[NotchJohnson]

Never could understand why a former employee would do this on this level.

[backhoe]

Cross-link:

http://www.freerepublic.com/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

[bonfire]

As the Dennis Miller quipped last night: the man should be in a 12 step program. Something is SO not right about this guy.

[shield]

Rand Beers is one of Dick's best friends, they both teach at Kennedy School of whatever at Harvard. Rand Beers is a supporter of Kerry, and will be his sec of state. So Dick has conspired to help get kerry elected.

[jim macomber]

As I posted earlier, this is yet one more example of allowing oneself to get shot in the foot by efforts and gestures of inclusiveness and, dare I say it, (yeccckk! - insert gagging sound) - bipartisanship.
I wish someone with far more influence than I could walk up to the President (the Republican leadership in general, actually) and kind of knock a knuckle on his forehead and get through to him/them that the other side doesn't like him, they will never like him no matter what he does, and every such act of 'reaching out' on his part is nothing more to them than a sign of weakness and an opportunity for mischief.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[SevenDaysInMay]

Clarke is angry over Bush opennning the Iraq Front? After 8 years of the Clintons' failing cops & robbers appoach after Bill's running from (Black African battle = Black vote risk) Somalia, Clarke is angry that Bush is moving strategically to block Shiity Iran while removing the Sunni of a b!+ch Saddamn?

We face the miseries of ignoring Iran's unconventional terror war with us since Tehran 1979. Iran's proxies used the truck bomb killing our 242 Marines in Beiruit, when Reagan did nothing but cut and run.

What besides our troops would keep Iran from Iraq's lower fields and Saudi's oil fields to control more than 1/3 of the world's proven reserves? (Turkey badly wants the "Kurd's northern fields.) During the 1990's, Iran purchased 3 armoured corps from the Russian tank factories, some T-90s, mostly T-80s and BMPs, outnumbering our armoured guys by 20-30:1?

Iran has their nuclear umbrella on its way to becoming payloads for Israel once the latest generation of NK missles arrive.

Who says that we have the abiblity to defeat Iran?

Think about it, Congress.

Clarke's analysis of the increased death count under Bush makes no sense. No wonder he was on his way out.

After the Clintons' feckless response to the crime wave (terrorists as proxy for islamo-tryanical nation states), such as WTC I, TWA 800?, Saudi towers, African embassies, U.S.S. Cole, et al.), who thought that the DNC-Politburo proclaimed dunce Bush could wage war greater than the islamokazies were waging war against us?

IMO, Clarke is a bitter u$eful idiot for the DNC-Politburo's Kerry campaign, employeed by the DNC-Politburo nomenclatura and apparatchiks via the Harvard KSG ueber alles. While JFingK hides out in his mountain castle, Clarke barters with his soul for future power now Dick is ca$hing in.

This Terror War has hardly begun.

[Dante3]

Clark is tryig to peddle his book.

Remember when the media was hysterical about Linda Tripp having a book deal even though there was no book?

[Eva]

Maybe the reason lies in the fact that Clarke's teaching partner works for the Kerry campaign.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Clarke's testimony is playing well with the anti-Rice crown. Lots of people I know just think she's stuck back in the 1970-1980 time frame. They have no confidence that she has a clue about terrorism. (I think they're wrong and that Clark is just pumping his book. )

[Solson]

Info on Richard Clarke...

As I've looked into news stories about Mr. Clarke and his past comments there were numerous articles which quoted other people saying that Mr. Clarke was "blunt" and "very honest" and that his bluntness didn't earn him the affection of many people.

If this is the case, how can Mr. Clarke expect the nation to believe he went out in August of 2002 and trumpeted the White House talking points, only focusing on the positive?

Moreover, how can Mr. Clarke, with his numerous quotes in Mr. Miniter's book, expect us to believe the Clinton Administration was doing everything to combat terror?

From the following sources:

http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20030129S0004
"WASHINGTON (AP)--Richard A. Clarke, a blunt-spoken White House adviser who raised warnings about Islamic terrorism and biological weapons years before they became nightmare headlines, will resign from government soon, people familiar with his plans said."

