ATTACK WARNINGS IGNORED!

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
ATTACK WARNINGS IGNORED!
37
Sun, 09-19-2004 - 12:02pm

From Vanity Fair July 2004


Interview with  Richard Clarke


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Re: Conversation with Rice:


 


He says he told her that al-Qaeda was <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America’s No. 1 threat. In the book he writes that it seems she hadn’t heard the term before. Rice’s defenders pointed out that she spoke about Osama bin Laden in a radio interview in October 2000. “She obviously knew about bin Laden,” Clarke now says. “But it’s not just Condi. A lot of people….didn’t get the phrase ‘al-Qaeda.’”


According to Clarke, Rice told him that she couldn’t see why the N.S.C. (National Security Council) should be worrying about things like “getting equipment and training to firemen around this country.��� (in case of a terrorist strike)


She told Clarke that she wanted him to focus on breaking up the N.S.C.’s  Office of Transnational Threats, which he headed, and spinning out some of the jobs and getting back to the old N.S.C. model. She also told him that he did not need to go to the Principals’ meetings any longer.  (this was a guy who had been the Counterterrorism Czar since 1992 or so and had been in the field for 30 years)


Clarke says the reduction of his responsibilities (which did not affect his paycheck) was significant because it sent a signal to the bureaucracy that counterterrorism was no longer as important as it had been in the Clinton administration.


 


Re: De-emphasizing counterterrorism


 


In fact, Clarke and his staff felt that counterterrorism was being shoved to the bottom of the agenda: “I was being told by people in the Pentagon they couldn’t get money. People in the Justice Dept were telling me they couldn’t get money….I was told terrorism was no longer on the priority list for the attorney general for priority issues.”


Over at Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld had not replied to Clarke’s request for a briefing meeting in January. Rumsfeld was also attempting to scale back the D.O.D.’s (Department of Defense) special ops, war on drugs, and peacekeeping…..all the operations Clarke considered an essential part of fighting al-Qaeda on its own turf.


 


Re: Clarke’s memo to cut off Afghanistan


 


Clarke’s now famous January 2001 memo advocating a series of actions to “roll back” al-Qaeda, including cutting off its financing, helping such organization as the Northern Alliance fight it in Afghanistan, and breaking up international cells, seemed to languish, ignored, in people’s in-boxes. Finally it was discussed at the end of April, in a meeting of deputies chaired by Hadley, who wanted to reach a consensus among all the departments and agencies before formalizing policy. Clarke describes Hadley as a “very precise lawyer…You could light a nuclear bomb off under him and his hair wouldn’t get singed.” Reaching a consensus was bound to take time. The C.I.A., for instance was against Clarke’s suggestion to resume using the Predator, an unmanned plane, to spy on and possibly target al-Qaeda missile camps in Afghanistan, in part because a Predator had crashed the year before.


 


Re: Warnings to the president about planned attacks on the US


 


Meanwhile, in May and June the C.I.A. was getting increasingly scary intelligence reports that al-Qaeda was planning something big. Clarke sent Rice and her N.S.C. colleagues additional memos. At the same time, George Tenet was personally briefing the president about the reports.


Clark leans forward, “I’m not sure everybody has grasped this…Tenet on 40 occasions


in these morning meetings mentioned al-Qaeda to the president. Forty times, many of them in a very alarmed way, about a pending attack. And as far as I can tell from what has been said at the commission, on one of these occasions, one out of 40, the president must have said something like ‘Well, what are we going to do about it.’”


On August 6, Bush received the page-and-a-half-long presidential brief from the C.I.A., the title of which was “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” Significantly, Clarke and his team were not shown it.


Finally, on September 4, when the principals were back in the capital from traveling and their summer vacations, they held a meeting, in which most of Clarke’s ideas were provisionally accepted as policy. As the world knows, it was too late. Seven days later al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil.


 


When asked why he had not requested to brief the president himself-- as Rice had testified—Clarke maintains he did, back in January, but Rice told him Bush would not be briefed unless there was a new policy he needed to make a decision on. “They’re very protective of this president.” Clark says. “He meet son a regular basis with only about a half-dozen senior White House people, who as a result wield tremendous influence.

Donna

Patriotism means to stand by the Country. It does not mean to stand by the President. -- Theodore Roosevelt.

Donna
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 2:31pm
Why would I re-read Clarkes testimony where he contradicts himself, after he had contradicted what he had been saying over the previous 9 years before his book came out.

Again....no credibility.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 2:33pm
The problem is that the Jim Engle tape is consistant with what Clarke had said previously during Clinton's presidency.

What he said when his book was coming out was the John Kerry in him coming out....flip-flop.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 2:35pm
I have come to the conclusion that it is no use to try to point facts out to people who discount them, and will believe what they want, just because it makes President Bush look bad.

