For those of you who think Pres. Bush is fighting war right

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For those of you who think Pres. Bush is fighting war right

#1 Postby JTD » Sat Mar 20, 2004 5:57 pm

FORMER WHITE HOUSE TERROR ADVISER SET TO BREAK SILENCE ON '60 MINS'; SAYS PRESIDENT ISN’T DOING VERY GOOD JOB FIGHTING TERRORISM
Fri Mar 19 2004 17:49:30 ET
**Updated** Sat Mar 20 2004 09:52:43 ET

President Bush’s former top terrorism advisor says the president isn’t doing the best job fighting terrorism. The former advisor, Richard Clarke, discusses this and other observations he made while he was a White House insider in an interview with Lesley Stahl to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday March 21 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

“Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism,” says Clarke in tomorrow night’s interview. “He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We’ll never know,” he tells Stahl.

Clarke tells Stahl that on September 11, 2001 and the day after - when it was clear Al Qaeda had carried out the terrorist attacks - the Bush administration was considering bombing Iraq in retaliation.

Clarke was surprised that the attention of administration officials was turning toward Iraq when he expected the focus to be on Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. "They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12," says Clarke.

The top counter-terrorism advisor, Clarke was briefing the highest government officials, including President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in the aftermath of 9/11. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq....We all said, 'but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan," recounts Clarke, "and 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 [the 9/11 attacks],'" he tells Stahl.

Clarke goes on to explain what he believes was the reason for the focus on Iraq. "I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection [between Iraq and Al Qaeda] but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying, 'We've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection,'" says Clarke.

Clarke, who advised four presidents, reveals more about the current administration's reaction to terrorism in his new book, "Against All Enemies."

Developing...


Richard Clarke is highly respected. On September 14 at Camp David, he went into a meeting with Bush/Cheney/Powell/Rumsfeld/Rice and said "here's my plan that I had developed for years and this is how we can fight terrorism. Let's kick some a__."

And, no, he is NOT, NOT a senior adviser to John Kerry. LOL.

Thoughts?
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#2 Postby mf_dolphin » Sat Mar 20, 2004 6:15 pm

It always funny how these people come out AFTER they've been fired or allowed to resign. There's a reason Richard Clarke wasn't elected to be the President ;-)

Here's a little background on Mr. Clarke.
Richard Clarke's Legacy of Miscalculation
The outgoing cybersecurity czar will be remembered for his steadfast belief in the danger of Internet attacks, even while genuine threats developed elsewhere.
By George Smith Feb 17 2003 01:38AM PT


The retirement of Richard Clarke is appropriate to the reality of the war on terror. Years ago, Clarke bet his national security career on the idea that electronic war was going to be real war. He lost, because as al Qaeda and Iraq have shown, real action is still of the blood and guts kind.

In happier times prior to 9/11, Clarke -- as Bill Clinton's counter-terror point man in the National Security Council -- devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing. 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.

September 11 spoiled the fun, though, and electronic attack was shoved onto the back-burner in favor of special operations men calling in B-52 precision air strikes on Taliban losers. One-hundred fifty-thousand U.S. soldiers on station outside Iraq make it perfectly clear that cyberspace is only a trivial distraction.

Saddam will not be brought down by people stealing his e-mail or his generals being spammed with exhortations to surrender.

Clarke's career in subsequent presidential administrations was a barometer of the recession of the belief that cyberspace would be a front effector in national security affairs. After being part of the NSC, Clarke was dismissed to Special Advisor for Cyberspace Security on October 9th in a ceremony led by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and new homeland security guru Tom Ridge. If it was an advance, it was one to the rear -- a pure demotion.
Saddam will not be brought down by people stealing his e-mail or his generals being spammed with exhortations to surrender.
Instead of combating terrorists, Clarke would be left to wrestle with corporate America over computer security, a match he would lose by pinfall. Ridding the world of bad guys and ensuring homeland safety was a job for CIA wet affairsmen, the FBI, the heavy bomb wing out of Whiteman Air Force Base -- anyone but marshals in cyberspace.

Information "Sharing" and Cruise Missiles
The Slammer virus gave Clarke one last mild hurrah with the media. But nationally, Slammer was a minor inconvenience compared to relentless cold weather in the east and the call up of the reserves.

But with his retirement, Clarke's career accomplishments should be noted.

