I'm just stunned that Amlord and GDan204 both agreed with me on something!



I'm a uniter, not a divider (sometimes). For my next trick I will get Richard Clarke and Condoleeza Rice to spend a quiet, candlelit dinner together.

Well, maybe not...

I don't really believe that 9/11 could have been prevented, but it is quite clear that the Clinton Administration did not take these warnings seriously. I don't know how they occupied their time for the eight years in office (oh, yes I do), but it certainly wasn't as important as anything they were being cautioned about. I would think that any president should take threats of attack on the country as a #1 priority, especially when one occured right here on US soil in 93'.

The Clinton administration did absolutely nothing to plan for or execute these recommendations. I would say that equates to what Richard Clarke said about an administration doing "nothing" about terror. I don't know how much easier it gets than having it all laid out for you like that.

Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but Clarke is correct -- they (the Clinton administration) knew about the threat and did nothing, other things were priority.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The above is an example of how easy it is to take a partisan approach to this issue.

There were two statements in that entire vituperation that I agreed with. The first being "I don't really believe that 9/11 could have been prevented". It wouldn't have mattered who was in office, 9/11 would have happened. And I can tell you one thing for sure; if 9/11 happened under Clinton's watch, those using the "Bush knew" mantra wouldn't have used it against Clinton.

The second statement I agreed with is "hindsight is 20/20" and it is obvious that government in general was not ready. Our government agencies weren't organized and weren't communicating. We are a little better in that area with the creation of Homeland Security and the implementation of Patriot Act. Our government didn't have proper security at our borders - still doesn't as is demonstrated by our inability to profile at airports, the lack of security measures at ports and the influx of illegal immigrants still crossing the Mexico/US border. In addition, Bush's new immigration policy seems to be an invitation to break immigration laws.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In my opinion, the Rice testimony cleared up some statements made "out of context" by Clarke. I am now left to wonder if Clarke deliberately misled or interpreted incorrectly.

Actually it is not so easy to substitute Clinton for Bush there...



Towards the latter years in office Clinton was able to put together some recommendations on a direction to go. Unfortunately they weren't given so much as a second glance until after the attack. The report was put together by a Democrat, it obviously had to be wrong.

When the attack in '93 occurred, the Clinton administration caught and prosecuted the offenders. How is Bush doing with Al Qaida? Not so well.

I could go on but I think that is enough. Addressing terrorism is a multi-term issue and Clinton took some big steps there. When Bush came into office he basically ignored everything the previous administration had done and went about his own priorities until it came back to bite him.

Would following those recommendations from day 1 have prevented 9/11? Probably not. But, I would feel a whole lot better about this administration if I knew that they were focusing on what was actually important instead of their own political agendas.

I agree and it now seems clear that R. Clark is a liar. His book and testimony say the AQ threat was a major concern of the Clinton Admin. and it was passed to Bush as such but the document passed over does not support his claim. Of course the press gave much more coverage to the lies than they did the discrepancies but that is to be expected I guess.

So Clarke is a liar, eh? Instead of just assertions, do you have evidence to back that up? Remember: he was under oath and subject to perjury if he lied to the committee. Most of what Condi said confirmed what Clarke said. Where did he lie, pray tell?

I finished Clarke's book last week. I found it very thought provoking and an excellent historical perspective on the growth of terrorism in that region dating back to the Reagan era.

I think where people are having the most trouble dealing with what may appear to be contradictions is the difference in a person's candor/ability to be honest about your boss while employed by your boss. The guy didn't get to serve under 4 presidents by being stupid. Just like Conde is doing now, if you want to keep your job you support/present in the most favorable light, what is taking place at the time.

Do I believe 100% of what Clark said? No. I do think there was some ax grinding taking place. But, in my opinion, he is far more credible than most of the people that I have seen speak to the subject. What also gave his testimony credibility about Bush was the fact that there have been 3 counter-terror chiefs since Clarke resigned.

Reading his account of what took place in preparation for the milennium celebration gives me hope that our government is capable of dealing with potential terrorist threats without requiring that our civil liberties be shredded in the process. (I can provide page numbers later, book is at home).

Doc

Cadman...Richard Clarke was cabinet level when serving under the Clinton administration and then when held over by Bush, went to staff level. Condi Rice is also staff level and that in the government is no grunt job.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/...ain607356.shtml



I read Karen Hughes book, "Ten Minutes From Normal" and it is not a political book per say, but one that deals with her role in the Bush White House, as a mother, and wife....a personal story about a role she would have never dreamed possible....working for a president. Again, I am not arguing the point about anyone writing a book...I was referring to choices in styles, etc. Nothing new about former White House members/staff writing books...or nothing bad about it.

