FRONTLINE: Some also say that due to the Lewinsky scandal, more action perhaps was never undertaken. In your eyes?
CLARKE: The interagency group on which I sat and John O'Neill sat--we never asked for a particular action to be authorized and were refused. We were never refused. Any time we took a proposal to higher authority, with one or two exceptions, it was approved . . .
FRONTLINE: But didn't you push for military action after the [al Qaeda bombing of the USS] Cole?
CLARKE: Yes, that's one of the exceptions..
FRONTLINE: How important is that exception?
CLARKE: I believe that, had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier, that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around the world would have been destroyed. So many, many trained and indoctrinated al Qaeda terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn't have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the camps earlier.
FRONTLINE: Without intelligence operatives on the ground in these organizations, how in the end does one stop something like this? If you look back on it now and you had one wish, you could have had one thing done, what would it have been?
CLARKE: Blow up the camps and take out their sanctuary. Eliminate their safe haven, eliminate their infrastructure. They would have been a hell of a lot less capable of recruiting people. Their whole "Come to Afghanistan where you'll be safe and you'll be trained"--well, that wouldn't have worked if every time they got a camp together, it was blown up by the United States. That's the one thing that we recommended that didn't happen--the one thing in retrospect I wish had happened.
FRONTLINE: So that's a pretty basic mistake that we made?
CLARKE: Well, I'm not prepared to call it a mistake. It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues. None of these decisions took place in isolation. There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals.
So, what does page five of this thread say so far?
That the position was demoted but they are trying to say that Clarke was misguided by a focus on cyberterror . .
means nothing . . . overturns nothing about Clarke's statements
and,
We learned that Clarke had some ideas that, before 911, would have not sustained political support enough to be maintained and would have eventually merly excacerbated the issue with the addition of worse political obrobriation due to the apparently unfounded nature of the actions.
I mean sure, we bombed AQ camps once, and that in itself caused a huge stir and only dismantled one camp and missed OBL . . to do it every time one popped up would have been, probably, both politically impossible to sustain and inefective . . . We did bomb AQ after the embassy bombings . .
but really what you get from the Palisrealitine situation is that there needs to be a huge effort that includes more than just bombs . . . bombs too, but also some sort of real international efforts to get these guys and to change their breeding grounds . .
As for Richard Clarke: this guy is a liar. The Vice President said in a national radio interview today that he (the author) was out of the loop, he was pushed aside by Condi Rice and DEMOTED to some piss-on computer virus czar thing, thus he had a score to settle. and Kerry being out of the spotlight on vacation all week. happy coincident, i doubt it, the pieces fit so well.
1) If he was out of the loop on 9/11, that ought to be pretty disturbing, considering he WAS THE COUNTERTERRORISM COORDINATOR OF THE NSC. In other words, he WAS the loop. If he's not privy to information floating around the White House, then there's a serious problem.
2) He was demoted AFTER 9/11 (Cheney himself was intentionally vague about the timeline on Limbaugh), and Cheney also deliberately misrepresents the position. Clarke headed the cyberterrorism wing of the NSC. If you don't think that's important, you're sorely deluded.
3) If he had a "score" to settle, it certainly wasn't over being reassigned to work on something that was his pet project.
1) If he was out of the loop on 9/11, that ought to be pretty disturbing, considering he WAS THE COUNTERTERRORISM COORDINATOR OF THE NSC. In other words, he WAS the loop. If he's not privy to information floating around the White House, then there's a serious problem.
2) He was demoted AFTER 9/11 (Cheney himself was intentionally vague about the timeline on Limbaugh), and Cheney also deliberately misrepresents the position. Clarke headed the cyberterrorism wing of the NSC. If you don't think that's important, you're sorely deluded.
3) If he had a "score" to settle, it certainly wasn't over being reassigned to work on something that was his pet project.
Richard Clarke, a former antiterrorism adviser to the White House, has gotten a lot of attention for some bizarre claims about the Bush administration's response to Sept. 11. Clarke appeared on "60 Minutes" last night, and here's the CBS News Web site's account of what he had to say:
After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to [Lesley] Stahl. "And we all said ._._. no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And [Donald] Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking._._._."
