Ex-Aide Says Bush Doing 'Terrible Job'

Sat Mar 20, 6:52 PM ET

By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism coordinator, accuses the Bush administration of failing to recognize the al-Qaida threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and then manipulating America into war with Iraq (news - web sites) with dangerous consequences.

He accuses Bush of doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism."

Clarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, writes in a new book going on sale Monday that Bush and his Cabinet were preoccupied during the early months of his presidency with some of the same Cold War issues that had faced his father's administration.

"It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier," Clarke told CBS for an interview Sunday on its "60 Minutes" program.

CBS' corporate parent, Viacom Inc., owns Simon & Schuster, publisher for Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies."

Clarke acknowledges that, "there's a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too." He said he wrote to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) on Jan. 24, 2001, asking "urgently" for a Cabinet-level meeting "to deal with the impending al-Qaida attack." Months later, in April, Clarke met with deputy cabinet secretaries, and the conversation turned to Iraq.

"I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me," Clarke said. "But 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."

The Associated Press first reported in June 2002 that Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions.

The last of those two meetings occurred Sept. 4 as the security council put finishing touches on a proposed national security policy review for the president. That review was finished Sept. 10 and was awaiting Bush's approval when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.

Almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Clarke said the president asked him directly to find whether Iraq was involved in the suicide hijackings.

"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,'" said Clarke, who told the president that U.S. intelligence agencies had never found a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida.

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

CBS said it asked Stephen Hadley, Rice's deputy on the national security council, about the incident, and Hadley said: "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred."

CBS responded to Hadley that it found two people it did not identify who recounted the incident independently, and one of them witnessed the conversation.

[QUOTEclarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, writes in a new book going on sale Monday[/QUOTE]

And if i wrote a book I would call it
Vedder you suck and here is proof. then people would buy it cause they would want to see it.

sorry Bob I think I will soon be leaving your site as I have boats to build , charts to sell and fish to pursue'

granted I am a bit drunk tonight but no matter how numb become I can not tolerate the anti American bull **** that seeps onto the board.

My chart still stands as a raffle prize and I will ship to the winner.
hopefully the winner will be
someone who ties his own leaders and
repects the country that gives him the freedoms that we all enjoy.

read it all vedder before you post cause it is just more left wing hate speech

Bush Cheney 'o4

PS Read it all!

Can you even begin to imagine that your Mr. Bush may have made a mistake? Most of the world can.

make mistakes. If you read all the reports, it appears that both Clinton and Bush were

Do you think this man who was in a very high position in the white house was anti American? Is any one who disagrees with the sitting president anti American? Why can't some folks understand that it is as American as can be to question our leaders.

Blindly following without question, now that is NOT the American way.

Caught the interview tonight on "60 Minutes." Finally someone comes along and tells the truth about what is really going on. Clark is even more credible than O'Neil considering his resume.

The fact that Bush demoted the Anti-terrorism Cabinet postion to simply staff speaks for itself. Taking into consideration who makes up the remaining Cabinet shows the real agenda.

And in reference to the Bush/Clarke conversation, Lesli Stark busted out Hedley when he denied it happened. She told him they had witnesses that said it did. Of course Hedley went into this fabulous song and dance routine.

Papaslap - you should probably consider finding another country to live in. You obviously don't appreciate the freedoms we all are granted here. From the posts of your's I've read you strike me as a man filled with absolute hate towards any person exhibiting what a true American really is. Your ideology belongs back with the Third Reich.

I'm still listening to the debate on this one. One thing I picked up watching the 60 minutes piece was when he said that the Clinton admin went to "red alert status" or something like that and prevented the attack on LAX. Since we live so close to what happened it stuck out as incorrect and it was. The terrorist who was stopped on his way to LA to bomb the airport was stopped by a diligent border agent as he tried to enter Washington state from Canada. That was an individual being very diligent and very lucky.

GP - That's what they said in the interview. The administration heightened security on all the borders during that time. They credit catching the guy to the heightened security.

Papa

Best thing you ever posted

After failing miserably at his "terrorism expert" job, Clark is pushed out of the loop by the Bush admin. He then "retires", joins the Kerry camp, and writes a book.

Obviously, he can say anything he wants in the book about "private conversations" and lie about other things as well. The president (historically) is in no position to sue anyone.

BTW, his book is owned by Viacom who also own CBS and "60 minutes".

It has always been my opinion that the Clinton/Clark policy of tolerance towards terrorism and their non-engagement of terrorists like bin Ladin was perceived to be a policy of complaisance encouraging increasingly bolder aggression that finally culminated with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

They watched the destruction our embassy and shuffled their feet.
They watched the destruction of the USS Cole and shuffled their feet.

