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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (554651)	3/22/2004 8:51:18 AM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

The Washington Post reports the White House's former top counter-terrorism official says the Bush Jr. administration made a strategic miscalculation both before and after 9/11 by focusing on Iraq rather than al-Qaida. Richard Clarke, who has served Reagan and every president since and has long been considered a hawk, has a book coming out. And he has stuck it to the White House. As he told 60 Minutes, he thinks Bush has "done terrible job on the war against terrorism." National security advisor Condoleezza Rice defends the administration in a WP op-ed. Among other things, she writes that the plan to go after AQ was "the first major foreign-policy strategy document of the Bush administration." Clarke disputes that, saying his request for a meeting about terror threats was put off for months, and then when finally granted it was with second-tier officials, including Deputy SecDef Paul Wolfowitz. "I began by saying, 'We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda,'" Clarke recalls. "Wolfowitz responded, ''No, no, no. We don't have to deal with al Qaeda. We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.' And I said, 'Paul, there hasn't been any Iraqi terrorism against the Untied States in eight years,' and I turned to the Deputy Director of [the] CIA and said, 'Isn't that right?' and he said, 'Yeah, that's right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States.'" Clarke says Bush's decision to invade Iraq actually hurts the fight against AQ-types since it will create "more terrorists than we jail or shoot." Wrote Clarke, "It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq."