Bush's chief advisor on terror: BUSH DIDN'T TAKE TERROR THREAT SERIOUSLY

[Proud2BAmurkin]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

Clarke was the president's chief adviser on terrorism, yet it wasn't until Sept. 11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says that prior to Sept. 11, the administration didn't take the threat seriously.

"Al Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months.

"But on January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently -- underlined urgently -- a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo-- wasn't acted on.

"I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back. They wanted to work on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years."

Clarke finally got his meeting about al Qaeda in April, three months after his urgent request. But it wasn't with the president or cabinet. It was with the second-in-command in each relevant department.

[connecticut yankee]

1. And they're still blaming it on Clinton.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. note the date of the article linked.....

what has clarke had to say on this currently, seeing as how he's prominently portrayed in the ABC movie?

I imagine this has been discussed, but I haven't been around for awhile

[ProgressiveEconomist]

6. Unlike Bill Clinton, Clarke has no attorneys on retainer. Given what happened

to him around the time the 9/11 Commission hearings started, when his book came out, I doubt he'd have much to say now. He's likely still too frightened to further expose Dubya's removal of the security bars, locks, and alarms against terrorism the previous administration left in place at the WH.

From http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/28/le.00.html :

"CLARKE: (Clinton) did a lot, and he was personally involved. He didn't just sit there in the morning and get intelligence briefings. ,,,

WOODRUFF: Well, let's move up to President Bush and your book, which came out the day before -- in essence, was made public the day before the 9/11 Commission did its work. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. BILL FRIST (R-TN), MAJORITY LEADER: I personally find this to be an appalling act of profiteering, of trading on insider access to highly classified information, and capitalizing upon the tragedy that befell this nation on September the 11th. ...

CLARKE: I intended all along to make substantial donations from the profits of this book. I'm now being told that there are people in the White House who are trying to destroy me personally, people who are saying, "Dick Clarke will never make another dime in this city." So I have to take that into account too, that there's this personal vendetta and destruction machine that's aimed at destroying the rest of my life."

[intheflow]

7. Clarke is not happy about this movie AT ALL.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2109936

[ProgressiveEconomist]

9. Great link, though unfortunately its use of the word "conspiracy" simply

reflects Clarke's apparent use of that unfortunate word. What was he thinking? He gave the media the means to discredit him.

[stepnw1f]

11. Funny, Because It's a Word People Allow the Right Wing to Mold

so in turn by saying such a thing, you give into their spin.

[intheflow]

12. If it looks like a duck...

I was called a conspiracy theorist for saying that election 2001 was stolen from Gore, yet it is a fact that Gore did indeed win the election, but the recount was stopped by Republicans in the state of Florida.

I was called a conspiracy theorist because I didn't believe and opposed the justification to invade Iraq, yet it is a fact that Hussein had no WMDs or any ties to al Qaida.

I was called a conspiracy theorist because I believe election 2004 was stolen, yet one of Ohio's leading Republicans, Kenneth Blackwell, locked the doors of a public vote count citing a terrorist warning the FBI says they never gave him and Ohio was the deciding state in the election.

I will gladly reclaim and support the term conspiracy when speaking about the Republican agenda today, not because they have called me a conspiracy theorist, but because so many so-called conspiracies have proven true since the current administration came into power.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

15. When you're trying to convince someone who doesn't agree with you,

do you call YOURSELF a conspiracy theorist? That appears to be what Clarke did.

[intheflow]

17. .

See this thread, and my response.

So yes, I would call myself a conspiracy theorist because I when I have theorized about conspiracies in this government, my theories are usually proven to actually be conspiracies committed by BushCo. The ones that haven't been proven are still pending.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

14. There are many better ways to say what you mean. "Deliberate bias",

"pre-election propaganda", "fearmongering to stir up the electorate", and numerous other terms would IMO have been more accurate than what Clarke apparently said.

The trouble with the word "conspiracy" is that it has hundreds of years of unfortunate history behind it, including the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", speculation about the Trilateral Commission, the Masons, etc. I don't think Clarke wanted to associate his views about PT911 with all of that, but that's what he did when he needlessly used the word "conspiracy".

[Marie26]

2. Comparison - Bush & Clinton on 9/11

When Clinton was on Larry King Live, he said that when the second plane hit the WTC, his first thought was that Bin Laden was responsible.

"Clinton said his first thought that day, after the second plane hit the World Trade Center, was: "Bin Laden did this."

His former adviser, Bruce Lindsey, narrated the events to Clinton, who was overseas at the time. "He said, 'How can you be sure?'"

"I said, 'Because only bin Laden and the Iranians could set up the network to do this, and they (the Iranians) wouldn't do it because they have a country and targets. Bin Laden did it.'"

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/09/03/clinton.bin.laden/index.html

On the day of the 9/11 attacks, Bush cornered his anti-terrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, & shouted that the attacks were Saddam's fault -

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' 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.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

Which leader had his eye on the ball here? Which leader was more knowledgeable about the terrorist threat Al-Qaeda posed?

[Old and In the Way]

4. Terriffic Post! It deserves its own thread.

Really, this distills all of the BS into 2 different world visions. Clinton had the right one, Bush had the wrong one.

[lumpy]

10. Kick

v

[BlueEyedSon]

5. Hah! I thought Bush said "there's one terrible pilot...."

[Gregorian]

8. Wrong. They took it very seriously. THEY NEEDED A NEW PEARL HARBOR.

It's that simple.

I will apologize if I'm wrong. And usually we are presumed innocent until guilty. But, not this time.

[cassiepriam]

13. Name one thing Bush takes seriously, nt

[ScreamingMeemie]

16. Beer.

:shrug:

[cassiepriam]

18. Sad but true :( nt

[cassiepriam]

20. True. Alcoholics see booze as the central relationship in their lives. N

[Raffi Ella]

19. The Bush administration

DID NOT PROTECT US


:kick: