What can I say? Neener neener neener?

[khaosworks]

Tell Me Something I Don't Know By Mr. Terence Chua, Wondering What It'll Take To Convince People

By now, you've probably heard the news about Richard Clarke, former Presidential anti-terrorism adviser, and his new tell-all book, "Against All Enemies," in which he reveals that not only did the Bush administration ignore terrorist threats prior to 9/11, but also upon 9/11, insist that intelligence find a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda where there was none to be found.

And of course, by now, Karl Rove has released the hounds on Clarke's tail. "It's politically motivated," they say, because Clarke was passed over for a post with Homeland Security. It's "politically timed," because it's coming out now in the run-up to the elections, even though it was a NSC security review that held up the publication. Clarke is trying to blame the administration because he, not the administration dropped the ball. Clarke's "close ties" with Kerry makes his remarks suspect.

It's the usual ball game being played by the Bush administration - attack the whistle-blower, and completely sidestep the issue. Not that they didn't try to deny it, too (excerpt from the transcript of the 60 Minutes piece - exchange between Leslie Stahl and NSC official Steven Hadley)...

STAHL (exp): {He also says Clarke was wrong when he said the President pressured him to find a link between Iraq and 9/11}

HADLEY: We can not find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the President ever occurred.

STAHL: Now can I interrupt you for one second. We have done our own work on that ourselves and we have two sources who tell us independently of Dick Clarke that there was this encounter. One of them was an actual witness.

HADLEY: Look, the -- I -- I stand on what I said.

Hadley goes on to say, "But the point I think we're missing in this is of course the President wanted to know if there was any evidence linking Iraq to 9/11." Well, the point that the ad hominem attacks on Clarke is missing is whether or not the allegations he makes are true or not, not if they are inspired by malice. There has been no denial of the allegations aside from a half-hearted "no evidence" whine which was contradicted. But of course, ad hominem attacks are typical of the Bush administration's tactics, not confronting the issues.

Clarke's allegations are yet another piece in a long line of other evidence that confirms what we already knew a long time ago - that the Bush administration, either through negligence, bloody-mindedness, or actual design, distorted or exaggerated intelligence to justify a war against Iraq, a war that they could not have justified otherwise. So, even if we concede that getting rid of Saddam was a good thing, the fact remains that the people of the United States were deceived into supporting such a war. And despite what Hollywood or Oliver North may try to tell you, ends don't justify the means.

So how much more do the voting public need? Good men and women are dying over in Iraq and were put there for reasons that were false. Is this just going to be another flash in the pan? How many lies does it take? This is the government who can't even be honest in its presentation of the benefits of Medicare, for Christ's sake, not to mention the cost overruns. But for some reason, calling your opponent a liar, even with good cause, is considered bad by the media. I have the sinking feeling that Clarke, like Kwaitkowski, will be the topic du jour for a week, then disappear out of sight.

At the same time, what's the 9/11 Commission going to do? Given the overlap of the US dealings with Bin Laden with both the Clinton and Bush administrations, I'm not expecting much - what I do expect is a mutual attempt at damage control for both the DNC and the GOP. Each side can allege each other fucked up over Al-Qaeda, so the Commission in the end will cover both asses. The preliminary findings aren't convincing me otherwise.

On the bright side, the Kerry campaign is finally trying to shift the issues away from mutual mudslinging to the domestic arena. The new ad is a good start as it actually mentions taxes, jobs, health care and education, but it has to be followed with more of the same. The more we can shift the debate to substantive nuts and bolts issues that can engage the American public, the more it'll be harder for the Bush administration to distract people with gay marriage or national security, or the latest red herring - "Victim's Rights."

I'm probably being overly optimistic, though, in hoping that Americans will actually be able to embrace and understand these issues without their eyes glazing over. I hope I'm wrong.

Comments

[oxlahun.livejournal.com]

... the Bush administration, either through negligence, bloody-mindedness, or actual design, distorted or exaggerated intelligence ...

Pardon the obvious snide remark, but the Bush administration wouldn't know intelligence (in any sense of the word) if it bit them in their collective asses.

[billroper]

Someone asked my opinion on these hearings on another mailing list. Here's what I had to say:

Well, Cynical Me says that everyone involved in testifying is going to busily cover their own butt. If that involves supporting someone who normally wouldn't be your political ally, that's fine. If it involves cutting them off at the kneecaps, that's even better.

Forgiving Me says that tracking down terrorists is actually hard, especially when the rest of the world and your domestic political foes are anxious to come down on anything you do or don't do, whether it's bombing a plant in the Sudan or attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Suspicious Me notes that man is not a rational animal, but rather a rationalizing animal. And if I were the person who had been the leader of the Al-Qaeda watch under two Administrations and had watched things blow up as disastrously as they did, I have to admit that I might find ways to blame other people for things that might have been my fault. I might even write a book about it, so that people would understand that it really wasn't my fault.

I'm not sure which one of Me is right. All of them may have some piece of the truth. Or not. That's the way it works.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Just as a point of info for Forgiving Me, apparently the US let its efforts in capturing Osama bin Whatsisname go by the wayside as it geared up to invade Iraq.

[billroper]

Part of the reason that tracking down terrorists is hard is that they sometimes hide in mountainous, tribal-dominated regions of countries like Pakistan -- which appears to be where bin Laden has been hiding out since the fall of Afghanistan. The problem is that it's rather difficult to send a massive U.S. force (which is what would likely be required) into this region since it would probably cause the Pakistani government to fall and be replaced by a much more radical Islamic regime. Did I mention that Pakistan has nuclear weapons?