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.

Trying his hand in cyberspace, Clarke's most lasting contribution is probably the new corporate exemption in the Freedom of Information Act. Originally designed to immunize companies against the theoretical malicious use of FOIA by competitors, journalists and other so-called miscreants interested in ferreting out cyber-vulnerabilities, it was suggested well before the war on terror as a measure that would increase corporate cooperation with Uncle Sam. Clarke labored and lobbied diligently from the NSC for this amendment to existing law, law which he frequently referred to as an "impediment" to information sharing.

While the exemption would inexplicably not pass during the Clinton administration, Clarke and other like-minded souls kept pushing for it. Finally, the national nervous breakdown that resulted from the collapse of the World Trade Center reframed the exemption as a grand idea, and it was embraced by legislators, who even expanded it to give a get-out-of-FOIA-free card to all of corporate America, not just those involved with the cyber-infrastructure. It passed into law as part of the legislation forming the Department of Homeland Security.

However, as with many allegedly bright ideas originally pushed by Richard Clarke, it came with thorns no one had anticipated.

In a January 17 confirmation hearing for Clarke's boss, Tom Ridge, Senator Carl Levin protested that the exemption's language needed to be clarified. "We are denying the public unclassified information in the current law which should not be denied to the public," he said as reported in the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News.

"That means that you could get information that, for instance, a company is leaking material into a river that you could not turn over to the EPA," Levin continued. "If that company was the source of the information, you could not even turn it over to another agency."

"It certainly wasn't the intent, I'm sure, of those who advocated the Freedom of Information Act exemption to give wrongdoers protection or to protect illegal activity," replied Ridge while adding he would work to remedy the problem.

Thanks for everything, Mr. Clarke.
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#3 Postby Rainband » Sat Mar 20, 2004 6:25 pm

mf_dolphin wrote:It always funny how these people come out AFTER they've been fired or allowed to resign. There's a reason Richard Clarke wasn't elected to be the President ;-)

I agree 100% :wink:
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#4 Postby southerngale » Sat Mar 20, 2004 6:38 pm

Rainband wrote:
mf_dolphin wrote:It always funny how these people come out AFTER they've been fired or allowed to resign. There's a reason Richard Clarke wasn't elected to be the President ;-)

I agree 100% :wink:


lol, I was gonna say the same thing Marshall.
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#5 Postby JTD » Sat Mar 20, 2004 9:36 pm

Who wrote that article, MFdolphin. What publication did it come from. And I notice you attack the messenger but not the message. Let's just consider this:

-- Richard Clarke is the White House terrorism czar. His stock in trade is the stuff of techno-thrillers -- biological bombs in the Wall Street subway, chemical clouds of death in the Pentagon parking lot, cyberwar attacks crippling the nation's computers.

Pale as skim milk, his once-red hair gone white at 48, he works long days and nights in Oliver North's old office at the National Security Council, keeping a profile so low that almost no one outside his top-secret world knows he exists.

As chairman of the government's chief counterterrorism group for the past seven years, he has become what John le Carre calls an "intellocrat" -- a gray baron who seems to command nothing more than his desk, yet waves a wand and sends soldiers, guns, money and spies around the world.

Clarke inspires ferocious loyalty from friends and fierce enmity from foes inside the government. He wins praise for getting things done in secret -- and criticism for exactly the same. At the National Security Council, where he landed in 1992 after losing his State Department job in a bitter battle over Israel's misuse of American military technology, he can operate without outside oversight so long as he has President Clinton's confidence.

He has it. The president recently named him the nation's counterterrorism coordinator, a new and powerful post. He has to try to coordinate everything from the Pentagon and its evolving plans to defend the United States against terrorists down to local police and fire departments. Despite years of effort to pull it all together, this has never been accomplished. There is no 911 number for the nation.

The mission of protecting Americans from attack, whether by states or rogue groups, is "almost the primary responsibility of the government," Clarke says. He is trying to raise the fear of terrorism in the United States to the right level -- higher, not too high -- as he girds the nation against the possibility of an assault from nerve gas, bacteria and viruses, and from what he calls "an electronic Pearl Harbor."

He has to walk a fine line. "You want people to understand the peril without panicking," said Anthony Lake, his boss at the National Security Council from 1993 to 1996.