Perhaps it escaped Clarke's notice, but less than a month after Sept. 11, the U.S. did begin bombing Afghanistan, while the military effort to liberate Iraq didn't get under way until a year and a half later. So just what is Clarke complaining about? Well, we found an October 2003 quote, from a guest on PBS's "NewsHour," that sums it up nicely: "What people are complaining about is that there is contention and debate and analysis and confrontation. I think that's better than trying to sweep everything under the rug." The guest was none other than Richard Clarke.
In a February 2003 article for SecurityFocus.net, George Smith reported that Clarke had a rather unimpressive record when it comes to terrorism:
In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.
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." The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.
Clarke also "devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing," Smith writes. "While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict."
In an article last week for Time, Clarke offered this brilliant advice: "In addition to placing more cameras on our subway platforms, maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us." Blogger John Hinderaker notes that Clarke is jointly teaching a course at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with Rand Beers, a foreign-policy adviser to the Kerry campaign. All of which leaves us inclined to take anything this guy says with a grain of salt.
The man is a far cry from a liberal . . . his politics are closer to yours (with exception to your inability to look at Bush through other than utopian-glasses) than Kerry's.
He is not 'gunning for a job'
he has a job allready/ This is last-ditch grasping at straws from a well funded PR machine . . . just get some distance
The Republicans should wake up and run someone against Bush . . .
Richard Clarke, a former antiterrorism adviser to the White House, has gotten a lot of attention for some bizarre claims about the Bush administration's response to Sept. 11. Clarke appeared on "60 Minutes" last night, and here's the CBS News Web site's account of what he had to say:
After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to [Lesley] Stahl. "And we all said ._._. no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And [Donald] Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking._._._."
Perhaps it escaped Clarke's notice, but less than a month after Sept. 11, the U.S. did begin bombing Afghanistan, while the military effort to liberate Iraq didn't get under way until a year and a half later. So just what is Clarke complaining about? Well, we found an October 2003 quote, from a guest on PBS's "NewsHour," that sums it up nicely: "What people are complaining about is that there is contention and debate and analysis and confrontation. I think that's better than trying to sweep everything under the rug." The guest was none other than Richard Clarke.
In a February 2003 article for SecurityFocus.net, George Smith reported that Clarke had a rather unimpressive record when it comes to terrorism:
In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.
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." The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.
Clarke also "devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing," Smith writes. "While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict."
In an article last week for Time, Clarke offered this brilliant advice: "In addition to placing more cameras on our subway platforms, maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us." Blogger John Hinderaker notes that Clarke is jointly teaching a course at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with Rand Beers, a foreign-policy adviser to the Kerry campaign. All of which leaves us inclined to take anything this guy says with a grain of salt.
OK, lets dissect:
First off you've linked an opinion article as insurmountable proof. Opinion doesn't meet the requirements as proof excepts for BushCo.
Quote:
Perhaps it escaped Clarke's notice, but less than a month after Sept. 11, the U.S. did begin bombing Afghanistan, while the military effort to liberate Iraq didn't get under way until a year and a half later. So just what is Clarke complaining about? Well, we found an October 2003 quote, from a guest on PBS's "NewsHour," that sums it up nicely: "What people are complaining about is that there is contention and debate and analysis and confrontation. I think that's better than trying to sweep everything under the rug." The guest was none other than Richard Clarke.
This is a Red Herring argument. The point was that the administration initially wanted to attack Iraq in respone an attach by OBL--a guy in Afganastan BTW. The fact the we bombed Afganastan a month later is inconsequential. Clark was complaining about the administrations fervent gusto to accomplish an ideological plan which had been signed onto by most of the administration. So, your contention that we went into Afganastan a month later doesn't have a bearing on or invasion into Iraq other than Afganastan was a delay for BushCo.
Quote:
In a February 2003 article for SecurityFocus.net, George Smith reported that Clarke had a rather unimpressive record when it comes to terrorism:
for someone with a shoddy record he sure as heck server under a few administrations. Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II.
Quote:
Clarke also "devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing," Smith writes. "While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict."
So, you offer proof (opinion) that Clark did a poor job you offer a quote which states he did sound alarms.... His pet project was cyber terrorism--of coarse he would hound it. This spin doesn't lessen the fact the Clark DID sound bells, and blow whistles.