Today....former FBI Director Freeh (Clinton administration) in his testimony when asked about Richard Clarke, said that Clarke was never present in any intelligence meetings or briefings that Freeh attended. (Guess it is too early for Freeh's transcript to find the quote.) What I was trying to get at....Clarke was not always in the loop of information. That isn't to discredit him, but it could have been a source of frustration for him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics...;partner=GOOGLE



I was just quoting Karen Hughes who attended many meetings...and said the fact that the Bush team called in Zelikow who is one of the foremost authorities on terrorism and al Qaeda just reinforces contrary to Clarke, they were focusing on al Qaeda and terrorism...otherwise why would they have called him in during the transition?

I wonder just what "Cabinet Level" position Clarke held in the Clinton Administration? He was Secretary of.....? The link says that under Clinton, Clarke was the number 2 man on the NSC. The Number 1 person is the National Security Advisor who is not a cabinet officer, but a member of the president's personal staff.

Hmmmm

1SG

I'm puzzled as to why you ask these questions, as if Clarke's testimony has been shaky. If anything, it has been corroborated and backed by the accounts of others. Perhaps you have sources that say otherwise, but it's quite interesting that with the passing of a few weeks, nothing has come about the "he perjured himself" crowd. As quoted above, after looking through the evidence, even partisan firebrands agree that there is no contradiction in his testimony. If there was, you had better believe that the senate and house republicans would not let his testimony die down mercifully like they have been doing. Where are the charges?

If we can't agree on this point-perhaps we can agree that president Bush was out to get Iraq since day one. Paul O'Neill has said so, Woodward alleges this in his book, and so does Clarke. Are they all imagining things?




(April 16th New York Times article: " Book Alleges Secret Iraq War Plan" by the Associated Press)

Now that Bob Woodward will be releasing his new book this week, I guess he was lying too.

I can see that the Bush Adminstration has not labeled Mr. Woodward,yet. Of course that would be suicide for them, since he has impeccable track record for good investigating reporting.

Now lets see the list of who is not telling the truth about the Bush Adminstration.

1. Paul O'Neill

2. Richard Clarke

3. Bob Woodward

My goodness, what would all those writers be making up things about our current president. I think they all should be hung from the highest tree.

p.s. I hope the press doesn't cover this new book and all those lies,too.

Can anyone find the funding levels for the FBI and CIA over the course of Clinton and Bush 2 years?I think it would be interesting sinc some claim Bu8sh cut it and others say he did not and in fact raised it above previous levels.

The Clinton administration had cut the FBI budget for technology so dramatically that it was "$36 million less than the last Bush budget eight years before." (It is important to note that on 11 September 2001 the Justice Department and CIA were operating under budgets and mandates set by the Clinton administration; the Bush administration had yet to have its first budget passed.)
On 11 September of 2001, the Justice Department and CIA were operating under a Clinton budget and a series of restrictive mandates. In addition, Bill Clinton's final national security policy directive (from December 2000) did not mention "al-Qa'ida" once in its 45,000 word text and mentions "Osama bin Laden" only four times. The directive is thus a self-incriminating document that lays bare the Clinton administration's "strategy" of swatting flies -- of lobbing the occasional cruise missile at a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory and of treating terrorists as mere "fugitives" who should be extradited to "answer for their crimes."

Clinton appeared far more interested in cracking down on "right-wing extremist" activities here at home. How else to explain the commitment of huge resources for politically-motivated investigations into such efforts as finding the suspected bomber of an Alabama abortion clinic? Thus, while the largest manhunt in history was attempting to track down a guy named Eric Robert Rudolph, al-Qa'ida operatives were busy developing their plans for 9/11.

Not only were critical FBI resources diverted for political theater, but Hillary Clinton was busy promoting the celebration of Ramadan and FBI agents were being chastised for investigating Islamic groups. Indeed, they were told that such investigations reflected a "stereotypical culture bias."

The USA PATRIOT Act does, indeed, tear down "the wall" between law enforcement and intelligence investigators when it comes to terrorism.

The Patriot act has its flaws but.
You are asking the wrong people.

Condi is out today essentially saying Woodward is a liar too....

go figure

Maybe she is, but it's gonna be almost impossible to twist out of this one.

Woodward spent hundreds oof hours in taped interviews with people like General Franks, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and about 5 hours with GWB himself. How can they possible claim that they were misquoted, or that Woodward has mis-represented what was said, when he has the unaltered tapes?

No, the cat's really out of the bag this time, and out of the mouths of those who were making the decisions.

