Bush and the 9/11 Commission: What We Need to Know

You know.. I usually try and show respect for.. the fact that a lot of Americans like George W Bush, and believe that one should at least show respect for the office of the presidency, and that there are plenty of crappy and dishonest Democratic politicians, and that ad hominem attacks on the man are so commonplace on the left as to be tedious, and that the right is happy to claim any complaint whatsoever about the president is a manifestation of irrational Bush-hatred.

That said, HE IS A FUCKING MORON. He's stupid, incompetent, arrogant, self-righteous, incapable of acknowledging the slightest mistake, has zero regard for anyone who tries to hold him accountable for his actions, and lives in a bubble world full of yes-men because he's only able to deal with people who tell him what he wants to hear, and what's more, he revels in all of these things. It's disgusting. However I do take solace in the fact that he is in fact too self-centered and arrogant to ever stick around and be a force in the GOP for years to come, so that once he's thrown out in November he'll probably disappear off into some corporate consulting job set up by some of his rich friends, and never mess with national politics again.

I also question the motivations of former Clinton aides accusing the Bush administration of doing nothing to stop terror attacks based on the simple principle that they seemed to do nothing about while they were in office. If they knew there were threats, how come they didn't start to tighten security at airports beforehand? Would that have seemed too unbelieveably paranoid for the Clinton administration, given that according to the average U.S. citizen pre-9/11, most people would be going "uh? what the hell is Clinton smoking?" and lose faith in him? Perhaps. I dunno. Just speculating here. It's easy now to accuse the Bush administration pre-9/11 of being too slow prepare, when the Clinton administration had plenty of more time than that to do the same.

</devil's advocate>

Now...

Then again, if you believe in the conspiracy theory that 9/11 could only have happened during the Bush administration due to Bush/Osama history, and not during anyone else' presidency, then I guess Clinton aides warning of danger because of that historical connection would make sense. I don't entire believe it in myself, but I can understand people who do.

If you are so fucking smart, so aware of so much bad shit, then why the fuck did you sit on your hands for so long?

Oh I know--pesky little things like your employment were always more important than, say, convincing anyone else of the threats of Al Qaeda. But you failed in your job rather than risk your lucrative government pension. You're aghast at Bushco's failings and campaigning, but if guys like you had screamed at the top of your lungs how real the threat was, then maybe 9/11 wouldn't have happened. If things were so bad for so long, then why did it take you years to write a book about it? Couldn't you have gone to the press sooner, like, say, in 2001? No, you needed to write a book to make sure that your story got told in a way that would line your pocket. And I love how you chose 60 Minutes as your vehicle of promotion--after all, that corporation is paying for your royalties, and what better way to make sure you make money than by having their top news show pimp your wares?

The last thing we need are more government whistleblowers who only come out of the closet for a book deal. Maybe if people would stand up and point out this kind of bullshit when it happens the country wouldn't be so busy going down the shitter.

Richard Clarke was appointed by Ronald Reagan and served under both him and the first President Bush. What makes you think he is politically aligned with the Clinton administration?

If they knew there were threats, how come they didn't start to tighten security at airports beforehand?

Perhaps Clinton did fail us on Defense, though I note that 9/11 did not occur during his administration. But to address this briefly - clearly the threat grew enormously late in the Clinton admin and then during Bush's term, and especially in the weeks and days before 9/11. It wasn't until early 2000 that the FAA began to warn of a threat to American airliners. It wasn't until March of 2001 that the CIA warned that bin Laden was preparing to implement Operation Bojinka (Al Qaeda's name for Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's airline plot, originally intended to blow up 11 airliners over oceans in 1996, and later intended to crash the airliners into 11 American buildings, that apparently was foiled in early stages by the CIA and others). It wasn't until 10 weeks before 9/11 that the intelligence community became convinced that a threat to America was imminent. Four weeks before 9/11, the CIA received specific information of an attack on US soil. Throughout this time, we were monitoring Al Qaeda electronic communications. Shortly before 9/11, we intercepted multiple telephone calls from Abu Zubaydah to the US. In the week before 9/11, John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial jets and some other prominent figures were warned about air travel.

Anyway, this isn't really relevant to the plan that Clarke repeatedly presented to Bush before 9/11, which dealt with Offense - going after Al Qaeda and the Taliban when they were all in one place. After the Cole, Clinton decided that it was necessary to take out bin Laden. He thought it better to leave such an action to the incoming President rather than act beyond our borders as a lame duck. Clarke, Beers and Berger presented a plan for doing so. Bush didn't follow up.

Dear Richard Clarke the Mr. Career Fucking Security Wonk, Lifetime Taxpayer Leech, Professional Goal Post Mover, and Man With Opportunistic Hindsight:

If you are so fucking smart, so aware of so much bad shit, then why the fuck did you sit on your hands for so long?

First of all, on July 5th, 2001, Clarke warned the FBI, FAA, Coast Guard, INS and Customs to increase security in anticipation of an attack. The FAA ignored him.

Second, did you read the articles linked here? Clarke clearly and repeatedly asked Bush to go on the offense. Clarke came back at Bush again and again. Bush was the one sitting on his hands. And it's not like Bush just waited too long. He actually told Clarke to stop bothering him with this terrorist stuff. Did you think Clarke had the power to order troops to Afghanistan himself?

The last thing we need are more government whistleblowers who only come out of the closet for a book deal. Maybe if people would stand up and point out this kind of bullshit when it happens the country wouldn't be so busy going down the shitter.

Maybe what you're missing Don, is that these "whistleblowers" don't go to the media because they actually think that they can directly influence the President, which, you know, is sort of their job. Maybe what you're missing is that we have a President who is not there to listen to certain of his advisors. Maybe what you're missing is that these advisors can't even conceive that a President would be so driven by his ideological and political teams (or so blinded by his own ideology or ignorance) that he wouldn't actually do what's right for the country, even if thousands of American lives are at stake. Maybe what you're missing is that they wait for so long to go to the Press because it takes them so long to figure this out. Maybe what you're missing is that once they do get it, they wait and get a book deal and a media strategy because they've realized how dangerous the President is and decide that they need to get their message out in the most effecive way possible, because it's so important to our future. I mean, what are you arguing for here? The impeachment of Bush before his term runs out? Fine with me.

Don, how did I know it was you before reading the end of the post? Fine, go ballistic on Clarke - blame the guy who fucking tried everything he could to force the Bushies to get off their asses and do something about the terrorism threat. You know, I realize you hate the government and think they're all crooks and whatever, but why is your outrage so selective? I'm a hell of a lot more pissed off at the fact that Bush et al were warned repeatedly in no uncertain terms that a spectactular Al Qaeda attack was about to occur and did fuck-all to stop it, preferring instead to draw up plans for bombing Iraq and then packing up for a month-long vacation in Crawford. The "opportunism" of a guy writing a book revealing the insane levels of corruption and incompetence in the current administration is just not all that high up there on my list of outrages, I'm sorry.

And "Taxpayer Leech"? Jesus fucking Christ, how high is your tax bill, anyway? Sometimes I think there must be some secret Scandinavian-level bracket in the tax code that's only selectively applied to a carefully-chosen 1% of the population just so the anti-tax crusaders have enough folks yelling loudly enough about the horrible burden of taxation they suffer, thereby allowing Grover Norquist to maintain his fantasy of shrinking the entire federal government down to the size at which he could drown it in the bathtub.

Is this an actual excuse? Bill was too busy packing up his stuff to deal with the growing, near imminent threat he knew Al Qaida was?

Maybe what you're missing is that once they do get it, they wait and get a book deal and a media strategy because they've realized how dangerous the President is and decide that they need to get their message out in the most effecive way possible, because it's so important to our future.

I could believe everything Clarke says and the angle he puts it from, but I'd never ever buy into this being some act of nobility.

"Bin Laden had been saying for years, 'America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country.' This is part of his propaganda," Clarke said. "So what did we do after 9/11? We invade ... and occupy an oil-rich Arab country, which was doing nothing to threaten us."

That quote makes me want to vomit. Perhaps we should run all our foreign policy decisions by Osama?

Yeah, he sure did. But he kept working for this terrible boss until 2003. Despite all the ignoring, he kept working for Bush. Sorry, but if matters were this bad--or if they were so obvious--I'm not really sure why the press was not an option. Oh, it's an option now, but it wasn't an option then. Because now, of course, Clarke has a book to sell.

Maybe what you're missing Don, is that these "whistleblowers" don't go to the media because they actually think that they can directly influence the President, which, you know, is sort of their job

Or maybe my take on this is that three years of getting ignored on issues so vital as these is reason to think a) maybe there are two legitimate sides of the story, b) maybe Clarke didn't make the case he thinks he made, c) maybe he didn't make his case very well, d) if his case was so vital, what was his hesitation for going to the press sooner.

Maybe what you're missing is that once they do get it, they wait and get a book deal and a media strategy because they've realized how dangerous the President is and decide that they need to get their message out in the most effecive way possible, because it's so important to our future

Yeah right--the future is so important that it can always wait a few months or years for the book to get written and a media strategy formulized before we start to worry about anything. This story would have been explosive in 2001, it could have been told on 20/20 without a book or a media strategy, etc. It was vital to our future at least two years ago, but apparently it was only vital to Clarke after he retired.

Don, how did I know it was you before reading the end of the post?

Maybe because I'm probably the only poster who holds the entire government up to to higher standards and doesn't join in the endless chorus of tirades that merely singles out the Bush Adminstration for being incompetent.

I realize it's convenient to take Clarke's allegations to reinforce your hatred of Bush, and in the end, Bush has failed us. But it's awfully convenient for Clarke to try to wash his hands of this with a book and press parade. The question demands to be asked: why didn't we know about this shit until now? Do you wish Clarke would have gone to the press out of frustration in 2002 after he'd been beating his head into the wall for over a year? What exactly was his motivation to keep working for such a moron? I'm not going to apologize for being cynical about someone who works for an idiot while our national security is being toyed with.

The "opportunism" of a guy writing a book revealing the insane levels of corruption and incompetence in the current administration is just not all that high up there on my list of outrages, I'm sorry.

Of course it isn't, because you disagree with the current office holder. Would you feel the same way if Bill Clinton were President? Did you feel the same way when endless books and tirades were credibly thrown in his direction?

Jesus fucking Christ, how high is your tax bill, anyway?

This matters because? Oh yes, if my tax bill is higher than Daria's, then I can't be cynical about lifetime government employees who write tell all books once they safely have attained their 30 year pension. If guys like Clarke would have gone to the press in, say, 2001, then maybe I'd be inclined to believe that my tax dollars were being put to good use. At least I know I can vote against Bush and get him removed from office for taking my money and throwing it out the window--it's much less likely with people like Clarke for my input to have nearly that impact.

That quote makes me want to vomit. Perhaps we should run all our foreign policy decisions by Osama?

I think that quote is explicitly saying that we already do "run all our foreign policy decisions by Osama."

First of all, the CIA did not consider the threat to be imminent until Spring of 01. I doubt anyone thought a threat was coming immediately after the Cole in early October 2000, given that there had been at least a year between Al Qaeda attacks in the past.

Second, you're misstating my argument. I said that Clinton considered it *inappropriate* to act at that time. Let's go over the timeline again. The Cole attack was early October. The election was coming in November. The election was contested for over one month, during a time of high partisanship and emotion, until the Supreme Court decision on December 9 and Gore's concession December 13. Bush's coronation was one month later. I am quite certain that the conservative, America-hating response to Clinton and Gore trying to take out bin Laden at any time during this period would have been the same as in 98.

I could believe everything Clarke says and the angle he puts it from, but I'd never ever buy into this being some act of nobility.

Again, that's not what I said. Rather than a noble act, it's one of calculated pragmatism. One I consider appropriate in a time when the President of the United States lies to the American people, and they by and large believe him. Such lies, even in the absence of a national security threat, would be dangerous to the democracy that protects the rights of Americans and especially the minorities among them.

That quote makes me want to vomit. Perhaps we should run all our foreign policy decisions by Osama?

I'm not sure what foreign policy decisions you think we're making that bin Laden disapproves of?

I think you're missing Clarke's point. He is saying that bin Laden can't defeat America unless he recruits more Islamists to his cause. Osama knows that provoking an American attack on an Arab country is the best way to do that, because it's good propaganda for the pan-Islamic movement. Bush played right into his hands by going to Iraq, because he helped create new terrorists while simultaneously diverting resources from the effort to kill existing ones. We get to inherit his wind.

I realize it's convenient to take Clarke's allegations to reinforce your hatred of Bush

oh yes. The fact that I live in Manhattan (in a high-rise apartment building above a parking garage) and take the subway every day, and have worked since 9/10/01 four blocks from the World Trade Center and New York Stock Exchange, five blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge, and one block from the New York branch of the Federal Reserve has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Even if you don't want to go that far, the pattern of taking a hands-off approach to suspicious Saudis is not hard to understand given the ties between the Saudi elite and some of the U.S. elite (including the Bush family).

Sorry, still doesn't get Clinton off the hook. Contested election, not enough time, all that should be trumped by him knowing how much of a threat Al Quida was. You can't have it both ways, either the Clinton team knew and didn't act strongly enough or they underestimated the threat. They knew and they told the next administration to act doesn't cut it, in my book at least.

One I consider appropriate in a time when the President of the United States lies to the American people, and they by and large believe him. Such lies, even in the absence of a national security threat, would be dangerous to the democracy that protects the rights of Americans and especially the minorities among them.

I agree 100000%. I do think Clarke's quote about Iraq reveals where his falling out with the admin probably occurred. It seems to his advantage therefore to point out the pre 9/11 issues.

