2002 TIME Mag quotes CLARKE - Bush team "moved as fast as could be expected" on terrorist threat.

TIME magazine ^ | Aug 5, 2002 | unattributed

[lunatic12]

Long before 9/11, the White House debated taking the fight to al-Qaeda

"...And that's the point. The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush. It is quite true that nobody predicted Sept. 11--that nobody guessed in advance how and when the attacks would come. But other things are true too. By last summer, many of those in the know--the spooks, the buttoned-down bureaucrats, the law-enforcement professionals in a dozen countries--were almost frantic with worry that a major terrorist attack against American interests was imminent. It wasn't averted because 2001 saw a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national-security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat."

"The winter proposals became a victim of the transition process, turf wars and time spent on the pet policies of new top officials. The Bush Administration chose to institute its own "policy review process" on the terrorist threat. Clarke told TIME that the review moved "as fast as could be expected." And Administration officials insist that by the time the review was endorsed by the Bush principals on Sept. 4, it was more aggressive than anything contemplated the previous winter. The final plan, they say, was designed not to "roll back" al-Qaeda but to "eliminate" it...."

[meenie]

The hearings show intelligence lapses and lack of sharing information, regardless of responsibility. These problems are not surprising in a bloated bureaucracy. This should be the target of the inquiry. As the hearings devolve into a blame game, these problems and how to solve them gets bypassed. Nothing learned, nothing gained.

[EQAndyBuzz]

"Or did Clarke think up this lie filled stink bomb himself knowing the presstitutes would make him a wealthy man?"

Presstitutes? ROFLMAO

New Buzz word for FReepers. Use it well.

Thank you for that. My day is now made.

[mware]

I wonder if someone from the panel will ask him about this today. I have only seen small portions of it, but from what I saw Bob Kerrey has been pretty fair.

[jla]

^

[Blood of Tyrants]

Clarke is beoming less and less credible as each and every day goes on.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Difficult to say. They may not even be aware that this article exists.

[an amused spectator]

"Sadly for them, dozens and dozens of newspapers have already printed the truth. Liberals simply can't grasp the problem Lexis-Nexis poses to their incessant lying. They ought to stick to their specialty -- hysterical overreaction. The truth is not their forte." - Ann Coulter (File Under: 'Omission Accomplished' February 18, 2004 http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2004/021804e.htm)

[Sprite518]

The Liberal Media will do its best to cover this up. It does not help their cause to get Skeery elected if the truth comes out.

[Sprite518]

The Bush team needs to point this out, and get it out into the public arena. You know if its up to the Media, then they Will do their best to hide this cold fact. This is proof that this gull is full of Bravo Sierra!

[CyberAnt]

Listening to Clarke again tonight - I know, I'm a glutton for punishment .. I heard the tape from Fox where Clarke says that the Bush admin changed from "roll back" to "eliminate" - and then while talking to Lehman or Thompson, Clarke says that unfortunately Bush didn't hold to that .. and now the Time article is stating that when the plan came together on 9/4 .. it was exactly as Clarke had stated it .. from rollback to eliminate.

How can Clarke now say in his book that Bush didn't do anything?

I still say this is purely sour grapes - just like O'Neill - and because Clarke didn't get the promotion he wanted, and because he was so full of himself that he believed everybody was ignoring his great ideas .. he resigned as a disgruntled employee.

Surely because of his great friendship with Rand Beers (who now works for Kerry) Hillary would have known about Clarke being unhappy - I can put 2 and 2 together and come out with "a Hillary plan" - even if the commission cannot.

[Fiddlstix]

[nutmeg]

Not sure if you had seen this...

[nutmeg]

ping!

Article posted in full in #13

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.

[YaYa123]

One thing for sure I remember about Bill Clinton and terrorism: Everytime something happened, Clinton would go on television and go into his outraged threat mode. "We will find you, we will not rest until we stop you" yada yada yada. Bin Laden and his band of bastards must have reveled in Clinton's grandstanding, for they already knew it was meaningless.

Obviously there were intelligence failures during all administrations, and Clarke can claim Bush did nothing for 8 months, but that's clearly not true.

[js1138]

It was Bush who broke the deadlock. Each morning the CIA gives the Chief Executive a top-secret Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) on pressing issues of national security.

One day in early spring, Tenet briefed Bush on the hunt for Abu Zubaydah, al-Qaeda's head of international operations, who was suspected of having been involved in the planning of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.

After the PDB, Bush told Rice that the approach to al-Qaeda was too scattershot. He was tired of "swatting at flies" and asked for a comprehensive plan for attacking terrorism. According to an official, Rice came back to the NSC and said, "The President wants a plan to eliminate al-Qaeda." Clarke reminded her that he already had one.

But having a plan isn't the same as executing it. Clarke's paper now had to go through three more stages: the Deputies' Committee, made up of the No. 2s to the main national-security officials; the Principals' Committee, which included Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Powell and Rumsfeld; and finally, the President. Only when Bush had signed off would the plan become what the Bush team called a national-security presidential directive.

On April 30, nearly six weeks after the Administration started holding deputies' meetings, Clarke presented a new plan to them. In addition to Hadley, who chaired the hour-long meeting, the gathering included Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby; Richard Armitage, the barrel-chested Deputy Secretary of State; Paul Wolfowitz, the scholarly hawk from the Pentagon; and John McLaughlin from the CIA.

Armitage was enthusiastic about Clarke's plan, according to a senior official. But the CIA was gun-shy. Tenet was a Clinton holdover and thus vulnerable if anything went wrong. His agency was unwilling to take risks; it wanted "top cover" from the White House.

The deputies, says a senior official, decided to have "three parallel reviews--one on al-Qaeda, one on the Pakistani political situation and the third on Indo-Pakistani relations." The issues, the deputies thought, were interrelated. "They wanted to view them holistically," says the senior official, "and not until they'd had three separate meetings on each of these were they able to hold a fourth integrating them all."

Enough said. This matches the "facts" in Clarke's 2002 interview. Tenant was gun-shy because he was used to working for Clinton and being hung out to dry.

[backhoe]

Cross-link:

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1104918/posts
The Clarke Effect- another Leftover from The Decade of Frauds
various FR links | 03-25-04 | The Heavy Equipment Guy