Ex-Aide Says Bush Doing 'Terrible Job'

I caught just a glimpse of this "60 Minutes" headline while watching Texas squeak past NC. This Yahoo headline filled in the gaps and made my week! Amazing article - very damning for * due to the nature of info and the scope of the coverage!!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040320/ap_on_go_pr_wh/terrorism_adviser_14

in tracking down some dudes in a cave.

to start work on Richard Clarke first thing on Monday. Limbaugh and others will say that he's making these charges just to cover his own mistakes.

Who cares what a chickenhawk has to say?

on Friday. And I'm just posting here so we have a heads-up where they're going to go-this is article they'll be citing. They'll also claim he's disgruntled cause he was demoted by Bush, his post reduced from a once cabinet-level position, and sent over to be in charge of blocking CyberTerror.

But with his retirement, Clarke's career accomplishments should be noted.

In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.

In 1998, according to the New Republic, Clarke "played a key role in the Clinton administration's misguided retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which targeted bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan." The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.

Trying his hand in cyberspace, Clarke's most lasting contribution is probably the new corporate exemption in the Freedom of Information Act. Originally designed to immunize companies against the theoretical malicious use of FOIA by competitors, journalists and other so-called miscreants interested in ferreting out cyber-vulnerabilities, it was suggested well before the war on terror as a measure that would increase corporate cooperation with Uncle Sam. Clarke labored and lobbied diligently from the NSC for this amendment to existing law, law which he frequently referred to as an "impediment" to information sharing.

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/143

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http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml - go to the bottom of the page and click on "feedback" and you're in.

Viacom, owner of both CBS and the publisher of Clarke's book, is a major donor to Kerry; Clarke's best friend is Kerry's foreign policy advisor... but, hey, why concentrate on the message when one can attack the messenger?

This is not the Drudge article, the thread you locked earlier had a lot of new information!

here's some of the info.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' 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.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

<snip>
Spring of '01 Clarke relates, "I began saying, 'We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.' Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, 'No, no, no. We don't have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.'

Please. Everyone. See the interview if possible. If not, read the article cited in rmpalmer's post. And realize just how much the tide has turned when a major news organization does their own homework to show that the adminstration's defense is a lie.

I think Bush will have to resign over this. Seriously.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

http://grytpype.dailykos.com/story/2004/3/21/44141/6101

Like that new show, Touching Evil--there's a part of his brain missing where he is immune from any sense of shame.

His lackeys won't let him resign. They will continue to defend and support their republican puppet. Glad I didn't vote for him.

his resignation and don't let up on it..do what the freepers do--mass mail everyone, make calls, fax, just do it. We must get the entire mob OUT now because we're not going to make it to election time. Look what they're doing in other countries.

And try it, yourself!

That the republican party has become a complete tool for corporations and the ruling elite? People DIE when a corrupt cabal controls the most powerful country in the world. It is time for republicans to see the obvious and stop supporting these criminals. I hope they see past the lies and look at what this administration is really doing. Voters with half a brain must reject a republican party that has become nothing more than a powerful criminal organization. True patriots will VOTE KERRY !

Crown Princes don't resign.

Besides, he's on a mission from God, remember?

The article says ...

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.

It wasn't "to deal with an eventual al-Qaida attack." It wasn't "to deal with an al-Qaida attack." It was "the" attack. I just keep seeing too many clues that 9-11 was foreseen.

Hell, Clinton's team told them so.

Perhaps this snip rom Al Franken's book is relevant:

Bill Clinton's far-reaching plan to eliminate al Qaeda root and branch was completed only a few weeks before the inauguration of George W. Bush. If it had been implemented then, a former senior Clinton aide told Time, we would be handing a war when they took office." Instead, Clinton and company decided to turn over the plan to the Bush administration to carry out. Clinton trusted Bush to protect America. This proved, nine months later, to be a disastrous mistake - perhaps the biggest one Clinton ever made.

Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger remembered how little help the previous Bush administration had provided to his team. Believing that the nation's security should transcend political bitterness, Berger arranged ten briefings for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. Berger made a special point of attending the briefing on terrorism. He told Dr. Rice, “I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.''