Clarke has a reserved seat when Cabinet officers gather at the White House on national security issues. "My name is on the table next to Madeleine Albright and Bill Cohen," the secretaries of state and defense, Clarke said. His vote carries the weight of those cast by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of central intelligence.

He helped drive the decision to fire cruise missiles at Afghanistan and Sudan in August, trying to strike at Osama bin Laden, overpowering dissenters at the State Department and the CIA. Now he is helping to steer secret operations aimed at capturing the Saudi exile, who is accused of bombing two American embassies.

Clarke also has written at least four classified presidential directives on terrorism. They helped expand the government's counterterrorism cadres into the $11 billion-a-year enterprise he now coordinates, stifling some protests at the Justice Department and the Pentagon, which saw him as a competitor for money and power.

In his office, where a small sign reads "Think Globally/Act Globally," he spoke passionately about the threat of cyberwar, invisible attacks on the nation's computers, a terror so insidious, so arcane he has trouble convincing corporate chieftains and political commissars it is real. But it is out there, somewhere, he says, even if he can't prove it.

"There is a problem convincing people that there is a threat," he said. "There is disbelief and resistance. Most people don't understand. CEOs of big corporations don't even know what I'm talking about. They think I'm talking about a 14-year-old hacking into their Web sites.

"I'm talking about people shutting down a city's electricity," he said, "shutting down 911 systems, shutting down telephone networks and transportation systems. You black out a city, people die. Black out lots of cities, lots of people die. It's as bad as being attacked by bombs.

"An attack on American cyberspace is an attack on the United States, just as much as a landing on New Jersey," he said. "The notion that we could respond with military force against a cyber-attack has to be accepted."

Why would anyone want to mount such an attack? "To extort us," he said. "To intimidate us. To get us to abandon our foreign policy -- 'Abandon Israel or else!'

"Imagine a few years from now: A president goes forth and orders troops to move. The lights go out, the phones don't ring, the trains don't move. That's what we mean by an electronic Pearl Harbor."

Enemies and allies alike say Clarke wins battles by working longer hours and twisting more arms. "I like Dick so much for the same reason that some people have not liked him: He has a passion for getting things done," said Lake. "That can be abrasive."

When thorny questions entangle political, military, diplomatic and intelligence issues, Clarke cuts the knot. Are there human rights concerns over sending helicopters to Colombia's army? Send the choppers. Does the State Department want to reopen its embassy in the Sudan, after reports of terrorist threats proved empty? Keep it shuttered.

"He's a hammer," said Leslie Gelb, who gave him his first job at the State Department 20 years ago.


"If there is something to slam through, that's his task -- to get people to do things they don't want to do," said Gelb, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and formerly a reporter and columnist for The New York Times. "You don't expect the highest quotient of political sensibility from Dick. They didn't hire him for that."

Under President Reagan, Clarke was the second-ranking intelligence officer at the State Department. His boss was Morton Abramowitz. "Dick is aggressive," Abramowitz said, "a man with strong views, with a great ability to tell people what the issues are without spending 10 years doing it. He's a low-profile guy. He has mixed feelings about having a profile at all."

Clarke's profile first surfaced in 1986. He was an intellectual author of a plan to use psychological warfare against the Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi. Under his plan, flights of SR-71 spy planes set off "sonic booms over his head, to tell him his air defenses couldn't stop us," and mysterious American rafts floated up on the shores of Tripoli, Clarke said. The operation backfired when the Reagan White House was caught planting a false report in The Wall Street Journal about Libya's support of terrorism.

Under President Bush, Clarke served as assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs. In 1992, he was accused by the State Department's inspector general of looking the other way as Israel transferred American military technology to China.

"There was an allegation that we hadn't investigated a huge body of evidence that the Israelis were involved in technology transfers," Clarke said. "In fact, we had investigated it. I knew more about it than anyone. We found one instance where it was true. The Israelis had taken aerial refueling technology we sold them and sold it to a Latin American country. We caught them, and they admitted they had done it."

He added: "The administration wanted to put heat on the Israeli government to create an atmosphere in which the incumbent government might lose an election. The bottom line was I wasn't going to lie. I wasn't going to go along with an administration strategy to pressure the Israeli government."

Sherman Funk, the inspector general who accused Clarke, remembered the case differently.