"...said Sandy Berger, Clinton's former national security adviser and Clarke's former boss. "He's not an easy guy. He's very demanding. More than once people would come to me and complain, but that's why I wanted Dick in that job: He was pushing the bureaucracy."

"Clarke was "a bulldog of a bureaucrat," wrote former national security adviser Anthony Lake in a book two years ago. He said Clarke has "a bluntness toward those at his level that has not earned him universal affection."

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/143

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030901-102358-9367r.htm

http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?from=search&item_id=390571

http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?from=search&item_id=302647

"Last week, Richard Clarke had finally had enough. Testifying Tuesday before a congressional subcommittee, Clarke blasted the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for failing to keep cybersecurity at the top of their agendas. Clarke's the man who should know: Before he retired from the job in February, he was the federal government's infrastructure security czar and came up with the national strategy for protecting cyberspace.

Clarke has a reputation as a loose cannon who despises bureaucracy and loathes government regulation of business. He reportedly quit in February because he wasn't offered a job in the new Homeland Security Department with as much clout as he had before. He's certainly no shrinking violet. And when it comes to cybersecurity, Clarke decidedly is an alarmist."

http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?from=search&item_id=275000

"Some former staffers in the Clinton White House understand that an opportunity was missed in the 1990s. Richard Clarke, former National Security Council counterterrorism chief, said his office urged destruction of the terrorist camps in Afghanistan after the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole. The request was denied. In an interview with the PBS show “Frontline” (excerpted recently in The Weekly Standard ), Clarke said, “That's the one thing that we recommended that didn't happen — the one thing in retrospect I wish had happened.” Destroying the camps, Clarke said, would have cut the “conveyor belt that was producing terrorists.…So many, many trained and indoctrinated al-Qaida terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn't have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the camps earlier.”

http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?from=search&item_id=308835

"Richard Clarke, who served as White House coordinator for counterterrorism under President Clinton, told congressional investigators that in 2000, he visited a half-dozen FBI field offices and asked agents what they were doing about Al Qaeda. "I got sort of blank looks of, 'What is Al Qaeda?' " he said"

http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?item_id=125597&pageId=2

"By late November, the amount of intelligence pouring in was overwhelming, and CTC staffers understood why. For years, their efforts at fighting terror had vied with a dozen other priorities of U.S. foreign policy. But the message from Washington now was clear. "No nation can be neutral in this conflict," declared President Bush. "You're either with us or you're against us." The results were immediate. "Before 9/11, the cooperation was halfhearted," recalls Richard Clarke, the top counterterrorism official at the National Security Council at the time of the attack. "But now everyone knew the president had a blank check to do whatever he wanted." From the Indian government came intercepts of al Qaeda-tied militants in Kashmir; from Italy, wiretapped conversations of Islamic radicals in Milan; from Sudan, long-awaited files on bin Laden operatives once headquartered in Khartoum. Much to the delight of old pros at the CIA, intelligence arrived even from old foes, among them Libya and Syria."

[GeorgiaYankee]

OK, here's my theory about the 2 Clarkes:

Have you ever had a negative experience with someone you have known and liked for years? Did it affect how you viewed your earlier experiences with that person? Did you think "Oh, now that explains what they meant 3 years ago."

That could be how Richard Clarke is thinking.

It all centers on his disapproval of the war with Iraq.
He resigned in late Feb 2003, right about the time the Iraq war seemed inevitable. Prior to this, all of his evaluations of the Bush administration were positive (both pre and post 9/11).

After this point he is critical of Bush's efforts (or the supposed lack thereof) both pre and post 9/11.

It is obvious that his disagreement over Iraq has retroactively colored his opinion of the Bush administration, even to the point that he can go back and read something negative into Condi Rice's facial expression and President Bush's words.
So for Clarke, his new statements on Bush and co are not lies, they are true for him in light of his new, negative opiinion based on his disapproval of the Iraq war.