Posted on 04/03/2004 3:51:24 AM PST by johnny7
The New York Times swooned. Newsweek put it on its cover. Commentators everywhere expressed sorrowful dismay that Bush had not done it long ago. Indeed, one has to admire it - the most cynical and brilliantly delivered apology in recent memory: Richard Clarke using the nationally televised Sept. 11 commission hearings to address the families of the victims. "Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you."
(Excerpt) Read more at ctnow.com ...
Our 'government' failed us on 9-11-01. And since 'our' government is 'by-the-people', we all share a portion of the blame.
ONLY A PARTIAL LIST OF TERRORIST ACTIVITIES
1968 Robert Kennedy assassinated
1972 Munich Olympics Sep-5,1972 (Black September)
1976 Entebbe Hostage Crisis, June 27, 1976
1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, Nov. 4, 1979 444 days
1979 Grand Mosque Seizure, Nov 20,1979
1981 Assassination of Egyptian President, Oct 6,1981
1982 Assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister, Sept 14, 1982
1983 Bombing of US Embassy in Beirut6, April 18,1983
1983 Bombing of Maring Barricks, Beruit, Oct 23,1983
1984 Hizballah Restaurant Bombing, April 12,1984
1985 Egyptian Airliner Hijacking, Nov 23,1985
1985 Rome Airport murders
1985 TWA Flight 847 hijacked, U.S. Navy diver murdered
1985 Achille Lauro hijacking, Homacidal maniac lived in saddams Iraq
1986 Aircraft Bombing in Greece, March 30, 1986
1988 Pan Am 747 Flight 103 Bombing, Lockerbie, 100's murdered
1988 Berlin Discoteque Bombing, Dec 21,1988
1992 Bombing in Israeli Embassy in Argentina, March 17,1992
1993 Attempted Assassination of Pres. Bush Sr., April 14,1993
1993 First World Trade Center bombing, February 26th, 7 Killed, Hundreds injured, Billions
1994 Air France Hijacking, Dec 24,1994
1995 Attack on US Diplomats in Pakistan, Mar 8,1995
1995 Saudi Military Installation Attack, Nov 13, 1995
1995 Kashmiri Hostage taking, July 4,1995
1996 Khobar Towers attack
1996 Sudanese Missionarys Kidnapping, Aug 17,1996
1996 Paris Subway Explosion, Dec 3,1996
1997 Israeli Shopping Mall Bombing, Sept 4, 1997
1997 Yemeni Kidnappings, Oct 30,1997
1998 Somali Hostage taking crisis, April 15,1998
1998 U.S. Embassy Bombing in Peru, Jan 15, 1998
1998 U.S. Kenya Embassy blown up, 100's murdered
1998 U.S. Tanzania Embassy blown up, 100's murdered
1999 Plot to blow up Space Needle (thwarted)
2000 USS Cole attacked, many U.S. Navy sailors murdered
2000-2003 Intifada against Israel - 100's dead and injured
2000 Manila Bombing, Dec 30,2000
2001 4 Commercial airliners hijacked, 250+ murdered
2001 World Trade Center attacked, 2800+ murdered
2001 Flight 93 murders
2001 Pentagon attacked, 180+ murdered
2002 Reporter Daniel Pearl, kidnapped and murdered
2002 Philippines American missionary, Filipino nurse killed
2002 July 4, El Al attack Los Angeles LAX, several murdered
2002 Bali bombing - 200 dead, 300 injured
2002 Yemen, French Oil Tanker attacked
2002 Marines attacked / murdered in Kuwait
2002 Washington D.C. sniper
2002 Russian Theater attacked, 100+ dead
2002 Nigerian riots against Miss World Pageant, 200 dead, dozens injured
2002 Mombasa Hotel Attacked, 12 dead, dozens injured
2002 Israeli Boeing 757 attacked by missiles, fortunately no one injured
2002 August Hotel bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia. 12 dead, dozens injured.
2003 Rusian concert bombing
2003 Phillipines airport and market bombing
2003 Foiled SAM plot in the USA
2003 UN Baghdad HQ Bombing
on and on and on and on it goes .........