"He's wrong," said Funk, the State Department's inspector general from 1987 to 1994. "He's being very disingenuous. Dick Clarke was unilaterally adopting a policy that was counter to the law and counter to the avowed policy of the government. It was not up to him to make that determination. Almost all the people in his own office disagreed with him. In the end, he had to leave the State Department."

Clarke joined the National Security Council staff under Bush. He was one of the only holdovers embraced by the Clinton administration. After seven years, he has placed proteges in key diplomatic and intelligence positions, creating a network of loyalty and solidifying his power.
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#6 Postby mf_dolphin » Sat Mar 20, 2004 10:07 pm

And I see just how good of a job he did under Clinton's administration. When a person criticizes the President his record is fair game. I see no reason not to question the messenger before listening to the message he brings. The happens to be a basic principle in determining what to believe and not.

Sorry for not posting the source earlier. http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/143

And what is the source for your quote? ;-)
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#7 Postby mf_dolphin » Sat Mar 20, 2004 10:17 pm

It looks like Clarke may have a stake in talking about the threat since he's going into the security business...

Both articles I have used are non-political. :-)

Richard Clarke to lead homeland security consulting firm
News Story by Dan Verton

JULY 11, 2003 (COMPUTERWORLD) - WASHINGTON -- Richard A. Clarke, the former special adviser to the president for cybersecurity, has joined Arlington, Va.-based Good Harbor Consulting LLC as chairman.
Clarke joins Roger Cressey, president of the firm, who served as Clarke's chief of staff at the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and before that as the director for Transnational Threats on the National Security Council.

Good Harbor Consulting plans to target a wide range of corporate clients, from the Fortune 500 to small technology start-ups, providing strategic consulting services in the areas of homeland security, cybersecurity, protection of critical infrastructure and counterterrorism.

John Tritak, former director of the Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office and a longtime government thought leader on cybersecurity issues, has also joined the firm as its CEO, said Good Harbor.

In addition to the core team of Clarke, Cressey and Tritak, the company will rely on what Cressey calls a "network of subject matter experts" and has been negotiating a partnership for the past several weeks with another major security consulting business.

Cressey and Clarke plan to focus on four key areas: strategic planning, product and business strategy evaluation, partnership opportunities and strategic security risk assessment.

"For too many companies, Washington is a jumble of acronyms and an indecipherable procurement maze," according to the company's new mission statement. "Good Harbor uses its unique combination of experience in the halls of government and with the information technology industry to provide clients with partnership opportunities to better negotiate the U.S. government space and the critical infrastructure vertical markets."

Howard Schmidt, a former White House colleague of both Clarke and Cressey who is now chief security officer at eBay Inc., called the new venture a "natural progression" for Clarke and Cressey, given the years the two spent working together in government. When asked about his own plans, Schmidt said he also had considered going into private practice as a consultant and may still do so on a part-time basis.

Clarke announced in January that he was stepping down from his cybersecurity role in the U.S. government, ending a career at the National Security Council that had spanned three administrations (see story). His career was characterized by a concerted effort to enhance the government's relationship with the private-sector operators of critical infrastructure.

Shortly after leaving government, he testified at a congressional hearing that he didn't think the Bush administration was moving fast enough in organizing the National Cyber Security Center (see story). Clarke also called on Congress to fund vulnerability scanning sensors on all federal networks, and he recommended that federal agencies outsource cybersecurity projects and withhold money from vendors if the agencies get failing cybersecurity grades.
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/consulting/story/0%2C10801%2C82965%2C00.html
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#8 Postby rainstorm » Sat Mar 20, 2004 11:53 pm

this is why you need to understand the media hates bush. they are timing tis for a reason. his book is coming out. he is testifying before the 9/11 committee. the 1 year anniversary of the war. they want bush to look as bad as possible
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#9 Postby stormchazer » Sun Mar 21, 2004 11:18 am

Clarke is a respected man, but he also takes himself a bit to seriously, and I am sure has the opinion that his opinion is the only correct one. Consider the below article from the Washington Post (Not a Conservative mouth-piece by any stretch)



washingtonpost.com
Anti-Terror Pioneer Turns In the Badge
After 11 Years, Clarke Leaves Legacy of Lasting Change -- and Enemies

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003; Page A21


On Feb. 21, the last day of an 11-year White House marathon, Richard A. Clarke walked into his office and turned in a gear bag fit for a Hollywood spook. From pockets and cases he shed an encrypted mobile phone, a satellite phone, a "priority service" mobile phone, a secure home phone and still another government cell phone.

