Clarke...running out of time and forums....

Ive been following this Clarke situation with some interest as Im reading the book.

It seems the Administration will, ultimatley, have the upper hand here, and Clarke will be discredited.

Ive seen Clarke four times on TV now:

a) 60 Minutes

b) Larry King

c) Testimony to the 9-11 Comission

d) Meet the Press.

Now, I havnt been counting, but the Administration can field a bunch of people to attack Clarke..Condi Rice, obviously, but also Scott McCellan, Rumsfeld, now the GOP Congressional delegation like Frist and Shays, and, perhaps, others. And, of course, their stable of right wing pundits.

So, Clarke, as credible and as good as an interviewee as he is, is just one guy with a limited number of forums availble to him. He wont be able to withstand the pile-on thats going on.

You can speak truth to power, but power has alot more voices to shout back at you and drown you out.

bu there are so many scandals just poised to erupt in the coming months. Clarke will give way to the Medicare scandal, which will give way to the Plame/Wilson scandal, which will circle round to 9/11 again, which will....etc. until Americans finally figure out that gee whilikers maybe * isn't always telling the truth!

I hope Kerry starts exploiting the hole in the Bush defense. On a related note he's (Clarke) is going to be on the daily show tomorrow, that'll be one to watch.

Sadaam Hussein Trial for prime-(election)-time.

Actually, I think that would be a good thing.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/28/saddam.attorney

Would like to see the trial held at The Hague International Court.

national security issue. The one to do it is Wesley Clark. He has already argued Clarke's case, and has also brought up the possible political exploitation of timing a Saddam trial. That's the one-two punch, all timed for the summer: capture Osama, try Saddam. Perfect, planned timing.

We will get totally steamrolled unless the doubts about Bush are hammered from now til election day.
I'm hoping once they're through with Clarke, Wes Clark is back on the airwaves, esp. before the VP nomination is announced. Because he can act more as an "analyst" like he did just before the Clarke book came out...

declassification of all documents related to 9/11 and what wasn't done prior. Clarke may have limited forums, but he has used his time wisely. Now even Powell is saying that the American people deserve to have all of this information declassified. As long as the Dems keep pressing the WH on this point, they will win this particular debate. If they don't release everything, everyone will know that they are hiding something.

There was a NYT article either on Friday or Saturday (was linked to here at DU) that lays out the GOP/Bush game plan re Clarke.

One thing they WANT to do is politicize the whole controversy, so for the Dems to jump in would be to play into the GOP hands.

on this issue because it deals with national security. its the perfect time to show that our party is strong on the issue and that Bush is not.

...Larry mentioned that he expected to see Clarke back on the show a few times.

Heard John W. Dean's book is due out soon. Anyone hear about this one? Will it contain anything that sticks???

and will read it when I finish Clarke's book.

It should be an interesting book but probably not as explosive as Clarke's since Dean is no longer an insider.

MzPip
:dem:

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I got the impression that one piece of fallout is that Shays committee is going to end up being discredited.

Also I have heard Frist speak up and then seem to back down. Are there heavyweight Republicans or the usual camera-ready types like Orrin Hatch who have attacked Clarke?

...and where is John Ashcroft?

The Daily Show
Hardball

he also did Late Edition today

When will he be on, and when does Hardball come on?

Hardball is on at 7pm EST (in the NYC market anyway)

Chris Mathews is so, well, hysterical, and Clarke is so composed. Should be an entertaining study in contrasts.

maybe there is a lot of very high up people behind him and possibly there could be more to come....other people coming out of the woodworks.

I haven't heard anything yet to make me doubt Clarke. That's the problem with the right-wing smears, they can't deny what he says in the book.

Did he present his plan to attack Al Qaeda in January, 2001 and was the plan finally approved on September 4th? Yes. So what took so long?

Was the position of counter-terrorism czar downgraded from a Cabinet position and forced to work through Cabinet deputies, further delaying the investigation into terror? Yes.

Did Bush* respond in any way to the USS Cole bombing? No.

Did Cheney's anti-terrorism task force ever meet before 9/11? No.

Never fear, history will be kind to Clarke.

what he is saying, they just have to wait him out. What he is saying doesn't appear to be making much of a dent in Bush's support. It doesn't appear to matter what this President does, his supporters don't waver. I mean, when a longstanding Repub appointee who was intimately involved in the situation, if not in charge of the situation, comes out and says that the President doesn't know what he is doing about the biggest foreign attack on US soil since, like, forEVER, and no one really thinks twice about it what the freak is the POINT. I mean, what does it TAKE????

Yeah, history will be very kind to Clarke, but it'll be too late by then.

Clarke only started talking a week ago. Give him some time, and I think things will change.
Bush's ratings dropped after Thanksgiving and the plastic turkey, they dropped after the Iraqis captured Saddam for him and he took the credit, and also after the "Mission Accomplished" histrionics he pulled. In all cases it took a lot of time-weeks-for it to build up momentum. It will still, so long as Clarke doesn't go back on what he said like O'Neill did.