Woodward's on 60 minutes tonight BTW, I read some transcripts. This one looks like its gonna be a doozy.

Richard Clarke is a liar?? Actually.....



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...5-2004Apr3.html

Given the fact that the above cited article was published on the 3rd of this month, I'm left to conclude

A.)The Bush folks found that the "Contradictions" were a matter of emphasis and thus, had no ammo to go after Clarke

B.)It's easier to just scream: "He lied!" than to prove it.

C.)They are hoping this will go away

D.)There will be no investigation as to whether or not Clarke lied since the above stated article has provided us with the knowledge that Clarke's critics have no leg to stand upon in criticizing him.

Larry king show;Bob Woodward went on to set the record straight. "What I say in the book is that the Saudis hoped to keep oil prices low during the period before the election, because of its impact on the economy." Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, also on Larry kingagreed witnh that and added he hoped that the oil prices would stay low because that benefits the U.S. economy as well as the international economy. He also said that every President since Carter asked him to keep the prices down.
Already he is haaving to clearify .

When McLaughlin concluded, there was a look on the president's face of, What's this? And then a brief moment of silence.
"Nice try," Bush said. "I don't think this is quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."
Card was also underwhelmed. The presentation was a flop. In terms of marketing, the examples didn't work, the charts didn't work, the photos were not gripping, the intercepts were less than compelling.
Bush turned to Tenet. "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?"
From the end of one of the couches in the Oval Office, Tenet rose up, threw him arms in the air. "It's a slam-dunk case!" the director of central intelligence said.
Bush pressed. "George, how confident are you?"
Tenet, a basketball fan who attended as many home games of his alma mater Georgetown University as possible, leaned forward and threw his arms up again. "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!"
It was unusual for Tenet to be so certain. From McLaughlin's presentation, Card was worried that there might be no "there there," but Tenet's double reassurance on the slam dunk was memorable and comforting. Cheney could think of no reason to question Tenet's assertion. He was, after all, the head of the CIA and would know the most. The president later recalled that McLaughlin's presentation "wouldn't have stood the test of time." But, said Bush, Tenet's reassurance -- "That was very important."
"Needs a lot more work," Bush told Card and Rice. "Let's get some people who've actually put together a case for a jury." He wanted some lawyers, prosecutors if need be. They were going to have to go public with something.
The president told Tenet several times, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...anguage=printer
For a book that supposed to nail Bush, it seems it aids his case at times .But we dont hear anything about that do we.
Just another reason TENET should have been fired long ago.Bush asked the right questions and was fed wronganswers. Why did his staff not advise him aginst this report?

O.K., the whole Saudi gas price fixing arrangement was more of Woodward's thing than Clarke. Am I right on this?? If that is the case, then what in the world does Woodward's claim about oil have to do with Richard Clarke?

Is that all yo saw in that post? I guess it proves that people see what they want.

"Needs a lot more work," Bush told Card and Rice. "Let's get some people who've actually put together a case for a jury." He wanted some lawyers, prosecutors if need be. They were going to have to go public with something.
The president told Tenet several times, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."

This alone was significant.

Clarke's inconsistencies (ok, lies... ) are not about Iraq, but are about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 national security approach to terrorism.

The statements remain in direct opposition to each other, what he said in 2002 and what he says in his book and on talk shows. His testimony is not as damning as the rhetoric surrounding his book, which is interesting in itself.

I can't understand why people think anything he said in 2002 is even relevant. When in the history of politics has a senior white house official done or said anything that was contradictory to the party line while still in office with that administration? I can't think of any occurance, but if you can feel free to post it and enlighten me.

This whole thing is fairly simple, Clarke toed the party line while he was in office and tried to work for change. When he finally realized that was futile, he decided to resign and let the nation know the truth.

What if any significant facts were directly refuted by Condolezza Rice in her testimony? Again, I can't think of anything significant, other than various spin on words.

So, as long as you are a member of the Administration it is ok to lie?

No, it's not.

In 2002, Clarke describes a series of actions, plans, and policies that were implemented before 9/11. In 2003/04, he says the Bush administration did "nothing" and "ignored" the problem.

Re-read the first post in this thread, because despite 15 pages of posts, no one has answered the basic question : why are his statements different now from what he said then. Being a member of the Administration is not an excuse to lie (either then, or now...)

I agree, Amlord.

The problem is, "spin" even extreme spin, has never before been considered a lie by this administration. Up until now, of course.

Do you think Clark is the only one to have spun bad news to good in the last 4 years? Or to accentuate the positive aspects of something, and forget to mention the negative? Please.

