Another Bush insider spills the beans.

[skywalker]

I doubt that the people who lost family members would agree with your summation Timber.

I respectfully disagree.To revisit the past and determine what was done and not done properly, can certainly help us to avoid future attacks and make us stronger.

Mark

[Timber Loftis]

Yes, but determining what was wrong with our SYSTEM and INFORMATION that kept us from predicting unforseeable things is NOT the same as pointing fingers and saying "he did it, she did it."

We have a real technology problem where security is concerned. Our ability to collect information has outpaced our ability to sort, organize, and make sense of that information tenfold.

Perhaps the best thing that can be learned is that we need to concentrate on information management technologies -- not just gathering -- for a while. Google can turn up a bazillion pages for you, but that doesn't help you if the page you need is the 45th one. This is the current problem we have right now. The day before yesterday, one of the guys testifying spoke to this very issue.

Pulling a few hundred thousand information/communication pieces out of the air is easy. But here is what is still nearly impossible, for instance: realizing that piece #4,567 (a cell phone call in arabic), combined with piece #3,672 (a scrap of paper found in Afghanistan 2 months ago), plus piece #17,267 (database information about a terrorist's residence in a foreign country and ties to the country) = bomb going off in X town during Y week. That is very difficult, especially moreso when AQ was less of a concern pre-9/11.

When 9/11 happened we all did this ------> [img]graemlins/jawdrop.gif[/img] Now we want to say someone was asleep at the switch? Puh-lease.

[Ronn_Bman]

Originally posted by skywalker: it's all a matter of which side you believe and support.

I think THAT is the best point made in this thread, and it completely sums up this forum.

It's all a matter of which side you believe and support.

What someone says seems undeniably true, if it reinforces what you already believed. If you didn't believe it before hand, then you can see holes in it.

If Clark had come out praising the Bush administration's job and received the press he's receiving now, this thread would still be here, but everyone would just switch sides.

That he's making money on a book about the subject? It's completely acceptable and understandable if/as long as what he says bolsters this position, but if the other side does it let's crucify them.

That he's made contradictory statements and explained them by saying it was his job to highlight the good and downplay the bad then? That's ok, too, as long as what he's saying now works for us, but we'll completely dismiss anyone or anything brought forward that opposes our view if they've done the same. We 'massage' the truth, but the other side, well, they lie.

I don't think Clark is lying. I think he's telling his story from his perspective. Just because that doesn't match up with everyone else's perspective doesn't make him the white knight nor does prove that the Bush administration is an evil dragon. It's one man's perspective, and it only as important OR as deceptive as our own personal opinions of the issue. I'd have more respect for it, if he didn't release his book during the 911 hearings in an election year in order to up the sales, but then, I don't completely buy what he's selling because it doesn't support my perspective. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[skywalker]

You do realise one of the reasons the book came out now? It was that the text had to be cleared by people whose job is to check out the possible classified info in the book before it could be published.

As I said before, let the Bush people discredit Clarke's testimony, but do it in public, before the committee, and under oath. Otherwise, I'm not giving them much credence.

Mark

[EDIT] For clarity.

[ 03-26-2004, 11:03 AM: Message edited by: skywalker ]

[Timber Loftis]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/c...20040326.shtml

Partisan Clarke
Charles Krauthammer (back to web version) | Send

March 26, 2004

WASHINGTON -- It is only March but the 2004 Chutzpah of the Year Award can be safely given out. It goes to Richard Clarke, now making himself famous by blaming the Bush administration for 9/11 -- after Clarke had spent eight years in charge of counterterrorism for a Clinton administration that did nothing.

The 1990s were al Qaeda's springtime: Blissfully unmolested in Afghanistan, it trained, indoctrinated, armed and, most fatally, planned. For the United States, this was a catastrophic lapse, and in a March 2002 interview on PBS' ``Frontline,'' Clarke admitted as such: ``I believe that had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier, that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around the world would have been destroyed.'' Instead, ``now we have to hunt (them) down country by country.''

What should we have done during those lost years? Clarke answered: ``Blow up the camps and take out their sanctuary. Eliminate their safe haven, eliminate their infrastructure. ... That's ... the one thing in retrospect I wish had happened.''

It did not. And who was president? Clinton. Who was the Clinton administration's top counterterrorism official? Clarke. He now says that no one followed his advice. Why did he not speak out then? And if the issue was as critical to the nation as he now tells us, why didn't he resign in protest?

