Storm Warnings - Bin Laden was a threat, but Clinton never pushed it ...

MSnbc/Newsweek ^ | Mar 21, 2004 | Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas

[The Raven]

Clarke is perhaps not the most neutral source. Last year Clarke's best friend, Rand Beers, quit as the White House's counterterrorism chief after complaining—over glasses of wine on Clarke's front porch—about the wrong-headedness of Bush's plan to invade Iraq. Beers is now a principal foreign-policy adviser to Kerry.

[The Raven]

Moby alert !!

[GraniteStateConservative]

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me about a few dozen times and counting, shame on me. Why do Norm Mineta and Tenet have a job, again?

[victoryatallcosts]

Me? Hardly. If I were a Moby acoylte I'd be telling you how Clarke's "credibility on these issues is hard to ignore" or something along similar lines.

There are primarily two sorts of infiltrators- open leftists who are quickly banned, and people who pretend to be conservatives but seek to plant doubts. I'm neither.

[KQQL]

Looks like CBS is in bed with the Kerry Camppiagn ....

Clarke is perhaps not the most neutral source. Last year Clarke's best friend, Rand Beers, quit as the White House's counterterrorism chief after complaining—over glasses of wine on Clarke's front porch—about the wrong-headedness of Bush's plan to invade Iraq. Beers is now a principal foreign-policy adviser to Kerry.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4571338/

[KQQL]

Looks like CBS is in bed with the Kerry Campaign ....

Clarke is perhaps not the most neutral source. Last year Clarke's best friend, Rand Beers, quit as the White House's counterterrorism chief after complaining—over glasses of wine on Clarke's front porch—about the wrong-headedness of Bush's plan to invade Iraq. Beers is now a principal foreign-policy adviser to Kerry.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4571338/

[CyberAnt]

I don't think Bush was kept from cleaning house because he was concerned how the media would react. I think he naively thought that civil service was just that .. civil.

I don't think a lot of people really realize how much the Clintons (more than any other democrats) made civil service a matter of loyalty to THEM .. not to the country. The travel office is a prime example. I guess those Clinton people are still there, but I would have fired them the first day .. but that's just me.

President Bush expects people to the best for the country regardless of what party they belong to. I think it's been a hard lesson for all the Bush admin to find out that is not a reality anymore.

[The Raven]

>>Me?

No NOT YOU !!!!

[John Thornton]

Remember how Clinton cleaned house in his early days?

Yes. Clinton even fired every single United States Attorney as soon as he took office. Even those positions filled by career (as opposed to political) hires.

[GraniteStateConservative]

I'm sure that Beers has always had a philosophy that included things like a belief in the UN the way Christians believe in God, a total faith in the importance of international co-operation, and so on. Bush doesn't believe that way. He should have purged out everyone who worked for him at high levels who weren't on board with his agenda. Otherwise, you might as well have some crazy European fusion government.

[victoryatallcosts]

Oh, the other fellow.

That's the damn problem with the net these days. I'm conviced that 10% of the people here are leftist infiltrators and so are at least 10% of the posters on Democratic Underground.

[Stentor]

He's been a nonpartisan civil servant, who rose high in the State Department based on results and performance.

You're kinda new around here so you don't realize how totally freakin funny this is.

[Indy Pendance]

How Clinton Let Al-Qaeda Go

[snip]

AS TERRORIST ATTACKS escalated in the 1990s, White House rhetoric intensified. President Clinton met each successive outrage with a vow to punish the perpetrators. After the Cole bombing in 2000, for example, he pledged to "find out who is responsible and hold them accountable." And to prove he was serious, he issued an increasingly tough series of Presidential Decision Directives. The United States would "deter and preempt...individuals who perpetrate or plan to perpetrate such acts," said Directive 39, in June 1995. Offensive measures would be used against foreign terrorists posing a threat to America, said Directive 62, in May 1998. Joint Staff contingency plans were revised to provide for offensive and preemptive options. And after al Qaeda's bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Clinton signed a secret "finding" authorizing lethal covert operations against bin Laden.

These initiatives led to the planning of several operations. Their details rest in the classified records of the National Security Council's Counterterrorism and Security Group. Its former coordinator, Dick Clarke, described them as providing the White House with "more aggressive options," to be carried out by Special Operations Forces (or SOF, a category that includes the Green Berets, the Rangers, psychological operations, civilian affairs, the SEALS, special helicopter units, and special mission units like the Delta Force and SEAL Team 6).

Several plans have been identified in newspaper accounts since 9/11. For example, "snatch operations" in Afghanistan were planned to seize bin Laden and his senior lieutenants. After the 1998 embassy bombings, options for killing bin Laden were entertained, including a gunship assault on his compound in Afghanistan.