Which brings me to a lie. When Time asked about the conversation, Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present" Perhaps so, Dr. Rice. But might I direct our mutual friends, my readers, to a certain December 30, 2001, New York Times article? Perhaps you know the one, Condi? Shall I quote it? "As he prepared to leave office last January, Mr. Berger met with his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and gave her a warning. According to both of them, he said that terrorism-and particularly Mr. bin Laden's brand of it-would consume far more of her time than she had ever imagined."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
And the Hart-Rudman Commission warned of this type of stuff on February 15, 2001! They are the ones who proposed an actual, functioning Homeland Security agency months before they elevated that turd Tom Ridge to a newly created cabinet post so he could play with color crayons, visqueen, and duct tape.

link to Hart-Rudman report: http://www.nssg.gov/PhaseIIIFR.pdf

So I agree with your observation, TahitiNut.

He tried calling Clarke a liar on 60 Minutes. Then Stahl told him they had independent sources to back up what Clarke said-- 1 of whom was present at the conversation where they essentially told Clarke to find a connection to Iraq.

You should have seen him squirm! He was pulling a Rummy-- All "uh...um...erm, well..." and you could just see his little brain thinking,"Who leaked...who leaked?"

That interview was great.

stammering, stuttering, like almost having a psychological breakdown. Her face looked contorted. I'm telling the honest truth, in my opinion. Anyone else see her?

If so, she deserves it. At the very least.

the Media Whores reporting this? A National Security Advisor having a Psychotic Breakdown and Democracy and the Media are just going to look the other way?

Why isn't a person in a position to affect nucluear weapons being used, advising conventional weapons to be used in the butching of 10's of thousands of people NOT required to submit to period drug and psychological testing? OK, let's just make the bus drivers submit that!

Ive never seen that in her before. She was telling a ball faced lie and she knows it. SHe is at the middle of what she was lying about. There will be more people coming forward with more of the same. Too many people know and many have consious'"

all the investigations have to come out and be thrust in the publics face...over and over...we have to get his poll numbers down to nothing..
Im working my ass off in my little part of the world to do what I can..we have got to get that son of a bitch out of the white house.
One voice at a time, one voice at a time..
the big guns have to come out now..we marched, we marched again..Lets put some heat on the whores in the media..this needs to be impeachable news..

Hell, no, they still want to chase the Cleeeeenis!

the Nazi Party won't "investigate" itself unless it can blame it on the Cleeeeeenis!

Isn't it ironic that some of Bush's biggest 9-11 critics have
come from not only Republicans but people in his own cabinet.

They are starting to jump ship; I think they want to clear their names and avoid being caught up.

I predict that more people within the Bush Administration will come forward with information about 9-11.

But ee've got to help keep this story alive so that more people in Bush's Administration get nervous and come forward with evidence on 9-11 and Iraq.

I, too, am working my ass off in my little part of the world. But is it just you and me, girlfriend? I called CBS AND CNN today, and left emails, AND called my congressman and my Senators, AND also Ted Kennedy's office. But sheesh, we can't do it alone! We need MANY MORE PEOPLE on the case, too!

These folks only listen to large numbers.

intellligence about terror that TRILLIONS of dollars was spent to collect. don't trust the scientists that have spent FIFTY TO A HUNDRED YEARS AND MORE gathering about weather and the environment and our effects on nature.

this will be his undoing of course, trusting only his own manipulative people, and never listening to the real authorities. bush's lack of respect for others and complete disregard for the people we've paid to find out the truth makes him an easy target for Kerry's people.

I understand there's a whole slough of books that have come out which are damning to Bush, one way or another. Mostly it's government people who were ousted or just quit because they could see what was coming down the road.

I called Powell's Books in Portland, and they said there's a whole section on books which "tell the Whole Story about Bush". Should be interesting. I think I'll go down and take a look.

I'm dying to read it, as well as Mr. Clarke's book.

I love that Boy George's harshest critics are people from his own administration, as well as lifelong Repubs like O'Neill! BTW, if you haven't read "The Price of Loyalty," it's excellent!

"Worse than Watergate." Also, Larry Flynt's supposed to be coming out with one that has bush's abortion scandal detailed, with names named and I's dotted and T's crossed (so he says), and of course, there's also Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 911"...

announcer just read a quote from the book, saying that Bush wasn't the only one that wanted to go after Iraq right after the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon happened. She said that Rumsfeld told the "President" that there were no good targets to bomb in Afghanistan, but Iraq was full of good targets, so why not start there.

