Mark Steyn: Bush has nothing to fear from this hilarious work of fiction

The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 03/28/04 | Mark Steyn

[GmbyMan]

>>>But the question of intrigue is would the approach to protecting against terrorism been any different up to and until the event of Sept. 11, 2001 with another President in place? My opinion is I doubt it would have changed drastically..... I think it took the event to shake the changes that are being implemented.<<<

I wish to disagree slightly with this assessment. I think the seminal event that told al Q'aeda that they could get away with hitting the US hard and not being attacked back was the Blackhawk Down embarrassment in Mogadishu. Now, if Bush were President, two things would have been true:

1)The soldiers would have gotten more back up.
2)Even if such an embarrassment occured, we would not have pulled out of Somalia with our tails between our legs.

The feeling amongst Bin Laden and others was that the US was soft and could be hit hard. They wouldn't respond in a way that would end the terror networks for good. That perception of our country would have been different had we fought harder in Somalia after the Mogadishu incident. I think George H.W. Bush would have been more aggressive in this manner than Clinton was which could have changed the whole atmosphere in the world of the terrorists.

Like you write, though, it is just speculation.

[nutmeg]

That perception of our country would have been different had we fought harder in Somalia after the Mogadishu incident. I think George H.W. Bush would have been more aggressive in this manner than Clinton was which could have changed the whole atmosphere in the world of the terrorists.

Good point.

[nutmeg]

ping!

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

[irv]

As for Clarke's beef with Bush, that's simple. For eight years, he had pottered away on the terrorism brief undisturbed. The new President took it away from him

IIRC, he was screeching about an imminent "electronic Pearl Harbor" while still assigned to counter-terror. His reassignment to electronic doomsaying seemed at the time like something he had wanted all along.

But he was lousy at that too. He had no credibility then, and even less now.

[GmbyMan]

>>>On the other hand, if you're one of those Michael Moore-type conspirazoids who wants to know why Bush let his cronies in the House of Saud and the bin Laden family sneak out of America on September 11, then Clarke's also your guy: he is the official who gave the go-ahead for the bigshot Saudis with the embarrassing surnames to be hustled out of the country before they could be questioned.
<<<<

OK, Here is a question. I haven't heard about this. Was it Clarke who gave the go ahead for the Bin Laden family members to leave via aircraft after 9/11? I have heard that he was the one who OK'd the bombing of the Aspirin factory in the Sudan in 1998.

I think it is rather amazing that this piece of excrement is going to make so much money from the fruits of his failures. His failures which have and continue to make our country more vulnerable to attacks from terrorists. What a jerk!

Can someone point me to a source on the above quote from Steyn?

[Freedom2specul8]

Important article to pass along..

[Bigg Red]

Bush has nothing to fear from this hilarious work of fiction...

&&&&&&&

I only wish that this were true, but the Democrats' Minsistry of Propaganda, aka CNNCBSNBCABC, are all over this like Jesse Jackson on money, and for the uninformed voters this junk is going to stick in their minds. Remember how they portrayed Dan Quayle as dumb?

[Gritty]

BTTT

[WOSG]

Terrorism is an issue Bush can still win on, because the facts are behind him. Bush did the right thing, after 8 years of Clinton letting the problem fester. Since 9/11 was 2 years in the planning and the people were in place in 2000 planning this, it is absurd to pin this on Bush. It's total 20/20 hindsight to imaging Bush of all people could or should have stopped this in his 8 months in office, while the people who were there the 8 YEARS prior had no similar responsibility.

Clarke was a miserable failure in the Clinton admin at stopping terrorism and his complaints are baseless at best.
Steyn disproves at least one of Clarke's inane suggestions, that Rice hadnt even heard of Bin Laden, etc. Sure, the Democrats can keep hammering at Bush - but if they are in the wrong, sooner or later it will backfire, even with the media bias that is so pervasive against Bush.

This portends significant electoral problems - for the Democrats. As in 2002, focussing the election on national security helps the Republicans. This may be why Bush's polling has actually improved in the last week while this scuffle went on: As long as the topic is terrorism, peope remember that Bush *DID WHAT IT TOOK AFTER 9/11 TO FIGHT TERRORISM*.

[WOSG]

This guy is working for Viacom/60minutes/CBSnooze/Simon&Shyster peddling his story for money.

And he's a Gore (now Kerry) supporter.

Think: No principles/integrity and not too bright.

[Kenny500c]

Clarke is your typical Log Cabin Republican - he voted for Al Gore.

[GretchenEE]

marker bump

[ohioWfan]

Then the nerve it touched was a wrong one.

Frist was right. Clarke was wrong.

He had no right to apologize to anyone for anything.

Who are you, anyway?

[M. Dodge Thomas]

"Then the nerve it touched was a wrong one. Frist was right. Clarke was wrong. He had no right to apologize to anyone for anything.

Who are you, anyway?"

If it really matters to you, please go back and reread that post and the following, I was making a comment on the *political* situation, not passing judgment on the appropriateness of Clarke's comments. What you or I think about the appropriateness of Clarke's statement is irrelevant to my point there: that Clarke's apology clearly "touched a nerve" with many listeners, and that First's comments therefor appeared *politically* "tone deaf" to me.

Myself, I think that to the extent that 9/11 was any American's fault it was a result of longstanding failures at both the intelligence and political level, and that in retrospect a lot of people in the intelligence community and in *both* the Clinton and Bush administrations likely wish they could revisit their decisions with the benefit of hindsight.

And that in a political culture like this one, where it's suicide to admit mistakes, such testimony is going to be political fodder for both sides.