The War on Clarke: "Clarke has told the uncomfortable truth in his book, and now finds himself the target of the full fury of angry Bush partisans, who insist that fighting terrorism was Bush's highest priority. The evidence shows otherwise. For starters, Clarke presented a memo to Condi Rice outlining the URGENT (this tag is on the document) threat presented by Al Qaeda in January 2001. While Dr. Rice insists she made terrorism a top priority, one of her first decisions in the early days of 2001 was to downgrade Clarke's position as the National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism. How is that making terrorism an elevated priority? It is not. Richard Clarke also requested in January 2001 that President Bush convene a meeting of principal Bush officials (e.g., the secretary of state, secretary of defense and the attorney general) but this meeting was postponed by Dr. Rice until Sept. 4, 2001. That seven-month gap represents time that, in retrospect, could have been used to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
The Clarke bashers also insist that that no more could have been done before 9/11 than what was done during the first eight months of the Bush presidency. Oh? If that was the case, then why did Bush direct the airlines to lock cockpit doors after 9/11? Why did the Bush administration decide to arm pilots, put more air marshals on planes and federalize the security force doing screening at airports? Why did the Bush administration order attacks on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan if, in the words of the Bush spinners, 'we did all that we could do prior to 9/11'? Why did Bush officials establish emergency financial task forces comprised of intelligence and law enforcement officials to hunt down the trails of terrorist financing if all had been done prior to 9/11? The uncomfortable facts show that Richard Clarke proposed many of these measures in the early days of the Bush presidency. Action was taken only in the aftermath of 9/11.
Here is the bottom line—Richard Clarke was right"
- posted by geoff @ #