There's no other way.

He stole an election and then committed treason by letting us get attacked.

He's gonna steal the next election too if he isn't impeached or forced to resign - the Diebold rigged paperless voting machines and the Goebbels/Riefenstahl rallies have all been set up now.

The only way we're gonna get rid of this criminal is by impeaching him or calling for his resignation.

You've seen how much Bush cheats. He laughs at our notions of democracy. Impeach the bastard and put him in front of a firing squad.

A vote for Bush is a vote for Satan.

More people need to see this article, today!

O'Neil, and now Clarke. I'm sure there was more that I'm forgetting too.

It's a bad sign when the bureaucrats start resigning in disgust of you. They usually feel they can wait out ne'er-do-wells in temporary control - but to throw away long standing careers in bureaucracy out of disgust? And then write a book about it? There's some serious stuff going behind closed doors over there in D.C., and it's scaring the normally secure and blase 'crats into doing the normally unthinkable.

This is a bad sign.

...eight years earlier," Clarke told CBS for an interview Sunday on its 60 Minutes program.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-20-clarke_x.htm?csp=24

Terrific metaphor for VI...

it's about time Clarke spoke out.

Looks like the rabid, foaming freepers are busting this story as fast as they can. Everyone needs to get out and rate it!

edit - typo

government, isn't it? I guess the motive is power for those folks.

This morning a CSPAN caller responded to all the Rightwingers calling in. They were all saying this is politically motivated and "Why didn't Clarke come out right after 9 11. Why did he wait this long!"

C SPAN callers response: "If ClarkE had come out after 9 11, Repubs would have said that he was "UnAmerican" and not supportive of our troops."


I agree.people would have hung him out to dry. Now, more people ,hopefully, are beginning to see that Bush lied and continues to lie.

That slime Condi is so pompous and she lies like a rug too.

ClarkE is my new hero! He handled that interview beautifully. He was forceful when he needed to get that silly Stahl out of her "shock and awe" from his statements.

He was sincere and honest to me. Everything that he said to describe Bush really did not surprise me. Any number of people have talked about his lack of focus.It is no secret that Bush is not engaged in any meaningful way. He only cared about those Baseball cards with pictures of the "'tearis" as he calls them.

wonder if it will live up to the advance billing?

when I saw this as a headline in my Sunday paper. This is VERY VERY damning, lets see how much publicity it receives.

certain hosts and callers are totally dismissing this revelation. Saying the person was experiencing "sour grapes" for being fired.

It's just astoundingly unbelievable what the right will do and say!!!!!!

Halliburton, Bechtel and Kellogg Brown & Root, think Dubya's doing a fantastic job.

- good to see this as the AOL lead news story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13607-2004Mar21.html

<snip>

Among the motives for the war, Clarke argues, were the politics of the 2002 midterm election. "The crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to 'run on the war,' " Clarke writes.

Clarke describes his book, in the preface, as "factual, not polemical," and he said in an interview that he was a registered Republican in the 2000 election.

<snip>

Like former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who spoke out in January, Clarke said some of Bush's leading advisers arrived in office determined to make war on Iraq. Nearly all of them, he said, believed Clinton had been "overly obsessed with al Qaeda."

<snip>

"I could hardly believe," Clarke writes, that Wolfowitz pressed the "totally discredited" theory that Iraq was behind the 1993 truck bomb at the World Trade Center, "a theory that had been investigated for years and found to be totally untrue."

<snip>

(last night)"Given what George Tenet and Colin Powell have said publicly about Iraqi links to al Qaeda, I just find it hard to understand how Dick Clarke can be so dismissive of the possibility that there were links between them," Wolfowitz said.

Who had any idea? We've only known that for three frigging years.
Its real simple. Bush is as dumb as a bag of hay. He doesn't belong in the White House. Osama waited to attack America until stupid was there. Any questions?

