http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/10/tomasky-m-10-30.htmlWesley Clark's gutsy new tack: Blame Bush for not preventing 9-11.
Michael Tomasky
Wesley Clark, speaking on Tuesday to a liberal foreign-policy conference sponsored by the Prospect, the Center for American Progress (John Podesta's new outfit) and The Century Foundation, could have gone in any of several directions in attacking the Bush administration's foreign policy. The $87 billion, so unpopular with voters, would have been the obvious target. The lack of a postwar plan, a close second. The intentionally failed diplomacy in the run-up to hostility, a pretty clear bronze medalist.
He didn't ignore those issues entirely, but the heart of his attack came in the form of "a blistering review" (The New York Times' words) of the administration's actions prior to September 11. Clark, assaying pre-9-11 intelligence failures, said that responsibility for those failures can't be fobbed off on "lower-level intelligence officers," and he came within a few inches of saying outright that the Bush administration was responsible for the attacks having happened.<snip>
The question of Bush administration responsibility for 9-11, you may recall, was explored by some in the media in May 2002. Newsweek offered the most notable entry, with a 3,300-word cover package headlined "What Went Wrong?" In it, some of the magazine's lead writers on intelligence and foreign policy (Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball, Christopher Dickey) delved into various aspects of the story and came up with several tantalizing angles that had the potential to do real political damage to the White House. Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, briefed successor Condi Rice on al-Qaeda -- and she yawned. John Ashcroft nixed an FBI request for "hundreds more counter-intelligence agents," as the magazine put it, and reduced Justice Department funding for anti-terrorism activity. Donald Rumsfeld chose not to renew the Predator Drone, which tracked terrorist cells, and emphasized Star Wars Redux.
It was tough stuff. Other outlets piled on, and for two weeks the administration was playing defense. The problem was that no one -- the Democrats, say -- was playing offense. The charges dissolved into a fog of unprovables; the story lost its momentum; George W. Bush seized the security issue during the midterm elections. And that was the end of that. <snip>
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