Richard Clark on 60 Minutes - bombing Iraq on 9/11

Ex-Advisor Says Bush Eyed Bombing of Iraq on 9/11

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040320/wl_nm/iraq_retaliation_dc_1

 

Wow, more and more nasty stuffs coming out!

 

Gee, I'm shocked that a Clintonite would criticize the Bush administration.

Richard Clarke's Legacy of Miscalculation

 

I guess that would also make him a Bushite (twice) and a Reaganite.

 

Clarke was a low level bureaucrat under Reagan's administration. He was Clinton's National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism (bang up job he did there). He was demoted under GWB, and it's fairly obvious that he has an axe to grind.

In 1998, according to the New Republic, Clarke "played a key role in the Clinton administration's misguided retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which targeted bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan."

 

Why is Clinton's 'anti-terrorism' record so bad, I mean comapared to Bush's. I just love conservatives "facts, be damned, I don't like 'em" attitude. 9-11 was on your guys watch, okay? Clinton hasn't been president for almost 4 years. Rememeber, that was back when the Nasdaq was at 5000 points, before the ahem 'fiscal conservative, party of personal responsibility' took over.

 

i'm just glad the president doesn't have to pump his own gas...

[dubya]

Hooooooooleeeeeeee smokes, Gas is at two and a quarter a gallon. Lets bomb some towlies!

[/dubya]

 

From the discussion below the column:

The allegation that Clarke failed to see the importance of al-Qaeda is totally false. Dec. 20, 2000 Clarke briefed the incoming Bush team on al-Qaeda, warning that it was the biggest threat facing the US. See http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/05/time.history/ for details on this meeting.

Clarke lost his terrorism job for being right about the al-Qaeda danger too early. By refusing to take action on Clarke's urgent recommendation, Rice set up the US for disaster.

Followed by:

Discussion closed.

Well, quite.

 

I don't see any details on the meeting, other than some Clinton officials doing a little CYA.

 

Re: Ex-Advisor Says Bush Eyed Bombing of Iraq on 9/11

If you factor in/out the (may vary) the taxes of about 25%, we in the USA are not paying our fair share. I understand our reserves allow for a lower price in a way, but considering how we consume in the States (eating 25% of all the world's food), shouldn't/couldn't you pay more? I would.

That way, if we have to pay more, we will save more. Not a savings in money, but a real savings of the oil.

Now, the real problem we have is, "To whom is our higher price going to?"

If we don't already care that for every gallon we pump (and what is up with that? Pump our own gas in the world's greatest nation?) sends 10 cents right back to the Saudi Princes, the same princes that are as elected by their people as Dubya!

See? This thinking is hurting us. Even if others are getting more money, they will be selling less. If you factor that with made-up numbers, we could guess that they are making the same, not more or less. The demand (in the supply/demand thinking) will be less, thus could be less to us, in relative terms. In turn, we will be doing our part to save, save the oil.

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

I'm watching this piece of crap journalism right now. Stahl can hardly contain herself, she seems so smug.

It is crap, pure and simple. This guy is a Clinton guy, who was held over. You don't think he has a bias here. He sounds like he is intereviewing for a job in a future Kerry Administration.

Bias is when you start selling a book a day later.

All is this is crap, pure and simple.

You would have thought we never went to Afganistan and completely wiped out the Taliban...

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

So this is how BigSoccer updates: Now with 50% more political blather!

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

FACT: The U.S. attacked Al Queda and Afghanistan, completing decimating the Taliban after two months (in which most liberals stated that Afghanistan was a place where Russians and British went to die, and was tuning into a quadmire!)

FACT: This guy is working for a Kerry National Security advisor at Harvard's Kennedy School.

FACT: This clown is SELLING A BOOK!

FACT: He is specifically and directly contridicted in his assertions that the President had knowledge of a potential 9-11 threat by DoD, CIA Tenat, the Deputy Chief of NSA and the President himself!

This was typical CBS liberal bullspit!

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

dont let facts get in the way here....

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

He was a low level bureaucrat under Reagan and Bush I. It's doubtful they ever heard of him. He was, however, Clinton's point man on terrorism and he failed miserably. GWB held him over to smooth the transition and then 9/11 happens, further underscoring his incompetence. The give him a polite send-off. He then feels embittered because of his incompetence and firing, saddles up to a close Kerry associate and now writes a book, three years later and in the midst of a presidential election. Apparently, this news wasn't big enough for him to reveal until right before his book hits the newstand. What else is there to say, this guy has no credibility whatsoever.

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

Later on 60 minutes (and I know you watched) Ed Bradley reports the following...

FACT: Amin Al Zawhari moved to Sudan in 1995, where he links up with Osama Bin Laden

FACT: Within 6 months, the two American embassies are destroyed in Africa, killing hundreds. Al Queda takes credit.

FACT: In 1997, two years later, Amin Al Zawhari is allowed entry into the United States, where he attends fundraisers in Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia for Islamic "welfare" causes...

