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Richard Clarke: "Bush ignored terrorism..."

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"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 September 11."

Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies", reveals that George W. Bush was soft on Al Quaida, and did not do what his counter-terrorism officials recommended to stop September 11 from happening.

Clarke revealed that just days after George W. Bush came into office, he sent a memo labeled "urgent" to National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, asking for a cabinet-level meeting to discuss the serious danger that Al Quaida posed to the United States. Bush Administration officials did not bother holding such a meeting until one week before September 11, 2001.

When Richard Clarke tried to get the Bush Administration to hold high level meetings about the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden, his requests were rejected, and Bush appointees such as Paul Wolfowitz insisted that Al Quaida was not a serious enough threat to merit their attention. These Bush Administration officials criticized President Clinton for focusing too much on the threat from Al Quaida. So, in what proved to be a fatal lapse in judgment, the Bush Administration relaxed the campaign to counter Bin Laden. This lapse would be repeated later, when Bush took resources from the hunt for Bin Laden in order to invade Iraq.

Clarke further comments that George W. Bush pressured him and other intelligence officials to create an official report linking Iraq and Al Quaida. When Clarke's report clearly stated that Iraq had no relationship with Al Quaida, he was told that his report had the "wrong answer" and that he should come back with a new report. Clarke says that all the intelligence Bush had told him that Iraq "did nothing to threaten us." Yet, Bush chose to ignore this intelligence."

Clarke served as a first hand witness to the plans of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld to invade Iraq, even without any reason to believe that Iraq posed any significant threat to the United States. According to Clarke, "The crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to 'run on the war." Apparently, the day after September 11, 2001, when it was already clear that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks, Donald Rumsfeld proposed bombing Iraq instead of Afghanistan simply because Iraq had more targets that would be easy to bomb. Rumsfeld, supported by Bush, continued to push for an invasion of Iraq in spite of information from the CIA, FBI and Richard Clarke himself that Iraq had done nothing to contribute to any attacks against America.

Richard Clarke's assessment of George W. Bush's record on national security? He says that George W. Bush "has made us less safe" and that "I think he's done a terrible job on the war on terrorism."

For the record, Richard Clarke was never fired. He worked in counter terrorism for presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He chose to resign from the White House of George W. Bush in 2003, after doing his best for two years to buttress the Bush Administration's weak and misdirected strategies to counter terrorist threats. There are no sour grapes here, just a leader with experience who is finally willing to tell the truth about George W. Bush's weakness in the face of terrorism.

We thank you, Mr. Clarke, for coming clean and telling the American public the uncomfortable truths that we should have heard from the lips of George W. Bush himself. We must now judge the Bush Administration for their reaction to Clarke's revelations. Will Bush and Cheney finally decide to be honest and tell the American people the whole truth?

Clarke, who has more experience dealing directly with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney than most Americans could ever dream of, isn't holding his breath. Rather, he expects the Bush Administration to try to cover up the truths he has exposed. "I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things," Clarke says, "and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me."

An Explosive New 9/11 Charge...

In a new documentary, former national-security aide Richard Clarke suggests the CIA tried to recruit 9/11 hijackers—then covered it up. Philip Shenon on George Tenet’s denial.

With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks only a month away, former CIA Director George Tenet and two former top aides are fighting back hard against allegations that they engaged in a massive cover-up in 2000 and 2001 to hide intelligence from the White House and the FBI that might have prevented the attacks.

The source of the explosive, unproved allegations is a man who once considered Tenet a close friend: former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who makes the charges against Tenet and the CIA in an interview for a radio documentary timed to the 10th anniversary next month. Portions of the Clarke interview were made available to The Daily Beast by the producers of the documentary.

Read More → An Explosive New 9/11 Charge @ thedailybeast.com

9/11 Commission Richard A. Clarke

On March 24, 2004, Clarke testified at the public 9/11 Commission hearings.[1] At the outset of his testimony Clarke offered an apology to the families of 9/11 victims and an acknowledgment that the government had failed: "I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11...", "To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in this room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."[1] Clarke was the only member of the Clinton or Bush Administrations who provided an apology to the family members of victims along with an acknowledgement of the government's failure.

Many of the events Clarke recounted during the hearings were also published in his memoir. Among his highly critical statements regarding the Bush Administration, Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the administration were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization by a pre-occupation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit".[2] After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke's version of the events.[3][4]

Prior to the 9/11 Commission, portions of the Clarke's August 6 Daily Briefing Memo to President Bush were subsequently redacted by The White House for national security reasons. Despite the title of the memo, in response to aggressive questioning from Richard Ben-Veniste – a Democratic member of the 9/11 Commission – Rice stated that the document "did not warn of attacks inside the United States." Clarke then asked on several occasions for early principals meetings on these issues, and was frustrated that no early meeting was scheduled. No principals committee meetings on Al-Qaida were held until September 4, 2001.[5]

In a late November truthout interview, former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal said, "Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of Al-Qaeda.. the Bush administration is trying to withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. I believe he told (Clarke) that he didn't want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible... The public has a right to know what happened on August 6, what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of them did, and what Richard Clarke's memos and statements were."[6]

Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, the only member of the 9/11 Commission to read the President's Daily Brief, revealed in the hearings that the documents "would set your hair on fire" and that the intelligence warnings of al-Qaida attacks "plateaued at a spike level for months" before 9/11.[7]

Elohim Reigns

Sunday, August 14, 2011

"I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me" and Who Is Rich Blee?

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