Then came a .357 Magnum SIG-Sauer semiautomatic with jacketed hollow-points, and the special deputy U.S. marshal's badge that went with it.

Clarke was one of only three White House officials -- in any recent administration -- known to have packed a pistol for protection. There were times, friends joked, when he could have used it in interagency combat. The Secret Service authorized the gun for another reason: Until last year, Clarke coordinated U.S. efforts to hunt and kill al Qaeda's senior leaders, and there was evidence that al Qaeda preferred to reverse the transaction. In 1999, in an episode not disclosed before, Clarke abandoned his house for a month and acquired a temporary Secret Service detail when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat passed urgent (and ultimately uncorroborated) word that an al Qaeda hit team had been dispatched for him.

Clarke's departure is a milestone of sorts in the war on terrorism -- not only the one that dates from Sept. 11, 2001, but the one that began in earnest five years earlier. And it tells government-watchers something about the decision-making style of the national security cabinet under President Bush.

Clarke, 52, reached the peak of his influence under President Bill Clinton, after serving presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as deputy assistant and assistant secretary of state. The present commander-in-chief is said to like Clarke -- he sent him a warm, handwritten note and invited him to the Oval Office on Feb. 19 for a goodbye chat -- but Clarke's bulldozing style did not fit as well with the quiet consensus that the White House looks for now.

He submitted his resignation two months after White House foes blocked his selection as deputy secretary, under Tom Ridge, of the new Homeland Security Department. Clarke had made it clear he would not accept a lesser position.

According to available records and memories, no one has served longer continuously on the senior White House staff. The average stint is about two years. Clarke reached that mark in 1994.

In New York recently, he made the rounds of a new world of opportunities -- at a brokerage house, a television network, two think tanks and a publisher who wants to commission a pair of books. Stopping for coffee and cheesecake between meetings, a man long seen as a lifer in the Senior Executive Service described himself as relieved that he did not get the Homeland Security job.

"I already don't miss it," he said of Washington. Asked to elaborate, he replied: "You know that great feeling you get when you stop banging your head against a wall?"

Clarke was the government's first counterterrorism czar -- formally from 1998 to 2002, but in practice beginning in 1995. Security officials, friends and foes alike, said no one rivaled him as a spur to action. He was the first to draw effective attention to the risk that terrorists would acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the first to force concrete steps to protect critical information networks from cyberattack, and a dominant voice for spending money and covert resources against terrorists at a time when government was inclined to perceive them as a minor threat.

His style was seldom delicate.

"Clarke is a bully, but he has an absolute talent for making the government move," said the chief of one U.S. intelligence agency, who clashed with him in a previous post. "Dick wanted to see everybody put their parochial interests aside, and people didn't always do that."

Widely respected, Clarke was also widely disliked. Some rivals admitted privately, in interviews, to celebrating his departure.

"If you don't have enemies in the interagency, then you're not doing the job," said Roger Cressey, Clarke's deputy at the National Security Council and chief of staff more recently at the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. "There are a lot of people in government who believe a consensus-based approach is the only way to get things done. There are some issues on which consensus is never going to happen. Dick was a master at rejecting the least-common-denominator approach and demanding more."

Under Clinton, Clarke had carte blanche from national security advisers Anthony Lake and Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger to blow past bureaucratic turf lines and assume operating and budgetary powers that were nowhere specified by statute or executive order. Berger said he regularly turned down demands that he fire Clarke.

Clarke had the political cover to roll two Treasury secretaries on funding for a terrorist-asset tracking center -- Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers both opposed it, but Clarke pushed the money through Congress and the Office of Management and Budget. When the FBI and State Department clashed in Yemen after the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, it was Clarke who brought together the secretary of state and the attorney general to decide lines of command.

His biggest loss came when a technology he championed, the armed Predator drone, proved five months before the Sept. 11 attacks that it could find and kill individuals. Clarke wanted to set it loose on Osama bin Laden. "Usually the CIA supported him, but on this one the directorate of operations resisted," said Michael Sheehan, State's former counterterrorism coordinator.

"Probably no one before or no one after is likely to exert such influence over these agencies that traditionally resist White House interference," Sheehan said. "They had a symbiotic relationship. Dick got them money from OMB . . . and political clearance for sensitive issues. In return, they worked with him . . . sometimes begrudgingly."