On the other hand, how many more "disgruntled" former employees, and books by respected journalists like Bob Woodward are we going to have to see, before conservatives finally get it? Bush and Co. have lied about a lot more than Clark has, and across a broader spectrum.

A war in Iraq planned far in advance of what the general public was ever told. Having White House staffers and military Generals in the know, deliberately lie to reporters and the public about those plans, even though the "planning" had already proceded to a building of infrastructure needed to prosecute the war.

Touting new "healthy" environmental regulations that turn out to only help the polluters.

Lying about the cost of the Prescription Drug plan, to the members of their own party, in order to get the bill passed.

Amlord, if you think that Clark should be excoriated for his "transgressions", I'm sure you'll join me in calling for the firing or impeachment of everyone in this administration for the lies they've told.

Right.........

First off, I don't think anyone should use Woodward's book as a blanket attack on this administration. From what I have seen of the excepts, that book seems to back what the Bush administration has been saying the whole time.

The White House thinks it bolsters their side, not the other way around:
White House disputes parts of Iraq 'secret history'




The other issues you cite : environment and the drug bill, are matters of perception. You simply do not have contradictory statements like "he did something" and "he did nothing".

Before you cite the costs of the prescription plan, please remember that the price tag on every single "entitlement" type bill is underestimated, most likely intentionally. As I said at the time this bill was passed, the cost was going to be understated when it was passed. Nothing new, just something to keep in mind when considering this type of legislation.

The point that keeps getting made Amlord is that what you deem to be contradictory statements are also "matters of perception".

I saw nothing in the Fox news article you quoted that would not easily be written off as "spin" if the shoe were on the other foot. And I will fully admit that Clarke's statement "he did nothing" is an exaggeration, or spin in the other direction. That does not make them contradictory. His testimony before the commission was probably the most telling in that regard when he said the issue was "important, but not urgent". The 8/6 PDB wouldn't have taken place if some importance hadn't existed about the issue.

If Clarke's statements after he left the Bush administration are in fact "lies", why didn't Conde establish them as such in her testimony before the commission? The answer is because they aren't. It IS a question of perception in this case as well. Its all about spin in DC. Sad, but true.

Doc

Sorry but that made me snicker.

Actually, Louis Freeh's 9.11 testimony contradicted Clarke's statement regarding Condi Rice's apparent ignorance of al Qaeda. In addition, Freeh stated that any briefings he attended, Richard Clarke was not present...thus why Clarke may not be privy to all briefings' information and why his assessment of Condi's al Qaeda knowledge may be a tad inaccurate.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/





No, "liar" is a frequent label used by the Bush critics and bashers. Actually, the Bush administration thinks highly of Bob Woodward and believes his overall representation in his new book is good. In fact, the Bush web site promotes Woodward's book as does the Democrat's web site. One of the few times that the Republicans and Democrats can agree on something for different reasons, of course.



You are right Amlord. I really enjoy those who are so quick to put words into people's mouths....you will not hear Bush, Condi Rice, Colin Powell or significant others in his administration call people "liars" whether it be Richard Clarke, former Secretary Paul O'Niel or a highly respected author, Bob Woodward. I might also add this is not Bob Woodward's first book about Bush...so the fact that he was again invited back into the White House and had direct access to the primary characters in his book dispels any hack's assertions that the Bush administration's evaluation of Woodward's book is on the same level as some other recent "authors" of the Bush administration. Also, Mr. Woodward doesn't resort to insulting people with labels attacking their character...another difference between a respected seasoned author and from newbie authors such as O'Niel and Clarke.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house...plan_04-19.html

Link to a few facts about some interpretations of Bob Woodward's new book since this is off topic on this thread. Mr. Woodward is not lying....there are differences in interpretations or opinions in some instances as to what was said or the meanings of what was said.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2097685/
There was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. . . .

Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. . . . In January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.

And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, in late January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent. . . . The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115085,00.html

He testified in the hearing that he was just doing the the bidding of the administration, which wanted him to "put the best face" on its record. But he flatly denied having said anything untrue at the time: "No one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them."


Clarke sent an e-mail to rice Sept. 15, 2001, stating:
"When the era of national unity begins to crack in the near future, it is possible that some will start asking questions like did the White House do a good job of making sure that intelligence about terrorist threats got to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and other domestic law enforcement authorities."

He attached an earlier memo from before Sept. 11 in which Clarke warned such agencies that "a spectacular al-Qaeda terrorist attack was coming in the near future."

