Let slip the counterattack dogs
The political firestorm over Clarke's recent accusations intensifies.
US President George W. Bush failed to adequately grasp the threat of Al Qaeda before the attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, then reacted with "an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide." This bold position articulated in the recently published memoir of the Bush administration's former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke continues to create a media buzz.
Mr. Clarke also charged in his memoir that Mr. Bush, in a meeting after Sept. 11, pressured him to find a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, even after he had told the president that his previous investigations had turned up no such link.
"At the worst possible moment, [the memoir]
undercuts Mr. Bush on the issue that he has made the unapologetic centerpiece of his administration and a linchpin of his re-election campaign: his handling of the global war on terror," reports
The New York Times. Not only is the timing bad for the the Bush administration, but Clarke's insider status gives him "special standing and credibility."
Clarke testifies today before the
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States an independent, bipartisan commission set up to investigate America's preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. In testimony before the 9/11 panel Tuesday, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
took the opportunity to dispute Clarke's charges indirectly, reports the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
But, other members of the White House were more direct in their rebuttal. In what a
Baltimore Sun report called Tuesday "a
full-scale counterattack" on Clarke, the White House vehmemently denied his charges. As the
Sun reports, Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that Clarke "wasn't in the loop, frankly" and "may have a grudge to bear."
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
questioned the timing of the Clarke's allegations in an interview Monday with
CNN.
I really don't know what Richard Clarke's motivations are, but I'll tell you this: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction, and he chose not to.
Ms. Rice has refused to testify before the 9/11 panel. In a
Washington Post "Media Notes" piece, columnist Howard Kurtz asks
why Rice won't testify while pointing out that the proceedings of the panel have been "sober-minded".
You also have to wonder, after watching such grownups as Tom Kean, Bob Kerrey, and John Lehman leading the questioning, why Condoleezza Rice won't testify in public. After all, she has no problem going on the morning shows and writing a Washington Post op-ed piece, but she can't go before the cameras for a bipartisan inquiry into the most important event of the Bush administration? Clarke has answered critics in the administration who accuse him of seeking to publish the book for political reasons by saying that the book could have been published in December, but was held back by the White House's own security review process. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan
addressed Clarke's claim:
His book went through the normal review process. It went through the normal national security review process to look at classification issues. This is standard practice to make sure that classified information is not inadvertently released. Dick Clarke could have released his book at any time, but the fact is he chose to release it at a time and in a way where he could maximize coverage to sell books, and at a time when he could have the impact to influence the political discourse. That's very clear.
Clarke seeks to answer some of the counterattacks from the White House in an interview with
Salon. He calls Mr. Cheney an "attack dog" and describes the "administration's attacks on his credibility as another
example of the 'big lie' strategy it has pursued since winning the White House."
Clarke is the second former White House insider to come forward with accusatory statements against the Bush administration's handling of the "war on terror" vis-a-vis the war in Iraq. Former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill alleged in a book published in January that toppling Saddam Hussein's regime was a top foreign policy objective
from the very beginning of Bush's presidency. A
Guardian editorial
compares the White House's reaction to Clarke's comments to O'Neill's comments.
That claim moved the White House to deposit a large volume of solids on Mr. O'Neill's head. He got away lightly, though, when compared with the president's former counter-terrorism chief. ... Every form of rebuttal and smear in the book - grudgebearer, minor official, friend of John Kerry - is now being deployed against the White House's accuser. Just about the only consolation for Mr. Clarke is that Ariel Sharon is not in charge of the administration's response. Conservative media in the US are rushing to discredit Clarke. The
Weekly Standard magazine seeks to
portray him as a man seeking to revise history for personal and political reasons.
In his own world, Clarke was the hero who warned Bush administration officials about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda ad nauseam. The Bush administration, in Clarke's world, just didn't care. In Clarke's world, eight months of Bush administration counterterrorism policy is more important than eight years of Clinton administration counterterrorism policy. ... In fact, Bush administration officials who worked with Clarke say his warnings about bin Laden were maddeningly vague. But
The New Zealand Herald reports that "Clarke may be the exception to the general rule that critical memoirs by former insiders have little lasting impact." The main reason the
Herald gives for this assessment is that Clarke is "an independent with Republican leanings who
cannot be accused of partisanship."
The Pakistani news site
HiPakistan reports that Clarke's allegations will be "especially damaging because they confirmed other previous revelations from policy insiders."
Also...
•
Machiavelli in the Middle East (
The Washington Post)
•
US law puts world ports on notice (
The New York Times)
•
Radical cleric 'was Al Qaeda instigator (
The Independent)
•
US envoy on historic Libya visit (
BBC)
•
Negative stereotyping at its worst (
Arab News)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Matthew Clark.
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