I'm not sure what foreign policy decisions you think we're making that bin Laden disapproves of?

Um, trying to kill him and his cronies? Driving the Taliban out of power? I get the whole blowback/hornet's nest argument. I just think allowing fear of terrorism to dictate what you do throughout the world is very dangerous. For example, if granting women in Iraq the right to vote and protest may stir up more Islamic extremists to take up arms, should we back down? The problem is that bin Laden's reasons to hate America are so broad that it is virtually impossible for us to exist wihtout pissing him off. Worrying about how we come across to the average person in the Mideast is one thing, worrying about what Al Quida and extremists think of us is another.

I've already said once that I'm not arguing about time

You can't have it both ways, either the Clinton team knew and didn't act strongly enough or they underestimated the threat. They knew and they told the next administration to act doesn't cut it, in my book at least.

I'm not having it both ways. I'm saying that there was a threat. And I'm also saying that they (correctly, as it turns out) anticipated that it was not so imminent that they needed to act before Bush took power.

Your argument can be said to be trying to have it both ways. Either Bush fucked up or he didn't. If you're saying that there was a threat for Clinton to ignore, you're admitting that there was a threat for Bush to ignore (and you're not denying that Bush ignored it). If you're not, then Clinton did nothing wrong.

In any event, Bush is President, and Clinton is not.

Um, trying to kill him and his cronies? Driving the Taliban out of power?

We're not trying very hard. If the administration were serious, it would not have pulled troops out of Afghanistan. It would not allow the Taliban to control 1/3 of Afghanistan. It would actually be paying attention toAfghanis' willingness to assist us find Al Qaeda.

I just think allowing fear of terrorism to dictate what you do throughout the world is very dangerous.

Who has said we should do that? Clarke hasn't. I haven't.

The problem is that bin Laden's reasons to hate America are so broad that it is virtually impossible for us to exist wihtout pissing him off.

Exactly. Which is why we should ignore those who tell us that a certain policy choice is what the terrorists want us to do.

What in the world? So.. let's see what's going on here. A former Bush administration official who was responsible for counterterror efforts comes out and claims, with evidence, that the administration failed to take terrorism seriously despite repeated and urgent warnings about imminent attacks. Well, this does reinforce the point that the administration failed us. But none of this is, of course, to be taken at all seriously because you've decided that I hate Bush! When exactly is Bush to be held accountable?

The question demands to be asked: why didn't we know about this shit until now?
Because people don't read about it or refuse to believe it? It's been reported on dating back to 2002:
Before Sept 11; Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy
by Barton Gellman
Washington Post
Friday, May 17, 2002
[...] On July 5 of last year, a month and a day before President Bush first heard that al Qaeda might plan a hijacking, the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room.

"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. [...]

A close look at the sequence of events, based on lengthy interviews early this year with participants and fresh accounts yesterday, appears to support the White House view that Bush lacked sufficient warning to stop the attack. But it also portrays a new administration that gave scant attention to an adversary whose lethal ambitions and savvy had been well understood for years.

Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet had been "nearly frantic" with concern since June 22, according to one frequent interlocutor, and a written intelligence summary for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on June 28: "It is highly likely that a significant al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks." By late summer, one senior political appointee said, Tenet had "repeated this so often that people got tired of hearing it."
------------------
The "opportunism" of a guy writing a book revealing the insane levels of corruption and incompetence in the current administration is just not all that high up there on my list of outrages, I'm sorry.

Of course it isn't, because you disagree with the current office holder. Would you feel the same way if Bill Clinton were President? Did you feel the same way when endless books and tirades were credibly thrown in his direction?

What is your point here? Tirades about what exactly? Bush is not to be held accountable for anything whatsoever because you don't like Clinton? This is a ridiculous, illogical red herring bullshit argument, and there is nothing I can say to refute it, because you're just going to keep making shit up in your head: Oh, you must hate Bush, you didn't complain about Clinton, did you? It doesn't matter if I bitched about Clinton or if I didn't, and I'm not going to even tell you how often I did. It's irrelevant to the subject at hand, and you know it.

If guys like Clarke would have gone to the press in, say, 2001, then maybe I'd be inclined to believe that my tax dollars were being put to good use.
Somehow I doubt it, given that you seem to have zero respect for the massive amount of work the man must have done during decades of public service under seven administrations, and that you jumped in to call him a choice list of grossly insulting and really juvenile names simply because you don't like the fact that he decided to write a book.

Oh, what's that? By "cut the FBI budget," you mean they suggested trimming a spending request for $1.5 billion in additional funds down to $538.5 million, which was then increased by Congress to $745 million? So even if the White House had gotten it's way, you're calling a $538,500,000 increase in spending a budget cut? Are you mental?

Also, from the WaPo:

Other documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's "Strategic Plan" from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. After the attacks, fighting terrorism became the department's primary goal. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism "the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area."

What's the difference between saying fighting terrorism is "a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs", and saying it's the most challenging threat "in the criminal justice area"?

The article details an emergency funds request directly after 9/11, the time at which it would be most needed, and Ashcroft still did not approve most of this funding. Furthermore the article goes on to detail continual refusals to fully meet FBI funding requests.. Perhaps it is par for the course for federal agencies to request more funding than they really expect to get, but then again, if priority one was really using all the tools at hand to fight terrorism and get to the bottom of what happened on 9/11 it seems this wasn't the time to deny the FBI funding. I was particularly surprised that one of the bills in question was threatened with a veto if it exceeded a $20 billion spending cap, given that the White House has had no objection to the massive costs of other legislation even as it runs up the deficit - such as hiding the fact that the Medicare bill was estimated to cost over $100 billion more than they claimed at the time. And the FBI funding issue is also remarkable in context, as the Bush camp just tried to claim John Kerry "gutted" intelligence in 1995 by pointing to a $1.5 billion cut Kerry proposed for an intelligence agency that had improperly hoarded $1.7 billion, and ignoring the fact that the Republican-led Congress eventually did pass a different bill cutting this amount. There were indeed budget squeezes and cuts in spending requests for the FBI, even after 9/11, and the pithy phrase I used to link to the piece did conflate the two.

What's the difference between saying fighting terrorism is "a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs", and saying it's the most challenging threat "in the criminal justice area"?
The difference is that John Ashcroft said terrorism is a "sub-goal" below other criminal justice issues, while the Clintonites said terrorism is the "most challenging threat" among them. Clearly, therefore, we are to believe there is no difference, because that might mean Ashcroft was mistaken in his priorities..

Daria, it was your tirade of "HE IS A FUCKING MORON. He's stupid, incompetent, arrogant, self-righteous, incapable of acknowledging the slightest mistake, has zero regard for anyone who tries to hold him accountable for his actions, and lives in a bubble world full of yes-men because he's only able to deal with people who tell him what he wants to hear, and what's more, he revels in all of these things. It's disgusting" that really inspired me to bring out my insulting and juvenile name calling.

Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass if Clarke served seven presidents, made wine with Jesus, or blew an intern while getting five Silver Stars and a gold watch during his tenure. I'm glad he did what he did, but the guy has a responsibility in this mess too--something he admits. Are you glad he was ineffective in his role during the last three years? Do you wish he would have gone to 60 Minutes in June of 2001 or are you glad he just kept his job and hoped for the best for the next three years?

Of course, it's you Daria who is making up the red herring argument (Bush is not to be held accountable for anything whatsoever because you don't like Clinton? This is a ridiculous, illogical red herring bullshit argument, and there is nothing I can say to refute it, because you're just going to keep making shit up in your head: Oh, you must hate Bush, you didn't complain about Clinton, did you) Just because I don't preface each political post of mine with a litany of Bush offenses, my impetus is based on my dislike of Clinton? Utter bullshit. And the reason I'm asking you whether or not the same kind of book would bother you were the political winds in the opposite direction is because it's totally releveant. I never accused you of not complaining about Clinton, I merely asked you if all those books about him bothered you.

I'm alarmed at the allegations Clarke is throwing around, just as I'd be alarmed if he was throwing them around towards any other president. I think Bush has been a massive failure. I don't think much of the guy. But in June 2001, Clarke was in the position to ward off September 11 and he, along with Bush, failed us all. He more or less admitted this, and if I felt like Clarke had no other options than to shut up and do his job, then I'd cut him some slack. That didn't happen. Clarke waited nearly three more years to tell his story--yes, there have been dribblings to the press about his position on terror but it's hardly been explosive finger pointing. Again I have to wonder: why did he wait so long? Awfully convenient of him. I'm glad he's doing what he's doing, but it only reinforces my cynicism of beaurocracy.

If both ways = both presidents fucked up re: Al Quida threat, then count me down with that opinion.

Which is why we should ignore those who tell us that a certain policy choice is what the terrorists want us to do.

!?!?!?! I could have sworn this is what I said 5 posts ago!

I read you as saying we should always do the opposite of what Al Qaeda wants to do, which isn't quite the same thing.

No, I don't have a problem with people who "take government money" and I really don't see any evidence of that in my postings. Ever. Indulge me in your evidence of this.

What I do have a problem with are people who take government money and then misuse it. The issue at hand, or at least the one I raised, is whether or not Richard Clarke could have raised these explosive accusations prior to retiring on his coveted 30 year pension. I say he could have. He may have prattled on and on to Bush or others in the Administration, but at some point I expect a person's moral obligations to inspire them to pass on this kind of vital information to someone who will listen. Instead, Clarke waited until years after the fact to go to the press, only going full force when he had a book to sell.

Yes, Clarke should have blown his pension in order to bolster Don's no-government fantasy. Seriously, this makes no sense at all. If the president won't take your counterterrorism suggestions seriously, where exactly are you going to go? To the press? Bush doesn't read the papers, remember? His best bet was to stick around and try to make the administration see the light. They didn't until it was too late.

Didn't the press print warnings about terrorist attacks before 9/11? It didn't do much good.

According to Richard Clarke, the best thing to do is just wait for retirement to write a lucrative book.

if clarks does an end around and goes to the press he gets fired by Bush for not being a team player.

At least then he could live with his conscience. But he would probably be less wealthy.

What does that change about his charge that the Bush administration went to sleep on the issue of terrorism, even after being warned in no uncertain terms?

Also, how lucrative was the contract exactly? I mean, I'm also au fait with the structure of book deals and would guess that the publisher will make back the advance on serialisation fees alone. Whatever an author makes, it is his or her publisher that ultimately cleans up even more as the royalty scale ATM is 8.5-10 per cent per copy after the agreed initial print run covered by the advance, the agent will be on a 15 domestic and 20 per cent foreign cut and even with the upswing in sales on political literature it's a crowded market so do you really think he'll earn past what he's already made?

I don't either, so maybe I'm not being clear. I'm not worried about what Clarke is doing right now, I'm worried about what he didn't do when he was employed by the State. In fact, I think his book is probably a valuable part of the context to what has happened in the Bush Administration. But his allegations are volatile enough that he should have made them long ago, and he should have gone straight to the press. It would have been a huge story back in 2001.

I have no idea how lucrative the contract was, and I wouldn't even want to guess other than the fact that his advance was probably pretty good given his career and the size of his publisher. As you note, the market for that genre of books is very crowded but only a select few get the publicity push of 60 Minutes. It's pretty embarassing that 60 Minutes did not note that Viacom was the corporate parent of Clarke's publisher, though given the exact same conflict of interest that came with the O'Neill book, it's not that surprising.

As for shooting the messenger, this guy's credibility is directly related to his accusations. Or maybe we should just assume everything is true and that his motives are pure. Maybe we should extend that same intellectual luxury to all politicians.

Do you also think that he shouldnt testify in front of congress as part of the 9/11 comission (something that also should have happened 'back in 2001') because it could be misconstrued as advertising? but either way: the documents he provides arent made any less legitimate. the timeline of events and the administrations response before and after sept 11 remains the same.

and I agree with dan. waiting up until this point is guaranteeing that his side of the story will be heard, rather than being denounced as providing 'aid and comfort to the terrorists'

Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists. The FAA even issued a warning to airlines and aviation security personnel that "the potential for a terrorist operation, such as an airline hijacking to free terrorists incarcerated in the United States, remains a concern."

Some evidence:

Numerous foreign governments warned the US that it was likely to be attacked by airplanes used as weapons. In 1999, the British warned that al-Qaeda had plans to use "commercial aircraft" in "unconventional ways, possibly as flying bombs."�[Sunday Times, 6/9/02] In early August 2001, Britain gave a categorical warning that the US should expect multiple airline hijackings. This warning was passed on to Bush a short time later. [Sunday Herald, 5/19/02] In June 2001, Germany warned that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack "American and Israeli symbols, which stand out." [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9/11/01, Washington Post, 9/14/01, Fox News, 5/17/02] In August, Russian President Putin warned the US that suicide pilots were training for attacks on US targets. [Fox News, 5/17/02]

In late July 2001, "Egyptian intelligence [learned] ... from one of its operatives in Afghanistan that 20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into the US and four of them had received flight training on Cessnas. To the Egyptians, pilots of small planes didn't sound terribly alarming, but they passed on the message to the CIA anyway, fully expecting Washington to request information. The request never came." [CBS, 10/9/02] This closely matches the details of the actual 9/11 plot, with its four pilots who trained on Cessnas. Around the end of August, Egyptian intelligence followed up with a warning that al-Qaeda was in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, probably within the US. [AP, 12/7/01, New York Times, 6/4/02] Jordan passed on the message that a major attack, code named the "Big Wedding," was planned inside the US and that aircraft would be used.�[International Herald Tribune, 5/21/02, Christian Science Monitor, 5/23/02] "Big Wedding" was in fact al-Qaeda's secret code name for the 9/11 attacks. [Chicago Tribune, 9/5/02]

Israel went even further, warning in mid-August 2001 that between 50 to 200 al-Qaeda terrorists had slipped into the US and were planning an imminent, "major assault on the United States." They said it was likely to be on a "large scale target" (the CIA has denied this warning). [Telegraph, 9/16/01, Los Angeles Times, 9/20/01, Fox News, 5/17/02] On August 23, Israel even gave the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in the US who were about to stage an attack. It's not known if these were the exact same 19 hijackers as in the 9/11 attack, but at least four of the names on the list were the same: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, and Mohamed Atta. [Die Zeit, 10/1/02, Der Spiegel, 10/1/02, BBC, 10/2/02, Haaretz, 10/3/02] Apparently Israeli agents had been monitoring the hijackers inside the US for months. For instance, beginning in December 2000, agents lived a few blocks from Marwan Alshehhi and Mohamed Atta, and observed them "around the clock." [Salon, 5/7/02, Der Spiegel, 10/1/02]

See this site for more information (as well as links to cited sources).

