ATTACK WARNINGS IGNORED!

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Registered: 08-21-2004
ATTACK WARNINGS IGNORED!
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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

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 10:09pm

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".


Oh so true, and I think many of us including congress have learned a lot from this one. If bush wins please let there be a democratic house and senate for the checks and balances, as intended.

Donna

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

Donna
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 10:16pm
He was "putting the best face on it" because he still worked for the president and those who work for him know what he wants to hear. He is now free to tell the whole truth and does not need to put a face on it. That's pretty easy to understand too.
Donna

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

Donna
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 10:22pm
< He was "putting the best face on it" because he still worked for the president and those who work for him know what he wants to hear.>

Once again, apparently he equates "putting the best face on something" with "saying the exact opposite of what you actually think". To me, saying the exact opposite of what one actually thinks would be defined as "lying". But I'm kinda bored with explaining that over and over again, so I'll stop here.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 11:04pm
Yes, we have a different take on it and that is obvious and yes it is getting tedious.
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
Fri, 09-24-2004 - 10:15am
I'm not defending Clinton, though it's a neat rhetorical trick to tie his credibility to Clarkes. Do I have to prove Clinton right for you to believe Clarke. Heck no.

Have you read in Woodward's "Plan of Attack" where President Bush repeatedly tells the press "I have no war plans on my desk." That was true. They were on Don Rumsfeld's desk. Spin? Lie? You tell me.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Fri, 09-24-2004 - 7:13pm


No. Did I say "Clinton was a liar, so Clarke must be too?" I just said that the equivocating was Clintonesque, meaning, it reminded me of Clinton. No attempt was made to tie their credibility together at all, except that in both cases those who wanted to believe they were being honest could twist and turn and find some kind of confounded way to say that they were, technically, honest. But most of us know the difference between being technically, semantically honest and completely honest and forthright. You don't have to prove Clinton was honest(though I'll give you a dollar if you can, LOL!). But in my opinion you haven't proven Clarke honest, and neither has he.



You're comparing apples and oranges. If Bush had said "I have no plans to go to war with Iraq" when he actually meant "There are plans to go to war with Iraq but I personally don't have them" that would be comparable to Clarke's equivocations. While the Pentagon may have had "war plans" in the event that war with Iraq was necessary, that is not the same as saying they were planning to go to war. So I would characterize that as spin-were there "war plans"? Of course. Does that mean Bush had planned to go to war regardless of the outcome of the UN resolution? I don't think so. But of course you disagree. Only George Bush knows for sure.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Sat, 09-25-2004 - 10:14am
<>

I know that there are standard "war plans" in place for many eventualities, but that's not what I'm talking about here. At the point in time when Bush said "there are no war plans on my desk" the Pentagon and General Thompson were ferverishly reworking to scrap the dusty old plan, which called for a massive US invasion, in order to come up with a plan that would be as fast as possible, and use as few troops as possbile. But were they committed to impliment the plan? In the same news conference Bush told reporters that "I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go." He was trying to balance a strong position on regime change with not tipping his hat that plans were under way. He was faced with an aggressive reporter and did some quick spinning.

If you have the book Plan of Attack, the exchange with the reporter is on page 119.

"I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go," Bush said. "That's about all I'm willing to share with you."

"Then Saddam must go?" McDonald (the reporter) asked.

"That's what I just said," bush said testily. "The policy of my government is that he goes."

"People think that Saddam Hussein has no links with the al Qaeda network, and I'm wondering why you have - "

"The worst thing that could happen would be to allow a nation like Iraq, run by Saddam Hussein, to develop weapons of mass destruction, and then team up with terrorist organizations so they can blackmail the world. I'm not going to let that happen."

"And how are you going ot acheive this, Mr. President?"

"Wait and see."

McDonald questioned him abut the weapons inspectors. Bush said he wanted them back in Iraq. "But this is not an issue of inspections. This is an issue of upholding his word that he would not develop weapons of mass destruction."

"So whether he allows the inspectors in or not, he is on the list to be attacked?" McDonald asked. "He's the next target?"

"You keep trying to put --" Bush said, then restarted his sentence. "You're one of those clever reporters that keeps trying to put words in my mouth."

"Far from that, Mr. President."

"Well, I'm afraid you do, sir. But nevertheless, you've had my answer on this subject." The prodding took Bush into dangerous territory as he added, "And I have no plans to attack on my desk." Though technically true, it obscured the direct and personal nature of his involvement in the war planning.

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