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infidelGOD
illusion
Registered: 04/18/02
Posts: 3,040
Loc: there
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Former counterterror adviser slams White House, Rumsfeld
#2456519 - 03/21/04 04:20 AM (20 years, 12 days ago) |
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Former counterterror adviser slams White House, Rumsfeld ______________________________________________________________ 3/20/2004
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism coordinator, accuses the Bush administration of failing to recognize the al-Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and then manipulating America into war with Iraq with dangerous consequences.
He accuses Bush of doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
Clarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, writes in a new book going on sale Monday that Bush and his Cabinet were preoccupied during the early months of his presidency with some of the same Cold War issues that had faced his father's administration.
"It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier," Clarke told CBS for an interview Sunday on its 60 Minutes program.
CBS' corporate parent, Viacom Inc., owns Simon & Schuster, publisher for Clarke's book, Against All Enemies.
Clarke acknowledges that, "there's a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too." He said he wrote to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Jan. 24, 2001, asking "urgently" for a Cabinet-level meeting "to deal with the impending al-Qaeda attack." Months later, in April, Clarke met with deputy cabinet secretaries, and the conversation turned to Iraq.
"I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me," Clarke said. "But frankly I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something."
The Associated Press first reported in June 2002 that Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions.
The last of those two meetings occurred Sept. 4 as the security council put finishing touches on a proposed national security policy review for the president. That review was finished Sept. 10 and was awaiting Bush's approval when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.
Almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Clarke said the president asked him directly to find whether Iraq was involved in the suicide hijackings.
"Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said, 'Iraq did this,'" said Clarke, who told the president that U.S. intelligence agencies had never found a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
"He came back at me and said, 'Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection,' and in a very intimidating way," Clarke said.
CBS said it asked Stephen Hadley, Rice's deputy on the national security council, about the incident, and Hadley said: "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred."
CBS responded to Hadley that it found two people it did not identify who recounted the incident independently, and one of them witnessed the conversation.
"I stand on what I said," Hadley told CBS, "but the point I think we're missing in this is, of course the president wanted to know if there was any evidence linking Iraq to 9-11."
Clarke also harshly criticizes Bush over his decision to invade Iraq, saying it helped brew a new wave of anti-American sentiment among supporters of Osama bin Laden.
"Bin Laden had been saying for years, 'America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country.' This is part of his propaganda," Clarke said. "So what did we do after 9/11? We invade ... and occupy an oil-rich Arab country, which was doing nothing to threaten us."
Clarke retired early in 2003 after 30 years in government service. He was among the longest-serving White House staffers, transferred in from the State Department in 1992 to deal with threats from terrorism and narcotics.
Clarke previously led the government's secretive Counterterrorism and Security Group, made up of senior officials from the FBI, CIA, Justice Department and armed services, who met several times each week to discuss foreign threats.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-20-clarke_x.htm
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EchoVortex
(hard) member
Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 859
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Re: Former counterterror adviser slams White House, Rumsfeld [Re: infidelGOD]
#2456630 - 03/21/04 06:20 AM (20 years, 12 days ago) |
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Nice one.
I wonder how many more whistle-blowing testimonials it's going to take from people who actually worked inside the Bush administration before a majority of people wake up to the fact Bush's team is criminally incompetent (at least) or relentlessly dishonest (at worst) in everything from the economy to counterterrorism to the Iraq war.
There will still be holdouts, however--if there are people on this forum who call themselves "libertarians" and still make excuses for Bush even after he proposed tampering with the Constitution to actually allow the government to discriminate against a particular group of people, then it's obvious that some people's minds have just shut down completely.
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Xlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
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Re: Former counterterror adviser slams White House, Rumsfeld [Re: EchoVortex]
#2456754 - 03/21/04 08:11 AM (20 years, 12 days ago) |
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It's astonishing how closed the "libertarian" mindset is. After falling hook, line and sinker for the WMD bullshit any rational person would pause and think "I've just believed a whole load of bullshit, I wonder what else I believe that's bullshit too". That doesn't seem to be the case with the neocon. Being proved wrong just makes them even angrier and more self-righteous. It's truly bizarre.
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Learyfan
It's the psychedelic movement!
Registered: 04/20/01
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Re: Former counterterror adviser slams White House, Rumsfeld [Re: infidelGOD]
#2456792 - 03/21/04 08:32 AM (20 years, 12 days ago) |
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Oh, what does the former White House counterterror advisor know.
-------------------- -------------------------------- Mp3 of the month: Sons Of Adam - Feathered Fish
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Evolving
Resident Cynic
Registered: 10/01/02
Posts: 5,385
Loc: Apt #6, The Village
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Re: Former counterterror adviser slams White House, Rumsfeld [Re: Xlea321]
#2457591 - 03/21/04 02:53 PM (20 years, 11 days ago) |
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Quote:
Alex123 said: It's astonishing how closed the "libertarian" mindset is. After falling hook, line and sinker for the WMD bullshit any rational person would pause and think "I've just believed a whole load of bullshit, I wonder what else I believe that's bullshit too".
Do not confuse labels which some people may use to identify themselves with the principles which the labels are supposed to signify. Mindsets are only within individuals, people may call themselves 'libertarian' without understanding or embracing the basic principle. Just as a man may be be a Catholic priest and call himself a 'Christian,' but when he molests little boys his actions prove that the label which he uses to identify himself is not the correct one.
If a man considers (a) certain principles(s) to be an ideal, chooses integrity over compromise and strives to live by his principles is that closed minded? Was Ghandi closed minded to insist on sticking to his principles of non-violence? Principled libertarians were against the whole Iraq mess from the very start. Here are a few websites of which express libertarian opinions, which may help to alleviate your ignorance...
LewRockwell.com
AntiWar.com
NonInterventionist.Com
Strike The Root
-------------------- To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.' Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence. Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains. Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.
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luvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?
Registered: 11/29/01
Posts: 34,247
Loc: Lost In Space
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Re: Former counterterror adviser slams White House, Rumsfeld [Re: Evolving]
#2457606 - 03/21/04 02:58 PM (20 years, 11 days ago) |
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Quote:
which may help to alleviate your ignorance...
-------------------- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
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