Don, either Clarke is lying, or Cheney/Bush/Wolfowitz/Rice/Rumsfeld are lying. Why don't you spell out which one of the two you believe?

It wasn't to be sensitive to a politician, it would have been to be sensitive to innocent people who might otherwise be killed because of a lack of action on the part of the State.

Do you also think that he shouldnt testify in front of congress as part of the 9/11 comission

Anyone involved should testify, though there are and should be limitations of what testimony is.

waiting up until this point is guaranteeing that his side of the story will be heard, rather than being denounced as providing 'aid and comfort to the terrorists'

The problem with waiting is that now Richard Clarke has a bit of a problem on his hands: he was demoted by President Bush in the twilight of his public service, he avoided going to the press with some very serious accusations three years ago and left in a huff after cashing in on his full pension rather than resign on principle. He then trots off to the Kennedy school and writes a book with...John Kerry's terrorism advisor. Now he writes a book full of complaints of the current Administration and I'm supposed to ignore the messenger and just blindly accept everything he says as merely a part of his civil duty? Sorry, but I'm just a little suspcious of a guy who suddenly gets religion when he's left the whorehouse.

(c) my crusty old journo prof

I realize this is the convenient position of Josh Marshall, but he's not the final authority and given that he is entirely partisan on this issue I really don't find his summation all that authoritative. And since both parties have a clear stake in the outcome I'm not convinced that there is a version that will be sufficiently succinct. Further, I really don't know which lie or lies you refer to--it'd be easier for you to ask me which allegation and then I'll tell you if I think it's a lie or not.

AS FOR WHO I BELIEVE, I'D SAY BOTH OF THEM ARE PROBABLY LYING TO AT LEAST SOME DEGREE. I HAVE EVERY REASON TO BE BE SUSPICIOUS OF THE BUSHIES BECAUSE IT IS ELECTION SEASON AND THEY ARGUABLY HAVE A LOT TO LOSE. ON THE OTHER HAND, IF I WERE A PERSON WHO WAS NOT ONLY DEMOTED AT THE TWILIGHT OF MY CAREER AND THEN SAT AND WATCH MY ADVICE GET IGNORED FOR THREE YEARS I WOULD PROBABLY BE BITTER. AS OF NOW, CLARKE'S STORY HAS NOT BEEN ADEQUATELY FLESHED OUT SO TAKING HIS WORD AT FACE VALUE, GIVEN HIS POSITION AS A DISGRUNTLED FORMER EMPLOYEE AND GOOD FRIEND OF A KEY KERRY ASSOCIATE, SEEMS SLIGHTLY DUBIOUS. IN AN ISSUE SUCH AS THIS THERE IS SUCH A VAST ARRAY OF INFORMATION THAT IT SEEMS UTTERLY STUPID TO MAKE A PRONOUNCEMENT WHO I BELIEVE. FURTHER, THE PEOPLE WHO ARE LINING UP ON THE SIDE OF ABSOLUTE BELIEVERS IN CLARKE'S TESTIMONY ARE ALL FROM THE SAME POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE, ANOTHER REASON TO BE SUSPICIOUS OF HIS MOTIVATIONS. IN THE END, I DON'T TRUST THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WITH MUCH AND I'M PRETTY SURE, LIKE EVERY OTHER ADMINISTRATION BEFORE THEM, THAT THEY SHROUD THE TRUTH OR LIE OUTRIGHT WITH ALARMING FREQUENCY. HOPE THAT ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION J. NEXT TIME LET'S NOT USE ALL CAPS DUDE.

Clarke's motives are suspect. Fine. BFD. That doesn't change anything.

Sure it does. It goes straight to Clarke's credibility--if you want to know who I believe then credibility matters. Bushco's motives are certainly suspect. Does that change anything for you?

Rand Beers became a "key Kerry advisor" only after being a "key Bush advisor."

Is there a difference between working on a presidential campaign and working for a presidential administration? Has Beers worked on any other presidential campaign? Yeah, I'd say Beers has a dog in this fight.

It is more likely than not that Don is correct in thinking that neither side is presenting the unvarnished truth.

These non-underlined bits actually make me more a Clarke fan:

"We should not have a barrier of evidence that can be used in a court of law," Clarke says.

He compares the current threat of global terrorism with the situation faced by Western democracies in the period leading up to World War II, when appeasement carried the day."

Whether [Clarke's] charges are the result of a momentary lapse in judgment ... or the hallmark of personal ego and greed ... while settling scores

then he goes on to bang on and on about how clinton ignored sudan's offer to extradite bin laden to the saudis, how clinton ignored the sudanese intelligence agencies, how clinton ignored the sudan-iraq-qaeda connection, sudan this, sudan that, something about the UAE and something about pakistan ...

so here's the punchline at the end of the article:

Mansoor Ijaz ... negotiated Sudan's offer of counterterrorism assistance on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to the Clinton administration

WTF??? we're supposed to question clarke's credibility on 9/11, when the cia from tenet on down have backed up most of clarke's claims and bob woodward reported most of the same (if you read between the lines) in "bush at war"? and we're supposed to take this guy seriously???

Yeah, that way the only source of information would be from the fox guarding the henhouse. Great idea, Vahid. What a great way to ensure a one-sided debate. Why do you waste your workday coming up with this kind of inane insight?

Anyway, I can't but be highly, highly skeptical of anything printed in the NRO. Mind you, I'm the same way about stuff like The Nation, Salon, even the American Prospect, which I just subscribed to..

Daria, I like you. I really do. But I really don't see where you're coming from on this one. I was embarassingly adolescent in my initial comments towards Clarke (and I am sorry about that), but to pick at me for posting a link to NRO after Gabbneb points us to Kleiman...that seems a bit, well, partisan of you.

FWIW, Sean Hannity is mental lightweight. He had a morning talk show down here about 8 years ago and regularly got his ass handed to him by all the competition, and even more hilariously, by his own callers. His success is an absolute refutation of meritocracy.

Yes

(as to Kleiman, not CFAP, which, while similarly, if not equally, partisan, is a research organization, not an advocacy magazine/blog)

in general, i think the most frustrating thing about political dialogue in america (and maybe everywhere else) is that the distinction between ad hominem attacks and rational critique of actions has been compltely lost. if clarke is doing it for the money, but all his statements are corroborated, i dont care if he makes $10 million, though if he does, i might call him and ask to borrow $5.

""

CFAP is not only a "research organization" like, say, the Heritage Foundation, it's an advocacy group that says, "Every day we challenge conservative thinking that undermines the bedrock American values". CFAP may claim to be non-partisan, but that's only for tax purposes--this is a group that is absolutely an advocacy group that is dedicated to pushing its political philosophy through the press. The staff is nearly exclusively former or current Democratic staffers. You will have to elaborate to me why CFAP is not just as partisan as NRO.

As for Kleiman, if he's not an outright advocate for the Democratic Party, then I don't know what one is. He often refers to Bush as "Bushco", has open contempt for the current administration, and clearly is supportive of the Kerry campaign. If you think Kleiman is not as partisan as NRO, then it would be revealing to know why.

Maybe you don't know what one is? Being against one thing doesn't make you in favour of the other. It doesn't even make you not a member of the Republican party!

Or it impossible to impartially find fault with the administration?

No it's not impossible at all. And if you follow the press closely enough, you can see that within the administration there is ample disagreement.

The point is that Mark Kleiman is reliably critical of the Republican Party and the current president. He's a liberal guy. His posts and blog are a continual criticism of conservatism. If that's not partisan behavior, then what is?

Don's point about "how comparably often is a competing viewpoint of liberalism linked on ILX anyway" is also otm.

Aarons post up there is a good one. Currently the organization that brought down the World Trade Center is on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Currently the bulk of the United States military is in Iraq.

You're right Teeny, Cohen was pretty good.

I stated clearly that CFAP is partisan. I also conceded, with little difficulty, the possibility that it is equally partisan as NRO. I was unwilling to state definitively an equality, however, because CFAP, in large part, disseminates the work of others - publications by the (conservative) government and the (conservative) mainstream media. NRO's sourcing is more, shall we say, faith-based.

Though actually, I think it's fair to say that, in one sense, CFAP is more partisan than NRO - it is more tied to a party, while NRO is more tied to an ideology, or at least an impulse.

As for Kleiman, if he's not an outright advocate for the Democratic Party, then I don't know what one is.

um, Eric Alterman? You yourself seemed to suggest he was reasonable a few days ago.

He often refers to Bush as "Bushco"

Damning.

has open contempt for the current administration,

You mean like John McCain, Chuck Hagel and Dick Clarke?

If you think Kleiman is not as partisan as NRO, then it would be revealing to know why.

Simple. He is willing to take sides with the dominant Republican message every once in a while. NRO will never do the reverse.

I so knew Gabb would turn my comment into Bush criticism.

don, are you aware that not everybody in the government is hired by the same person?? are you aware that the entire US government isn't replaced when the administration changes?? that different government agencies often have different findings on the same subject?? that most federal employees are NOT comparable to cabinet members in terms of partisanship?? that there are many many many bureacratically oriented government agencies that are essentially nonpartisan??

don, are you familiar with the idea of primary sources and secondary sources?

WTF??? we're supposed to question clarke's credibility on 9/11, when the cia from tenet on down have backed up most of clarke's claims and bob woodward reported most of the same (if you read between the lines) in "bush at war"? and we're supposed to take this guy seriously???

No, I described him specifically with one word: "okay". And that was in the context of blogs. Nice try, though.

Though actually, I think it's fair to say that, in one sense, CFAP is more partisan than NRO - it is more tied to a party, while NRO is more tied to an ideology, or at least an impulse.

Maybe, but I give you credit for making the concessions you have.

He is willing to take sides with the dominant Republican message every once in a while. NRO will never do the reverse

That's a stretch. Frankly, I don't really trust that you have that thorough of a knowledge of NRO's archives. How much and how often do you read it? Do you subscribe? You are positing absolutes and it seems to me that your political prejudice flavors your authority. Are you willing to bet your life that NRO didn't disagree with the Bush message of expanding education spending, initiating the free drug program, etc.? I don't have the time to sort through stacks or Lexis today, but I'm nearly certain that NRO has deviated from the dominant Republican message.

Vahid, I have a journalism degree. Your rhetorical questions are not compelling. Are you familiar with the idea of a secondary (or primary source, for that matter) being outside the auspices or control of .gov?

don, I'm also curious why you focused in on that aspect of vahid's posts instead of this one

We are supposed to focus on the content and the motive. Clarke's assertions have changed over the years, and conveniently, his story seems rather rubber in certain areas. "Most of Clarke's claims"? There's a mile of grey area in that line alone. Which claims? Which constitutes "most"? And in order to discern the truth, I'm supposed to "read between the lines", which then means I'm supposed to have magical, interpretative powers that will then make it all crystal clear. It turns out there are varying stories and varying degrees of agreement in this whole commission saga. Lots of people are up there trying to cover their asses and assign blame elsewhere. And I'm supposed to just believe Clarke outright?

And to your last point J., I've been saying we probably can't reliably trust anyone very well in this matter since all have a dog in the fight, and all have political careers to lose. Some, more than others. We should have a degree of suspicion towards all.

But that's an obvious point, isn't it? I mean, everybody's who's anybody in politics is probably suspect in one way or another. I don't think it's very courageous to use suspicion as a way out of any belief at all.

The broader issue here is that Clarke's *big points* aren't really anything new, it's just that no one with his credentials and access has said them before. You're probably right about his little disagreements with various Bush admin officials, but that's not what counts, ever--what counts are his *big points* (Bush admin focused on Saddam for no good reason, Bush Admin completely ignored Al Queda until after 9/11), and you have stubbornly refused to take a position on those big points, and instead focused on the Clarke's biases. Quite frankly, that strikes me as arguing in bad faith, and in fact, it's *precisely* what the Bush administration is doing (cf. Cheney on Limbaugh, Rice's editorial, etc.). That's why I accused you of shooting the messenger way upthread.

I'm responding to your similarly absolute statement about Kleiman - how long and how closely have you read him? No, of course I don't spend my time reading NRO, and of course I'm going a little overboard - I think that's clear from my stating an absolute negative in partisan political speech. But I've seen enough to trust my instinct. If you'd like to prove me wrong, go ahead. I am sure that one or more of the NRO bloggers has differed in at least some respect from the Bush admin, but of course there are times (not many, but increasingly often) when the Bush admin != the dominant Republican message, or when no such dominant message exists.

Richard Clarke today (to the 9/11 families):
Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. I failed you. We tried hard, but we failed you...I ask for your understanding, and your forgiveness.