Clinton and CLARKE did nothing to stop this while on THEIR WATCH!!!!

WHY, HOW? Maybe Clarke ought to be answering that....

BUT NOOOOOOOOO.... CBS would rather make a story where none exists in order to push their own (liberal) agenda. If Bush were a Democrat, and Clinton were a Republican, 60 minutes would have been all over this, stating out loud how the Republicans could have stopped the brains behind 9-11...

You liberals are so two-faced, it is not even close to funny.

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

USAsoccer, you did catch the phrase that a major attack was averted on LAX, didn't you?

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

He is a Clinton guy. I took him seriously. I thought Leslie Stahl focused too much on how what he is saying affects the next election.

I think it's clear that the experts saw it coming. I think I've written on this board before that I had a friend from Egypt who predicted that they would do something spectacular before 9/11. The problem is that Clark comes across in pre-9/11 articles as an Senior Executive Service appointment who was on his way out even before 9/11. The counter terrorism people as a whole were not the cream of the crop and didn’t have a whole lot of influence. After 9/11 Clark seems to come across as saying "I told you so, I learned nothing on 9/11 that I didn’t already know and there is only one way to do something about it." The fact is that Clark was one of many voices and when things didn’t go exactly his way he needed to suck it up.

To the substance of what he is saying, it is clear we didn’t do enough before 9/11. However, I don’t blame Bush just like I don’t blame Clinton. Clinton too had people in his administration who saw it coming and were frustrated he wasn't doing enough. From what I can tell, Madelyn Albright squashed any anti-terrorism effort that might have ruffled feathers. Before 9/11 there simple wasn't the widespread understanding to let a president act enough on the issue, neither home or abroad. Most here probably remember that even after 9/11 we had to threaten Pakistan before they let us fly over their territory. It wasn't until after the attempted assassination of Musharif that Pakistan got really serious.

Towards that end, it's clear the US went after the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan first. In fact, most people in December of 2001 would not have predicted we would have control of most of Afghanistan by the summer.

Since then Clark seems to be the proponent of the "defend and police" theory. His own ineffectiveness before 9/11 in dealing with Saudi Arabia and Yemen should be all the proof he needs that this theory is not good enough.

As a statement against GWB, he should have had a much more interactive relationship with the public. He has not explained himself well enough. We all know he commits grammatical gymnastics and verbal missteps but he too should have sucked it up and explained over and over and over what we are doing and why. If he had then the comments of Clark and his ilk would be easy to put in context.

 

Re: Ex-Advisor Says Bush Eyed Bombing of Iraq on 9/11

Of course, in an all too typical fashion, Loney points to an article, and presumably fails to read the entire thing so he gets the complete story.

Like, for example, in these paragraphs.

The Bush Administration chose to institute its own "policy review process" on the terrorist threat. Clarke told TIME that the review moved "as fast as could be expected." And Administration officials insist that by the time the review was endorsed by the Bush principals on Sept. 4, it was more aggressive than anything contemplated the previous winter. The final plan, they say, was designed not to "roll back" al-Qaeda but to "eliminate" it. But that delay came at a cost. The Northern Alliance was desperate for help but got little of it. And in a bureaucratic squabble that would be farfetched on The West Wing, nobody in Washington could decide whether a Predator drone--an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and the best possible source of real intelligence on what was happening in the terror camps--should be sent to fly over Afghanistan. So the Predator sat idle from October 2000 until after Sept. 11. No single person was responsible for all this. But "Washington"--that organic compound of officials and politicians, in uniform and out, with faces both familiar and unknown--failed horribly.

Could al-Qaeda's plot have been foiled if the U.S. had taken the fight to the terrorists in January 2001? Perhaps not. The thrust of the winter plan was to attack al-Qaeda outside the U.S. Yet by the beginning of that year, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, two Arabs who had been leaders of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, were already living in Florida, honing their skills in flight schools. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had been doing the same in Southern California. The hijackers maintained tight security, generally avoided cell phones, rented apartments under false names and used cash--not wire transfers--wherever possible. If every plan to attack al-Qaeda had been executed, and every lead explored, Atta's team might still never have been caught.

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

He was a REAGAN appointee, you moron.

Keep reaching. Your boy Dumbya has f-ed this country up beyond all levels of comprehension.

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

Yeah, USAsoccer, we decimated Al Queda.

Everything except their Berlitz Spanish CDs.

 

Re: Richard Clark on 60 Minutes

February 1996: Unemployment: 5.6...Inflation: 2.2 per annum....Interest rates for a 30 year mortgage (the month I bought my first home): 7.1 (fixed-no points) Deficit as percentage of GDP: 2.1 percent

February 2004: Unemployment 5.6...Inflation: 2.8 per annum...Interest rates for a 30 year mortgage: 5.6 (fixed-no points) Deficit as a percentage of GDP: 3.2 percent

Too quote Dr Evil: Yea, riiiiggghhhtttt