← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · weisbrot
Thread ID: 12859 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-03-24
2004-03-24 17:40 | User Profile
Clarke's attacks against the Bush administration have focused largely on failures to act on information that was readily available. I've yet to see him question the possible motivations for that "failure" or to suggest that there was anything more than incompetence or a revenge motive- "he tried to kill my Daddy!"- involved.
Could this be the long-awaited limited hangout response from the neoconservatives? It would seem that Bush has outlived his usefulness; even Bill Kristol is coming out with questions (again all about incompetence) and stating that "heads should have rolled".
Read the sidebar from Kaplan, and count the lightbulbs that click on as a result...
[url]http://slate.msn.com/id/2097685/[/url]
Dick Clarke Is Telling the Truth Why he's right about Bush's negligence on terrorism. By Fred Kaplan Posted Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 3:22 PM PT
I have no doubt that Richard Clarke, the former National Security Council official who has launched a broadside against President Bush's counterterrorism policies, is telling the truth about every single charge. There are three reasons for this confidence.
First, his basic accusations are consistent with tales told by other officials, including some who had no significant dealings with Clarke.
Second, the White House's attempts at rebuttal have been extremely weak and contradictory. If Clarke were wrong, one would expect the comebacksââ¬âespecially from Bush's aides, who excel at the counterstrikeââ¬âto be stronger and more substantive.
Third, I went to graduate school with Clarke in the late 1970s, at MIT's political science department, and called him as an occasional source in the mid-'80s when he was in the State Department and I was a newspaper reporter. There were good things and dubious things about Clarke, traits that inspired both admiration and leeriness. The former: He was very smart, a highly skilled (and utterly nonpartisan) analyst, and he knew how to get things done in a calcified bureaucracy. The latter: He was arrogant, made no effort to disguise his contempt for those who disagreed with him, and blatantly maneuvered around all obstacles to make sure his views got through.
The key thing, though, is this: Both sets of traits tell me he's too shrewd to write or say anything in public that might be decisively refuted. As Daniel Benjamin, another terrorism specialist who worked alongside Clarke in the Clinton White House, put it in a phone conversation today, "Dick did not survive and flourish in the bureaucracy all those years by leaving himself open to attack."
Clarke did suffer one setback in his 30-year career in high office, though he doesn't mention it in his book. James Baker, the first President Bush's secretary of state, fired Clarke from his position as director of the department's politico-military bureau. (Bush's NSC director, Brent Scowcroft, hired him almost instantly.) I doubt we'll be hearing from Baker on this episode: He fired Clarke for being too close to Israelââ¬ânot a point the Bush family's political savior is likely to make in an election season. (For details on this unwritten chapter and on why Clarke hasn't talked to me for over 15 years, click here.)
But on to the substance. Clarke's main argumentââ¬âmade in his new book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, in lengthy interviews on CBS's 60 Minutes and PBS's Charlie Rose Show, and presumably in his testimony scheduled for tomorrow before the 9/11 Commissionââ¬âis that Bush has done (as Clarke put it on CBS) "a terrible job" at fighting terrorism. Specifically: In the summer of 2001, Bush did almost nothing to deal with mounting evidence of an impending al-Qaida attack. Then, after 9/11, his main response was to attack Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. This move not only distracted us from the real war on terrorism, it fed into Osama Bin Laden's propagandaââ¬âthat the United States would invade and occupy an oil-rich Arab countryââ¬âand thus served as the rallying cry for new terrorist recruits.
Clarke's charges have raised a furor because of who he is. In every administration starting with Ronald Reagan's, Clarke was a high-ranking official in the State Department or the NSC, dealing mainly with countering weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Under Clinton and the first year of George W. Bush, he worked in the White House as the national coordinator for terrorism, a Cabinet-level post created specifically for his talents. When the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, Condi Rice, Bush's national security adviser, designated Clarke as the "crisis manager;" he ran the interagency meetings from the Situation Room, coordinatingââ¬âin some cases, directingââ¬âthe response.
Clarke backs up his chronicle with meticulous detail, but the basic charges themselves should not be so controversial; certainly, they're nothing new. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill wrote in his book, The Price of Loyalty, that Bush's top officials talked about invading Iraq from the very start of the administration. Jim Mann's new book about Bush's war Cabinet, Rise of the Vulcans, reveals the historic depths of this obsession.
Most pertinent, Rand Beers, the official who succeeded Clarke after he left the White House in February 2003, resigned in protest just one month laterââ¬âfive days before the Iraqi war startedââ¬âfor precisely the same reason that Clarke quit. In June, he told the Washington Post, "The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terror. They're making us less secure, not more." And: "The difficult, long-term issues both at home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged, and generally underfunded." (For more about Beers, including his association with Clarke and whether there's anything pertinent about his current position as a volunteer national security adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign, click here.)
