Richard Clarke

As you've probably heard, Richard Clarke, the one-time terrorism advisor to George W. Bush (and senior man in six previous administrations), has spilled more beans than Juan Valdez sees in a year. Just in case you didn't catch him on 60 Minutes, here are the juicy quotes (which you can skim past if you're already familiar with this material):

"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. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11."

And:

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq. And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq."

Further on:

""The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.' He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

The report was verified by the CIA and the FBI, neither of which saw a link between the World Trade Center attacks and Iraq.

Clarke: "It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'"

Clarke confirms that, previous to the attack, the Bush administration ignored al-Qaida: "That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months.

"There's a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too. But on January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently -- underlined urgently -- a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo-- wasn't acted on.

"I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier."

At this writing, the land of Blog offers two terrific analyses of the Clarke affair. The first comes from the reliable Joshua Marshall. The second comes from Billmon at The Whiskey Bar, who searches his memory for the last time someone this senior came out against an administration he had served. General John Singlaub's contretemps with Jimmy Carter over South Korea comes to Billmon's mind; I suppose one could also cite General Walker's defiance toward JFK and McArthur's disobedience of Harry Truman. All three instances involved ultra-conservative generals getting snippy with Democrats. By contrast (as Billmon notes), "Clarke is a national security ultrahawk taking aim at a hawkish president."

Clarke seems to have been (until recently, at least) a classic neocon. He counted among his friends Steve Emerson, the fervent Likud supporter accused by some Arabs of racism. Emerson also wrote an influential -- and deceptive -- article which helped shield (temporarily) George H.W. Bush from the October Surprise scandal.

Clarke predicted that the Republicans would sic their attack dogs on him. Already, the hounds have indeed strained free of their tethers.

FrontPage Magazine, for example, has bared its fangs in an unrestrained personal attack. The piece proclaims "Iraq was involved in the Islamofascists' 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Center" and that "Iraq did in fact support and collaborate with al Qaeda." The former theory, associated primarily with neocon writer Laurie Mylroie and former CIA director James Woolsey, has never been proven; the latter contention is pure propaganda.

The FrontPage smear also contradicts itself: At first, it derides Clarke for justifying pre-emptive military attacks when Bill Clinton was in office. (The charge here is partisanship: If Bill could do it, George should be able to do it.) Later, the piece alleges that "Clarke bought into the now-discredited "law enforcement" approach to counter-terrorism: if people are making war on us, arrest them!" Well, which is it? At first, Clarke is damned for supporting a military solution, then he's damned for doing otherwise!

The one piece of evidence cited for the "law enforcement" canard is a quote from Clarke which includes these words: "Where possible and appropriate, the United States will bring the terrorists back to this country and put them on trial." No-one in his right mind would interpret that statement as a repudiation of a military response to a terrorist attack sponsored by a foreign nation.

Moreover, Clarke's previous endorsement of a military strike by Clinton does not mean that Clarke was so fierce a partisan that he took a "Bill can do it, but George can't" approach. I have yet to see or read a single statement by Clarke in which he denounces the idea of a military response. Re-read the quotes above: He prodded the administration to attack Afghanistan. But he thought Iraq was the wrong target. So did the CIA. So did the FBI.

It is true that Clarke worked for Clinton. He worked for seven presidents, five of them Republican. He left the current administration. He has a friend named Rand Beers who went to work for Kerry. The Republican Brainwashing System will try to convince you that Clarke was some sort of Democratic "mole." Seems to me his actions were those of a man who had a crisis of conscience and left an administration blinded by its preconceptions.

On an amusing note: One cable news outlet began its Clarke segment by stating that, from day one, George Bush increased America's focus on the al-Qaida threat. Then the reporter went on to interview Clarke, who made precisely the opposite claim. Talk about cognitive dissonance! How can a journalist continue to bleat the propaganda line even when presenting evidence that demolishes it?