One close friend in government said, "Dick would just get into a foul mood sometimes and say things that made enemies of people forever, because he belittled them publicly," the friend said. "That used to be one of my jobs: to close the doors and go and yell at him." In the end, though, Lake and Berger "were prepared to clean up after him because he got things done."

The Bush White House works differently, valuing consensus and rewarding longtime loyalists. Clarke earned the confidence of Ridge and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, but neither encouraged him to break crockery if his proposals stalled. Some Bush partisans suspected him as a Clinton holdover. And Clarke had uneven relationships with Bush Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and Lawrence B. Lindsey, Bush's former top economic adviser.

Clarke consented to a goodbye party at the Army and Navy Club. "Only my friends -- it was a small group," he said. He delivered the line ironically, but not altogether in jest. Ridge turned up, but no other Bush appointee outside the career security establishment.

Attrition diminished Clarke's closest cohort of allies. They included Charles E. Allen, the CIA's assistant director for collection, and Cofer Black, its former counterterrorism chief; Dale Watson and the late John O'Neill, who ran the FBI's counterterrorism operations; and Sheehan at the State Department. More recently he relied on Cressey, FBI cyberwarrior Ronald Dick and John Tritak, chief of the Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office. All but Allen and Black are gone now.

Some of them have said privately the White House gutted the central project of Clarke's final year, a strategy to protect cyberspace from terrorists. He wanted, for example, a presidential call to Internet service providers to integrate security measures into every account, but was rebuffed by opponents hostile to any hint of regulation.

Clarke, in the interview, maintained that the core of his strategy remained intact. "I'm enormously proud of it, and want to be associated with it," he said.

Among friends, Clarke is skeptical that the coming war with Iraq is integral to the war on terrorism, as the White House maintains. He describes it as a diversion of scarce resources and a wedge between Washington and critical allies in destroying al Qaeda. Until late last year, he has said, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would not have been among the top suspects should al Qaeda manage to acquire a weapon of mass destruction. Now, with Hussein's regime on the brink of falling, he will.

If and when the next attack comes, somebody else will get to cancel his plans and sleep on an office couch. No one schedules Clarke's travels now but Clarke. His first trip after he resigned was to the British Virgin Islands.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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#10 Postby Stephanie » Sun Mar 21, 2004 11:31 am

Thanks for the article Jara.
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#11 Postby JTD » Sun Mar 21, 2004 4:55 pm

Darn. I knew as soon as I posted my article, I'd missed quoting the source. It's a Washington post article I found on a google search. Sorry about that, MFDolphin. BTW, I knew you had a good source, I just wanted to know what it was. :D

Now, I do believe Pres. Clinton was much more serious about AQ than Pres. Bush was pre 9/11. Clinton didn't have the support that the world gave Bush after the unspeakable artocity. You may recall that the world screamed in outrage after Clinton bombed the AQ training camps where UBL was having a meeting in 1998. The world was oblivious to the threat. In fact, even Pakistan was outraged. There was no support. I would even go so far as to say that if Clinton had launched a mission to get UBL, there would have been emergency security council meetings (U.N) and the U.S would be decried for it.

Clinton didn't act because he didn't have the intelligence support that the Brits, French, Mossad and Pakistanis gave Bush post 9/11. You will recall that Musharaf nearly fell when he joined Bush 9/11. I guarantee you that any leader that supported U.S efforts pre 9/11 would have fallen.

Now, that brings us to Bush. What did he do when he had the entire world on his side. He squandered all the good will the U.S had ganed. He launched an unilateral attack on Iraq and destroyed the credibility of the UN and U.S relationships with key long-term allies like France (France supported U.S efforts in revolutionary war in 1700s') and ended up in an Iraq quagmire.

He diverted attention from the hunt for UBL and AQ, let AQ supporters escape from Afghanistan and allowed AQ to splinter up into even more dangerous organizations (see this week's time magazine) and he had an obsession with UBL, sayng "Get me one shred of proof Saddam was responsible for 9/11. I don't care how small." He didn't care one bit about AQ, his plans were to go after Saddam right from 9/12/01.