Been trying to express this to my Angry Left cohorts. As if, with word of Bin Laden's capture, the Koranic call to jihad will evaporate!
This great op-ed column also in Boulder News
Krauthammer: What a sorry apology
WASHINGTON The New York Times swooned. Newsweek put it on its cover. Commentators everywhere expressed sorrowful dismay that Bush had not done it long ago.Indeed, one has to admire it the most cynical and brilliantly delivered apology in recent memory: Richard Clarke using the nationally televised Sept. 11 commission hearings to address the families of the victims. "Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you."
Many were moved. I was not. For two reasons. First, the climactic confession "I failed you" the one that packed the emotional punch was entirely disingenuous. Clarke did the mea culpa then spent the next 2 1/2 hours of testimony as he did on every talk show known to man and in the 300 pages of his book demonstrating how everyone else except Richard Clarke had failed. And they failed because the stubborn, ignorant, ideologically blinkered, poll-driven knaves and fools he had been heroically fighting against in government would not listen to him.
Message: They failed you.
Second, by blaming the government for the deaths of their loved ones, Clarke deftly endorsed the grotesque moral inversion by which those who died on Sept. 11 are victims of ... George Bush. This is about as morally obscene as the implication (made by, among others, the irrepressible Howard Dean) that those who died in the Madrid bombings were also victims of George Bush.
This is false. They were all victims of al-Qaida and al Qaida alone.
Clinton did not apologize for Oklahoma City. Reagan did not apologize for the Beirut bombing. FDR did not apologize for Pearl Harbor. George Bush owes no apology. If an apology is owed, it is owed to the entire country and not just the families, and it is owed by the murderers who planned and carried out Sept. 11.
The most telling remark Clarke made in the entire hearing was one that did not make the cover of Newsweek.
SEN. SLADE GORTON: "Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001 ... had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?"
CLARKE: "No."
Thus, doing everything demanded by the most hawkish, most prescient, most brilliant, most heroic, most swaggering antiterrorism chief in American history i.e. Clarke, in his own mind would not have prevented Sept. 11. Why then should the administration apologize?
What exactly was the failure? What was Bush supposed to do in order to prevent Sept. 11? Invade Afghanistan? Clarke has expressed outrage at Bush's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. So: Bush deserves excoriation for pre-emptively invading Iraq based on massive, universally accepted intelligence of its weapons, to say nothing of its hostility and virulence; and simultaneously, Bush deserves excoriation for not pre-emptively attacking Afghanistan on the basis of ... what? Increased terrorist chatter in the summer of 2001?
At the hearing, Clarke was particularly brilliant in playing to the gallery, mainly to the families in the gallery. By some strange cultural transmutation, the families or more accurately, a small number of politically active families have claimed, and been ceded, special status in the war on terrorism.
Surely they deserve our sympathy and our care. And they have received an extraordinary, indeed unprecedented, outpouring of both from the public and from the government. But some families go much further, and claim the moral high ground in judging the war on terror and how it is to be waged.
On what grounds? Did the Pearl Harbor families enjoy special status in critiquing FDR's decisions in World War II? The Oklahoma City families were denied any special status at all they never even got compensation of the sort the Sept. 11 families received.
Just this week the widow of Daniel Pearl was denied a claim for similar government compensation, on the grounds that, while Pearl was surely a victim of the war on terror and, in fact, was engaged in it by pursuing the truth about those waging war against us he happened to die on a date other than Sept. 11.
Clarke's clever pseudo-apology we failed, meaning, they failed played perfectly to the families in the gallery, who applauded and warmly embraced the very man who for 12 years was the U.S. government official most responsible for preventing a Sept. 11. A neat trick.
And in Clarkes case, the empty desk would've served the country as well as he did as terror czar.
You can count on that. I was wondering if the administration was delaying permission for Condi's testimony in order to slow down the Dems' unveiling some "brand new scandal" that would have to be dealt with.
It may seem like a bad idea to delay dealing with Democratic attacks, but I can see doing that once in a while, just to get a breather.
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