Richard Clarke - Against All Enemies
- Thread starter waggie945
- Start date
What you say is true, most leaders and successful people have sufficient ego and self confidence to think their plan is the best.
I am not in favor of the blame game for 911. I think there is plenty of blame to go around on that, my interest is really on how to deal with terrorism and move forward, and have confidence that leadership and government is really acting in our best interest collectively.
The issue again is did Bush and company distract this country
away from the work that could have been done on terrorism
to fulfill a personal agenda of Bush Jr., and now as a result we are stuck with a nation building project that I believe will ultimately fail and help to drain our budget.
I don't think the odds are good that you can bring in Democracy to a country and make it work as easily as some think.
If we look to what Mao and the Bolsheviks did, they were successful in their work because they essentially killed those who opposed them. Neat trick. It still took a generation to convert people to an ideology.
However, that doesn't work so easily with democracy.
Would you hand over to a bunch of teenagers the responsible for a "democratic" functioning of their daily lives?
No way. They are not mature enough to handle that. In my opinion, neither are the Iraqi people mature enough to handle the task in front of them.
We can see it already, like rebellious teenagers who think they know enough to manage their own lives, many Iraqis want to kick us out so they can "manage" themselves. What a joke.
How quickly we forget what happened in Iran with the Shah.
It is a different culture, different religious base, and different way of life.
It is our hubris that we think we can export our way of life to a different society so easily, or that it is the right thing to do.
We will fail in Iraq, we will not be able to keep the peace there long term, and it will end in more misery.
I am not in favor of the blame game for 911. I think there is plenty of blame to go around on that, my interest is really on how to deal with terrorism and move forward, and have confidence that leadership and government is really acting in our best interest collectively.
The issue again is did Bush and company distract this country
away from the work that could have been done on terrorism
to fulfill a personal agenda of Bush Jr., and now as a result we are stuck with a nation building project that I believe will ultimately fail and help to drain our budget.
I don't think the odds are good that you can bring in Democracy to a country and make it work as easily as some think.
If we look to what Mao and the Bolsheviks did, they were successful in their work because they essentially killed those who opposed them. Neat trick. It still took a generation to convert people to an ideology.
However, that doesn't work so easily with democracy.
Would you hand over to a bunch of teenagers the responsible for a "democratic" functioning of their daily lives?
No way. They are not mature enough to handle that. In my opinion, neither are the Iraqi people mature enough to handle the task in front of them.
We can see it already, like rebellious teenagers who think they know enough to manage their own lives, many Iraqis want to kick us out so they can "manage" themselves. What a joke.
How quickly we forget what happened in Iran with the Shah.
It is a different culture, different religious base, and different way of life.
It is our hubris that we think we can export our way of life to a different society so easily, or that it is the right thing to do.
We will fail in Iraq, we will not be able to keep the peace there long term, and it will end in more misery.
I am still waiting to learn from you the "evidence" that you cite that the Bush Administration used as a means to go invade Iraq.
So far, as I stated earlier I only see some aluminum tubes that the Department of Energy laughed at, and forged documents about Niger and uranium as evidence that the Iraqi's had WMD and an ongoing nuclear development program.
Care to add to that?
Did I miss anything?
So far, as I stated earlier I only see some aluminum tubes that the Department of Energy laughed at, and forged documents about Niger and uranium as evidence that the Iraqi's had WMD and an ongoing nuclear development program.
Care to add to that?
Did I miss anything?
The Wrong War
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 26, 2004
The most compelling aspects of Richard Clarke's take on the world have less to do with the question of whether the Bush administration could somehow have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and much more with the administration's folly of responding to the attacks by launching a war on Iraq.
The United States had been the victim of a sneak attack worse than the attack at Pearl Harbor. It was an act of war, and the administration had a moral obligation (not to mention the backing of the entire country and most of the world) to hunt down and eradicate the forces responsible.
(I walked past the vacant acreage of the World Trade Center site the other day. It was a bitterly cold morning, and the wind slicing across the mournful landscape intensified the memories of the violence and horror â the unspeakable agony of the thousands lost and injured, and the grief of a traumatized city brought temporarily to its knees.)
Mr. Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, writes in his book, "Against All Enemies," that despite clear evidence the attacks had been the work of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, top administration officials focused almost immediately on the object of their obsession, Iraq.
He remembers taking a short break for a bite to eat and a shower, then returning to the White House very early on the morning of Sept. 12. He writes:
"I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were. . . . Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq."
Soon would come the now-famous encounter between Mr. Clarke and President Bush in the White House Situation Room. According to Mr. Clarke: "[The president] grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. `Look,' he told us, `I know you have a lot to do and all . . . but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way.' "
"I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. `But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this.'