Criticism of Bush is implicit in what I said, but wasn't my point

More of Clarke talking out the other side of his mouth.

I'm not really sure why being suspicious about Clarke's a) motives or b) the content of his comments is arguing in bad faith, given that until Monday the commission hadn't released a report and no public hearings had even been held. And to say that everything, or even the bulk of what Clark alleges, is absolutely true is something I'm not willing to grant at his word. Why? Because I find his motives questionable, which detracts from his credibility. A guy like Rand Beers, who as Gabbneb noted is a Democrat, who resigned in disgust has more credibility complaining on principle than Clarke does. Doesn't the entirety of Clarke's comments bear scrutiny by his peers and the press before we accept it as gospel?

And now, with the dogs of defense unleashed, we start to see that maybe Clarke isn't such a one-dimensional whistle blower. We are starting to see that there are obvious contradictions in statements he made in 2002 and now. When was he telling the truth? Now or then? Do you believe him now, when he's got a book (whose publishing date was moved up to coincide with the hearings) to sell and an image to polish, or did you believe him in 2002 when he was singning the company song? Do you believe him now, when he says the Bush Administration "ignored" Al Qaeda until 9/11 happened, or do you believe this? I dunno, the more this whole thing spins into a political football the harder it is to really trust anyone.

As to which emphasis better describes the situation, that's easy. I "believe" him more now that he is out of government and testifying under oath than before when he was unsworn and his job was on the line.

At least, that was his rationale. He assumes, apparently, that he was the only one who could perform in that function. Fine. But as I've stated all along, I think #1 was a perfectly reasonable route as well. And as for #3, his "best face" in 2002 directly contradicts his statements now. Pretty convenient, doncha think? And as for his statements vs. facts, it's apparent his alleging of the Bushies "ignoring" Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 is a figment of his imagination.

I also find it *very* interesting that Don, as a J school grad, has nothing to say about Fox' publication of a background briefing and identification of its source.

I will assume that you are not, but if you are intimating that somehow I am compromising my sense of ethics for not bringing up the nature of Fox' publication--a document the White House approved, not one covertly leaked like so much "news" that is typically faxed around DC--then I guess I have even less of your respect than I might have imagined. I really don't like the White House selectively releasing documents to organizations that might give them favorable treatment, but it's hardly unique behavior by the executive branch. And this incident pales in comparison to what the networks do on a regular basis by not identifying conflicts of interest.

-----
A former FBI translator said Wednesday that the bureau had "real, specific" information relating to the Sept. 11 attacks before they happened. Sibel Edmonds worked for the agency working from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002.Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities. Edmonds said she could not comment in detail because she has been under a Justice Department gag order since October 2002.

Edmonds has testified before the Sept. 11 commission, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.
-----

Some background info on Edmond's story

-----
Edmonds says that to her amazement, from the day she started the job, she was told repeatedly by one of her supervisors that there was no urgency - that she should take longer to translate documents so that the department would appear overworked and understaffed. That way, it would receive a larger budget for the next year.

“We were told by our supervisors that this was the great opportunity for asking for increased budget and asking for more translators,” says Edmonds. “And in order to do that, don't do the work and let the documents pile up so we can show it and say that we need more translators and expand the department.”

Edmonds says that the supervisor, in an effort to slow her down, went so far as to erase completed translations from her FBI computer after she'd left work for the day.
-----

And the DOJ "state secret" order which dumped a bucket of cold water on everything

It really is fun to watch this stuff, but this is nothing compared to the drama I imagine the Iraq committee will produce. Will that be televised?

I'm sure people could have done more, and certainly if it's found that specific intelligence was ignored I'll be furious, and heads should roll, etc, but I feel pretty forgiving towards the people who are being held responsible for anticipating 9/11. The U.S. got bitch-slapped fair and square. It was an "intelligence failure" insofar as it wasn't anticipated, but as many people have pointed out, these kinds of attacks are to some extent inevitable short of a Fahrenheit 451-type society.

W/r/t the book release date: I have seen reports that the White House refused to clear or delayed clearance by 3-5 months (depending on the source). How long does clearance of this type normally take?

W/r/t the background report: So, Fox had the background interview, which I guess was not for attribution originally(?). Fox approached the White House for permission to divulge. Do they have the authority to release info from Clarke's background interview? Is this common practice? These are not rhetorical questions--I don't know a lot about journalistic practice.

I agree with Tracer in that I'm more willing to accept an apology for, or admission of, being too slack in advance of 9/11 than I am to forgive exploiting 9/11 in order to attack Iraq. I really think that is an unpardonable action, if true. (I have long suspected strongly that it is true).

bitch-slapped fair and square

"Fair and square"?

The information on the background briefing really interests me. From a journalistic standards standpoint, does the White House have the authority to allow disclosure of a former _employee's_ interview that was not for attribution? I am not discussing the legal authority of the administration, I am scrutinizing whether journalists would consider the employer's authorization to be a release from confidentiality of sources principles.

This guy is alleging that all the networks were released to ID the person doing background.

What a clusterfuck this whole thing has turned out to be. Makes you wonder exactly what Clarke (and Rice et al) said in their testimony to the commission behind closed doors.

"I'm not happy."

Haha Condi's coming in for some stick from the commission isn't she? I guess they feel dissed.

The United States is in the process of picking apart the intelligence and political failures that led up to the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001. This is an unprecedented process. Normally such reviews occur after the war has ended. In this case, the review was made necessary by the president's failure to clean house after Sept. 11. That said, the truth of the matter would appear to be more complex than the simplistic charges being traded. The fact is, in our view, the Bush and Clinton policies were far more similar than they were different. We are not quite certain who we have insulted with that claim.

That said, I really don't know the rules of confidentiality in this case and haven't seen a conclusive ruling on the matter. I don't know if backgrounding gives an implicit agreement of privacy with the person being interviewed or if the privacy decision is in the government's domain. If Clarke spoke on the implicit condition that he'd never be identified, then I don't think he should have been. However, revealing names in a situation like this has plenty of precedent, and I think the boogeyman here is the White House more than Fox. That interview was very much newsworthy and relevant--if Clarke is allowed to make charges like that in a book on a publicity crusade, then it seems appropriate that relevant public comments he made be used to round out the story. But the commission itself could have made that call, I suppose.

As far as the standard I hold to messengers and the degree to whether or not I agree (either by opinion or fact) with them, I would say that my impulse is probably like yours--I'm more suspicious of people I don't agree with. I don't think my standards are necessarily higher as much as I am probably more inclined to be outspoken towards people whom I have a difference of perspective. If that's an abnormal personality trait that I have, or you think that I apply a higher standard to less-favored messengers than say, most people, well I guess I should be more careful.

(FWIW, I thought the Stephanopolus book was a travesty and the endless verbal diarrhea from guys like Dick Morris about the Clintons was/is without class--both of those guys knew of the problems as they happened in that administration, and they too sat on their hands. I was very critical of them at the time for doing this, though back then it was on the Usenet and not here at ILX.)

Furthermore, Colin Powell now tells us that everything Clarke has said may be legitimate.

Maybe now people will wake up to the obvious.

"I'm not aware of a campaign against Mr. Clarke, and I am not a member," Mr. Powell said. "The book is the book, and you can read it and make your own judgment as to whether it's accurate."

????? How is that saying "everything Clarke has said may be legitimate" ?

And from that last article: "For most of 2001, the national security agenda really consisted of only two items, neither of which had anything to do with the terrorist threat of radical Islam. First, the administration increased its efforts to bring about regime change in Iraq, which was believed to be the prime source of instability in a region of great strategic importance."

I find it telling that an issue under considerable debate is stated as an unquestionable fact.

Here is a point-by-point response to the "evidence" in the Murdoch-paper article, which was written by "a syndicated columnist [whose] views on political, economic and social issues appear frequently in such outlets as the New York Post, The Washington Times, and National Review Online," who is also a media fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution (Condi's old stomping grounds) and who served on both Reagan for President campaigns, worked for Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and served as a communications consultant to Steve Forbes' 2000 presidential campaign:

- Abdul Rahman Yasin

Oh wow, there was one terrorist in Iraq! A whole terrorist! Not half of one! There were hundreds or thousands in the US prior to 9/11 - the US must harbor terrorists!

The article conveniently leaves out most of the following testimony from Clarke:

"But the investigation, both the CIA investigation and the FBI investigation, made it very clear in '95 and '96 as they got more information, that the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack.

And the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the attack was Iraqi hardly seems to me as evidence that the Iraqi government was involved in the attack. The attack was Al Qaida; not Iraq. The Iraqi government because, obviously, of the hostility between us and them, didn't cooperate in turning him over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give sanctuary to other terrorists.

But the allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was done by the Iraqi government I think is absolutely without foundation."

Yasin was an Iraqi who fled there after the 93 WTC bombing (Ramzi Yousef, who carried out the bombing, fled to Pakistan, not Iraq), and after the FBI arrested him and let him go. He wasn't considered important enough to be on the FBI's Most Wanted list until after 9/11, when we needed excuses to "Go Massive. Sweep up things related and not." It's claimed (unverifiable, of course) that he was arrested by the Iraqi government in 94, and that he remained in their custody thereafter. It's effectively conceded by the Bush administration that Saddam offered him to the US after 9/11 as proof of no Iraqi involvement and to avoid an invasion. Sort of like how Iran may be holding some senior Al Qaeda people to get leverage in negotiating with the US.

- The Shifa plant

The plant was quickly

- The Shifa plant

The plant was quickly

- The Shifa plant

The plant was quickly conceded by the Clinton admin not to have been a chemical weapons plant. The evidence of VX is based solely upon the presence of a chemical that is produced by the decomposition of pesticides.

- Abu Abbas

Abu Abbas has never been connected with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He has been involved with a pro-Palestinian terrorist group responsible for the death of one American. Before Abbas was "relaxing in Baghdad," he was relaxing in Israel, where he purportedly was engaged in efforts to push the Palestinian cause without violence, and was there with the tacit permission of the Israeli government. After Oslo "failed," he did go to Iraq, and there's some evidence that his organization was a conduit for payments by Saddam to Palestinian suicide bombers. Those suicide bombers, however, have little to do with the "terrorist threat of radical Islam," certainly insofar as it threatens Americans, and substantially insofar as it threatens Israel. Most Palestinian terrorists are motivated by nationalism and anti-semitism. They do not, however, seek the establishment of an Islamic caliphate ruling Arabia if not the world. The Iraq war was not sold as a war to protect Israel.

- Hisham al-Hussein

I had never heard of this guy or this incident until I read the article you linked. A search for "Hisham al Hussein" produces 15 search hits in Google. At least 5 are conservative magazines/websites/research groups. I think I'll let that speak for itself.

- the '93 IIS document

I have no compunction about believing that the administration created a fake document. They've done it before. Yellowcake, maybe Zarqawi. Anyway, it doesn't matter. There were contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda back then. In 91-92, bin Laden sought to build ties with other Islamic organizations. He and Saddam felt each other out about collaboration. Saddam wasn't up for it. bin Laden retreated to his predisposed distaste for the largely secular man who fought the (Shiite, admittedly, but) Islamic revolutionary regime in Iran. They had competing ideologies and competing interests.

- Tenet's 2002 Letter

In 2004, Tenet tells us that there's no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda and never was. You don't suppose that the 2002 letter is another instance of an administration official trying to put the best face on the evidence at pain of losing their job, like Clarke's 2002 background briefing, do you? I mean, it's not as if a half dozen high level advisors have resigned, alleging that the administration is a political operation in which truth is abused, facts are ignored, and the party line is toed.

Hey, notice how that article fails to mention the famous meeting between Mohammad Atta and the Iraqi intelligence officer? And how it fails to mention Ansar al-Islam? Yeah. Those omissions might be illuminating.

In summary, there is no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. The CIA has said that. The government's chief counter-terror officials of the last 15 years have said that. British intelligence and Tony Blair have said that. George W. Bush has admitted that Iraq played no role in 9/11. In fact, you can probably find more links between Al Qaeda and the Bush administration than between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The only person who has continually pretended that there is evidence of a connection is a single, influential, conservative conspiracy crackpot paid off by a conservative research organization and relying on patently flimsy evidence.

Rather, as Richard Clarke (and, by implication, George Tenet) tells us, "by invading Iraq the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."

The thing I can't figure out is why people like this guy are in such denial about the obvious. Yeah, the Bush team has flip flopped and probably spun the truth as much as any administration, but the virtual free pass Clarke has received from the press--you know, the whole hero/civillian bullshit where no one but the usual suspectsare even vetting his many claims. And gee, to spend the majority of his testimony, 60 Minutes appearance, and his book ripping apart the Bush administration and comparatively ignoring the shortcomings in his the previous eight years is the kind of thing that we’d expect from a person on the other side of the political fence. Because, despite what’s being trumpeted in the press (and here), there’s no evidence yet that Richard Clarke is a registered Republican.

Which is why, as usual, politics as usual is rearing its ugly head.

I can't believe people aren't more up in arms about this, it's fucking ridiculous.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Next time I want an answer like this, I'll give Saddam a call.

Dude, you just cited the same article I debunked in its entirety

So what does that tell you?

obvious. it will reveal that she has lied to the American people when unsworn. it might even reveal that Bush has done so as well

Yes, very obvious. How could I have missed it. There can only be one answer to everything. Because, you know, it's so obvious.

Funny, the people who claim that the policies were so different are the ones who have the most to lose if they weren't--general level or otherwise. This political circus is all about assigning and denying blame, rather than an apolitical process to vet the truth.