Quote:
In an article last week for Time, Clarke offered this brilliant advice: "In addition to placing more cameras on our subway platforms, maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us." Blogger John Hinderaker notes that Clarke is jointly teaching a course at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with Rand Beers, a foreign-policy adviser to the Kerry campaign. All of which leaves us inclined to take anything this guy says with a grain of salt.
Again you offer opinion as proof. Also, I don't get the logic of "He teaches therefore he's less reputible." Is he supposidly acting as a Harvard Recruiter, or trying to pack a lecture hall? No. Should we stop listening to Condi because she's a professor? Hmmmm if that's the case....
Dick Cheney could come out against Bush and you people would simply start to dismiss him for whatever . . . maybe his Halliburton connections . . . its is just too incredible . .
What would it take for this lying dangerous spolied rich kids nightmare to be seen for what it is?!?!?!
I'll give you a hint: He's more of a hawk on Iraq than even wolfowitz. [/B][/QUOTE]
This raises a question I've been thinking about today: just who makes up the Bush administration? Can we compile a list of cabinet officials and advisors? Perhaps a timeline and brief bio for each? Might be fun! Worthy of its own thread (and strikingly non-partisan!)
I'll give you a hint: He's more of a hawk on Iraq than even wolfowitz.
This raises a question I've been thinking about today: just who makes up the Bush administration? Can we compile a list of cabinet officials and advisors? Perhaps a timeline and brief bio for each? Might be fun! Worthy of its own thread (and strikingly non-partisan!)
You just choose not to see the connection between Clark and the Kerry campaign.
For the love of God...
If co-teaching a class at Harvard with Rand Beers is the best you can do "linking" Clark to the Kerry campaign, I'm suprised you even bothered to post.
Do you actually believe the stuff you say? Do you actually believe that all of the people from within the Bush white house who say essentially the same thing are just DNC moles of some sort?
Anybody who doesn't play ball with the Bush Administration is a simp, disgruntled former employee, or closet dem.
Remember Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame? First we heard that Wilson was a lousy ambassador who did a poor job of investigating the Niger yellow cake connection. Then we heard that his wife was a "glorified stenographer" so outing her CIA status was trivial.
I understand that this white house never hesitates to slander its enemies, in a full court press, even if one story contadicts the next, or makes no sense, or is demonstrably false.
I just don't understand why citizens think it's worth repeating.
I was watching Crossfire today, and Tucker was in finer than usual whine form. Of course Clarke was the huge topic. When Carlisle said Clarke is a Republican, neither Tucker nor the other guest(from the right) said a word even after they'd been trashing the guy all show. Not one word.
Of course, someone who served under THREE Republican administrations as a high ranking official suddenly became..... not good enough.
Here's a little hypothetical question. Assuming Clarke were trying to help Kerry.....so what? He obviously saw enough to make him want to want change. He's entitled to change his mind isn't he?
I've been watching the news, listening to the radio, and only the zealots are pissed and trying their hardest to discredit him. It's pathetic.
Oh come off it...... Do you think the US administration would allow the UN to inspect it's weapons programs? I don't think so.
Does the US administration respect international law? I don't think so.
It is possible that Iraqis are human beings and had a sense of national pride even if their leader was a tyranical bastard.
why let the un do jack, every thing they touch turns to shit, hanz blix is a dits, like barny Fife or as Rush Limbaugh so elequently puts it insppector cluso In other words he couldnt find a computer chip at an intel plant - why expect him to find the preverbial needle in a haystack?
Comments
FRONTLINE: Some also say that due to the Lewinsky scandal, more action perhaps was never undertaken. In your eyes?
CLARKE: The interagency group on which I sat and John O'Neill sat--we never asked for a particular action to be authorized and were refused. We were never refused. Any time we took a proposal to higher authority, with one or two exceptions, it was approved . . .
FRONTLINE: But didn't you push for military action after the [al Qaeda bombing of the USS] Cole?
CLARKE: Yes, that's one of the exceptions..
FRONTLINE: How important is that exception?
CLARKE: I believe that, had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier, that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around the world would have been destroyed. So many, many trained and indoctrinated al Qaeda terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn't have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the camps earlier.