Since Al Qaeda was apparently silly enough to take some potshots at Musharraf, he's felt free to send some troops into the neighborhood to roust out the baddies lately. Not entirely effectively yet, but it's progress. Whether the Iraq war had anything to do with encouraging Musharraf to do so is unknowable at this time.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Fox News just unearthed and played a tape of an interview with Clarke 2 years ago, in which he said the exact opposite of what he's saying now.

And before 11-Sep-01, he was on record saying that the real threat was from cyberterrorism (which it may still be, but gives the lie to his present claims that he was focused on physical attacks and was ignored).

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the Fox News item (you'll forgive my initial recoiling at anything coming from Fox resembling news). From what I can gather though, the interview took place in August 2002, when Clarke was still an administration official. Clarke resigned only in March 2003, just prior to the Iraq war. Point being, it would have been a career killer to say on record that the President was derelict in his duty.

That aside, however, do his remarks really contradict what he's saying now? Take this excerpt:

Fox News correspondent Jim Angle, who was at the August 2002 briefing, asked Clarke to clarify: "You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?"

Clarke replied: "All of that's correct."

So Bush did not stop anything the Clinton administration was doing. But was the Clinton administration doing anything?

Another reporter referred to Clinton's alleged plan on al-Qaida and was interrupted by Clarke.

"There was never a plan, Andrea," he said. "What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table."

So there was no plan for Bush to stop. If Bush continued to not do anything when Clarke submitted his recommendations, the statement would still be correct.

Here's an excerpt from a Newsweek article:

In his new book, Clarke recounts how on Jan. 24, 2001, he recommended that the new president's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, convene the president's top advisers to discuss the Qaeda threat. One week later, Bush did. But according to Clarke, the meeting had nothing to do with bin Laden. The topic was how to get rid of Saddam Hussein. "What does that tell you?" Clarke remarked to NEWSWEEK. "They thought there was something more urgent. It was Iraq. They came in there with their agenda, and [Al Qaeda] was not on it."

A White House official countered that the true fault lay with Clarke for failing to propose an effective plan to go after Al Qaeda. On Jan. 25, this official told NEWSWEEK, Clarke submitted proposals to "roll back" Al Qaeda in Afghanistan by boosting military aid to neighboring Uzbekistan, getting the CIA to arm its Predator spy planes and increasing funding for guerrillas fighting the Taliban. There was no need for a high-level meeting on terrorism until Clarke came up with a better plan, this official told NEWSWEEK. The official quoted President Bush as telling Condi Rice, "I'm tired of swatting flies." Bush, this official says, wanted an aggressive scheme to take bin Laden out.

So the White House is saying that Clarke did make proposals in January 2001, but they weren't good enough, so they were tabled until a new plan was available.

Again, this is consistent with this excerpt from the earlier article about the interview:

Yet, in the August 2002 briefing, Clarke said Bush's newly appointed counterterrorism deputies came into office in late March and early April of 2001 and by the summer had "changed the strategy from one of rollback with al-Qaida over the course [of] five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al-Qaida."

Clarke said President Bush was briefed throughout the process and received a final document of the plan Sept. 10, 2001, "I think."

Here, Clarke is talking about plans that were forumulated starting in March of 2001, and that he "thinks" Bush was handed the draft on September 10. Where's the contradiction?

(continued in next reply)

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

(continued from previous reply)

What it comes down to is this 25 January memo to Condi Rice where Clarke says he outlined his concerns about Al-Qaeda. The White House has not denied its existence, not has it denied that it tabled the proposals. At best then, the White House's defense - which is only on record from an unnamed "official" - is that it wasn't an effective plan. The best way to prove this claim by the White House, then, would be to produce the memo. Shall we call for it?

But that's not all - what about the claim that immediately after 9/11 the President told Clarke to find a connection between Iraq and the attack, which subsequently when found that none existed, the administration told the intelligence services to go back and try again? McClellan claims that there is no record of Bush having this conversation with Clarke, or that Bush was in the Situation Room on 9/12.

Q Scott, this morning, you said the President didn't recall the conversation in the Situation Room on September 12th that Mr. Clarke said he had, where the President asked Dick Clarke three times to pursue links between 9/11 and Iraq. And you said he doesn't -- I had two questions. So did the President tell you or somebody in the White House over the weekend, he doesn't recall?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I talked to him. He doesn't recall that conversation or meeting.

Q And that was -- he said it this morning, or this weekend? When did he say that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, this weekend and this morning, yes.

Q Okay. And secondly, Clarke now says that he has three eyewitnesses, and he repeated it again this morning, and he named them -- to the conversation.

MR. McCLELLAN: Let's just step backwards -- regardless, regardless, put that aside. There's no record of the President being in the Situation Room on that day that it was alleged to have happened, on the day of September the 12th. When the President is in the Situation Room, we keep track of that.

To repeat Jon Stewart's incredulity - the day after the most horrific terrorist attack on American soil, the President did not go into the Situation Room? Where the Hell was he? Can we see the records, please?

The problem is not really whether Bush could have prevented 9/11. That's just one allegation. The more pressing issue, for which more and more evidence is mounting, from Clarke, from Paul O'Neill, from Karen Kwaitkowski, that the administration wanted a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda where none existed to justify the war against Iraq. The fact that America went to war on grounds exaggerated at best, fabricated at worst, but in any case deceptive, remains.