Replies

Good morning!

Jennifer Griffin, reporting from Israel, said that all that was left of the Sheikh was his HEAD! Yikes!

Condi Rice very delicately blasted Clarke this morning, in essence calling him a liar.

Then Monsur Ijaz went ballistic about Clarke, and flat-out called him a liar and said that every time the administration (Clinton) got the idea to do something about bin Laden, CLARKE blocked it!

This is going to turn into a battle royale, methinks.

John Podhertz on Fox was also great this morning. Said that Berger gave no briefings, Madeline Halfbright gave no briefings. IOW, they weren't offered from the Clintoon administration at the high levels they should have been.

Good morning all. We are back at home, basking in this lovely 24 degree weather....NOT! Sam the hound dog wishes he was back in FL and so do I.

I heard that the only thing left of the Hamas terrorist founder and "spiritual leader" (oxymoron alert!)....was his head. Wow. Condi Rice said the US wasn't aware of the strike on the Sheikh. Hmmmmmmm.......

Prairie

Bob Woodward in his book Bush at War was given unprecedented access to the president and his administration, including Clarke. Clarke did not mention his concerns about a "focus on Iraq."

The Bush administration was continuing the Clinton administration's foreign policy which called for regime change in Iraq.

Iraq's involvement in supporting terrorists is longer than I can post her but some of the more obvious: Abdul Rahman Yasin, the one conspirator from the 1993 WTC bombing, had fled to Iraq and was harbored by Saddam Hussein for years. Paying Palestinian bomber's families. Salmon Pak where terrorists used a real airplane to learn how to hijack OUR planes.

Clarke claims that Condi Rice didn't even know who Al Qaeda was. I'm nearly falling on the floor laughing. The entire world knew UBL was a threat when he was interviewed in a world exclusive interview, by CNN's Nic Robertson in August of 1998, televised in it's entirety to the world via CNN and CNN International and when he famously repeated his jihad against America.

Just a year ago Clarke was singing a different tune, telling reporter Richard Miniter, author of the book "Losing bin Laden," that it was the Clinton administration - not team Bush - that had dropped the ball on bin Laden.

Clarke, who was a primary source for Miniter's book, detailed a meeting of top Clinton officials in the wake of al Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.

He urged them to take immediate military action. But his advice found no takers.

Reporting on Miniter's book, the National Review summarized the episode:

"At a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other staffers, Clarke was the only one in favor of retaliation against bin Laden."

The list of excuses seemed endless:

"Reno thought retaliation might violate international law and was therefore against it.

"Tenet wanted to more definitive proof that bin Laden was behind the attack, although he personally thought he was.

"Albright was concerned about the reaction of world opinion to a retaliation against Muslims, and the impact it would have in the final days of the Clinton Middle East peace process.

"Cohen, according to Clarke, did not consider the Cole attack 'sufficient provocation' for a military retaliation."

And what about President Clinton? According to what Clarke told Miniter, he rejected the attack plan. Instead Clinton twice phoned the president of Yemen demanding better cooperation between the FBI and the Yemeni security services.

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 Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?" said the dismayed Clintonista