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Just 31 Weeks Left: The Bush Blooper Reel, with Dick Clarke

By Mark Grueter

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My school's president, Bob Kerrey, is receiving attention this week because of some of the comments he’s made while serving on the “independent” commission responsible for investigating events surrounding 9/11.

On Tuesday morning, a petulant Kerrey asked former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, “What the hell is the point of actionable intelligence if you cannot act on it?” Later that afternoon he caught current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in an obvious, subtle contradiction. Because all of the intelligence before 9/11 warned us that an attack from al-Qaeda was extremely likely to occur at any moment, why did we not act on that intelligence? By act, Kerrey was referring not only to beefing up domestic security but also the use of military force when we knew that option was being recommended by insiders.

Rumsfeld responded by saying that a military plan couldn’t be acted upon because it lacked public support. This answer came after Rummy insisted that the Bush administration had a military plan in place and would have gone into Afghanistan even if the relevant events on 9/11 hadn’t happened. So, if the Bush team was reluctant to crack down on terrorism in Afghanistan because of a lack of public support before 9/11 what would allow them to commence the crackdown after 9/11, assuming the events of 9/11 didn’t happen - that was Kerrey’s question? “I understand,” replied Rummy and that’s all he could say. But then Kerrey ran out of his allotted time and that, was that.

The 9/11 commission’s proceedings are the main event this week, partly as a result of Richard Clarke’s appearance on 60 minutes and a few other talk shows. Clarke is the former chief of counter-terrorism for Presidents Clinton and Bush II. Clarke also served as a senior official under Reagan and Bush I. In a new book called Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, Clarke says that George W. Bush did not do all that he could have done to prevent 9/11. He claims the Bush team ignored much of the intelligence information and advice that he and others had offered. Yes, 9/11 could have, should have been prevented. Moreover, Clarke documents first-hand experiences of how Bush and others were looking toward Iraq as early as September 12, 2001. On that day, Bush called Clarke into his office to tell him to look for a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Not to manufacture a link - nothing that overtly sinister. The point Clarke makes is that Bush was quite obviously hoping that Saddam was involved so that he could justify an invasion of Iraq (as we found out later, Bush didn’t let this non-connection stop him). In short, Bush did a “terrible job” fighting terrorism, wrote Clarke.

These are explosive charges because they come from someone with bipartisan credibility, high up in the ranks. This is a much bigger story than former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill coming out against his former boss. Clarke has no political agenda; he was just angry with the lack of leadership and direction on the part of the Bush team. The Bush people are now, of course, doing all they can to smear Clarke. First they said that Clarke was simply auditioning for a job in a hypothetical John Kerry administration. After Clarke said that he would refuse to work for Kerry, the Bush people now say, well, that doesn’t matter because Clarke has a friend, you see, who works for Kerry. This “friend” is Rand Beers, the individual who briefly replaced Clarke on Bush’s staff in February 2003. Beers quickly resigned from the White House because of similar complaints.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the US government had not done enough to protect America before 9/11. As Bob Kerrey noted, all our defense and intelligence services were “defeated, utterly” on that day. The trouble with the way most politicians discuss this issue is that they blame the opposing party. It’s sort of ridiculous. On this non-ideological issue, all the Republicans line up to blame Bill Clinton for not adequately addressing the al-Qaeda/terrorist threat while all the Democrats, of course, blame Bush for the dereliction. What a coincidence. The obvious answer to this pseudo-riddle is that both parties are to blame. But this “independent” 9/11 commission consists of 5 Republicans and 5 Democrats - no independents.

That is one issue. The other issue is Iraq. I have yet to hear any hawk provide a persuasive reason why it made sense and/or why it was necessary to attack Iraq before the al-Qaeda threat had been contained. To say that resources were not diverted from both Afghanistan and the war on terror to fight the war in Iraq is to deny reality. Osama bin Laden is the individual primarily responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on 9/11, yet, he is still-at-large and al-Qaeda, along with a slew of other related Islamic terrorist groups are still a threat to the “civilized world.” Even if one believes Saddam was connected to terrorism, we know that he was not behind 9/11, so it defied logic to go into Iraq before those responsible for 9/11 were eliminated. Only if we possessed an endless supply of resources and military personnel could the strategy of invading Iraq have made sense.

Bush brags about all the work he’s done to protect the country in the wake of 9/11. But when you ask anyone in the administration if there could be a repeat of 9/11 “tomorrow” they all invariably say, Yes. Combine this admission with the recent bombing in Madrid and the frequent terrorist attacks in Iraq and one is left to wonder. As Richard Clarke said Monday night on the Charlie Rose Show: “there have been more terrorist attacks, and more deaths from terrorism in the 30 months following 9/11 than there were in the 30 months prior to 9/11.” So, we are less safe now than we were on 9/11. How can Bush now continue to say he’s a great job fighting terrorism?

Click here for last week's column.

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Mark Grueter is a writer living in New York City.  He may be contacted at [email protected].

© 2004 Me Three