"Thus, the White House did insure that domestic law enforcement . . . knew that (his office) believed that a major al-Qaeda attack was coming and it could be in the U.S.," Clarke's e-mail said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washin...hitehouse_x.htm

Clarke gave everyonr the impression that Bush was stuck in "amber" concerning Iraq and never paid any attention to the al queda issue. He even hinted the Rice had no clue about AQ. I found this little bit from 2002 thatseems to contradict himself.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115085,00.html

Read his 7 points he wants to make and then the exchange on the bottom.
.
.
.

QUESTION: When was that presented to the president?

CLARKE: Well, the president was briefed throughout this process


JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?

CLARKE: All of that's correct

CLARKE:One of the big problems was that Pakistan at the time was aiding the other side, was aiding the Taliban. And so, this would put, if we started aiding the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, this would have put us directly in opposition to the Pakistani government. These are not easy decisions.

ANGLE: And none of that really changed until we were attacked and then it was ...

CLARKE: No, that's not true. In the spring, the Bush administration changed — began to change Pakistani policy, um, by a dialogue that said we would be willing to lift sanctions. So we began to offer carrots, which made it possible for the Pakistanis, I think, to begin to realize that they could go down another path, which was to join us and to break away from the Taliban. So that's really how it started

The most telling remark Clarke made in the entire hearing was one that did not make the cover of Newsweek.

SEN. SLADE GORTON: ``Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001 ... had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?"

CLARKE: ``No."

Thus, doing everything demanded by the most hawkish, most prescient, most brilliant, most heroic, most swaggering antiterrorism chief in American history -- i.e. Clarke, in his own mind -- would not have prevented Sept. 11.


look no further than the preliminary report of the 9/11 Commission itself, from which all the quotes below are drawn.

Clarke's tenor suggests that it was bizarre that it took Bush officials, many of whom weren't in place until the spring of 2001, eight months to bring to the verge of presidential approval a plan to eliminate al-Qaida. But policy-making takes time. The Clinton administration's Presidential Decision Directive 39 identified terrorism as a national security concern, and was "signed in June 1995 after at least a year of interagency consultation and coordination." At least a year.

Clarke's tone makes it sound as if Clinton officials were extremely solicitous of his anti-terror plans. Well, that's nice for him to believe. He circulated among Clinton officials an anti-al-Qaida plan in September 1998. "This strategy was not formally adopted, and Cabinet-level participants ... have little or no recollection of it, at least as a formal policy document."

Clarke's tenor says it is an outrage that the Bush team approved more CIA counterterrorism spending in principle, but hadn't yet made it happen. Really? In the 1990s, more resources were supposed to go to the CIA, but "baseline spending requests, and thus core staffing, remained flat. The CIA told us that Clarke kept promising more budget support, but could never deliver."

Clarke wanted to fly Predator reconnaissance missions over Afghanistan in 2001 while an armed version of the plane was being developed. Clarke, in his tenor, suggests resistance to his view was irrational. But other officials wanted to wait until they had armed Predators ready to go, so as not to lose the element of surprise. The armed Predator got up and running relatively quickly: "A program that would ordinarily have taken years was, [Air Force officials] said, finished in months; they were 'throwing out the books on the normal acquisition process just to press on and get it done.'"

Clarke's tone strongly implies that no one in the Bush administration took any serious action in the summer of 2001 when terrorist "chatter" increased, in marked contrast to the Clinton team's on-the-ball response to similar chatter around the time of the millennium. Not quite. In the summer of 2001, "the CIA again went into what the DCI [George Tenet] described as 'Millennium threat mode,' engaging with foreign liaison and disrupting operations around the world. At least one planned terrorist attack in Europe may have been successfully disrupted during the summer of 2001."

"Security was stepped up for the G8 Summit in Genoa, including air-defense measures. U.S. embassies were temporarily closed. Units of the Fifth Fleet were redeployed from usual locations in the Persian Gulf. Administration officials, including Vice President Cheney, Secretary Powell and DCI Tenet, contacted foreign officials to urge them to take needed defensive steps."

The FBI issued a threat advisory. There was an FAA warning. Then, things calmed down. "On July 27 Clarke reported to [Condi] Rice ... that the spike in intelligence indicating a near-term attack appeared to have ceased, but he urged them to keep readiness high."

Rich Lowry
March 29, 2004

There's much more...conclusion..Clarke is a liar and the Bush administration WAS doing something about AQ

I don't think you'll find too many people on this site arguing that 9/11 could have been realistically prevented.

The rest of your case, Vicideon, has been refuted already on more than one occasion. The Fox News article, in particular. Clarke's language reeks of spin. You should recognize it, the Bush administration is doing a lot of it these days (Kerry is pretty good at it as well in case you think me too partisan).

