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Everyone expected this presidential campaign to be an acrimonious one, but few thought it would sink to the level of blaming the President for the September 11 attack on America. It seems apparent now that the Democrats believe they can only win in November if they characterize Bush's leadership before and after 9/11 as feckless. In addition, they must make it appear that Bush secretly wanted to go to war with Iraq, resulting in less attention to Osama and al-Qaeda, which, according to their rhetoric, made our country less safe.   Of course, the fact that we haven't had another...

<p>WASHINGTON -- It is only March but the 2004 Chutzpah of the Year Award can be safely given out. It goes to Richard Clarke, now making himself famous by blaming the Bush administration for 9/11 -- after Clarke had spent eight years in charge of counterterrorism for a Clinton administration that did nothing.</p>

Contact Us National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States 301 7th Street, SW Room 5125 Washington, DC 20407 Washington Office* Tel: (202) 331-4060 Fax: (202) 296-5545 info@9-11Commission.gov New York Office Tel: (212) 264-1505 Fax: (212) 264-1595info@9-11Commission.gov

Long before 9/11, the White House debated taking the fight to al-Qaeda"...And that's the point. The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush. It is quite true that nobody predicted Sept. 11--that nobody guessed in advance how and when the attacks would come. But other things are true too. By last summer, many of those in the know--the spooks, the buttoned-down bureaucrats, the law-enforcement professionals...

ANTI-CLARKE BOMBSHELL [Rich Lowry] Watch for a story about to break in the media this morning that will make Clarke look pretty foolish. More soon... Posted at 10:20 AM

<p>LONDON. — Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism czar for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, testifies today before the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States. He is well-qualified to do so because few individuals over the last decade, inside or outside government, better understood the Islamic extremism threat in all its dimensions.</p>

It seems one of the least plausible criticisms of a president who's often portrayed as one of the world's greatest warmongers since Caesar Augustus -- that George Bush has been too weak on the War on Terror. But with the release of former Clinton and Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke's new book, "Against All Enemies," Bush critics have, to use a favorite Clarke phrase, "gone to battle stations" to try to make the charge stick. Clarke's book reads like a typical just-out-of-government memoir, a genre usually premised on the idea that if only the author's advice had been heeded, the...