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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (8845)	3/20/2004 11:14:37 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 81568

The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush. It is quite true that nobody predicted Sept. 11—that nobody guessed in advance how and when the attacks would come. But other things are true too. By last summer, many of those in the know—the spooks, the buttoned-down bureaucrats, the law-enforcement professionals in a dozen countries—were almost frantic with worry that a major terrorist attack against American interests was imminent. It wasn't averted because 2001 saw a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national-security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat. The winter proposals became a victim of the transition process, turf wars and time spent on the pet policies of new top officials. The Bush Administration chose to institute its own "policy review process" on the terrorist threat. Clarke told Time that the review moved "as fast as could be expected." And Administration officials insist that by the time the review was endorsed by the Bush principals on Sept. 4, it was more aggressive than anything contemplated the previous winter. The final plan, they say, was designed not to "roll back" al-Qaeda but to "eliminate" it. But that delay came at a cost. The Northern Alliance was desperate for help but got little of it. And in a bureaucratic squabble that would be farfetched on The West Wing, nobody in Washington could decide whether a Predator drone—an unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) and the best possible source of real intelligence on what was happening in the terror camps—should be sent to fly over Afghanistan. So the Predator sat idle from October 2000 until a until after Sept. 11. No single person was responsible for all this. But "Washington"—that organic compound of officials and politicians, in uniform and out, with faces both familiar and unknown—failed horribly. Could al-Qaeda's plot have been foiled if the U.S. had taken the fight to the terrorists in January 2001? Perhaps not. The thrust of the winter plan was to attack al-Qaeda outside the U.S. Yet by the beginning of that year, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, two Arabs who had been leaders of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, were already living in Florida, honing their skills in flight schools. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had been doing the same in Southern California. The hijackers maintained tight security, generally avoided cell phones, rented apartments under false names and used cash—not wire transfers—wherever possible. If every plan to attack al-Qaeda had been executed, and every lead explored, Atta's team might still never have been caught mtholyoke.edu All this was known, but Bush was intent on invading Iraq to the detriment of national security, the fact it's just being addressed now is another example of "too little, too late".

To: stockman_scott who wrote (8845)	3/20/2004 11:28:24 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

More: Ex-Advisor Says Bush Eyed Bombing of Iraq on 9/11 Fri Mar 19, 7:20 PM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! Clarke told Bush re 9/11 & Iraq: 'We've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection,"' NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former White House anti-terrorism advisor says the Bush administration considered bombing Iraq (news - web sites) in retaliation after Sept. 11, 2001 even though it was clear al Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites). Reuters Photo AP Photo Slideshow: September 11 Richard Clarke, who headed a cybersecurity board that gleaned intelligence from the Internet, told CBS "60 Minutes" in an interview to be aired on Sunday he was surprised administration officials turned immediately toward Iraq instead of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (news - web sites). "They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12," Clarke says. Clarke said he was briefing President Bush (news - web sites) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld among other top officials in the aftermath of the devastating attacks. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq. ... We all said, 'but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan (news - web sites)," recounts Clarke, "and Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."' Clarke, an advisor to four presidents, left his position in February 2003 after the White House transferred functions of the cybersecurity board to Homeland Security. Clarke's comments are the latest to raise the question of the Bush administration's focus on overthrowing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, fired in a shake-up of Bush's economic team in December 2002, told "60 Minutes" in an interview aired in January he never saw any evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction -- Bush's main justification for going to war. O'Neill also charged that Bush entered office intent on invading Iraq and ousting its leader, Saddam Hussein. "I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection" between Iraq and al Qaeda, Clarke tells "60 Minutes." "But the CIA (news - web sites) was sitting there, the FBI (news - web sites) was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying, 'We've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection,"' says Clarke. story.news.yahoo.com