Clarke's distinction, of course, is that he was the ultimate insiderââ¬âas highly and deeply inside, on this issue, as anyone could imagine. And so his charges are more credible, potent, and dangerous. So, how has Team Bush gone after Clarke? Badly.
To an unusual degree, the Bush people can't get their story straight. On the one hand, Condi Rice has said that Bush did almost everything that Clarke recommended he do. On the other hand, Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's show, acted as if Clarke were a lowly, eccentric clerk: "He wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff." This is laughably absurd. Clarke wasn't just in the loop, he was the loop.
Cheney's elaboration of his dismissal is blatantly misleading. "He was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things ... attacks on computer systems and, you know, sophisticated information technology," Cheney scoffed. Limbaugh replied, "Well, now, that explains a lot, that answer right there."
It explains nothing. First, he wasn't "moved out"; he transferred, at his own request, out of frustration with being cut out of the action on broad terrorism policy, to a new NSC office dealing with cyberterrorism. Second, he did so after 9/11. (He left government altogether in February 2003.)
In a further effort to minimize Clarke's importance, a talking-points paper put out by the White House press office states that, contrary to his claims, "Dick Clarke never had Cabinet rank." At the same time, the paper deniesââ¬âagain, contrary to the bookââ¬âthat he was demoted: He "continued to be the National Coordinator on Counter-terrorism."
Both arguments are deceptive. Clarke wasn't a Cabinet secretary, but as Clinton's NCC, he ran the "Principals Committee" meetings on counterterrorism, which were attended by Cabinet secretaries. Two NSC senior directors reported to Clarke directly, and he had reviewing power over relevant sections of the federal budget.
Clarke writes (and nobody has disputed) that when Condi Rice took over the NSC, she kept him onboard and preserved his title but demoted the position. He would no longer participate in, much less run, Principals' meetings. He would report to deputy secretaries. He would have no staff and would attend no more meetings with budget officials.
Clarke probably resented the slight, took it personally. But he also saw it as a downgrading of the issue, a sign that al-Qaida was no longer taken as the urgent threat that the Clinton White House had come to interpret it. (One less-noted aspect of Clarke's book is its detailed description of the major steps that Clinton took to combat terrorism.)
The White House talking-points paper is filled with these sorts of distortions. For instance, it notes that Bush didn't need to meet with Clarke because, unlike Clinton, he met every day with CIA Director George Tenet, who talked frequently about al-Qaida.
But here's how Clarke describes those meetings:
[Tenet] and I regularly commiserated that al Qaeda was not being addressed more seriously by the new administration. ... We agreed that Tenet would insure that the president's daily briefings would continue to be replete with threat information on al Qaeda.
The problem is: Nothing happened. (It is significant, by the way, that Tenet has not been recruitedââ¬ânot successfully, anywayââ¬âto rebut Clarke's charges. Clarke told Charlie Rose that he was "very close" to Tenet. The two come off as frustrated allies in Clarke's book.)
The White House document insists Bush did take the threat seriously, telling Rice at one point "that he was 'tired of swatting flies' and wanted to go on the offense against al-Qaeda."
Here's how Clarke describes that exchange:
President Bush, reading the intelligence every day and noticing that there was a lot about al Qaeda, asked Condi Rice why it was that we couldn't stop "swatting flies" and eliminate al Qaeda. Rice told me about the conversation and asked how the plan to get al Qaeda was coming in the Deputies' Committee. "It can be presented to the Principals in two days, whenever we can get a meeting," I pressed. Rice promised to get to it soon. Time passed.
The Principals meeting, which Clarke urgently requested during Bush's first week in office, did not take place until one week before 9/11. In his 60 Minutes interview, Clarke spelled out the significance of this delay. He contrasted July 2001 with December 1999, when the Clinton White House got word of an impending al-Qaida attack on Los Angeles International Airport and Principals meetings were called instantly and repeatedly:
In December '99, every day or every other day, the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA, the Attorney General had to go to the White House and sit in a meeting and report on all the things that they personally had done to stop the al Qaeda attack, so they were going back every night to their departments and shaking the trees personally and finding out all the information. If that had happened in July of 2001, we might have found out in the White House, the Attorney General might have found out that there were al Qaeda operatives in the United States. FBI, at lower levels, knew [but] never told me, never told the highest levels in the FBI. ... We could have caught those guys and then we might have been able to pull that thread and get more of the conspiracy. I'm not saying we could have stopped 9/11, but we could have at least had a chance.
That's what Clarke says is the tragedy of Bush's inaction, and nobody in the White House has dealt with the charge at all.
SIDEBAR [url]http://slate.msn.com/id/2097685/sidebar/2097705/[/url] *Baker fired Clarke, accusing him of condoning Israel's illicit transfer of American air-defense technology to China. Clarke raises this dispute in his book (see Page 46) but denies that any such transfers were made (quoting an official report to that effect). He acknowledges that he came under heavy criticism as a result of the allegations, but doesn't say that he lost his job over the incident.
