Clarke's Rebuttal Comments To Rice Testimony

Would adopting STRATEGY in JAN instead of Feb stop 9/11?

Clarke: No but it MIGHT have effected events.

Rice & Prez needed to act PERSONALLY to shake trees WHEN the threats were occuring in June-July-August.

Prez had 40 meetings with CIA director warning attacks were imminent.

Neither Rice nor Prez convened Cabinet Meeting.

This is different than Sept 99 when Clinton DID prevent attacks.

Rice corroborated that Prez thought it INEFFICIENT to bring Cabinet together and work to stop attacks.

Rice claims structural deficiency in CIA/FBI.

Clarke says to OVERCOME these deficiencies there could have had daily meetings White House meetings
under CRISIS MODE where info buried at CIA/FBI could have been brought out.

Rice ADMITS she didn't have these daily Crisis Mode Meetings.

Clarke's Memo was supposedly in "Historical Nature" according to Rice and she sez Clarke didn't try hard
enought to meet Prez.

Clarke: His documents and attachments from Jan 25 should be declassified. Sez URGENTLY needed to have
meeting with full Cabinet to approve strategy.

Clarke presented a strategy but BUSH NEEDED TO MAKE DECISIONS

Sept 4th strategy that WAS adopted same as earlier. BUSH WASTED TIME.

Clarke DID ask for meetings after Transition but was told he couldn't meet with bush til after POLICY
DEVELOPEMENT PROCESS was completed

Clarke had Cyber-Terrorism meeting with Prez but was told NOT to talk about Al Qaeda that he would
EVENTUALLY get to talk with Prez about it in the future possibly sometime in September.

eom

If so, they didn't air it on my local station. :grr:

Jennings commented that they had no way of knowing when Clarke came aboard how significant a role he would be playing.

glad you started a thread on this...

Thank heavens Clarke spoke out...Condi lies lies lies...it is so sad what these people have done...and they continue to pass the buck.

Well- she said this stuff under oath and so did Clarke.....

makes it more & more obvious they wanted to put this off til after 9/11 so they could MIHOP or LIHOP and then act the innocents about it all.

Makes me :puke:


and Wolfie just spoke with Trent Lott...even more :puke: :puke:


DR

:-)

Canadian broadcaster NWI thinks Rice's testimony was weak...commentator Henry Champ following testimony says, in football and hockey, defense usually wins...in politics though, defense exclusively doesn't look good. He went on to say that Rice's testimony was weak in response to Clarke's charges and that her rambling was innefectual. Her refusal to answer questions directly will only serve to extend the debate over the Bush administrations competency.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

n/t

:kick:

took my own notes. Don't know if there's a transcript.

GeeDuhhhbya did NOT carry on (re: Islamic extremeists and terrorism) with the same fervor when he took over the WH from Clinton. THAT MUCH is evident and proven. Clarke has eluded to this multiple times, and to 'shaking the trees' at CIA and FBI to get pertinent info to evaluate and try to prevent attacks - Clinton DID this - *resident DopeHead didn't.

BOTTOM LINE: Chimpy got caught with his pants down. He FAILED TO PROTECT THIS COUNTRY - even when he was WARNED by the outgoing administration, France, Germany, his daily briefings, the CIA, FBI, etc. GWB had SUCH a hatred for all things Clinton that he deliberately did NOT carry on any Clinton policies when he took over. This is at least ONE area where his hatred of Clinton bit him in the a**. Too bad it killed 3,600+ others now, too. And all Clinton did was lie about a blowjob. Hows THAT for a comparison?

Gods and Goddesses help us all. The lowest common denominator is running this country... :mad:

And frankly, I think that Dr. Rice's testimony today, and she did a very good job, basically corroborates what I said. She said that the president received 40 warnings face to face from the director of central intelligence that a major al Qaeda attack was going to take place and she admitted that the president did not have a meeting on the subject, did not convene the Cabinet.
She admitted that she didn't convene the Cabinet. And as some of the commissioners pointed out, this was in marked contrast to the way the government operated in December of 1999, when it had similar information and it successfully thwarted attacks.

So I don't see that there are a lot of factual problems with what Dr. Rice said.

There are one or two other minor points here or there that I think are probably wrong, but overall I think she corroborated what I said. She said it was inefficient to bring the Cabinet members together to have them work to stop the attacks that they had been informed were coming.


http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/US/clarke_interview_transcript_040408-1.html