And by the way, this guy never got around to debunking the infamous Stephen Hayes article, except to concede that he respects Hayes a great deal and that while much of it may be restatement of known facts, some of it is also minorly new. Marshall said that it was worth vetting in the press, but that the press probably wouldn’t do much with it. Which they didn’t. But the money quote for me is:
“It seems clear that there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaida during the 1990s.” His italics, not mine. Marshall dismisses what they might have been, but concedes they were there. So, if you don’t trust or just hate the Bushies, then that probably means that these contacts were just your basic shady arms deals or telling dirty jokes or whatever. And if you "celebrate the Iraq war" then you probably see this as absolute evidence that Saddam was sleeping with Al Qaeda.

This is a somewhat reasonable argument, but what makes you so sure of this?

If I am so driven by partisanship, then why am I not railing against Clarke's criticism of the Clinton administration?

Because a) you intimate that you accepted Clarke's account as wholly true without even the slightest vetting and b) his criticism of the Clinton regime was comparatively non-existent. Certain statements Clarke made on 60 Minutes such as Bush "completely ignored" Al Qaeda are a total, proven fabrication. Perhaps those statements were taken out of context (i.e. in the editing room for programming reasons that were out of his control) but on face value a statement like that is laughable. I'd also say you're not railing on his criticism of the Clinton administration because it doesn't serve your agenda; this issue (of course) isn't what Clinton did or didn't do because he wasn't president on 9/11.

Finally, does anyone know if someone did a thorough takedown of that Hayes article I referenced? I'm sure someone probably did, and I'd like to read it. (Honestly.)

Her money quote in the article...

" Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."

...doesn't really make sense given Rice's op-ed, which is what is referenced:

"Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists. The FAA even issued a warning to airlines and aviation security personnel that 'the potential for a terrorist operation, such as an airline hijacking to free terrorists incarcerated in the United States, remains a concern.'"

I wonder why Boehlert didn't confront her on this quote, or directly compare this woman's charges with Rice's comments. I wonder why Salon editors didn't insist that element be added, given the charges Boehlert is reporting. The obvious question would have been, "So, you're saying that Administration officials knew that airplanes would be used to attack the US at least two months prior to 9/11?"

The reason this is an obvious question is because we already know that problems like thisexisted within our intel. Her quotes in the article are too vague at this point to suggest contradiction in Rice's op-ed. And given this woman's motive to embarrass, which is approximately 17.45 times more than Clarke's, I'd say we'll have to wait to read her commission testimony before we can determine the relevance of this story.

Of course it's true. It's nothing new, either. We've heard endlessly from multiple sources about how there was no communication b/w FBI and CIA and the admin and no communication from the lower levels of FBI to the higher levels, and that the lower levels had all of the info she specified. This is completely consistent with that storyline. Clarke's charge is that if the President, or at least Condi, had war-roomed this thing, and gotten the principals together and impressed them with the importance of the issue, and forced them to go back to their teams and sweep up all of the info, they might well have dug this intel out of FBI.

I wonder why Boehlert didn't confront her on this quote, or directly compare this woman's charges with Rice's comments. I wonder why Salon editors didn't insist that element be added, given the charges Boehlert is reporting. The obvious question would have been, "So, you're saying that Administration officials knew that airplanes would be used to attack the US at least two months prior to 9/11?"

I really don't understand the point here. The obvious question you propose is clearly exactly what she's saying. You seem to be "vetting" "this woman's charges" while completely crediting Condi.

Because a) you intimate that you accepted Clarke's account as wholly true without even the slightest vetting and b) his criticism of the Clinton regime was comparatively non-existent.

"vetting"? I evaluate the credibility of everyone who says anything. I find Clarke highly credible. The only thing I question him on is that he's upset at not being #2 at Homeland Security, but even then in a strict sense, he's telling the truth - he wouldn't want to run such a dept in an administration that continues to hamper the real effort to fight terrorists. In any event, that's irrelevant to the substance of his charges. I also judge professional people differently from political people. He is a career civil servant who is clearly - look at his record of Presidential support and the comments of those who have worked for him - extremely good at his job, and driven by the single issue to which he is assigned. I also judge him on the tenor of his statements. He is continually concerned with their precision, truthfulness and fairness. By contrast, his critics, such as Stephen Hadley who followed him on 60 minutes, appear to me clearly to be managing the truth. Hadley would not have passed a credibility test in any courtroom - look at how uncomfortable he was, how he kept flinching and swallowing. Condi isn't credible either - why won't she testify under oath and why are her statements internally inconsisstent and contradicted by Armitage? Moreover, the admin officials are moving away from precision - they are trying to talk about broad themes and moving from the issue - what kind of job they did - to the spin - Clarke's motivation.

There are two very good reasons that Clarke's criticism of the Clinton admin was "comparatively nonexistent":
1) Clinton is not up for re-election; Bush is
2) he thinks that, while Clinton failed, Clinton did a much better job than Bush did

Certain statements Clarke made on 60 Minutes such as Bush "completely ignored" Al Qaeda are a total, proven fabrication.

Tell me one thing Bush did to fight Al Qaeda prior to September 4, 2001.

there’s no evidence yet that Richard Clarke is a registered Republican.

The evidence was that in the 2000 Virginia primary, he requested a Republican, not a Democratic, ballot. But I guess this morning you get your birthday cake - Clarke told Tim Russert that he voted for Gore in 2000. I guess that totally destroys his credibility, because it's ridiculous to think that anyone who would vote for a Democrat has anything to say about anything, especially macho-type stuff. So maybe he's a big, flaming liberal (who voted for John McCain). Or maybe he's an independent who votes primarily on national security issues (and who has called George H.W. Bush the best President he has served under, because he was a serious national security professional), and who knew, just like I and anyone who read the newspaper every day and had a brain did in 2000, that George W. Bush was an ignoramus unprepared for his job who would surround himself with advisors driven by ideology that blinds them to the problems facing our country and how to fix them.

I can deal with a difference of a opinion. I can deal with a different perspective on what the facts are or even how they are presented. But why resort to this kind of condescension? Exchange the words "2000" with "1992" and "Bush" with "Clinton" and you sound like someone writing in the American Spectator circa 1994.

Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case for War

By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball," according to current and former intelligence officials.

U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn't even know his real name until after the war. Instead, his story was provided by German agents, and his file was so thick with details that American officials thought it confirmed long-standing suspicions that the Iraqis had developed mobile germ factories to evade arms inspections.

Curveball's story has since crumbled under doubts raised by the Germans and the scrutiny of U.S. weapons hunters, who have come to see his code name as particularly apt, given the problems that beset much of the prewar intelligence collection and analysis.

U.N. weapons inspectors hypothesized that such trucks might exist, officials said. They then asked former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, a bitter enemy of Hussein, to help search for intelligence supporting their theory.

Soon after, a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army.

Based largely on his account, President Bush and his aides repeatedly warned of the shadowy germ trucks, dubbed "Winnebagos of Death" or "Hell on Wheels" in news accounts, and they became a crucial part of the White House case for war — including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the war.

Only later, U.S. officials said, did the CIA learn that the defector was the brother of one of Chalabi's top aides, and begin to suspect that he might have been coached to provide false information. Partly because of that, some U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators fear that the CIA may have inadvertently conjured up and then chased a phantom weapons system.

David Kay, who resigned in January as head of the CIA-led group created to find illicit weapons in Iraq, said that of all the intelligence failures in Iraq, the case of Curveball was particularly troubling.

"This is the one that's damning," he said. "This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward."

Kay said in an interview that the defector "was absolutely at the heart of a matter of intense interest to us." But Curveball turned out to be an "out-and-out fabricator," he added.

Last May, the CIA announced that it had found two of the suspect trucks in northern Iraq, but the agency later backtracked. However, in the absence of evidence to support many of its prewar claims, the Bush administration has continued to cling to the possibility that biowarfare trucks might still exist.

Vice President Dick Cheney as recently as January referred to the trucks as "conclusive" proof that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction. CIA Director George J. Tenet later told a Senate committee that he called Cheney to warn him that the evidence was increasingly suspect.

Tenet gave the first hint of the underlying problem in a speech at Georgetown University on Feb. 5.

"I must tell you we are finding discrepancies in some claims made by human sources" about mobile biological weapons production, he said. "Because we lack direct access to the most important sources on this question, we have as yet been unable to resolve the differences."

U.S. and British intelligence officials have acknowledged since major combat ended in Iraq that lies or distortions by Iraqi opposition groups in exile contributed to numerous misjudgments about Iraq's suspected weapons programs. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress is blamed most often, but the rival Iraqi National Accord and various Kurdish groups also were responsible for sending dubious defectors to Western intelligence, officials say.

Still, the Curveball case may be especially damaging because no other credible defector has provided firsthand confirmation that Iraq modified vehicles to produce germ agents, and no proof has been found before or after the end of major combat. Iraqi officials interrogated since the war have all denied that such a program existed.

The whole story is well worth the read.

Although previous CIA reports had referred to the biowarfare trucks, Powell's U.N. presentation put them in the spotlight.

Citing "eyewitness accounts," he called them "one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq."

"We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell said. He showed what he called "highly detailed and extremely accurate" diagrams of how the trucks were configured, and warned that they could spew enough anthrax or botulinus toxin "in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people."

But Kay, who sought to confirm Curveball's claims in Iraq after the end of major combat, said Powell's account was "disingenuous."

Kay added: "If Powell had said to the Security Council: 'It's one source, we never actually talked to him, and we don't know his name,' as he's describing this, I think people would have laughed us out of court."

Boy, I sure love me everything about this whole shebang.

During the summer, Kay's investigators visited Curveball's parents and brother in Baghdad, as well as his former work sites. They determined that he was last in his class at the University of Baghdad, not first as he had claimed. They learned he had been fired from his job and jailed for embezzlement before he fled Iraq.

"He was wrong about so much," Kay recalled. "Physical descriptions he gave for buildings and sites simply didn't match reality. Things started to fall apart."

Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, retains strong support in the White House. He was a guest of First Lady Laura Bush at the president's State of the Union address last January, and his organization still receives several hundred thousand dollars a month from the Pentagon to help collect intelligence in Iraq.

Chalabi says he has been unfairly blamed for the failure to find germ trucks or any other unconventional weapons in Iraq since major combat ended. He blames the CIA instead.

"Intelligence people are supposed to do a better job for their country, and their government did not do such a good job," he told CBS' "60 Minutes" in a recent interview. "This is a ridiculous situation."

INC defectors were always accused of having an ax to grind, he said. "So why did the CIA believe them so much?"

Right, because the facts certainly didn't show that Clinton was arguably the most intelligent man ever to serve in the office.

think they named him that so that Bush would pay attention?

Excuse me for being sickened by Americans' support for a man without whose heedlessness we might have avoided losing 3000 lives, and because of whose heedlessness we have lost nearly hundreds more, and injured thousands more, while increasing the terrorist threat.

Don't ever tell Jimmy Carter this.

Oh, and if Clinton was so smart, then why did he make so many stupid decisions?

Excuse me for being sickened by Americans' support for a man without whose heedlessness we might have avoided losing 3000 lives, and because of whose heedlessness we have lost nearly hundreds more, and injured thousands more

Yeah, just think if Clinton would have bothered to listen to Clarke back in the day--like, say for example when Clarke wanted to go after Al Qaeda after the Cole was hit. Maybe that would have changed things--hell, maybe action like that would have even gotten AlGore elected. I guess that part of Clinton's genius doesn't bother you.

Yeah, because people with suspected ties to terrorism are the same as people who have committed terrorism. How very neo-con of you.

I had never heard of this guy or this incident until I read the article you linked. A search for "Hisham al Hussein" produces 15 search hits in Google. At least 5 are conservative magazines/websites/research groups. I think I'll let that speak for itself.

So, just for the record, all the links you make to biased liberal sites, we can discount those, right?

One real catch to this whole issue is that even with "No WMD's" and "No ties to 9/11," there is still an argument to be made for going into Iraq.

But here's a good damning Bush essay I read last night in Friedman's book. This is from June 26, 2001.

And this article, among other things, really has me thinking about terror in general.

I almost wonder if the word choice was intentional. Good piece, that's for sure. There has been precious little in terms of trying to understand what's going on and to obviate that for the future.

Before I address your ingenuous argument, I'll address your disingenuous example - Clarke presented his plan for responding to the Cole to Clinton on December 20, 2000. So Clarke himself didn't consider the threat to be sufficiently serious that he couldn't wait more than two months to develop a plan. Bush was to take office one month later. I have no doubt that conservatives would have howled if Clinton had acted instead of passing the plan on to Bush. And I have no doubt that the administration did not act in part for that reason, and in part on principle, believing that it would be inappropriate for a lame-duck administration to hand the incoming president a war.

Clinton did, however, fail earlier in his second term to do everything he could to fight Al Qaeda. While he bombed the camps once in an attempt to kill bin Laden, and continued to fly the Predator searching for him and gathering intelligence, he did not, per Clarke's suggestion, try to take out the camps themselves and their trainees. His failure on this front does bother me, and I do consider him responsible in some respect for 9/11. I consider Reagan and Bush I responsible too, to a lesser extent than Clinton, for their failures to respond militarily to earlier terrorist incidents. However, I consider Clinton's failure to be less serious than Bush II's, because the facts were different - the threat increased dramatically in March 2001. I don't have much doubt that Clinton or Gore would have acted where Bush didn't had they been in office at that time.

So, just for the record, all the links you make to biased liberal sites, we can discount those, right?

If I base my argument on a piece of evidence mentioned on 15 sites, 1/3 of which are liberal, you are welcome to discount that, or point it out and I'll find better evidence.