Clinton had one justification after another for going on the offensive: American blood spilled in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the embassy bombings of 1998, the undeniable act of war in the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Response: A single, transparently useless, cruise missile attack on empty Afghan tents, plus a (mistaken!) attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory.

As Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen testified, three times the CIA was ready with plans to assassinate Osama. Every time, President Clinton stood them down, because ``We're not quite sure.''

We're not quite sure -- a fitting epitaph for the Clinton antiterrorism policy. They were also not quite sure about taking Osama when Sudan offered him up on a silver platter in 1996. The Clinton people turned Sudan down, citing legal reasons.

The ``Frontline'' interviewer asked Clarke whether failing to blow up the camps and take out the Afghan sanctuary was a ``pretty basic mistake.''

Clarke's answer is unbelievable; ``Well, I'm not prepared to call it a mistake. It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues. ... There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals.''

This is significant for two reasons. First, if the Clarke of 2002 was telling the truth, then the Clarke of this week -- the one who told the 9/11 commission under oath that ``fighting terrorism in general and fighting al Qaeda, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration -- certainly (there was) no higher priority'' -- is a liar.

Second, he becomes not just a perjurer but a partisan perjurer. He savages Bush for not having made al Qaeda his top national security priority, but he refuses even to call a ``mistake'' Clinton's staggering dereliction in putting Yasser Arafat and Yugoslavia(!) above fighting al Qaeda.

Clarke gives Clinton a pass and instead concentrates his ire on Bush. For what? For not having pre-emptively attacked Afghanistan? On what grounds -- increased terrorist chatter in June and July 2001?

Look. George W. Bush did not distinguish himself on terrorism in the first eight months of his presidency. Whatever his failings, however, they pale in comparison to those of his predecessor.

Clinton was in office eight years, not eight months. As Clarke himself said in a 2002 National Security Council briefing, the Clinton administration never made a plan for dealing with al Qaeda and never left one behind for the Bush administration.

Clarke says he pushed very hard for such critical anti-al Qaeda measures as aid to and cooperation with Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan's Northern Alliance. By his own testimony, the Clinton administration then spent more than two years -- October 1998 to December 2000, the very time the 9/11 plot was hatched -- fruitlessly debating this and doing absolutely nothing.

Clarke is clearly an angry man, angry that Condoleezza Rice demoted him, angry that he was denied a coveted bureaucratic job by the Bush administration. Angry and unreliable. He told the commission to disregard what he said in his 2002 briefing because he was, in effect, spinning. ``I've done it for several presidents,'' he said. He's still at it, doing it now for himself.

©2004 Washington Post Writers Group
__________________________________________

Personally, I think town hall is equally full of shit in trying to blame Clinton. I think handing out blame for this is just a pretend make-believe thing. It's based on the idea that for every bad thing that happens someone must be at fault. I want to know who is to blame for the weather, dammit. Oh, wait, these days we got an answer for that one, too.

We convince ourselves we know too much. We make up a lot of meaningless crap that we consider to be "history."

But, it is funny trying to watch one side throw blame at the other, while ducking it themselves. It's like a snowball fight -- you're going to end up wet whether you win or lose.

[skywalker]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Yes, but determining what was wrong with our SYSTEM and INFORMATION that kept us from predicting unforseeable things is NOT the same as pointing fingers and saying "he did it, she did it." We have a real technology problem where security is concerned. Our ability to collect information has outpaced our ability to sort, organize, and make sense of that information tenfold. Perhaps the best thing that can be learned is that we need to concentrate on information management technologies -- not just gathering -- for a while. Google can turn up a bazillion pages for you, but that doesn't help you if the page you need is the 45th one. This is the current problem we have right now. The day before yesterday, one of the guys testifying spoke to this very issue. Pulling a few hundred thousand information/communication pieces out of the air is easy. But here is what is still nearly impossible, for instance: realizing that piece #4,567 (a cell phone call in arabic), combined with piece #3,672 (a scrap of paper found in Afghanistan 2 months ago), plus piece #17,267 (database information about a terrorist's residence in a foreign country and ties to the country) = bomb going off in X town during Y week. That is very difficult, especially moreso when AQ was less of a concern pre-9/11. When 9/11 happened we all did this ------> [img]graemlins/jawdrop.gif[/img] Now we want to say someone was asleep at the switch? Puh-lease.