I can't get the image out of my head from 60 Minutes interview of Clarke describing Bush asking for "playing cards" with all the Al Queda leaders so that he could cross their names out with a red X after their capture. And I think Clarke got right to the heart of Bush's conceptual limitations with that example. That is apparently about all Bush feels he needs to know or can grasp about the threat of international terror. It is beyond scary that foreign policy issues need to be explained to the man in charge of our national security as if they were being taught to a slow learning fifth grader. "George says he likes his flash cards - they remind him of playing with baseball cards when he was a kid. He says: 'I'm a baseball fan. I want a scorecard.'"
http://www.dangerous.com/02-13-02.htm


It reminded me of reading Gail Sheehy's story about Bush in the October 2000 issue Vanity Fair. In an interview for CBC News on December 13, 2000, Sheehy again mentioned how Barbara Bush used to grill George for hours with flash cards:
"His mother was the one who took him under her protection when he had trouble in school and was drilling him with flash cards on Saturday morning as late as the 8th grade when he was 12 or 13 years old. Hiding, I think, his limitations to the degree that she could." http://www.cbc.ca/news/iraq/players/bush.html

Well the jig is up, Barbara, Poppy, Dick and Condi. You can't hide little Georgie's limitations anymore. I thought Kerry's line about how we couldn't afford to have a President who needed "on the job training" in foreign policy and national security played pretty well for him in the primaries. Well it's time to bring that line out again. When our country was attacked terrorists, our President needed to "lurn him his flashcards." I'd say that's some pretty remedial on the job training.

So what have we learned from former Bush insiders recently? His former top economic guy Paul O'Neill described him as a "blind man in a room full of deaf people" and as a man completely disengaged from economic policy. And his former top anti-terrorism guy come out and says that he basically has no grasp on the realities of the war on terror. In short, he's in the dark on the economy, foreign policy and national defense. If we can't beat this bozo this November, the game is fixed.

The flash cards are meaningful for Georgie. There are especially helpful for drill and practice with grades K - 3rd. Generally we stop using them, as an educational tool,after that level.

The fact that he would ask someone of the stature of Clarke to get cards so he could remember the names and faces is just amazing.

I thought the interview cut to the chase . It vividly pointed out the intellectual weakness of our fearless leader.

We have a 3rd grader living at the White House and he is presenting himself as the leader of the free world.
Oh my God!

what took you so long to get here? Welcome to the DU! :hi:

:toast:

Bush is prolly thanking Sharon for providing today's BIG Story......BBC is all Hamas, all the time, too.

Nice.

P.

287 pages of love and happiness to read. Should be better than your average Harlequin. I read the O'Neil book and it was not polite to Bush either. Suskind put all 19,000 of his referenced documents on line for people to view if they had doubts or questions. Maybe Clarke will put his information and sources on line also.

Just saw Barbara Comstock on MSNBC getting nailed about Richard Clarke's book by Dan Abrams. Basically he told her that unless she could prove that Richard Clarke was a serial liar that the things he said about Rumsfeld wanting to bomb Iraq after the war were downright scary. She tried to smear Clarke for being politically motivated. I have to give her credit though. It takes some pretty big stones to go on national TV and assert that the top counter-terrorism official in the US' first person factual recounting of the events leading up to and following 9/11 are wrong while having absolutely no facts to back yourself up and just basically having to make shit up as you go along.

I also got the impression that maybe Frank Luntz or somebody told her to be sure to use the name "Dick Clark" as many times as possible on TV to make the charges seem less serious, as though they were just some of George and Dick's Bloopers and and Rummy's Practical Jokes (he wasjust joking about that "whole bomb Iraq cuz there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan" thing after all!). She deserves credit for that too because now I can't get Barry Manilow's rendition of the American Bandstand theme out of my head.

I'm sick of these straw man arguments by the GOP flunkies going unquestioned. Frankly, I don't give a shit if Clarke's impression that Condi Rice didn't know what Al Queda can be proved or not. That is the first thing that they all mention. "How absurd that he would think Condi Rice didn't know that?" Who cares? It's called an impression. He's not asserting that that is the absolute truth. Clarke's conversations with GWB and Rumsfeld after 9/11 and the inaction before 9/11 are things that can be proved factually accurate or inaccurate and so far they look pretty solid. Defending the baboon whose only instructions to his top anti-terrorism official could only grunt out "Iraq! Saddam! Find out! Connection!" ala Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein as a steady hand after 9/11 is what's absurd.