Clarke's biggest complaint about the Bush Administration prior to 9/11 is that Al Qaeda was not viewed as a critical foreign policy area when compared with Iraq, the ABM treaty, or backing out of Kyoto. Both the books sourced by O'Neill and penned by Woodward bear this out. No one has ever said that Bush did nothing.



This is an interesting point, but there is something lacking in it. Did CIA go into that mode at Bush's behest or because Tenet saw chatter warranting it? Also, if CIA went into that mode, why didn't the other agencies like NSA or FBI follow suit?

A key difference during that time between Clinton & Bush is found in this quote from the 60 minutes interview:


Bottom line is, independent of Dick Clarke's book, both Sandy Berger and George Tenet told Conde Rice and later President Bush that Al Qaeda should be their top foreign policy priority. That advice was not heeded. That doesn't mean nothing happened in that area, but clearly not enough. Would it have been enough to prevent 9/11? Probably not. But I would be giving the president and his administration a helluva lot more credit for trying to stop it than I do now. Those aren't lies, dems da facts.

Doc

People forget so quickly as to what led to the horrific events that took place on September 11th. Bill Cinton. Its as if, people simply forget, that the World Trade Center Towers were attacked twice, buy the same evil, twisted terrorist group. But thanks to a lying, dodge drafter that was unfortunatley elected into office, twice, nothing was done about it. As a matter of fact more terrorist attacks were executed on US soil during the Clinton administration that during any other presidency in the history of the United States of America. And not one of those attacks was ever reasonably fought back against. That is, unless, you call lobbing off cruise missles at veryfied targets, instead of sending an elite team of approxamatley 60, elite, special operations forces to go pick off Ussamah Bin Laden. But now, Clinton didn't want to risk his life to fight for a war, which I will say the US had no part in at that time, so he undoubtedly felt incapable of sending young men and women to possible die, in a just cause they swore to uphold. It is, demorilizing, when young service men die in combat. But what so many fail to recognize is the fact that these service men take this oath, this voluntary oath, that when and if they are called to duty they will go, and if neccisary, die for the country that gives their freedom. Whats sadder than this though is when innocent civilians are killed. When children can't go to school without fear of being shot. In 600 B.C. a greek philosopher said, "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it," Bill Clinton didn't forget the past, he walked around it, and through negligence condemed every innocent civilian living in the United States. Let us never forget, the horrors that man brought about to this nation.

No one except Richard Clarke:

Clarke's Take On Terror



Later in the same interview, he said:


These statements fly in the face of what everyone else has said. He doesn't say "we could have done more" he said "Bush ignored it" "He did nothing before 9/11".

Clarke has said that. If that's "spin"...

No one had terrorism on our soil as a priority. Bush, Clinton even Kerry has admitted they did not do enough. No one had it as a priority.

When McLaughlin concluded, there was a look on the president's face of, what’s this? And then a brief moment of silence.
"Nice try," Bush said. "I don't think this is quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."
Card was also under whelmed. The presentation was a flop. In terms of marketing, the examples didn't work, the charts didn't work, the photos were not gripping, and the intercepts were less than compelling.
Bush turned to Tenet. "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?"
From the end of one of the couches in the Oval Office, Tenet rose up, threw him arms in the air. "It's a slam-dunk case!" the director of central intelligence said.
Bush pressed. "George, how confident are you?"
Tenet, a basketball fan who attended as many home games of his alma mater Georgetown University as possible, leaned forward and threw his arms up again. "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!"
It was unusual for Tenet to be so certain. From McLaughlin's presentation, Card was worried that there might be no "there there," but Tenet's double reassurance on the slam dunk was memorable and comforting. Cheney could think of no reason to question Tenet's assertion. He was, after all, the head of the CIA and would know the most. The president later recalled that McLaughlin's presentation "wouldn't have stood the test of time." But, said Bush, Tenet's reassurance -- "That was very important."
"Needs a lot more work," Bush told Card and Rice. "Let's get some people who've actually put together a case for a jury." He wanted some lawyers, prosecutors if need be. They were going to have to go public with something.
The president told Tenet several times, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...anguage=printer
For a book that supposed to nail Bush, it seems it aids his case at times .But we don’t hear anything about that do we.
Just another reason TENET should have been fired long ago. Bush asked the right questions and was fed wrong answers. Why did his staff not advise him against this report?

Plenty of blame to go around.

John Kerry admitted that he had not done enough, in an appearance on
CNN's "Larry King Live" on Sept. 11, 2001:

King: Senator Kerry did your . . . committee on international operations and terrorism ever actually fear something like this?

