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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: JohnM who wrote (127488)3/28/2004 2:21:59 AM
From: Nadine Carroll  Read Replies (3) of 281500
 
Frankly, Clarke's presentation tracks with the 9-11 commission's staff summaries and just about everything else we know

Actually, no, it doesn't, both in tone and on several key points - especially if you count Clarke's 60 Minutes insinuations that Bush could have done something to prevent 9/11. Clarke clearly took the committee findings and spun them to look worse for the Bush administration, while giving the Clinton administration a pass. The unpolitic truth is that Al Qaeda was not right at the top of anyone's agenda before 9/11 except Richard Clarke's (certainly not Bill Clinton's), there was a massive intelligence failure, and there's plenty of blame to go around on all sides.

One other constant I hear about Clarke, besides "hard charging, arrogant and hard to work with" is "vindictive when crossed". Reading between the lines, I really get the sense that Clarke's self-righteous outrage is one part due to not being heeded by the Bush administration the way he thought he should have been, and one part vengeance for being dissed. It is also clear that there is a huge underlying policy division: Clarke thinks we should go after Al Qaeda operations alone (he never does explain why Clinton did so little of this) and slams the Iraq War as a "distraction"; while the Bush adminstration had little use for what they considered a "whack-a-mole" counter-terrorism strategy and sought ways to go after the terror-hosting states. This is the core of the realist/neocon divide and Richard Clarke is on the realist side.
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