One real catch to this whole issue is that even with "No WMD's" and "No ties to 9/11," there is still an argument to be made for going into Iraq.

Maybe it should have been made before we went there, and maybe it should have been a subject of extensive, serious public discussion. Maybe this is Clarke's whole point. Maybe you should make it now. (I happen to agree with Yancey on this point - I supported a theoretical effort to depose Saddam, but not one that would take troops out of Afghanistan, not one at this time or any other time when the weight of the evidence suggests it would hinder the 'war on terror', not one with inadequate troop strength, and not one without a serious, realistic post-war plan).

Do you always have to condescend like this? Why?

Clarke was raising hell about Al Qaeda long before 12/20, and he was certain of their involvement immediately on October 12 when the Cole was bombed. He claims that he had to wait for Tenet to "officially" verify involvement before Clinton would buy in, but has also said that Tenet knew it was Al Qaeda right away as well. The formalization of the plan happened in December only because of verification issue. Clarke was campaigning for action immediately in October, and it is silly to think Clinton needed a formal plan that took two months to draw up. It doesn't take that long for retaliatory strikes to happen. Or maybe it did in the Clinton administration.

also, any opinions on Clarke's book and/or his appearance on meet the press this morning?

I'm only a little way into the book but it's very well structured so far. He is definitely way easier on Clinton than Reagan/Bush I/Bush II, but it's in a way that says (to me), 'hey isn't it WEIRD that the Democrats are seen as soft on defense?'

Is it "condescending" to call that disingenuous too? It took Bush a month to go to Afghanistan. Which administration are you comparing Clinton to? You can't be comparing him to Bush, who responded to the attack on the Cole by sending the Taliban $43 million to curb opium production and planning no military action against Al Qaeda prior to 9/11.

Anway, I didn't realize that the verification issue was what held up the plan, if that's the case. That does mean that the delay of the plan is not evidence that Clarke thought the threat wasn't serious. But it does not change the fact that the threat was not considered as serious as it was six months later. And it does not change the political situation. Both Gore and Bush suspended their campaigns briefly after the bombing. You're telling me that a response wouldn't have been considered a partisan act? Or are you saying that Gore somehow passed up a golden opportunity to help his campaign? Are you saying that there's some reason that the Clinton administration should have believed that Bush would not have acted against Al Qaeda after taking office?

U.S. officials told NBC News that the full record of Clarke’s testimony two years ago would not be declassified. They said that at the request of the White House, however, the CIA was going through the transcript to see what could be declassified, with an eye toward pointing out contradictions.

This moment is the angriest and most disappointed I've been in my government.

Who knows? The human capacity for believing bullshit or at least tolerating it has been pushed a lot farther than this. Part of me thinks the average American is seeing through a lot of it. But part of me knows there a lot Americans lining up to buy the last book in the Tim LaHaye series. (Jesus finally shows up! And now that we know what he went through on the way, thanks to Mel Gibson, it's just that much more special.)

My longterm optimism is based on the knowledge that, both as a country and a species, we've been through much worse. My short-term pessimism is based on the same thing.

Explanations of allegations Clarke, Bush administration exchanged

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/8313574.htm

So now we have the Treasury Dept. working to discredit Kerry's budget proposals and the CIA working to discredit Bush's critics on national security? I don't remember Clinton so shamelessly using the federal government as his own personal re-election committee.

Tenet is not the only quiet dog. One of the hounds that the White House did unleash—Secretary of State Powell—not only declined to growl, but practically purred like a kitten. Interviewed on Jim Lehrer's NewsHour, Powell said: "I know Mr. Clarke. I have known him for many, many years. He's a very smart guy. He served his nation very, very well. He's an expert in these matters." His book "is not the complete story," but, Powell added, "I'm not attributing any bad motives to it."

Asked if he had been recruited to join the campaign against Clarke, Powell replied, "I'm not aware of any campaign against Mr. Clarke, and I am not a member."

His choice of words here is fascinating. Note: He did not say "There is no campaign," but rather "I'm not aware of any campaign." As has been widely observed, Powell truly is out of the loop in this administration; it's conceivable he is unaware. He then went on to say, "[A]nd I am not a member"—suggesting there might be a campaign, but he's not part of it.

I've heard of protecting your own butt, but c'mon. But then, he is a vet of the politico machine. Is it me, or is he distancing himself from being further connected with future fallout?

Against Selected Enemies

By RICHARD MINITER
April 1, 2004; Page D8

A year ago, I thought Richard A. Clarke, President Clinton's counterterror czar, was a hero. He and his small band of officials fought a long battle to focus the bureaucracy on stopping Osama bin Laden long before 9/11. For my own book, I interviewed Mr. Clarke extensively and found him to be blunt and forthright. He remembered whole conversations from inside the Situation Room.

So I looked forward to reading "Against All Enemies" (Free Press, 304 pages, $27). Yes, I expected him to put the wood to President Bush for not doing enough about terrorism -- a continuation of his Clinton-era complaints -- and I expected that he might be right. I assumed, of course, that he would not spare the Clinton team either, or the CIA and FBI. I expected, in short, something blunt and forthright -- and, that rarest thing, nonpartisan in a principled way.

I was wrong on all counts. Forthright? One momentous Bush-era episode on which Mr. Clarke can shed some light is his decision to approve the flights of the bin Laden clan out of the U.S. in the days after 9/11, when all other flights were grounded. About this he doesn't say a word. The whole premise of "Against All Enemies" is its value as an insider account. But Mr. Clarke was not a Bush insider. When he lost his right to brief the Cabinet, he also lost his ringside seat on presidential decision-making.

Mr. Clarke's ire is largely directed at the Iraq war, but its preparation was left to others on the National Security Council. He left the White House almost a month before the war began. As for its justification, he acts as if there is none. He dismisses, as "raw," reports that show meetings between al Qaeda and the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, going back to 1993. The documented meeting between the head of the Mukhabarat and bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1996 -- a meeting that challenged all the CIA's assumptions about "secular" Iraq's distance from Islamist terrorism -- should have set off alarm bells. It didn't.

There is other evidence of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda that Mr. Clarke should have felt obliged to address. Just days before Mr. Clarke resigned, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that bin Laden had met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization. In 1998, an aide to Saddam's son Uday defected and repeatedly told reporters that Iraq funded al Qaeda. South of Baghdad, satellite photos pinpointed a Boeing 707 parked at a camp where terrorists learned to take over planes. When U.S. forces captured the camp, its commander confirmed that al Qaeda had trained there as early as 1997. Mr. Clarke does not take up any of this.

Curiously, about the Clinton years, where Mr. Clarke's testimony would be authoritative, he is circumspect. When I interviewed him a year ago, he thundered at the political appointees who blocked his plan to destroy bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan in the wake of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Yet in his book he glosses over them. He has little of his former vitriol for Clinton-era bureaucrats who tried to stop the deployment of the Predator spy plane over Afghanistan. (It spotted bin Laden three times.)

He fails to mention that President Clinton's three "findings" on bin Laden, which would have allowed the U.S. to take action against him, were haggled over and lawyered to death. And he plays down the fact that the Treasury Department, worried about the effects on financial markets, obstructed efforts to cut off al Qaeda funding. He never notes that between 1993 and 1998 the FBI, under Mr. Clinton, paid an informant who turned out to be a double agent working on behalf of al Qaeda. In 1998, the Clinton administration alerted Pakistan to our imminent missile strikes in Afghanistan, despite the links between Pakistan's intelligence service and al Qaeda. Mr. Clarke excuses this decision -- bin Laden managed to flee just before the strikes -- as a diplomatic necessity.

While angry over Mr. Bush's intelligence failures, Mr. Clarke actually defends one of the Clinton administration's biggest ones -- the bombing of a Sudanese "aspirin factory" in 1998. Even at the time, there were good reasons for doubting that it made nerve agents. He fails to mention that in 1997 the CIA had to reject more than 100 reports from Sudan when agency sources failed lie-detector tests and that the CIA continued to pay Sudanese dissidents $100 a report, in a country where the annual per-capita income is about $400. The soil sample he cites, supposedly showing a nerve-gas ingredient, is now agreed to contain a common herbicide.

Last year Mr. Clarke made much of such failures. But this year he treats Mr. Clinton with deference. Indeed, the only man whom he really wants to take to the woodshed is President Bush. Mr. Clarke believes the Iraq war to be a foolish distraction from the fight against terrorism, driving a wedge between the U.S. and its Arab allies. In fairness, he might have noted that, since the war started, our allies (e.g., Saudi Arabia and Sudan) have given us more intelligence leads, not fewer. Considering its anti-Bush bias, maybe Mr. Clarke's book should have been called "Against One Enemy."

Or, better, "Against All Evidence." Mr. Clarke misstates a range of checkable facts. The 1993 U.S. death toll in Somalia was 18, not 17. He writes that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed became al Qaeda's "chief operational leader" in 1995; in fact, he took over in November 2001. He writes (correctly) that Abdul Yasim, one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, fled to Iraq but adds the whopper that "he was incarcerated by Saddam Hussein's regime." An ABC News crew found Mr. Yasim working a government job in Iraq in 1997, and documents captured in 2003 revealed that the bomber had been on Saddam's payroll for years.

Mr. Clarke gets the timing wrong of the plot to assassinate bin Laden in Sudan; it was 1994, not 1995, and was the work of Saudi intelligence, not Egypt. He dismisses Laurie Mylorie's argument that Iraq was behind the 1993 World Trade Center blast as if there is nothing to it. Doesn't it matter that the bombers made hundreds of phone calls to Iraq in the weeks leading up to the event? That Ramzi Yousef, the lead bomber, entered the U.S. as a supposed refugee from Iraq? That he was known as "Rasheed the Iraqi"?

In recent days we have been subjected to a great deal of Mr. Clarke, not least to replays of his fulsome apology for not doing enough to prevent 9/11. But he has nothing to apologize for: He was a relentless foe of al Qaeda for years. He should really apologize for the flaws in his book.

Mr. Miniter is the author of "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror" (Regnery).

It's hard to believe this is the best you can do. Accusations of "anti-Bush bias" from a guy writing a book called "How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror"?? I have to agree with vahid here. Raise your standards, don!

That WSJ article is kind of lame. What would be the point of Clarke making such a big deal about Clinton's missteps now? Clinton's not still in office. And why does it matter that Clarke wasn't directly involved in planning the Iraq war? Clarke's thesis is that the Iraq war took away valuable resources from the hunt for Al Qaeda. He wouldn't need any inside information about the Iraq war plans to be able to verify that thesis. Furthermore, I can't believe this guy is still trying to show a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam. That dead horse has been pretty well flogged by now. Anyway, considering Saddam's lack of WMDs, the prospect of any links there is a lot less alarming than it once was. Most of the other stuff is nit-picky. I guess the reviewer did a good job - if his job was to miss the point.

Pretty disputed as well, I'd say. And there has been an enormous movement to completely discredit any relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

My point of posting that article is that a) this guy interviewed Clarke at length about many of the exact same issues and says that Clarke has changed his tune. He's got Clarke on record and claims that no one has disputed any of his book, including Clarke and Albright.

It's hard to believe this is the best you can do.

Not really sure what you mean by this Tracer, as I've posted plenty in this thread. Some people don't see any value in chipping away at Clarke's credibility, but I do. He's changed his story multiple times. He wants us to believe that he's righteous and principled, even though this also requires us to believe that he was happy to play the role of mindless government stooge when he knew better. He wants us to think he's facially empirical, even though he gets a lot of details wrong. Clarke wants us to believe he can read Condeleezza Rice's mind, even though he's can't. Clarke asserts that the Bushies didn't want to fight Al Qaeda as hard as Clinton did, even though there's evidence to the contrary.

But it was the irony of this part of the post that really made me laugh--Accusations of "anti-Bush bias" from a guy writing a book called "How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror"?? I have to agree with vahid here. Raise your standards, don!

Hmm, let's see--Clarke, a guy who voted for Gore, who has only donated money to Democratic candidates, who got demoted by Bush, who couldn't find the gumption to quit on principle like his buddy Rand Beers, who wrote a partisan book on what a total failure Bushco has been, who has a book to sell, who has told conflicting stories, shouldn't be held up to the same standards as Richard Miniter? What exactly is the difference in bias here? All I'm doing is pointing out that Richard Clarke's standards are the same as, say, Richard Miniter's. (Go to the guy's website and I think you'll see he's no hack. You can email him if you think he's full of shit.)

He has credibility to be chipped away. With the stories that have been published nearly every day since the spring of 2000, Bushco has very little to no credibility. What's the point of demolishing Clarke, when the net worth of the truth that has emerged is that Bushco has committed numerous grave errors and as many possible crimes to conceal these errors?

Look at the thread title again, don. Can you see how far off the track you are here? I'm surprised that a libertarian like yourself is falling for every anti-whistleblower trick in the book.

Maybe I should just lighten up though. It's a beautiful day outside!

And also, as I've posted, I'm glad Clarke has said what he's said. What disappoints me is when he decided to say it. I'm also pointing out--which seems appropriate, given that this thread is about what we need to know--that a person giving testimony has testified differently on previous occasions and that his testimony might be selective because of his strong bias or other elements of motivation. Is it so off the track to be suspicious of a person's credibility and motive when they are allegeding factual details to a vital commission like this?

I really don't know what you are intimating about me being a libertarian and the anti-whistleblower playbook. I have no idea what that is. What Clarke has done is hardly the stuff of a whistleblower.

He's changed his story multiple times.