Clarke is pretty damn fearless and hasnt reatracted a thing yet. I was really impressed the way he handled himself on MTP.

http://www.radiofreemonkey.com:8080/charts/img_bush_approval.gif

Looks like Niagra Falls . . . .

once the CIA and FBI decided it was al Qaeda?

When Clinton left office, the FBI and CIA hadn't decided who had done the bombing yet. That was why they sent John O'Neil to investigate and didn't the ambassador to Yemen do whatever she could to hamper the investigation? Is that how W responded?

Clarke mentions the CIA & FBI couldnt agree to who did the bombing, but he was pushing for a strike against al Quada anyway, but does agree with you about our ambassador hampering the investigation (but no motiviation ascribed).

He sort of drops this thread as the book moves into the Bush administration.

The lack of response to the Cole is for me still an open question.

The media can't report on the progress of the investigation because there isn't one. Or maybe there is.

and louder by the day.

and it's everywhere. Gaud, I just spent the entire weekend working in another mobile home park here in sunny fla and no one, i mean, NO ONE believes one word of the fucking chimp. They are pissed and watching the news channels, reading the papers, writing the editors and in short, kicking ass. He's going down, or the country is. Hope it's the former.

the more * and his goons pile on, the worse they look IMHO.

Other books are coming out at a rate of one per month or every other month.

They can't keep shouting these people down saying they are disgruntled, incompetent, etc.

They would have us believe that they hired these insane, incompetent into the highest positions in the government, and these people performed above adequately. They suddenly become inept when they leave and tell the country what really is going on in the secret * WH.

People are catching on to their bs.

Again, IMHO.

The issue is that can Clarke get the word out....and not be drowned out and spun out by the Administration and their media friends.

The other books...it depends on who wrote them.

Clarke (and O'Neill) are , to date, the most credible critiques as they authors are pretty credible.

do you have a problem with his credentials and/or credibility?

Wilson will be spun as no-shit sour grapes due to his wife being outed. Thats really tough to do with Clarke (and I think you are seeing the WH back-off from that and moving to a differnet line of attack on Clarke).

So Wilsons book can be much more easily dismissed than Clarkes as a "Bush hit piece".

What would be much more powerfull would be a grand jury indictment of key members of the Cheneys staff for the Plame outing. That would be much more damaging. Especially if his chief -of-staff was indicted.

Wilson will be spun as no-shit sour grapes due to his wife being outed.

Don't you think that's normal?

Don't you think that normal people can connect with that??

Don't you think that's adequate justification for him slamming this admin?

...I was just suggesting why Clarke would be more credible and tougher to spin, that he doesnt have an axe to grind....they tried that & he blew them out of the water, so now they are falling back to the "perjured tesimony" thing.

and be Bush's downfall.

In response to your original post, I think people in general
realize a number of things on a subconcious level:

-If Bush could stand by his record on terrorism, he would have nothing to
fear from Clarke

-There are only so many times you can cry "disgruntled employee" and be
taken seriously.

-"The Lady doth protest too much, methinks". In other words, there must
be some truth to this.

-ALL these book authors can't be wrong!

Can you imagine if Cheneys cheif-of-staff was indicted?

What would Cheney say...that he was "out of the loop"?

It would be a real firestorm.

This genie can't be put back in the bottle. It was the LAST thing Bush had to run on. Everything else is a catastrophe.

This was ALL he had. And he ain't got it anymore.

Clarke spoke under oath. Condi didn't. Above all, BUSH didn't. Clarke asked for forgiveness. Bush won't ever. Bush will never admit he did anything wrong.

Clarke has a book that's #1 at Amazon. People are reading it, handing it off to friends. That takes some time.

An ugly process has begun.

Bush has NOTHING to run on. NOTHING that can't be successfully challenged.

Kerry would have to knock up a nun and then murder her with his bare hands to look worse.

that breaks the bu$h's back. This is ammunition for Kerry to use in September and October when it has all settled down. The doubt has been planted in the mind of the undecided voter and that is all that matters right now.

CatWoman has it right, above. The sheer number of people they put out doesn't matter. In fact, the ferocity with which they attack Clarke indicates to a lot of people that they ARE hiding something. Nobody is attacking Clarke on the issues he raised - they're only attacking HIM, and the attacks aren't very convincing.


And there are more to come - John Dean, Joe Wilson, Michael Moore....

pointed out untruths in his statements? Contradicted him on the facts?... silence on the other side.

The admins strategy is to make this a totally confusing thing, and to politicize it.

Clarke, unfortunatly, helped them out on this a bit by admitting he voted for Gore in 2000.

The Administration wants the undecided voter to come away confused from this and to throw up their hands and just walk away from the issue.

"the Hunting of the President" based on the book. It was at Sundance and is due in theaters this summer.

I'd love to see Paul O'Neil back him up, but unfortunately I don't see that happening.

...its still # 5 on the NYT bestseller list.

I think we wont be hearing much in public from O'Neil, though.

