the Bush administration paid little heed to threat posed by al-Qaeda in the days before the September the 11th attacks.
RICHARD CLARKE: I think the way he has responded to al-Qaeda, both before 9/11 by doing nothing, and by what he's done after 9/11 has made us less safe. I find it outrageous that the President is running for re-election on the grounds that he has done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. Maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.
JOHN SHOVELAN: It's this, the latter issue which concerns the White House most.
Right now it's right in the midst of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign attempting to portray President Bush as a wartime leader strong on national security while his challenger, Democrat Senator John Kerry, is weak.
GEORGE BUSH (ad excerpt): I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message.
AD EXCERPT: Few votes in Congress are as important as funding our troops at war…
JOHN SHOVELAN: According to the Washington Post, no one has served longer on senior White House staff than Richard Clarke.
His book, Against All Enemies, is being released this week, and follows one by Mr O'Neill, which asserted earlier this year too, that Iraq was an overriding priority of the Bush White House from the time that it took office.
Like the former Treasury Secretary, Mr Clarke says some of President Bush's leading advisers arrived in office determined to go to war with Iraq. And nearly all of them, he claims, believed President Clinton had been "overly obsessed with al-Qaeda".
Mr Clarke is one of several former Clinton administration officials who will testify this week before the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks.
abc.net.au
John Shovelan, Washington. |