Kerry: Absolutely. Absolutely. . . . We have always known this could happen. We've warned about it. We've talked about it. I regret to say, as--I served on the Intelligence Committee up until last year. I can remember after the bombings of the embassies, after TWA 800, we went through this flurry of activity, talking about it, but not really doing hard work of responding.
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/lkl.00.html

This in no way mean Kerry is to blame for Sept. 11. It simply points out that until then; the majority of political leaders of both parties did not take the terrorist threat seriously enough. Both Clinton and Bush.


From the left-wing site CommonDreams.org, a professor named Ira Chernus illuminates one reason why:

Suppose the Bush administration had heeded the urgent pleas of Richard
Clarke. Suppose they had made stopping Osama's agents their very highest goal. Suppose they had done everything that Clarke and other antiterrorism experts advised. How would we on the left, in the peace and justice movement, have responded?

We would have called it fear-mongering. We would have decried their skewed priorities. Every time they stopped an Arab tourist on suspicion, or made us take off our shoes at the airport, we would have denounced the emerging police state. And we would have been right.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0326-02.htm

So all this crap that folks are trying to pin on Bush can just as easily be pinned on Kerry the democrats and even the American people themselves that keep electing these idiots. The American people that care more about who slept with who on what soap or who the latest reality bachelor is going to pick. They all screwed up PERIOD.

But, then again it IS an election year.

If we applaud Richard Clarke and his kind now, we cannot urge the voters to do the right thing for the right reason. We cannot argue that militarism and tough "security measures" are the wrong approach to the problem. We cannot explain how Bush's foreign policy, like Clinton's, breeds anti-American violence. We cannot talk about the changes we want to see in U.S. foreign policy, so that the victims of our policy won't feel driven to commit suicide in an effort to deter us. When it comes to so-called terrorism, those are the right reasons to turn Bush out of office.
Chernus states that we should not sit back and use this incident for political gain. Everyone screwed up.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/19172.htm
April 21, 2004 -- BOB Woodward has misled the nation! In the run-up to the publication of his new book, "Plan of Attack," he sexed up his own intelligence findings! Quick, convene a panel at the Columbia Journalism School!

How did Woodward deceive the audience of "60 Minutes" and the entire press corps? He made people believe "Plan of Attack" rivaled Richard Clarke's bestseller in Bush-bashing - by pulling out a few isolated sentences from the book's endless 465 pages to make it appear as though "Plan" were a startling indictment of the war in Iraq.

"Plan of Attack" is indeed a startling book - startling because it offers a persuasive portrait of an extraordinarily serious Bush administration and the 17-month process that led to the war.


"Bob Woodward's new book is less an expose than an inkblot testing. It's remarkable how people can see the same words on the same pages - and come away with entirely different pictures. “Cliff May. I think he is exactly right. Woodward’s book is being plugged on the GOP website. Hardly the thing to do if it was as incriminating as so many believe.


More troubling is that so many media figures also are viewing the book through a partisan prism - headlining whatever casts the president in an unfavorable light, conspicuously ignoring those chapters that challenge the conventional critique of Bush and his policies.........It's not a secret that President Bill Clinton in 1998 signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making regime change in Baghdad the official policy of the U.S. government. What was not widely known before Woodward's book was that in 2002 the CIA reluctantly concluded that neither diplomacy nor clandestine action could get the job done. Instead, the CIA's top Iraq specialist told Bush that he regarded "military action as the only feasible way of removing Hussein." In other words, Bush had no choice other than war or abandoning America's bipartisan policy on Iraq...................On some occasions, Bush did take Powell's advice. Over Cheney's "strenuous objections," he followed Powell's strong recommendation to go to the United Nations "to seek new weapons inspection resolutions." On other occasions, he took Cheney's counsel instead. Is that not what a president is supposed to do - listen to various advisers and then make up his own mind? Inside the Beltway, the answer to that question would be "no." In this town, every president is supposed to take your advice - if he doesn't, what a fool he must be, as you are bound to reveal in a blockbuster book and maybe a movie, perhaps starring Harrison Ford in the role of you.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040406-121654-1495r.htm

The final policy paper on national security that President Clinton submitted to Congress — 45,000 words long — makes no mention of al Qaeda and refers to Osama bin Laden by name just four times.
The scarce references to bin Laden and his terror network undercut claims by former White House terrorism analyst Richard A. Clarke that the Clinton administration considered al Qaeda an "urgent" threat, while President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "ignored" it.
The Clinton document, titled "A National Security Strategy for a Global Age," is dated December 2000 and is the final official assessment of national security policy and strategy by the Clinton team. The document is publicly available, though no U.S. media outlets have examined it in the context of Mr. Clarke's testimony and new book................[/I]

Let's start with a statement Clarke made to the 9/11 Commission yesterday. Clarke told the commissioners that early on in the Bush administration he told the president: " ... and I said, well, you know, we've had this strategy ready ... ahh ... since before you were inaugrated. I showed it to you. You have the paperwork. We can have a meeting on the strategy anytime you want."

