...or proud of someone else's handiwork.
Posted on 03/19/2004 3:13:02 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Edited on 03/19/2004 5:25:30 PM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]
Former White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke tells Lesley Stahl that on September 11, 2001 and the day after - when it was clear Al Qaeda had carried out the terrorist attacks - the Bush administration was considering bombing Iraq in retaliation. Clarke's exclusive interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday March 21 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Clarke was surprised that the attention of administration officials was turning toward Iraq when he expected the focus to be on Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. "They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12," says Clarke. The top counter-terrorism advisor, Clarke was briefing the highest government officials, including President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in the aftermath of 9/11. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq....We all said, 'but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan," recounts Clarke, "and Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.' I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with [the 9/11 attacks],'" he tells Stahl. Clarke goes on to explain what he believes was the reason for the focus on Iraq. "I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection [between Iraq and Al Qaeda] but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying, 'We've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection,'" says Clarke. Clarke, who advised four presidents, reveals more about the current administration's reaction to terrorism in his new book, "Against All Enemies." Developing...
Moderator note: Be sure to read the related story on Richard Clarke:
FORMER WHITE HOUSE TERRORISM ADVISOR RICHARD CLARKE'S LEGACY OF MISCALCULATION
...or proud of someone else's handiwork.
Because he wants to sell a book, and nothing creates publicity like controversy.
I was watching the TV with my middle school aged homeschooled kids when the second plane hit the tower. I turned to them and said "Osama bin Laden is toast." I knew it even then!
I'm not surprised those discussions were going on in the White House, hell, they were going on here at FR!! Just because things are discussed as a possibility doesn't mean those things are going to come to pass immediately! We had our sights set on Iraq ever since Gulf War 1 for pete's sake! The ball was in Hussein's court at that time whether or not we'd have to intervene again.
This book is a hit piece designed to shed more heat than light on the subject of President Bush.
Clarke is a career member of the federal government's Senior Executive Service, having started there in 1973 in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Since May 1998, Clarke was the first National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism.
Not necessarily...read your own post. This guy's a career guy. He's one of those "unnamed senior administration officials" that the mainstream media likes to depict as one of Bush's "trusted" advisors who just has to leak the terrible things this president is doing.
I wouldn't be surprised if Carville and Company don't have pictures of him with a little boy...
GOOD FOR THEM! I hope they were talking about it on 9/11. This long parade of whiny "ex-officials" only tells me that Bush doesn't put up with any crap in those he works closest with. I like that about him. Bush probably threw this dolt out on his ear. If this guy's credibility isn't strained by his obvious disgruntledness, I'll eat my hat. Everything he says oozes with rhetoric and resentment, not facts that mean anything.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/3/19/173238.shtml
Clarke, who recently proclaimed that "fighting Iraq had little to do with fighting the war on terrorism, until we made it (so)," is set to appear on "60 Minutes" this Sunday.
He's expected to address charges that the Clinton administration failed to act when the CIA pinpointed Osama bin Laden's location on several occasions before the 9/11 attacks.
Democratic spinmeister Paul Begala, who announced Clarke's "60 Minutes" spot during a radio interview Friday morning, signaled the public relations blitzkrieg on terrorism, daring Republicans:
"Ask the nonpartisan national security experts who worked in both administrations, who was tougher on bin Laden, who was aware of the problem, who was going after bin Laden."
In further evidence that the Clinton and Kerry teams were joining forces on foreign policy, Norway's Socialist leadership met with Sen. Hillary Clinton and other members of her political team in what the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten described as a bid to "link up with the Democrats in the US.
"The goal is to be prepared with common strategies if a majority of them on both sides of the Atlantic come back to power," the paper explained.
Espen Barth Eide, who led the Norwegian delegation in Washington, D.C., said she hoped the meeting would help bring about "political globalization."
These guys are wild, and this story is even more troubling in light of the international socialist context.
...except for high level Al Qaeda operatives traveling to Iraq for meetings, and Iraqi Intelligence officials traveling to Afghanistan for meetings, and Iraq providing travel documents for '93 WTC bombing mastermind Ramsey Yusef, and sanctuary in country (though possibly not material sustenance) for Al Qaeda operatives, and Iraq and Al Qaeda jointly operating Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan, and Iraq providing training in chem warfare, aircraft hijacking, etc, for Al Qaeda members in Iraq.
Except for all that (at minimum) "[there was] just no connection."
I'm sure glad Clark is a former anti-Terrorism official!
There's a quote from Coffer Black, discussing plans for the Afghan war with Tenet, that goes something like: "We'll hunt them down like dogs. When we get done with them flies will be walking across their eyeballs." (Of course this didn't take into account the fuel-air bombs tend to burst or incinerate eyeballs.)
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