Tom Maertens: Clarke's public service

The RED Star Tribune ^ | 4/1/2004 | Tom Maertens

[Solson]

MANKATO, MINN. -- Richard Clarke, who served as the national coordinator for counterterrorism in the White House, argues in his new book, "Against All Enemies," that the Bush administration ignored the threat from Al-Qaida and instead chose to fight "the wrong war" by attacking Iraq. The troops who could have been used in Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaida were instead held back for the planned invasion of Iraq. In contrast to the 150,000 men sent to Iraq, only about 11,500 troops were sent to Afghanistan, a force smaller than the New York City police. The result is that Bin Laden and his followers escaped across the border into Pakistan.

[Solson]

Arrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhh. This guy is a liberal hack trying to play "non-partisan" in his attack on Bush.

[dirtboy]

This one's special:

Clarke's gutsy insider recounting of events related to 9/11 is an important public service. From my perspective, the Bush administration has practiced the most cynical, opportunistic form of politics I witnessed in my 28 years in government: hijacking legitimate American outrage and patriotism over 9/11 to conduct a pre-ordained war against Saddam Hussein.

That invasion was then misleadingly packaged as a war on terrorism and used to sell more tax cuts, the USA Patriot Act, oil drilling in ANWR, exemptions to environmental laws and other controversial programs.

The Patriot Act was passed long before the war with Iraq. But liberals never let the facts get in the way of their opinions.

[Steven W.]

and Rumsfeld had difficulty trying to convince liberals of the need for force realignment before 9/11 and still continues to have difficulties getting them to recognize its application. Liberals are so detached from reality and suffer from lapses in creativity they are merely unable to apply rational, logical thinking to problems in which their idiological bias shields all other viewpoints.

[Dilbert56]

This guy is an idiot and wrong to boot.

• We undertook a major mailitary operation in Afghanistan just one day after the Iraq war started.
• We've conducted four others since.
• Does any thinking person think we haven't destroyed Al Qaeda because we need more troops in Afghanistan? If we knew the locations of AQ they'd be dead within hours.
• Jason has a great retort about logistics of trying to place a huge force in Afghanistan here(scroll down a few).
• Ask someone what resources Iraq took away from Afghanistan and about the most you'll get is "Arabic translators". Of course the part of Afghanistan we're working in speaks Pashtun so we would only need enough Arabic speakers to cover the Al Qaeda foreigners. How many interceptable comminucations do you think they put out?