FRONTLINE: Without intelligence operatives on the ground in these organizations, how in the end does one stop something like this? If you look back on it now and you had one wish, you could have had one thing done, what would it have been?
CLARKE: Blow up the camps and take out their sanctuary. Eliminate their safe haven, eliminate their infrastructure. They would have been a hell of a lot less capable of recruiting people. Their whole "Come to Afghanistan where you'll be safe and you'll be trained"--well, that wouldn't have worked if every time they got a camp together, it was blown up by the United States. That's the one thing that we recommended that didn't happen--the one thing in retrospect I wish had happened.
FRONTLINE: So that's a pretty basic mistake that we made?
CLARKE: Well, I'm not prepared to call it a mistake. It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues. None of these decisions took place in isolation. There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals.
interesting
Originally posted by a_greer
this is what I was talking about:
No, that's wrong. He was moved to the cyber-terrorism unit after 9/11.
That the position was demoted but they are trying to say that Clarke was misguided by a focus on cyberterror . .
means nothing . . . overturns nothing about Clarke's statements
and,
We learned that Clarke had some ideas that, before 911, would have not sustained political support enough to be maintained and would have eventually merly excacerbated the issue with the addition of worse political obrobriation due to the apparently unfounded nature of the actions.
I mean sure, we bombed AQ camps once, and that in itself caused a huge stir and only dismantled one camp and missed OBL . . to do it every time one popped up would have been, probably, both politically impossible to sustain and inefective . . . We did bomb AQ after the embassy bombings . .
but really what you get from the Palisrealitine situation is that there needs to be a huge effort that includes more than just bombs . . . bombs too, but also some sort of real international efforts to get these guys and to change their breeding grounds . .
Originally posted by a_greer
As for Richard Clarke: this guy is a liar. The Vice President said in a national radio interview today that he (the author) was out of the loop, he was pushed aside by Condi Rice and DEMOTED to some piss-on computer virus czar thing, thus he had a score to settle. and Kerry being out of the spotlight on vacation all week. happy coincident, i doubt it, the pieces fit so well.
1) If he was out of the loop on 9/11, that ought to be pretty disturbing, considering he WAS THE COUNTERTERRORISM COORDINATOR OF THE NSC. In other words, he WAS the loop. If he's not privy to information floating around the White House, then there's a serious problem.
2) He was demoted AFTER 9/11 (Cheney himself was intentionally vague about the timeline on Limbaugh), and Cheney also deliberately misrepresents the position. Clarke headed the cyberterrorism wing of the NSC. If you don't think that's important, you're sorely deluded.
3) If he had a "score" to settle, it certainly wasn't over being reassigned to work on something that was his pet project.
1) If he was out of the loop on 9/11, that ought to be pretty disturbing, considering he WAS THE COUNTERTERRORISM COORDINATOR OF THE NSC. In other words, he WAS the loop. If he's not privy to information floating around the White House, then there's a serious problem.
2) He was demoted AFTER 9/11 (Cheney himself was intentionally vague about the timeline on Limbaugh), and Cheney also deliberately misrepresents the position. Clarke headed the cyberterrorism wing of the NSC. If you don't think that's important, you're sorely deluded.
3) If he had a "score" to settle, it certainly wasn't over being reassigned to work on something that was his pet project.
touchay!
From Best of the Web
The Clarke Kerfuffle
Richard Clarke, a former antiterrorism adviser to the White House, has gotten a lot of attention for some bizarre claims about the Bush administration's response to Sept. 11. Clarke appeared on "60 Minutes" last night, and here's the CBS News Web site's account of what he had to say:
After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to [Lesley] Stahl. "And we all said ._._. no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And [Donald] Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking._._._."
Perhaps it escaped Clarke's notice, but less than a month after Sept. 11, the U.S. did begin bombing Afghanistan, while the military effort to liberate Iraq didn't get under way until a year and a half later. So just what is Clarke complaining about? Well, we found an October 2003 quote, from a guest on PBS's "NewsHour," that sums it up nicely: "What people are complaining about is that there is contention and debate and analysis and confrontation. I think that's better than trying to sweep everything under the rug." The guest was none other than Richard Clarke.
In a February 2003 article for SecurityFocus.net, George Smith reported that Clarke had a rather unimpressive record when it comes to terrorism:
In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.