SOF assaults on al Qaeda's Afghan training camps were also planned. An official very close to Clinton said that the president believed the image of American commandos jumping out of helicopters and killing terrorists would send a strong message. He "saw these camps as conveyor belts pushing radical Islamists through," the official said, "that either went into the war against the Northern Alliance [an Afghan force fighting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan] or became sleeper cells in Germany, Spain, Britain, Italy, and here. We wanted to close these camps down. We had to make it unattractive to go to these camps. And blowing them up, by God, would make them unattractive."

And preemptive strikes against al Qaeda cells outside Afghanistan were planned, in North Africa and the Arabian Gulf. Then in May 1999, the White House decided to press the Taliban to end its support of bin Laden. The Counterterrorism and Security Group recommended supporting the Northern Alliance.

These examples, among others, depict an increasingly aggressive, lethal, and preemptive counterterrorist policy. But not one of these operations--all authorized by President Clinton--was ever executed. General Schoomaker's explanation is devastating. "The presidential directives that were issued," he said, "and the subsequent findings and authorities, in my view, were done to check off boxes. The president signed things that everybody involved knew full well were never going to happen. You're checking off boxes, and have all this activity going on, but the fact is that there's very low probability of it ever coming to fruition. . . ." And he added: "The military, by the way, didn't want to touch it. There was great reluctance in the Pentagon."

[snip]

[MizSterious]

In my opinion, you are exactly correct. And remember 60 Minutes actually took credit for getting Clinton elected, because of the interview (Bill and Hill) on that show. No doubt they're hoping for a repeat.

[Catspaw]

Yes. Clinton even fired every single United States Attorney as soon as he took office. Even those positions filled by career (as opposed to political) hires.

You've got it backwards. US Attorneys are appointed by the President. They're political appointees and are confirmed by the Senate.

[Phisher]

Here is another source:

"Kerry's adviser on national security, Rand Beers, is a close associate of Clarke's and held the job as terrorism adviser under President Bush during part of 2002. Clarke quotes Beers in the book as asking his advice when Beers considered quitting because "they're using the war on terror politically."

Bartlett, the White House communications director, noted Clarke's friendship with Beers and the upcoming presidential election.


"We believe the timing is questionable," Bartlett said. "When (Clarke) left office, he had every opportunity" to make any grievances known. "

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040322/ap_on_go_pr_wh/terrorism_adviser&cid=544&ncid=716



BTW Don't you love how the past two web pages have posted this information at the very END of their story. It should be at the top as a "Grain of salt" type of accusation.

[Poundstone]

"I'm sure that Beers has always had a philosophy that included things like a belief in the UN the way Christians believe in God, a total faith in the importance of international co-operation, and so on."

That's simply not true -- and I actually know this for a fact.

[Catspaw]

BTW Don't you love how the past two web pages have posted this information at the very END of their story. It should be at the top as a "Grain of salt" type of accusation.

They buried Barlett's response, and when this story is cut for space consideration in smaller newspapers, they'll cut from the bottom. POOF goes the WH response.

[The Raven]

Bush's policy (with us or against us) was all that was needed for Iraq.

He didn't need the 17 resolutions of the UN.

He didn't need the UN members being bribed by Saddam.

He didn't need WMDs

He didn't need Beer or Clarke's leftist theories.

He didn't need the Democrats.

--

BTW - The UN bribes should be a bigger story than WMD's

[CatoRenasci]

Not knowing Beers, I cannot say one way or the other.

You're fairly new around here. And, you appear to be, or have been, an employee of the State Department. You should realize just how deep the suspicions run among conservatives concerning the State Department. Ever since the Eisenhower administration, and perhaps even before back to the administrations of Roosevelt Minor (H.L. Mencken's name for FDR), the State Department has been regarded with grave suspicion as harboring left-wing socialites hostile to America. Certainly, the career State corps was hostile to Nixon and Ford, very hostile to Reagan, and has been very very hostile to George W Bush. The only republican president State has not been noticably hostile towards was George H.W. Bush. That's not to say there aren't many patriotic, even fairly conservative, employees of the State Department, but, the State bureaucracy, at its core, is liberal, the product of the elite northeastern universities and liberal arts colleges whose faculties have been hard left for the past 30 years. In my limited experience, state employees reminded me of the diplomats parodied by Keith Laumer in his "Retief" novels, socially and culturally more comfortable with the European upper classes and their views, than with ordinary Americans.

[Mo1]

The guy was a lifer - started under Reagan & Bush Sr.

Sounds like Joe Wilson's career also