Even tho his book coroberates some of what Clarke is saying about the focus on Iraq.

There's plenty of Clarke supporters that agree with him and will speak for him.

Clarke is a hero. Accept it.

What the White House is doing is pretty damn scary.

Clarke seems pretty alone right now, except for folks like DU online, and maybe a few sites like TPM.

And the more that the Repubs fight him. The more that people will buy the book to see for themselves. Kingd of like the passion of Clarke.lol..

Can you imagine him being a commentator? I bet he also has more than one book in him given his many years of experience. How about a book on cyber security for us geeks?

He has so much experience and commands attention that I think he's being sought after right now for lots of projects.

He'll no doubt be a frequent guest on Air America. Wouldn't it be fantastic if he was one of the first guests to be interviewed? Wow!

He's the head of a cybersecurity consultancy...Safe Harbor, I think.

this was stated on ABC in his introduction the first time he aired on ABC

Im wondering if thats a good thing right now. That can be more ammo on Clarke.

Clarke should just sit down, take these attacks, and shut the fuck up?

Your logic is completely baffling.

And troubling.

...and try to exploit it. Im playing devils advocate a bit here, too.

Clarke is probably the most credible critic to come out against the administration. Even better than Paul O'Neill possibly. The book is excellent..I recommend it to anyone who wants a good backrounder and lessons leanred on antiterrorism..its not just about the Bush Administration.

The problem, as I said in the thread header, is that I fear his truly excellent rebuttals and self-defense will be drowned out by the spin.

What is your agenda? To discredit this patriot?

Actually I want to here MORE from him....every time I see him on the air he is better and better. The candor is refreshing, and he manages to fend off every attempted hit.

I am playing a bit of devils advocate here, anticipating some of the spin thats going to come out.

that's it then, Bush is :nuke:

All we have to do is remember to show up at the poll in November.

And since 9/11 Bush's numbers just keep going down and down and down and down and down, with only the occasional bounce.

It is not necessary that Clarke's revelations cause every single person in the country to immediately turn on Bush. What is necessary is to continue to reveal Bush for the compulsive, incessant, corrupt, criminal liar that he is. Day by day, and voter by voter, Bush is losing support. If it continues, he will lose badly. If it reverses soon enough and strongly enough, he will win easily.

Clarke has ammo.

This is just getting started ....

Your assertion is baseless ...

...Clake is the most effective critic of Administration policy that I have ever seen. I know not that many people read, so the best way for him to get his case out there is via the media.

The more he is on the better he can make his case.

Three people besides me bought the book when I did and Woodward has a book due (that Tucker Carlson said the WH is VERY WORRIED about) and John Dean has a good one out there. People do read. And if he's going to do analysis on TV, he'll be out there. And the 9/11 families will be out there. It'll stay in the public eye, I do believe it.
On edit: Another book due is the one written by Joe Wilson.

David Letterman, Jay Leno, the two late-late-night geeks, Regis and Kelly, Randi Rhodes, Al Franken, Janeane Garafalo.

Even if he did just these, he could go back and do Timmy again.

to start the attack. Leave Kerry out of this until September. Let's get Cuomo and Gephardt and Kennedy and Clinton to pick up this thread and run with it. The country must also be reminded that bu$h was on one of the longest vacations in Presidential history and didn't come back to Washington until just a few days before 9/11. Cheney was also on vacation at that time So they weren't concerned with terrorism.

Mainly due to their national security roles. Graham especially.

on edit...I mean Wesly CLARK, not Richard Clarke.

Clarke needs to maintian an air of nonpartisanship as much as possible.

So, the Democrats need to put out people to defend Clarke that are in the national security arena, or are out of politics. This is actually a risky deal as the GOP wants to politicize this issue rather than make it an discussion of failures and bad policy in the Bush Administration.

...and he has reinforcements coming with former Ambassador Wilson and Bob Woodward releasing books this summer.

Just out of curiousity, have you noticed that since Valerie Plame and her network was exposed that there has been a steady flow of leaks exposing various segments of the NeoCon administration? Or is that something that's escaped your attention?

...in the book, seem to be of the same mind on certain issues.

So....good point!

There is much more to be revealed.

... are thoroughly impressed by Clarke. He gives even better than he takes.

And he's drawing viewers.

Don't think players in the TV news biz aren't taking note.

Does anyone else think that Clarke would make a terrific political/diplomatic/security commentator and analyst for the soon-to-be-retooled Newsworld International?

His book won't go away. The truth in the book won't go away.

The lie is here to stay with this administration and all the thugs that's in it -

Clarke is a hero, Clarke is an honest countryman.
What is George Bush? A fucking jerk!! Without no power!
Waverley_Hills_Hiker talks nonsense to ghost hikers.

Actually, I think that would be a good thing.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/28/saddam.attorney

as long as they attack him, he has every reason to appear publicly and defend himself.

I saw him on MTP this morning and I must say, that is one astute and focused fellow. I would hate to have to go up against this man. He is definitely a force to be reckoned with.