He could have been the leader of the world after 9/11. He could have created a national unity government and destroyed AQ in Afghanistan first and then got a vigorous inspections regime going in Iraq. Instead, he chose to use 9/11 for political gain and go on an adventure in Iraq.

That's why Bush lost my support. He had it after 9/11. He could have kept it. He has severely disappointed me.
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#12 Postby Lindaloo » Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:09 pm

WHAT?!! You believe Clinton was more serious about ALQ than Bush?!!! utterly ridiculous!!

Go back and check out the WTC bombing in 93, the African Embassy bombing in 98 and the USS Cole. The number two man of AlQ was indicted for the Embassy bombing!!! If Bush would have been in office during the first WTC bombing the other two would not have happened nor would Sept. 11th. This just amazes me!!
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#13 Postby JTD » Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:28 pm

Linda, your comments are amazing.

Bush was in office for almost a year before 9/11 and he DID nothing about AQ. There was a meeting in February about Saddam Hussein and Iraq but no meetings took place about AQ until August 2001. Bush was interested in getting some family revenge on Saddam and he didn't care about AQ until it was thrust in his face by 9/11.

He was told by Sandy Berger and Pres. Clinton that there were 3 grave threats to the U.S:
1) Al Qaeda
2) China
3) Weapons of Mass destruction profileration.

He chose to do nothing.

And I would just point out that the Senate Majority leader heavily criticized the AQ bombing strike in 1998 and wondered why Clinton was going after AQ, anyway. The republlicans didn't seem to care much about terrorism. They criticized every move Clinton made to combat it and wondered if it was really necessary.

Bush was far more interested in banning legitimate stem-cell research that could save countless lives than stopping an organization that was dedicated to killing tens of thousands.

Also, if Bush was so dedicated to the war on terror, why did he abandon it to go after his father's enemy. He was more interested in settling old family scores than really destroying AQ.

BTW, where are those nuclear weapons.

Quote from Dick Cheney in March 2003:

"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

VP Dick Cheney – “Meet the Press” 3/16/2003

He didn't say Saddam would some day like to have nuclear weapons. He said Saddam has nuclear weapons, not a nuclear weapons program but actual nuclear weapons.

BTW, where are those WMD's:

“U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein
had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable
of delivering chemical agents.”

State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003

I mean. Countless hours and lives and energy was expended on the imaginary Saddam threat when we should have been going after AQ to prevent attacks like the one that occured in Madrid.
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#14 Postby mf_dolphin » Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:29 pm

Clinton didn;t act because he didn't want to. There was plenty of opportunity for him to have stopped OBL including when OBL was offered to the US and Clinton chose not to extradite. At no time did Bush foresake Afganistan because of Iraq. The effort has continued there all during the war and great progress has been made.

As to Iraq, Saddam had every chance to avoid the war. He chose to play a dengerous game with President Bush and he lost! I'm very pround that our President didn't succumb to world opinion like President Clinton did!
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#15 Postby Lindaloo » Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:36 pm

Oh please Jason!! If Clinton were SO concerned about threats he would have dealt with them when all those mass murders took place. Why tell Bush when he closed his eyes and ears too.

Almost a year? try 8 months. The only Intelligence Bush received was nothing in detail nor did it say anything about them using airliners as weapons!! Give me a break! :roll:

All I can say is WOW!! Nice spin Jason. :lol:
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#16 Postby southerngale » Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:53 pm

Dang Jason, are you dizzy from all that spinning? :lol:

Even Clinton knows he should have gotten bin laden when he had the chance: "I thought that my virtual obsession with him was well placed, and I was full of regret that I didn't get him."

That was about a year after the 9/11 attacks.


source: http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/09/03/clinton.bin.laden/
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#17 Postby Lindaloo » Sun Mar 21, 2004 6:00 pm

WOW!! And this is even an article from the Communist News Network.
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#18 Postby streetsoldier » Sun Mar 21, 2004 7:59 pm

And, jason, you might not recall that when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright for what information the Clinton Administration had on Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, she returned...five days later, with a manila folder holding only five pages of NEWSPAPER articles! :roll:

I remember the incident very well...you must not have been watching C-Span2 at the time (1997).
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#19 Postby stormchazer » Mon Mar 22, 2004 11:51 am

jason0509 wrote:Linda, your comments are amazing.