If Gore had won the election he would have watched the 9/11 attacks and shuffled his feet.

Thankfully Bush had the nads to take decisive action and with the continued backing by the major world powers we might just weaken the perpetrators of terrorism to a degree of impotence that more and more people like Omar Gadaffi realize the futility of such barbaric acts and embrace civilization.

And Thanks Papaslap…
For speaking out against those who patronize the media blather whereby national traitors are spun as unsung heroes. It takes a strong stomach to read some of the liberal press.

I love it when people call the press 'liberal'.

You know that is a myth the Ted Turner's and Rupert Murdoch's of the world love for the average american to believe.

What sickens me is the idea that we should have blind faith in our leaders because its a time of war. On the way to a thousand dead american men and women in a conflict sold to americans based on false pretenses...that's sickening.

Not sickening enough for you?

Fifty percent of americans think this is perfectly acceptable.......now THAT"S sickening. They refuse to read articles that 'are written by the liberal press', such as the one I posted titled 'Blind Into Baghdad' where even members of his own conservative constituency decry the extrememly poor planning of the Iraq war and the thin to non-existent reasoning used to justify said war...

"Iraq...Saddam"...Get it? If there is no link, find one or make one plausible.

Bush was waiting for Saddam to so much as pass gas so he could call it a biological attack and invade.

Next, Plunker will provide us with next week's Lotto numbers. :rolleyes:

Bush gets credit for Libya coming to its senses......a process that has been taking place for years?

So, 9/11 is Clinton's fault and Libya is to Bush Jr's credit?

Oh, well that makes perfect sense.

Man, where do you come up with this stuff? You're killin' me.

I guess if your only selected source of information is Drudge and The Weekly Standard you're bound to be ill-informed. :rolleyes:

h2o,

If you can't recognize that the vast majority of the media has a liberal bias, then it is you who are blind. (and if you are sickened, I suggest you throw-up).

GoHarley,

Why do you bother making a post that says nothing? (nevermind, I think I know).

Gawldamn Slab! Watchin' the 5:00 news must just be hell for you... Huh? Tryin' to eat dinner and decidin' what's liberal propaganda and what ain't all at the same time! :p

I'm willing to bet Slab tuned his telly to Fox then busted the remote.

Given that Richard Clark served under both Reagan and Bush Sr., I find it hard to blatantly label him as "uncredible." He may have a bit of chip on his shoulder for having a lesser roll in GWB's cabinet, I don't see how you can dismiss his book / testimony immediately.

Clarke transcript

RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, 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. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And 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.

And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. 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.

So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda..

So Clarke, which was it? The admin didn't or did want to go after AQ??

A little more reading enjoyment...

The sixth point, the newly-appointed deputies — and you had to remember, the deputies didn't get into office until late March, early April. The deputies then tasked the development of the implementation details, uh, of these new decisions that they were endorsing, and sending out to the principals.

Over the course of the summer — last point — they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance.

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.


Oh, and this whole transcript came from and interview in 8/2002


One more thing, I am not Blatantly labeling him as not credible but I also don't think that he should be the final word either as some of the left would like people to think..

For those who think Richard Clarke deserves credibility, read on...

Clarke Blocked bin Laden Extradition

Clinton administration diplomatic troubleshooter Mansoor Ijaz charged Monday that one-time White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke blocked efforts to gather intelligence on al Qaeda and torpedoed a deal to have Osama bin Laden extradited from Afghanistan in the years before the 9/11 attacks.

"I was personally asked to brief Condoleezza Rice's deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley on exactly what had gone wrong in the previous efforts to get bin Laden out of the Sudan, to get the terrorism data out of the Sudan, which I negotiated the offer for," Ijaz told Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends."

He said he also personally negotiated a deal "to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 2000, using at Abu Dhabi Royal Family as a proxy to get him out on an extradition offer."

But Ijaz told Fox:

"In each case of things that were involved in the Clinton administration, Richard Clarke himself stepped in and blocked the efforts that were being made over and over and over again."

The unofficial diplomat said that if Clarke hadn't put up roadblocks to obtaining Sudanese intelligence, the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 might have been prevented.

He called Clarke's account denying offers of Sudanese cooperation "absolutely disingenuous; it comes very close to flat-out lying."

After months of denials from his former aides, ex-President Clinton finally admitted that he personally turned down the offer by Sudan to arrest bin Laden.

"We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again," Clinton told a New York business group in February 2002.

"They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

"So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan."

In his book, "Against All Enemies," Clarke called reports that Clinton had turned down the Sudanese offer "a fable."

See: *News Article*