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." The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.
Clarke also "devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing," Smith writes. "While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict."
In an article last week for Time, Clarke offered this brilliant advice: "In addition to placing more cameras on our subway platforms, maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us." Blogger John Hinderaker notes that Clarke is jointly teaching a course at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with Rand Beers, a foreign-policy adviser to the Kerry campaign. All of which leaves us inclined to take anything this guy says with a grain of salt.
He is not 'gunning for a job'
he has a job allready/ This is last-ditch grasping at straws from a well funded PR machine . . . just get some distance
The Republicans should wake up and run someone against Bush . . .
Originally posted by Scott
This guy Clark is a partisan kook. He's gunning for a job from Kerry. Helping to take Bush down at the expense of the US. Great guy!
From Best of the Web
The Clarke Kerfuffle
Richard Clarke, a former antiterrorism adviser to the White House, has gotten a lot of attention for some bizarre claims about the Bush administration's response to Sept. 11. Clarke appeared on "60 Minutes" last night, and here's the CBS News Web site's account of what he had to say:
After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to [Lesley] Stahl. "And we all said ._._. no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And [Donald] Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking._._._."
Perhaps it escaped Clarke's notice, but less than a month after Sept. 11, the U.S. did begin bombing Afghanistan, while the military effort to liberate Iraq didn't get under way until a year and a half later. So just what is Clarke complaining about? Well, we found an October 2003 quote, from a guest on PBS's "NewsHour," that sums it up nicely: "What people are complaining about is that there is contention and debate and analysis and confrontation. I think that's better than trying to sweep everything under the rug." The guest was none other than Richard Clarke.
In a February 2003 article for SecurityFocus.net, George Smith reported that Clarke had a rather unimpressive record when it comes to terrorism:
In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.
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." The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.
Clarke also "devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing," Smith writes. "While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict."
In an article last week for Time, Clarke offered this brilliant advice: "In addition to placing more cameras on our subway platforms, maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us." Blogger John Hinderaker notes that Clarke is jointly teaching a course at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with Rand Beers, a foreign-policy adviser to the Kerry campaign. All of which leaves us inclined to take anything this guy says with a grain of salt.
OK, lets dissect:
First off you've linked an opinion article as insurmountable proof. Opinion doesn't meet the requirements as proof excepts for BushCo.
Perhaps it escaped Clarke's notice, but less than a month after Sept. 11, the U.S. did begin bombing Afghanistan, while the military effort to liberate Iraq didn't get under way until a year and a half later. So just what is Clarke complaining about? Well, we found an October 2003 quote, from a guest on PBS's "NewsHour," that sums it up nicely: "What people are complaining about is that there is contention and debate and analysis and confrontation. I think that's better than trying to sweep everything under the rug." The guest was none other than Richard Clarke.
This is a Red Herring argument. The point was that the administration initially wanted to attack Iraq in respone an attach by OBL--a guy in Afganastan BTW. The fact the we bombed Afganastan a month later is inconsequential. Clark was complaining about the administrations fervent gusto to accomplish an ideological plan which had been signed onto by most of the administration. So, your contention that we went into Afganastan a month later doesn't have a bearing on or invasion into Iraq other than Afganastan was a delay for BushCo.
In a February 2003 article for SecurityFocus.net, George Smith reported that Clarke had a rather unimpressive record when it comes to terrorism:
for someone with a shoddy record he sure as heck server under a few administrations. Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II.
Clarke also "devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing," Smith writes. "While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict."
So, you offer proof (opinion) that Clark did a poor job you offer a quote which states he did sound alarms.... His pet project was cyber terrorism--of coarse he would hound it. This spin doesn't lessen the fact the Clark DID sound bells, and blow whistles.
In an article last week for Time, Clarke offered this brilliant advice: "In addition to placing more cameras on our subway platforms, maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us." Blogger John Hinderaker notes that Clarke is jointly teaching a course at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with Rand Beers, a foreign-policy adviser to the Kerry campaign. All of which leaves us inclined to take anything this guy says with a grain of salt.