Around this time, when I was the defense reporter for the Boston Globe, Clarkeââ¬âthen still at Stateââ¬âtold me that Baker was blocking or somehow interfering with Israel's attempt to acquire Patriot air-defense missiles or to market its own missiles. I must confess, I don't remember the details. In any case, I could not get his story confirmed; one source (who appears briefly in Clarke's book in a different context) flatly denied it. So I didn't write a story. Clarke never talked with me, or returned any of my phone calls, again.
In other words, Dick Clarke plays hardball. And that's why Bush's operatives are finding it harder than usual to bring him down.*
2004-03-25 09:31 | User Profile
Excellent nose, Weisbrot.
The highly polished, well-orchestrated out-of-the-blue broadsides on the White House with this pitch -- "Didn't do enough to make America safe! , as our plan would have done, if followed" -- indeed has all the ear marks of an inside counter punch job -to vent, neutralize and contain the serious hate-Bush problem the Republicans are running into. :whlch:. For the inside neocon connections, its a win-win again: If he goes under, OK -- they, Leslie Stahl, Viacom and those who get wink-wink time knocking them on Imus, come off as compleate men-of-conscience whistle-blowers, with a still fatter counterintel budget and historical good guy badges. Rah Rah for Israel. If nothing comes of it...
-he has had his day, and Kaplan his both buying drinks for George as the Bush-led process emerges stronger -- "a leader for our times!" -- by having undergone the most-credible [B]inside[/B] challenge and thus gaining "warts and all" transparency. They have sternly flogged the Wicked ones for Not having Done It Right; challenged itself from inside by pull-no-punches dick clark. The system has "worked" for those who are ready to forgive, forget, and move on. Rah rah Israel.
That this is close to the background scenario (whether intended, or driven by coinciding unconscious agendas is left open, for now; both are involved, one suspects) is indicated by several particular sign-uses (I tag these B]"forensicals*" -- sign-uses playing an intrinsic part in the crime being committed by such use [/B] (way of speaking).
The title "[B]AGAINST ALL ENEMIES"[/B] . This was prominently displayed leading up to Clarke's advent as Christ Killer (as read by True Believing Bushiters). It functions in communication to simultaneously (1) skewer the inept, go-for-Iraq claque of drop-the-ball defenders; and (2) guarantee that there would be no let up, but redoubled effort to eliminate, kill (Kill got a lot of use; see below next) the [B]new, expanded-definition al Quida![/B] ever more sorely needed after Spain, and Europe's "3/11" now matching America's "9/11".
The timing: [B]ISRAELI STATE ORDER MURDER OF QUADRAPLEGIC OLD MAN IN A WHEELCHAIR FROM A US MADE HELICOPTER SNIPER LAIR -- A HOLY HORIUCCI FOR THE JEWS[/B] . ...Was taking place as background, while George Tenet, Richard Cohen, and others on Day 1 of the Senate Inv. Hearings were announcing to the American public, at least those who may not have know about it, the policy of [B]UNITED STATES POLICY OF TARGETING OPPOSING STATE LEADERS FOR ASSASSINATION -- bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, both previously allies of the U.S. they turned upon, thus incurring justified revenge ...and even now, in unchecked archecriminality, dancing the same deadly tango with Pakistan's Musharaff, who has got the bomb (or would like to get his hands on it, if his own ISI's cold dead grip wasn't on its trigger.[/B] That is the other major motive this Dick Clarke episode is "about". They have non-democratically, pre-emptively, installed the anti-Christian, anti-civilization. policy of: just first strike with overpowering force, to overwhelm a non-threatening enemy, known to be such at the time; but a policy of killing whoever is deemed in secret councils to be a danger, to themselves or their human shields, even while openly professing to deal with them honorably.(allowing UN inspectors to search for WMD's)..
Under Kant's moral philosophy, this is a direct violation of the categorical imperative: act only on that maxim that can be willed as universal law (applied to oneself, as to all others, as law).. The maxim of the state ordered assassinations would be "Whenever leaders of one state finds sit can extract itself from great difficulty by killing an opponent behind their back, let them do so.' This could not be universal law, it needs pointing out, NOT because there couldn't be humanoids so mean as to "Will" such a maxim. If everyone did, that would define Hobbe's state of nature, which may be improbably is not precluded by logic. In the present case, it is impossible to will the maxim because no "other" could possibly deal with one using it. This point, that it is logically, not just factually impossible to act on such a twisted maxim, needs much more careful elaboration, but this is perhaps clear and sufficient.
What the Senate Hearings, including Clarke's testimony, illustrate is: categorically immoral, by standards of reason anti-Christian, by spirit wanton and depraved indifference to human life, by standards of criminality
Those who accede to the judgment that it is OK to kill quadraplegic old men in wheel chairs from US made helicopter sniper's lairs, to protect against the death wishes against Jews they bring on themselves, from within themselves, by their pre-human, pre-Christian, pre-logical way of being, let them kill me. I would rather go than exist on earth side by side with them.