So .. there's Clarke telling the media and the commissioners yesterday that he had presented paperwork to Bush on a strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda and was ready to discuss it. But what did he say to Jim Angle in 2002? This: "I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush Administration."

Lying then? Or lying now?

In the 2002 background briefing Clarke said: "When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve
this problem, then that was the strategic direction that triggered the NSPD (National Security Presidential Directive) from
one of roll back to one of elimination." "NSPD" is National Security Presidential Directive. So Clark was telling reporters
in August of 2002 that the directive from the president in March of 2001 was to stop swatting at flies ... to eliminate Al
Qaeda. This is what calls doing virtually nothing?

In the 2002 briefing Clarke also told Angle and the rest of the reporters that Bush had ordered an increase in CIA resources
by five times .. .including funding for covert actions against Al Qaeda. Again ... doing virtually nothing?

Here's the kicker. It comes from the transcript of the 2002 Clarke briefing ... near the end.

Jim Angle: "So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no -- one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the months just after the administration came into office?

Richard Clarke: "You got it. That's right.

So .. while the terrorist threat was increasing Clinton made no changes in his plan of action against terrorism during the last two years of his presidency, but Bush got on the stick immediately. That is what Clarke is now describing as "doing virtually nothing."
Clarke said Bush paid no attention to al-Qaeda; Rice countered that the president wanted a new strategy to eliminate the network instead of trying to contain it by ''swatting at flies.''Her statements match up with the facts on the record of what the Bush Admin did after taking office. Her statements match up with your hero Richard Clarkes first set of statements from 02

Oneil. I don’t get him as being so trust worthy or condemning either.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/...ain592330.shtml
CBS) A year ago, Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

Now, O'Neill - who is known for speaking his mind - talks for the first time about his two years inside the Bush administration. His story is the centerpiece of a new book being published this week about the way the Bush White House is run……….In the book, O’Neill says that the president did not make decisions in a methodical way: there was no free-flow of ideas or open debate.

At cabinet meetings, he says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."
This is countered by the other 2 that say their was debate, discussion and Bush was interested in evidence not guesswork.

The policy on Iraq was founded and written under Clinton.
"Mark my words," Clinton said on the eve of the 1998 bombing. "(Saddam) will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them and he will use them."

Clinton subsequently came under fire from congressional leaders for allowing U.S. policy toward Iraq to "drift." In a letter dated Aug. 11, 1999, several congressmen, including Democratic presidential contender Sen. Joseph Lieberman, wrote:

"There is considerable evidence that Iraq continues to seek to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction. The whole point of Operation Desert Fox was that we could not afford to wait until Saddam reconstituted his WMD capabilities."
O’Neil interviewed on CNN and He stated that what the left is doing is mischaracterizing the entire statements. He clarified that it was the continuation of an ongoing process that was going on and had begun in the Clinton administration.


He also stated that he plans on voting for Bush again because there isn't anyone more qualified to do the job.

Perhaps some other stories will surface on this to help clarify.
Given all that, it’s pretty clear what is what here.

Sorry I just don’t see how you can take Woodward Clarke and O’Neil and say "see, Bush did not care anything about terrorists threats”. Kerry has said they did not do enough, the repubs did not do enough, and congress did not do enough. Seems to me that NO ONE from Clinton to bush was really all that interested in the domestic terrorist threat that much. So Clinton prosecuted the first tower attackers. Big deal. They had to. What were they going to do, let them go? Bush has knocked al qaeda for a loop, disrupted their main base and capture many of the leaders {not the top ones yet}. Given Clinton had the chance several times to get Osama and passed I don’t thing touting him as achieving anything is helping anyone’s case.

It’s going to take a lot more than just a few lines out of a book out of overall context and the Medias opinion of what it says to convince me.

Dontreadonme I'm not trying to come off like a rebel or anything but my post was about Clinton's negligence with a foreign terrorist orginization that spearheaded the majority of terrorist attack that have occured on US soil, including 9/11. From reading 80 percent of all the other posts in the topic it seems that the question for debate was wheter 9/11 could have been prevented, I say yes and that was my reply. Sorry if I misintepreted the question.