Again you offer opinion as proof. Also, I don't get the logic of "He teaches therefore he's less reputible." Is he supposidly acting as a Harvard Recruiter, or trying to pack a lecture hall? No. Should we stop listening to Condi because she's a professor? Hmmmm if that's the case....
Originally posted by Scott
You just choose not to see the connection between Clark and the Kerry campaign.
Perhaps its the otherway around. You may be making a nonexistant link.
What would it take for this lying dangerous spolied rich kids nightmare to be seen for what it is?!?!?!
Originally posted by a_greer
Quote:
This Clarke guy was demoted by Condoleezza Rice to the cyberspace unit. Nobody took it seriously, and he knows it. He was out, and this explains it.
source:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/da...ck_c.guest.htm
Have you bothered to look at what replaced him?
I'll give you a hint: He's more of a hawk on Iraq than even wolfowitz.
Originally posted by giant
Have you bothered to look at what replaced him?
I'll give you a hint: He's more of a hawk on Iraq than even wolfowitz. [/B][/QUOTE]
This raises a question I've been thinking about today: just who makes up the Bush administration? Can we compile a list of cabinet officials and advisors? Perhaps a timeline and brief bio for each? Might be fun! Worthy of its own thread (and strikingly non-partisan!)
Cheers
Scott
Originally posted by midwinter
Have you bothered to look at what replaced him?
I'll give you a hint: He's more of a hawk on Iraq than even wolfowitz.
This raises a question I've been thinking about today: just who makes up the Bush administration? Can we compile a list of cabinet officials and advisors? Perhaps a timeline and brief bio for each? Might be fun! Worthy of its own thread (and strikingly non-partisan!)
Cheers
Scott [/B]
Ohhh, Kudos to midwinter. Good project idea.
Originally posted by Scott
You just choose not to see the connection between Clark and the Kerry campaign.
For the love of God...
If co-teaching a class at Harvard with Rand Beers is the best you can do "linking" Clark to the Kerry campaign, I'm suprised you even bothered to post.
Do you actually believe the stuff you say? Do you actually believe that all of the people from within the Bush white house who say essentially the same thing are just DNC moles of some sort?
Anybody who doesn't play ball with the Bush Administration is a simp, disgruntled former employee, or closet dem.
Remember Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame? First we heard that Wilson was a lousy ambassador who did a poor job of investigating the Niger yellow cake connection. Then we heard that his wife was a "glorified stenographer" so outing her CIA status was trivial.
I understand that this white house never hesitates to slander its enemies, in a full court press, even if one story contadicts the next, or makes no sense, or is demonstrably false.
I just don't understand why citizens think it's worth repeating.
Of course, someone who served under THREE Republican administrations as a high ranking official suddenly became..... not good enough.
Here's a little hypothetical question. Assuming Clarke were trying to help Kerry.....so what? He obviously saw enough to make him want to want change. He's entitled to change his mind isn't he?
I've been watching the news, listening to the radio, and only the zealots are pissed and trying their hardest to discredit him. It's pathetic.
Originally posted by addabox
If co-teaching a class at Harvard with Rand Beers is the best you can do "linking" Clark to the Kerry campaign...
And who is rand beers?
Bush's other top advisor for counter-terrorism. (the order is Clarke->Downing->Beers)
So, as I've said, we now have two of bush's top counter-terrorism advisors speaking out against the Bush admin.
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
It is common knowledge that William Jefferson Clinton had plans to invade Iraq.
I always wonder this, "Why did Iraq not let the inspectors in if they had nothing to hide, which it seems is partly true?"
Oh come off it...... Do you think the US administration would allow the UN to inspect it's weapons programs? I don't think so.
Does the US administration respect international law? I don't think so.
It is possible that Iraqis are human beings and had a sense of national pride even if their leader was a tyranical bastard.
Originally posted by orange whip
Oh come off it...... Do you think the US administration would allow the UN to inspect it's weapons programs? I don't think so.
Does the US administration respect international law? I don't think so.
It is possible that Iraqis are human beings and had a sense of national pride even if their leader was a tyranical bastard.
why let the un do jack, every thing they touch turns to shit, hanz blix is a dits, like barny Fife or as Rush Limbaugh so elequently puts it insppector cluso In other words he couldnt find a computer chip at an intel plant - why expect him to find the preverbial needle in a haystack?