" `I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred. . . .' "
The president wanted war with Iraq, and ultimately he would have his war. The drumbeat for an invasion of Iraq in the aftermath of the Qaeda attack was as incessant as it was bizarre. Mr. Clarke told "60 Minutes" that an attack on Iraq under those circumstances was comparable to President Roosevelt, after Pearl Harbor, deciding to invade Mexico "instead of going to war with Japan."
The U.S. never pursued Al Qaeda with the focus, tenacity and resources it would expend â and continues to expend â on Iraq. The war against Iraq was sold the way a butcher would sell rotten meat â as something that was good for us. The administration and its apologists went out of their way to create the false impression that Saddam and Iraq were somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that he was an imminent threat to the U.S.
Condoleezza Rice went on television to say with a straight face, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
With the first anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and Osama bin Laden still at large, George Shultz, a former secretary of state (and longtime Bechtel Corporation biggie) ratcheted up his rant for war with Iraq in an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post. The headline said: "Act Now: The Danger Is Immediate."
Mr. Shultz wrote: "[Saddam] has relentlessly amassed weapons of mass destruction and continues their development." Insisting that the threat was imminent, he said, "When the risk is not hundreds of people killed in a conventional attack but tens or hundreds of thousands killed by chemical, biological or nuclear attack, the time factor is even more compelling."
Richard Clarke has been consistently right on the facts, and the White House and its apologists consistently wrong. Which is why the White House is waging such a ferocious and unconscionable campaign of character assassination against Mr. Clarke.
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 26, 2004
The most compelling aspects of Richard Clarke's take on the world have less to do with the question of whether the Bush administration could somehow have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and much more with the administration's folly of responding to the attacks by launching a war on Iraq.
The United States had been the victim of a sneak attack worse than the attack at Pearl Harbor. It was an act of war, and the administration had a moral obligation (not to mention the backing of the entire country and most of the world) to hunt down and eradicate the forces responsible.
(I walked past the vacant acreage of the World Trade Center site the other day. It was a bitterly cold morning, and the wind slicing across the mournful landscape intensified the memories of the violence and horror â the unspeakable agony of the thousands lost and injured, and the grief of a traumatized city brought temporarily to its knees.)
Mr. Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, writes in his book, "Against All Enemies," that despite clear evidence the attacks had been the work of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, top administration officials focused almost immediately on the object of their obsession, Iraq.
He remembers taking a short break for a bite to eat and a shower, then returning to the White House very early on the morning of Sept. 12. He writes:
"I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were. . . . Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq."
Soon would come the now-famous encounter between Mr. Clarke and President Bush in the White House Situation Room. According to Mr. Clarke: "[The president] grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. `Look,' he told us, `I know you have a lot to do and all . . . but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way.' "
"I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. `But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this.'
" `I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred. . . .' "
The president wanted war with Iraq, and ultimately he would have his war. The drumbeat for an invasion of Iraq in the aftermath of the Qaeda attack was as incessant as it was bizarre. Mr. Clarke told "60 Minutes" that an attack on Iraq under those circumstances was comparable to President Roosevelt, after Pearl Harbor, deciding to invade Mexico "instead of going to war with Japan."
The U.S. never pursued Al Qaeda with the focus, tenacity and resources it would expend â and continues to expend â on Iraq. The war against Iraq was sold the way a butcher would sell rotten meat â as something that was good for us. The administration and its apologists went out of their way to create the false impression that Saddam and Iraq were somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that he was an imminent threat to the U.S.
Condoleezza Rice went on television to say with a straight face, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
With the first anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and Osama bin Laden still at large, George Shultz, a former secretary of state (and longtime Bechtel Corporation biggie) ratcheted up his rant for war with Iraq in an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post. The headline said: "Act Now: The Danger Is Immediate."
Mr. Shultz wrote: "[Saddam] has relentlessly amassed weapons of mass destruction and continues their development." Insisting that the threat was imminent, he said, "When the risk is not hundreds of people killed in a conventional attack but tens or hundreds of thousands killed by chemical, biological or nuclear attack, the time factor is even more compelling."
Richard Clarke has been consistently right on the facts, and the White House and its apologists consistently wrong. Which is why the White House is waging such a ferocious and unconscionable campaign of character assassination against Mr. Clarke.
Like this one:
Clarke claims, for example, that in early 2001, when he told President Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about al-Qaida, her "facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before."
Except this "fact" that Rice never heard of al-Qaida is rebutted by:
Sean Hannity has been playing a radio interview that Dr. Rice gave to David Newman on WJR in Detroit back in October 2000, in which she discusses al-Qaida in great detail.
".....gave me the impression...."
That is a statement of fact? That is just a personal observation. Maybe she did give Clarke that stupid look she is famous for.....
That is a statement of fact? That is just a personal observation. Maybe she did give Clarke that stupid look she is famous for.....