One example

Yes. But my problem here is that Clarke has not presented this as a mere disagreement in policy. His comments thus far strike me as a vendetta. As to whatever implicit assumptions I have regarding bias, I'm not really sure how much different they are than Clarke's. From what I've seen reported, as well as in the testimony I saw, he makes many implicit assumptions in his arguments that are the foundation for his criticism. Or maybe I'm not understanding your comment directly.

I wonder if Don has read the book at all

No, I haven't had time (though I did buy it.) FWIW, I haven't read the Miniter book and don't plan to (though I'd like to and compare Clarke's assertions.) I doubt I'll get to the book until later in April because of other committments, but I do look forward to reading it.

It requires less fact-checking than that article does

Why is that?

And I'm glad Don's finally made up his mind about Clarke's credibility - he seemed to be on the fence for so long.

I still have credibility problems with Clarke. Some of what he said and/or wrote is factually wrong, and while some of it is nitpicking, some of the things he got wrong are part of his greater argument.

I'll point out a point where he's changed his story later today Gabbneb (and I assume that you'd want me to ignore his stooging on behalf of Bushco as proof.) But right now I gotta get going.

No doubt with enough digging you could turn up some anecdotal evidence of times where Iraqis crossed paths with Al Qaeda. As some wags have observed though, it's easier to prove links between George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden than it is between Bin Laden and Hussein. The evidence that there was any real cooperation at a meaningful level is still missing, AFAIK. The ties between Pakistan (esp. the ISI) and the Taliban should be a lot more troubling. After all, we know that Pakistan has nukes. Hussein wasn't even close to getting them. All in all, as a means of getting to Al Qaeda, invading Iraq was an enormously costly waste of time.

Actually, there is lots of evidence. There's just no evidence (or only speculative at best) that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

As for your request Gabbneb, here are a number of times that Clarke has spun his story. I'll assume you didn't get around to reading the article in Time.

* ..."In a few other instances, Clarke's televised comments seem designed to disparage the President and his aides at all cost, omitting any of the inconvenient details — some of which appear in the pages of his book — "

or

* "While Clarke claims that he is "an independent" not driven by partisan motives, it's hard not to read some passages in his book as anything but shrill broadsides."

or

* The next day, interviewed on PBS' The NewsHour, Clarke sexed up the story even more. "What happened was the President, with his finger in my face, saying, 'Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaeda, a memo on Iraq and the attacks.' Very vigorous, very intimidating." Several interviewers pushed Clarke on this point, asking whether it was all that surprising that the President would want him to investigate all possible perpetrators of the attacks. Clarke responded, "It would have been irresponsible for the president not to come to me and say, Dick, I don't want you to assume it was al-Qaeda. I'd like you to look at every possibility to see if maybe it was al-Qaeda with somebody else, in a very calm way, with all possibilities open. That's not what happened."

How does this square with the account of the same meeting provided in Clarke's book? In that version, Clarke finds the President wandering alone in the Situation Room on Sept. 12, "looking like he wanted something to do." Clarke writes that Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room" — an impetuous move, perhaps, but hardly the image that Clarke depicted on television, of the President dragging in unwitting staffers by their shirt-collars. "

Also:

* Clarke was interviewed on the record on March 20, 2002 and said "This administration -- the Bush administration, and the Clinton administration before it -- had authorized an ongoing dialogue with the Taliban, where we told them that if there's another terrorist attack anywhere in the world on the United States that we can pin on bin Laden, we're not only going to hold bin Laden responsible; we're going to hold the Taliban responsible." This doesn't jibe with his televised descriptions.

* In the very same interview, Clarke was asked Because one of the things that surprises a lot of the public, I think, is that immediately after Sept. 11, the administration knew exactly who had done it. Was that why?

Clarke: No. On the day of Sept. 11, then the day or two following, we had a very open mind. CIA and FBI were asked, "See if it's Hezbollah. See if it's Hamas. Don't assume it's Al Qaeda. Don't just assume it's Al Qaeda." This differs from recent depictions of Bushco.

*According to Richard Miniter, Clarke was "more furious with Clinton than Bush" when he first left government. But now, Clarke has directed the vast majority of his ire towards Bush.

* According to the Miniter book after the Cole was bombed, Clinton administration counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke attended a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and others. Several others were in the room, including Leon Fuerth, Gore's national security advisor; Jim Steinberg, the deputy National Security Advisor; and Michael Sheehan, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism. An American warship had been attacked without warning in a "friendly" harbor — and, at the time, no one knew if the ship's pumps could keep it afloat for the night. Now they had to decide what to do about it.
    Mr. Clarke had no doubts about whom to punish. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had compiled thick binders of bin Laden and Taliban targets in Afghanistan, complete with satellite photographs and GPS bomb coordinates — the Pentagon's "target decks." The detailed plan was "to level" every bin Laden training camp and compound in Afghanistan as well as key Taliban buildings in Kabul and Kandahar. "Let's blow them up," Clarke said. . . . Around the table, Clarke heard only objections — not a mandate for action. But now, Clarke says the Clinton Administration felt the Al Qaeda threat was treated with "urgency." Heh. Clarke never talks about how Clinton refused to meet with the first head of the CIA while he was in office. Clarke never talks about Bushco's request for a five-fold increase in terrorism budget for the CIA--that would undercut his current book pitch.

* According to the Miniter book, Clarke offered a chillingly prescient quote from one aide who agreed with him about Clinton administration inaction: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al-Qaida in Afghanistan? Does al-Qaida have to attack the Pentagon?" said the dismayed Clintonista. A couple of weeks ago, Clarke referred to the Clinton's attitude towards terrorism as "urgent".

*According to Bob Novak, Clarke was not only the hero but also obviously a prime source of "Losing Bin Laden." Richard Miniter for the first time revealed, directly quoting Clarke, the meeting of "principals" (Cabinet-level officials) on Oct. 12, 2000, after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole. The vote was 7 to 1 against an attack on Osama bin Laden. Only Clarke wanted action.

In his own book, Clarke quickly brushes off the Cole meeting that he described in detail to Miniter. Instead of complaining about Clinton's failure to come to grips with al Qaeda and bin Laden, Clarke recites what sounds like Democratic talking points.

* From NRO: Despite Clarke's criticism of the Iraq invasion, he once thought the U.S. didn't need ironclad evidence of weapons of mass destruction to take military action against a threat. From the April 2, 2000 Post profile:
"We should have a very low barrier in terms of acting when there is a threat of weapons of mass destruction being used against American citizens," says Clarke. "We should not have a barrier of evidence that can be used in a court of law." Interesting, given Clarke's revisionist position on terrorism and Iraq.

* liberal blogger BillMon says, "I wanted to highlight the fact that Clarke's attack on Bush (and by extension, on the neocons) appears to be totally at odds with his ideological sympathies"

* On "Hardball," Clarke made an excuse for attacking Rice:

MR. MATTHEWS: That’s a contradiction. You said—

MR. CLARKE: --.

MR. MATTHEWS: --she wasn’t familiar with al Qaeda and here she is, the year before, talking about bin Laden’s operation, maybe heading out to—

MR. CLARKE: Chris, did you hear what she said? She talked about bin Laden.

MR. MATTHEWS: Right.

MR. CLARKE: And what I said in the passage you’re referring to in the book, it’s when I said al Qaeda she looked confused. When I said bin Laden, she recognized who I was talking about.

Sorry Dick. That's not in his book. In the book Rice is described as "skeptical"

Clarke has changed his tune in order to sell his book. Maybe that stooging he did for the Bushies was just toeing the company line and he felt comfortable lying on background. I don't know.

Don, I asked for evidence of Clarke "changing his story," thinking you would supply examples of factual inconsistencies, rather than variations in spin, or characterizations of his (unspecified, let alone quoted) comments or thoughts by right-wing columnists. I won't waste time demonstrating the absence of inconsistency in the above. Again, I ask for one example.

In the meantime, I'll quote one of the more interesting passages that I've encountered in the book thus far. It comes towards the end of discussion of the crash of TWA Flight 800...

"Unfortunately, the public debate over the incident was clouded by conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are a constant in counter-terrorism. Conspiracy theorists simultaneously hold two contrary beliefs: a) that the U.S. government is so incompetent that it can miss explanations that the theorists can uncover, and b) that the U.S. government can keep a big and juicy secret. The first belief has some validity. The second idea is pure fantasy. Dismissing conspiracy theories out of hand, however, is dangerous. I learned early on in my goveernment career not to believe that the government experts knew it all. The list of major intelligence failures and law enforcement errors is far too long to dismiss alternative views. Because I was personally skeptical about what agencies told me and alwas intrigued by the possibility of the unlikely explanation, I encouraged my analysts to have open minds and perform due diligence on ever claim. For that reason we had always looked for Iraqi involvement in the World Trade Center attack of 1993, to no avail."

You're in denial. Including the way Clarke is parsing his description of Rice on television vs. what he wrote in the book.

Or the key elements of thisthis?

My "particular people" are the majority of the intelligence community and the most serious investigative journalists of the mainstream media. Don's "particular people" largely come back to a single person, Laurie Mylroie, who essentially operates as a consultant to neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Richard Perle and Dick Cheney, who buy her largely discredited opinion through a job at the American Enterprise Institute. The people on Don's side get away with what they get away with because they know that people on our side are quite concerned with finding the truth and doing what's right. Therefore, they can continually use academic- or serious-sounding people to pump out 'intelligence' about the Iraq-AQ "connection" because they know that liberals' more academic and open nature will give them second thoughts, allowing the neocons to pretend a little bit longer until someone with authority comes out of the woodwork to call it raw (i.e. out of context and easily faked) intelligence presented to support a discredited theory. Some of us just don't fall for it anymore. Perhaps most significantly, my "particular people" don't come exclusively or even primarily from my side of the ideological spectrum. I'll take just one example from Don upthread...

liberal blogger BillMon says, "I wanted to highlight the fact that Clarke's attack on Bush (and by extension, on the neocons) appears to be totally at odds with his ideological sympathies"

But I also realize that one, perhaps major, reason that I took all of this so seriously was that Bill Clinton talked about terrorism all the time in the most serious terms. Admittedly, I had more exposure to his speeches in the mid-90s than the average bear, but terrorist incidents, real and suspected, were frequent around that time, and he brought them up enough that if you read the newspaper, I would think his warnings were hard to miss. Which leads me to my realization - most people didn't pay attention to Clinton's warnings because most Americans don't read the New York Times and/or didn't give much credence to what Bill Clinton had to say. Mickey Kaus perhaps falling into the latter category (though actually I dunno if he dislikes Clinton - he is after all a Democrat obsessed with welfare reform). Maybe this is the reason Bush gets the benefit of the doubt. Those who are uninformed and/or indifferent to Clinton's opinion were led along by people who loathed Clinton and therefore treated everything he said as the opposite of what is reality. These are the people who objected to Clinton attacking Al Qaeda after the Cole, pretending that the attack, and bin Laden's declaration of war, basically didn't exist because Clinton was President. And they're the members of the administration who actively ignored terrorism because Clinton's outgoing people warned them it would be the biggest issue they would face.

So basically I see it this way - Bill Clinton caused 9/11 because he was so damn smart about terrorism.

Matthews: Condi thought that AQ was "a gang, not a network"?
Clarke: Exactly.

Saletan makes a similar, more general, point

Are you really this easily duped? Honestly, sometimes your comments reflect an incredible naivete about DC.

because they know that liberals' more academic and open nature

I honestly wondered how long it would take you trot out this nugget. It's such a predictable, condescending tactic. And it's make-believe.

...I took all of this so seriously was that Bill Clinton talked about terrorism all the time in the most serious terms

Bill Clinton talked about everything all the time in the most serious terms. But on the issue of, say, retaliating against the Cole bombing, he didn't do jack shit. Kind of like how he talked about a middle class tax cut in the most serious terms, but never got around to it in eight years.

Oh, and in Clarke's testimony In his testimony Clarke said that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than fighting terror.But in his book, he says trying to force a Middle East peace agreement was more important to Clinton than retaliating for the attack against USS Cole. Explain it away and away and away.

Are you really this easily duped? Honestly, sometimes your comments reflect an incredible naivete about DC.

I'm not sure what "DC" has to do with it, given that I was talking about average citizens. But I am amused by the idea of your knowing "DC" better than I do.

Clarke said that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than fighting terror.But in his book, he says trying to force a Middle East peace agreement was more important to Clinton than retaliating for the attack against USS Cole.

Yes Don, "trying to force a Middle East peace agreement" has nothing at all to do with "fighting terror."

Of course you are, since you just made that up. You know almost nothing about me, and you're better off that way. Let's also stop making up the bullshit that "right wingers" like me were preventing Bill Clinton making a move for the Cole bombing, especially given the fact that he'd taken responsive measures on a previous occasion.

I'm consistently amused by your one-sided, partisan mentality of Washington politics. In the midst of coming up with ignorant phrases like "people on our side are quite concerned with finding the truth and doing what's right" you expose yourself as being duped by the eternal quest for power.

Likewise.

especially given the fact that he'd taken responsive measures on a previous occasion.

When CIA told him he had a clear shot at bin Laden. He was not given such a shot at any time during the remainder of his Presidency.

As you know, there were other ways to retaliate against bin Laden without taking him out--a formal plan was even presented, as you have noted previously on this thread. The president is afforded vast military powers, and to say that he ignored those powers simply because he was afraid of the "far right" is a bit damning.

But I guess we're long beside the point. There'll be a lot more to talk about once Condi appears this week and the rest of the documents get dumped.