The same happened when Clinton was in office, and the Republicans were so gung-ho on ousting him too....they became fanatical about it. Now it is the Democrats turn.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 3:01pm
I'm not splitting hairs. (And who all is "you folks"?) I'm trying to stop you from passing off small inaccuracies which add up to larger ones. You're free to say that you think Clarke lied, but not free to say that HE SAID, he lied. He said the exact opposite. This is how vague inaccuracies become accepted as facts.


<< He didn't say the words "I lied", but he did say he had a choice between telling the truth and resigning, he chose not to resign, therefore by his own statement we can only conclude that he chose NOT TO TELL THE TRUTH. >>

No. Again. That's exactly NOT what he said. He said he had THREE choices - resigning, lying, spinning (which he calls putting "the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were") and he chose the third. Did you just skim this stuff, reading like, every fifth word?

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/24/bn.00.html

CLARKE: Actually, I think you have three choices. You can resign rather than do it. I chose not to do that. Second choice is...

THOMPSON: Why was that, Mr. Clarke? You finally resigned because you were frustrated.

CLARKE: I was, at that time, at the request of the president, preparing a national strategy to defend America's cyberspace, something which I thought then and think now is vitally important. I thought that completing that strategy was a lot more important than whether or not I had to provide emphasis in one place or other while discussing the facts on this particular news story.

The second choice one has, Governor, is whether or not to say things that are untruthful. And no one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.

In any event, the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did.

I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration.

•••

As for saying that spinning is the same as "Clintonesqe backpedaling" - you can't be serious that only Bill Clinton and the Democrats spin anything. Believe me, I'd love it if White House spokespeople all of a sudden told us exactly how they personally felt on the issues, but it ain't gonna happen. Everyone knows and expects them to put the best face on things. Everyone knows there's a certain amount of BS involved in doing so. The people who actually believe the spin are the scary ones, the idealogues, and they're the ones I don't trust.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 5:15pm
This has all been answered here and by Clarke himself. Rather than go over it ad nauseum again (since nothing I say or anyone else says will change your mind anyway), I refer you to Metrochic's response:




4149.19

Donna
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 5:19pm

The people who actually believe the spin are the scary ones, the idealogues, and they're the ones I don't trust.


These same people not only believe it but they repeat it word for word as a robot, repeating the propaganda the Bush machine puts out. It is truly scary. I fear we are headed for a dictatorship and loss of this Republic. I know this sounds paranoid but if you look at history we are headed down that road.

Donna

"Patriotism means to stand by the Country. It does not mean to stand by the President." -- Theodore Roosevelt.

Donna
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 8:28pm
<< I fear we are headed for a dictatorship and loss of this Republic.>> I was going to say not to worry, because there are so many times in the past when it probably seemed the same way (my Mom often talks about how scary the 60's were in terms of assasinations, riots, the war on TV) but I do have to say, I don't recall a time when terms like "treason" and "enemy of the Republic" were tossed around so freely. My favorite is "card carrying Liberal." Huh? That's why it's so important to be out there and open with what you believe. After the tragedy of Sept. 11th, there was a time of coming together...followed by a really weird time of fear and paranoia during which I think our fears won out over our freedom. We can't let that happen again, and heaven forbid, if there is another attack, we can't just hand the government our free will in return for whatever it is they call "safety".
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 8:34pm
I truly don't understand your point. The whole crux of the background briefing (what you're callin the Jim Angle tape) is that Richard Clarke is accused of glossing over the Bush administration's record on counterterrorism. How is the "problem" that he's being consistent with what he said during the Clinton administration? He's been uniform about what he's said about the Cinton administration. I don't understand your point.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 9:18pm


I'm referring to all those on the left who are doing backflips, handsprings and all other kinds of contortions trying to persuade others of Clarke's sparkling integrity.



"The second choice one has, Governor, is whether or not to say things that are untruthful. And no one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.

In any event, the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did." >

Truthfully, I do read most of the stuff I read on here very hastily in between chasing a toddler, folding laundry and trying to cram some food in my face before someone wakes up from their nap, so I admit I did miss choice number three. So ok, you are correct, he DOES distinguish between lying and "putting the best face on things", which in his view apparently means "saying the exact opposite of what you really think". Which is different from lying. Ok, now I understand his position perfectly, LOL!

But I will concede your point, HE did not actually say he lied. But he did lie, of course.



Look, everyone spins no question. I'm talking about the minute semantic hairsplitting which is vintage Clinton-the "depends on what your definition of is, is" and the "I don't count oral sex as sex". I put "Did not pass a plan down" equals "there was a plan, but it wasn't passed down because they wouldn't accept it" in with that category of things that technically, semantically may be true but are basically intended to deceive. You're not going to convicne me that Clinton wasn't actually lying when he said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman", and you're not going to convince me that Richard Clarke's equivocating was any more honest.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 9:19pm

4149.19>

Thanks for pointing that out, though I've already read it and responded to it, and no, nothing will change my mind unless you're going to tell me that someone slipped me a Mickey and I didn't actually hear him on that tape directly contradicting his 9/11 testimony.