Posted on 03/31/2004 1:03:36 PM PST by ironman
NEW YORK - Richard Clarke, President Bush’s former chief counterterrorism adviser, said Wednesday that it was possible that he and his team could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks if the Bush administration had paid more attention ahead of time to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network.
Clarke’s comments, in an hourlong interview on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” were a departure from the testimony he gave last week before the independent commission investigating the attacks, when he answered no to the question of whether there was “the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11” even if everything he had called for had been implemented.
But Clarke told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that he hoped he and his team would have been able to take action to quash the attacks, which killed about 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, had the CIA and the FBI sufficiently coordinated the bits and pieces of information they had about the 19 Saudis who hijacked four planes and crashed them in the worst attack on U.S. soil.
Acknowledging that he was indulging in “20/20 hindsight,” Clarke said it was likely that he could have made a difference had he known that some of the hijackers were in the country ahead of time and had drawn suspicion. The full interview is scheduled to air today at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC-TV.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
What he's saying now is that if every bit of intelligence that can be peiced together nicely with 20/20 hindsight was presented to him prior to 9-11, he could have put it together because he is a master at solving puzzles. Here's a picture of him in the situation room solving riddles
As a retired Foreign Service Officer, I was angered by Clarke's comments during the hearing that only 35 Americans lost their lives to al-Qaeda during the Clinton administration compared to the number lost during Bush's tenure. There were 36 US employees (American and local) killed in Kenya alone. Clarke and Clinton need to answer for their feckless reaction to the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings, which injured and killed thousands. Clarke's assertion that the Clinton administration placed a higher priority on fighting terrorism is belied by their reaction to the attacks on our embassies.
According to official Kenyan government figures, 213 people were killed in the blast that gutted the U.S. Embassy building in downtown Nairobi. That included 12 American workers and 34 of their Kenyan colleagues, called "foreign service nationals [FSNs]." More than 4,000 Kenyans were also injured in the explosion.
According to Tanzanian government figures, 12 people, all Tanzanians, died as a result of the truck bomb that exploded in the street outside the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam. Seventy-two Americans and Tanzanians were also injured in the terrorist attack.
The bombings in East Africa should have been the real 9/11 wake-up call for the American public. It was a failure of leadership (read Clinton/Clarke) that did not rally our country to go to war against al-Qaeda. The number of total casualties, wounded and dead, in the East Africa bombings against our embassies approximated those suffered on 9/11. In addition to the bombings, bin Laden had issued a fatwah in 1998 declaring war against the United States. Clarke/Clinton's response was to blow up an aspirin factory in the Sudan and launch some missiles at terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
The bottom line is that the Clinton administration failed to recognize we were at war and took the less controversial stance of treating terrorism as an ad hoc, law enforcement matter. There was a thread that ran through all of these attacks, and attempted attacks and that was al-Qaeda.
When our vital national interests are at stake, I want a President who will take action regardless of how it may affect the polls or our international standing or the personal consequences. One of the functions of leadership is to lead and build a national consensus. Clinton saw foreign policy as an extension of domestic politics and acted accordingly. We are reaping the whirlwind due to Clinton's failures.
Seems like Clarke and F'ing Kerry have a common problem:
FLIP FLOP!
He's just jealous because she pushed Sheiffer out of the way right after he got himself a new shiny beret to wear.
Maybe we will eventually see the little guys in the white coats escorting Dickie-Poo away, mumbling incoherently and talking back to those "voices".
Well, if we here at FR had known all that, I suspect WE could have "put it together," too.
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