Uh, Bush, that wasn't the question???? Now he's making me fucking nervous!

http://www.louisville.edu/~caiser01/cornholio.jpg

On the other hand, "terrorism" is mentioned seven times in the introduction alone and 58 times in the main section on "Implementing the Strategy." What's more, in the major section titled "Protecting the Homeland" there are seven primary issues discussed. Two of them are "Combating Terrorism" and "Domestic Preparedness Against Weapons of Mass Destruction." from Kevin Drum column

"It's a shame we are not focused more on moving forward, instead of about who was concerned more,"

Um hmm. "I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." *cue howls from Washington Times crue*

Two of the Democratic commissioners left the session about an hour early. Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton was scheduled to introduce the Canadian prime minister at a luncheon, and former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey left to meet with Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) on funding issues related to New School University, where Kerrey serves as president.

Remember the demands that Bushco meet before the entire committee instead of just the chairmen? Hmm, I wonder if the "9/11 Widows" find this sort of behavior by commission members outrageous.

I'm not sure if I've said it before, but what a fucking waste of time and money this 9/11 commission has become.

In any event, despite the absence of any attention to the substance of the meeting whatsoever, you're parroting Rove's message of the day, pushed on the Drudge Report, which is supposed to suggest that they're somehow disrespecting the President or on opposite sides or something. The only thing wrong with Hamilton and Kerrey is that their concern with appearing impartial leadds them not to have the balls to call Rove out on playing politics with this. For the political machine, there doesn't have to be any substance to an attack, it just has to sound sort of bad. I think, Don, that you should ask your question of the "9/11 Widows" directly - if not in person, then at least by mail or phone. I mean, I'm sure they only care about scoring political points, and not their dead husbands and future dead husbands.

Uh, maybe because I think he's exactly the kind of guy who should have been in there grilling Bushco the whole time. I'd much rather have Kerrey in there than the some of those other shills for the White House. What, since the cameras and press weren't there, Kerrey didn't need to be there?

It's really amazing, Don, that your great concern about the cost-effectiveness and time-management of the 9/11 commission has nothing to say about the fact that Cheney and Bush refused to meet separately and stonewalled this meeting for ages but translates only to a concern with whether two of the 8 commission members left a meeting after the allotted two hours were up for previously-scheduled engagements.

Are you telling me that if the shoe were on the other foot--let's say, for example, that the Republicans were crowing about the vitality of some sort of investigative commission during the Clinton years, and then they blew off a third of their allotted time that they'd demanded with Clinton--that you wouldn't be posting your disgust? And are you implying that if Bush and/or Cheney would have agreed to one-on-one meetings with the commission that those two members--Democrats--would have remained in attendance? Do you honestly think they would have skipped out of the last hour if those hearings would have been televised? I do not.

It's not entirely clear that they missed anything.

According to whom?

And for what it's worth, I'm not pimping the Rove message any more than the Washington Post is.

Cheney: "There's been at least three instances here where we've had reports of aircraft approaching Washington -- a couple were confirmed hijack. And, pursuant to the president's instructions, I gave authorization for them to be taken out. Hello?"

Rumsfeld: "Yes, I understand. Who did you give that direction to?"

Cheney: "It was passed from here through the operations center at the White House, from the (shelter)."

Rumsfeld: "OK. Let me ask the question here. Has that directive been transmitted to the aircraft?"

Cheney: "Yes, it has."

Rumsfeld: "So we've got a couple of aircraft up there that have those instructions at the present time?"

Cheney: "That is correct. And it's my understanding they've already taken a couple of the aircraft (hijacked airliners) out."

Rumsfeld: "We can't confirm that. We're told that one aircraft is down, but we do not have a pilot report that they did it."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I've always been skeptical of the passengers of flight 93 taking control of the plane and crashing it intentionally, especially when witnesses had visual confirmation of 2 F-16s chasing the plane, the plane crash site indicative of a missle strike, the whole "Hero" story was wayyyy too forced and bought into hook, line, and sinker.

so here we cheney confirming that at least one aircraft had been shot down. why on earth would he have bad information?

"Let's Roll" indeed.

"The President was seated in a classroom of second graders when, at approximately 9:05, Andrew Card whispered to him: 'A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.' The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis. The national press corps was standing behind the children in the classroom; he saw their phones and pagers start to ring. The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening.

"The President remained in the classroom for another five to seven minutes, while the children continued reading. He then returned to a holding room shortly before 9:15, where he was briefed by staff and saw television coverage. He then spoke to Vice President Cheney, Dr. Rice, Governor Pataki, and FBI Director Mueller. He decided to make a brief statement from the school before leaving for the airport. The Secret Service told us they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door.

"Between 9:15 and 9:30, the staff was busy arranging a return to Washington, while the President consulted his senior advisers about his remarks. No one in the traveling party had any information during this time that other aircraft were hijacked or missing. As far as we know, no one was in contact with the Pentagon. The focus was on the President's statement to the nation. No decisions were made during this time, other than the decision to return to Washington.

"The President's motorcade departed at 9:35, and arrived at the airport between 9:42 and 9:45. During the ride the President learned about the attack on the Pentagon. He boarded the aircraft, asked the Secret Service about the safety of his family, and called the Vice President. According to notes of the call, at about 9:45 the President told the Vice President: 'Sounds like we have a minor war going on here, I heard about the Pentagon. We're at war. . . . somebody's going to pay.'"

May this day be the last day I wear the hat of bush apologist.

Fuck wearing a hat.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush told reporters after a cabinet meeting today.

Try refutting that logic, PLEBES!

The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission called on Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know.

"Probably," Mr. Cheney replied.

Maybe possibly perhaps.

June 21, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Zelikow Report
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON — "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ."

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" — just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.

The Zelikow report was seized upon by John Kerry because it fuzzed up the distinction between evidence of decade-long dealings between agents of Saddam and bin Laden (which panel members know to be true) and evidence of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attacks (which, as Hamilton said yesterday, modifying his earlier "no credible evidence" judgment, was "not proven one way or the other.")

But the staff had twisted the two strands together to cast doubt on both the Qaeda-Iraq ties and the specific attacks of 9/11: "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Zelikow & Co. dismissed the reports, citing the denials of Qaeda agents and what they decided was "no credible evidence" of cooperation on 9/11.

That paragraph — extending doubt on 9/11 to all previous contacts — put the story on front pages. Here was a release on the official commission's letterhead not merely failing to find Saddam's hand in 9/11, which Bush does not claim. The news was in the apparent contradiction of what the president repeatedly asserted as a powerful reason for war: that Iraq had long been dangerously in cahoots with terrorists.

Cheney's ire was misdirected. Don't blame the media for jumping on the politically charged Zelikow report. Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.

Yesterday, Governor Kean passed along this stunner about "no collaborative relationship" to ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Members do not get involved in staff reports."

Not involved? Another commission member tells me he did not see the Zelikow bombshell until the night before its release. Moreover, the White House, vetting the report for secrets, failed to raise an objection to a Democratic bonanza in the tricky paragraph leading to the misleading "no Qaeda-Iraq tie."

What can the commission do now to regain its nonpartisan credibility?

1. Require every member to sign off on every word that the commission releases, or write and sign a minority report. No more "staff conclusions" without presenting supporting evidence, pro and con.

2. Set the record straight, in evidentiary detail, on every contact known between Iraq and terrorist groups, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's operations in Iraq. Include the basis for the Clinton-era "cooperating in weapons development" statement.

3. Despite the prejudgment announced yesterday by Kean and Democratic partisan Richard Ben-Veniste dismissing Mohammed Atta's reported meeting in Prague with an Iraqi spymaster, fairly spell out all the evidence that led to George Tenet's "not proven or disproven" testimony. (Start with www.edwardjayepstein.com.)

4. Show how the failure to retaliate after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole affected 9/11, how removing the director of central intelligence from running the C.I.A. would work, and how Congress's intelligence oversight failed abysmally.

5. Stop wasting time posturing on television and get involved writing a defensible commission report.

and this zarqawi situation has gotten out of hand. isnt the main reason zarqawi was able to run fast and loose in kurdistan is because of the no fly zone enforced by the us? didnt the us have multiply chances to wipe out zarqawi but failed to do so because it would hurt our claims v. saddam and terror? hes also a convenient excuse for every single bad thing that happens in iraq..

Anyway, now all we need is a commision to investigate the commision and we should finally figure this shit out.

I am all for Ashcroft getting his head lopped off for this, but I don't think this gets Pickard off the hook. If the Qaida threat was so high he should have been screaming about it. Fuck what Ashcroft doesn't want to hear, tell him anyway. Is the Attorney General that far above the Director of the FBI? They sound like pouting children.

ANd since I am too lazy to find a thread that pertains to this, I just want to say how annoying it is to hear the press repeatedly ask Clinton about Lewinsky during his press tour. Not that I think it should be off-limits, but for fuck's sake, grill him about 9/11 and Iraq and you know, things that actually matter.

The Washington Post's Richard Leiby lifts a quote from the latest Rolling Stone magazine, in which Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) described some unsolicited advice he gave Bush.

"I turned to Vice President Cheney, who was there, and I said, 'Mr. Vice President, I wouldn't keep you if it weren't constitutionally required.' I turned back to the president and said, 'Mr. President, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld are bright guys, really patriotic, but they've been dead wrong on every major piece of advice they've given you. That's why I'd get rid of them, Mr. President . . . ' They said nothing. Just sat like big old bullfrogs on a log and looked at me."

The Attorney General is the FBI Director's boss.

The 9/11 Commission released its final report today, outlining an array of shortcomings in the government's response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and calling overall progress "disappointing."

"We are safer, but we are not yet safe," said Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the commission charged with finding ways to prevent another terrorist attack and to investigate past intelligence failures. "That's simply not acceptable."

The commission, split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, criticized the continued lack of intelligence sharing between government agencies; the lack of progress in curtailing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; the failure to establish a uniform standard for treating detainees; and the distribution of Department of Homeland Security money based on politics rather than on potential risk.

In a statement, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the progress report issued by the commissioners today, showed that the Bush administration and Congress were "dangerously neglecting the defensive war on terror we should be fighting here at home."

"The report is a top-to-bottom indictment of the federal government's lack of resources, focus and expertise in fighting the domestic war on terror," Mr. Schumer said. "New York State is particularly hurt by the terribly unfair and inefficient homeland security funding formula and the lack of a federal program for communications interoperability among first responders. We can and must do better."

In July 2004, the 10-member commission issued a report with 41 recommendations, most of which have not been enacted.

President Bush did carry out one of the recommendations by appointing a director of national intelligence after receiving pressure from members of Congress.

Since the release of its report, the commission has embarked on what it has called a "public education campaign" seeking to get its recommendations approved by Congress.

At a Washington news conference today, members of the commission repeatedly blasted the government - though none criticized the Bush administration directly - for its lack of progress on pushing through the recommendations.

"None of it is rocket science," said John F. Lehman, a Republican commission member who was a Navy secretary in the Reagan administration. "None of it is in the too-hard category. We all believe it is possible to get all of these things achieved."

Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic commission member and a former House member from Indiana, asked, "When will our government wake up?" He added, "Al Qaeda is highly dynamic, and we are not."

Among the most pressing issues, according to the commission, was to revamp the federal method of distributing Homeland Security money. Some cities and states that have a much lower risk of terrorism are receiving money, while high-risk cities that have been attacked before - including New York and Washington - receive too little.

"Federal grants to first responders should be distributed on risk and vulnerability," said Mr. Kean, a former governor of New Jersey. Mr. Kean said the commission had found that one city, which he did not identify, had spent its anti-terrorism money on air conditioning for garbage trucks, while another had bought body armor for dogs.

Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat and the commission's vice chairman, said information sharing between agencies had not improved sufficiently, even though rules and laws that had barred some sharing of information had been eliminated.

"We've made minimal progress so far on information sharing," he said. "You can change the laws, you can change the technology, but you've got to change the culture."

He said one particular problem was the culture of the F.B.I., which he said continues to suffer from "inertia" and "complacency" when it comes to making intelligence a priority. "Current efforts fall far short of what we need to do," Mr. Hamilton said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

saudis did 9/11

http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/declasspart4.pdf

http://www.bloodygoodhorror.com/bgh/files/reviews/caps/vampires-kiss.jpg

i'll admit i don't understand that meme

lol fkn n00b

lol at the "ally" scare quotes on the first page

It’s easier to bury uncomfortable facts than to confront them. So this September 11, the ceremonies marking the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., will simply honor the dead. In Manhattan, tourists and mourners will gather where the World Trade Center Towers once stood, lowering their heads in memory of the 2,606 who perished there. The services won't reflect the view that the attacks might well have been prevented.

But for hundreds of families and a growing number of former FBI agents, the grief of another 9/11 ceremony will be laced with barely muted rage: There remains a conspiracy of silence among high former U.S. and Saudi officials about the attacks.

“It’s horrible. We still don’t know what happened,” said Ali Soufan, one of the lead FBI counterterrorism agents whom the CIA kept in the dark about the movements of the future Al-Qaeda hijackers. To Soufan and many other former national security officials, the unanswered questions about the events leading up to the September 11, 2001, attacks dwarf those about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, because “9/11 changed the whole world.” It not only led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the fracturing of the Middle East and the global growth of Islamic militantism but also pushed the U.S. closer to being a virtual homeland-security police state.

“I am sad and depressed about it,” said Mark Rossini, one of two FBI agents assigned to the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, who says agency managers mysteriously blocked them from informing their headquarters about future Al-Qaeda plotters present in the United States in 2000 and again in the summer of 2001. “It is patently evident the attacks did not need to happen and there has been no justice,” he said.

https://www.newsweek.com/cia-and-saudi-arabia-conspired-keep-911-details-secret-new-book-says-1091935