Bush was in office for almost a year before 9/11 and he DID nothing about AQ. There was a meeting in February about Saddam Hussein and Iraq but no meetings took place about AQ until August 2001. Bush was interested in getting some family revenge on Saddam and he didn't care about AQ until it was thrust in his face by 9/11.


Oh...you mean the first 8 months where he had to get his cabinet settled, face an economy in recession and get all the "W" replaced on the keyboards at the White House. The Clinton Admin welcomed Pres Bush with 2 low-level meetings with incoming Sec of State Powell and Nat Sec Advisor Rice. Albright did not meet with them in an official briefing. Berger met with Rice once, presenting a plan hatched by Clarke. This plan was basically the same actions that had been used in the last 8 years of Clinton but with the introduction of limited ground troops. Another words, here is our plan, we did not do it but you should.

He was told by Sandy Berger and Pres. Clinton that there were 3 grave threats to the U.S:
1) Al Qaeda
2) China
3) Weapons of Mass destruction profileration.

He chose to do nothing.


From Clinton Advisor Morris....a man who knows no loyalty to anyone...

Everything was more important than fighting terrorism. Political correctness, civil liberties concerns, fear of offending the administration's supporters, Janet Reno's objections, considerations of cost, worries about racial profiling and, in the second term, surviving impeachment, all came before fighting terrorism.
- Dick Morris, New York Post, Jan. 2, 2002



And I would just point out that the Senate Majority leader heavily criticized the AQ bombing strike in 1998 and wondered why Clinton was going after AQ, anyway. The republlicans didn't seem to care much about terrorism. They criticized every move Clinton made to combat it and wondered if it was really necessary.


Hmmm...from Time Magazine and CNN...no friends of Conservatives...

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Aug. 20) -- President Bill Clinton's decision Thursday to order military strikes against alleged terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan received quick, but not universal, support from members of Congress.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich quickly sided with the adminstration, saying the president "did the right thing" by ordering the simultaneous attacks against facilities believed linked to terrorists suspected in the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa.

"Just a few days ago in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, we saw what happens when people who hate America and hate freedom decide to kill Americans," Gingrich said. "They did so in a way in which we have to respond.

Sen. Dan Coats
"We have every reason to believe that this terrorist organization will try to hurt other Americans," Gingrich said.

Other key members of Congress also quickly voiced their approval for the decisive military action, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), and Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).


Does not support your assertion..

Bush was far more interested in banning legitimate stem-cell research that could save countless lives than stopping an organization that was dedicated to killing tens of thousands.


Okay...so he has a phillisophical difference with you. This attack has what to do with terror?

Also, if Bush was so dedicated to the war on terror, why did he abandon it to go after his father's enemy. He was more interested in settling old family scores than really destroying AQ.


Maybe....a guy who tried to assasinate a former President, who thumbed his nose at the sacred liberal cow of the UN, killed more of his own then did Serbia in Yugoslavia and Kosovo (Clintons favorite Foriegn Policy triumph) and was called by everyone "a threat to peace in the Middle East."

BTW, where are those nuclear weapons.

Quote from Dick Cheney in March 2003:

"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

VP Dick Cheney – “Meet the Press” 3/16/2003

He didn't say Saddam would some day like to have nuclear weapons. He said Saddam has nuclear weapons, not a nuclear weapons program but actual nuclear weapons.

BTW, where are those WMD's:

“U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein
had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable
of delivering chemical agents.”

State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003

I mean. Countless hours and lives and energy was expended on the imaginary Saddam threat when we should have been going after AQ to prevent attacks like the one that occured in Madrid.


"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
-President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
-President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
-Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
-Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." Letter to President Clinton, signed by:
-Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
-Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D! , CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
-Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
Letter to President Bush, Signed by:
-Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, Dec 5, 2001

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them."
-Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
-Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
-Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
-Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
-Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
-Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do"
-Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
-Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002


"[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ..."
-Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

Ask them where they are!!
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#20 Postby Rainband » Mon Mar 22, 2004 12:41 pm

If our country and it's politicians spent less time bickering amongst party lines and more time taking care of business we would all be better off. We are all Americans no matter what party we belong to or don't belong to. I feel too much time energy and money is is wasted fighting this internal conflict. This time and money would be better spent fighting our enemies and securing the future of this country. :roll: :roll: The key to this is some kind of compromise. Until our own leaders can agree and get along there will be a serious vulnerability to anyone who hates America and what we stand for. Just my Honest opinion.
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