Just wondering, Timber. Have you seen any of the testimony that occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday this week?

Mark

[Timber Loftis]

And, let's try to remember what this really is: the most successful BOOK TOUR in history.
_______________________________________________
Today's NY Times:

Ex-Aide's Book Corners Market in Capital Buzz
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

Published: March 26, 2004

WASHINGTON, March 25 — On the first day, the hottest new book in town sold out in an hour at Politics and Prose and sales clerks turned away dozens of disappointed buyers. On the second day, the store called three national book wholesalers, which announced they did not have a single copy left.

That was when Barbara Meade knew that Richard A. Clarke, the author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," was the genuine article, an unexpected literary phenomenon whose account of counterterrorism failures within the Bush administration has been flying off the shelves this week.

"It's reached a point now where if you're going to be in the loop in Washington you probably have to say you've read the book," Ms. Meade, co-owner of Politics and Prose, said, adding that she believed she now has enough copies to last through the weekend.

In Washington, Mr. Clarke's book is not just the talk of the town, it is practically the only conversation in town, having — in just four days — hijacked the news agenda and placing him in the ranks of other best-selling Washington authors like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. On Amazon.com, it is ranked first, outselling even "The South Beach Diet." And some booksellers around the country are struggling to keep up with demand for the book, which has gone into its fifth printing since it went on sale on Monday.

*snip*

[Timber Loftis]

Just wondering, Timber. Have you seen any of the testimony that occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday this week?

Very, very little. Wish I had a TV in my office, but alas and alack. If you have a link to transcripts or (better yet) summaries of transcripts, I'd love to check it out in fact. As you may be able to guess, I'm trying to read all I can about it, so it's not that I think I can comment on something without studying up on it -- I just haven't been able to catch it yet.

EDIT -- never mind, found some links myself.

FYI -- www.9-11commission.gov

[ 03-26-2004, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[skywalker]

I have not found transcripts yet, but I have seen video testimony here and it is by far much more satisfying than reading text. There is a quite a bit of video to watch, but I have an advantage (?) I have lots of time (unemployed).

I also do not really care much for reporters, pundits and assorted other professional hacks' summations of Clarke's words and his book. I prefer to see and read it myself and make my own conclusions, biased as they may be.

That said I find the attempts to discredit testimony less helpful to the process than trying to point out who actually failed.

Clarke himself accepted the failure himself and hoped for forgiveness in his opening statements. So far no one else has extended the same courtesy, that I know of.

Mark

[EDIT] Whoa! I finally made it 3000 posts!

[ 03-26-2004, 11:30 AM: Message edited by: skywalker ]

[skywalker]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: And, let's try to remember what this really is: the most successful BOOK TOUR in history. _______________________________________________ Today's NY Times: Ex-Aide's Book Corners Market in Capital Buzz By RACHEL L. SWARNS Published: March 26, 2004 WASHINGTON, March 25 — On the first day, the hottest new book in town sold out in an hour at Politics and Prose and sales clerks turned away dozens of disappointed buyers. On the second day, the store called three national book wholesalers, which announced they did not have a single copy left. That was when Barbara Meade knew that Richard A. Clarke, the author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," was the genuine article, an unexpected literary phenomenon whose account of counterterrorism failures within the Bush administration has been flying off the shelves this week. "It's reached a point now where if you're going to be in the loop in Washington you probably have to say you've read the book," Ms. Meade, co-owner of Politics and Prose, said, adding that she believed she now has enough copies to last through the weekend. In Washington, Mr. Clarke's book is not just the talk of the town, it is practically the only conversation in town, having — in just four days — hijacked the news agenda and placing him in the ranks of other best-selling Washington authors like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. On Amazon.com, it is ranked first, outselling even "The South Beach Diet." And some booksellers around the country are struggling to keep up with demand for the book, which has gone into its fifth printing since it went on sale on Monday. *snip*

So is there something inherently evil about making lots of money on a book?

Does that make the text less than genuine?

I'm glad he is making a ton of money and if the book manages to shave a few points off Bush's lead in the Presidential Polls without him having to workfor Kerry - all the better. In my own little quasi-partisan way, it makes me smile (quasi because I'm not a Democrat).

Mark