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

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (9720)	3/23/2004 12:24:26 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 81568

Meanwhile Condi Rice refuses to testify...letting Clarke do so in her stead. Maybe she is on America's side after all: National Security Adviser Rice Will Sit Out 9/11 Panel Hearing in Washington By James Gordon Meek, Daily News, New York Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News Mar. 22--WASHINGTON - Starting tomorrow, the most important 9/11 Commission hearings yet will scrutinize counterterror efforts of two presidential administrations -- but a star witness will not be there. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice refuses to testify under oath, insisting that presidential advisers need not answer to legislative bodies. Rice's no-show will leave the floor to a former subordinate on Wednesday -- ex-counterterror guru Richard Clarke, who lambastes the White House in a new told-you-so book for failing to take seriously his warnings about Al Qaeda in early 2001. "Well, there's a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame too," Clarke told "60 Minutes" last night. "But on Jan. 24, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently -- underlined urgently -- a cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending Al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo wasn't acted on." Clarke, who served four Presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan, also alleges that Bush fruitlessly sought evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But tomorrow, before the panel hears from Clarke, it will grill Secretary of State Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the two who held those jobs in the Clinton administration: Madeleine Albright and William Cohen. Up Wednesday along with Clarke are CIA Director George Tenet and former national security adviser Sandy Berger. New School University President Bob Kerrey, an ex-Nebraska senator and Democrat on the commission, said he will ask the officials from both administrations why neither "declared war on Al Qaeda" after horrifying bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000. "The question is ... why didn't you attack them?" Kerrey said. "It's a question for Rumsfeld, but it's a better question for Rice." That's the sort of finger-pointing the Bush administration feared when it opposed creating the commission. But when he signed it into law in November 2002, the President urged the panel to "carefully examine all the evidence and follow all the facts, wherever they lead." Since then, his aides have clashed with the panel at least eight times over access to intelligence and officials, including testimony from Bush, Vice President Cheney and Rice. The disputes have led to two subpoenas and threats for several more. Even Republican members, such as former Navy Secretary John Lehman, complained about the stonewalling. "We've gotten everything we've asked for, but always after a lot of resistance and criticism," said Slade Gorton, a former senator from Washington State. The contretemps extended to the presidential campaign earlier this month when widows who fought for the 9/11 probe blasted Bush's campaign for using imagery in a TV ad of a firefighter's flag-covered remains. The GOP accused the women of partisanship, which they deny. "I'm not a Democrat and I voted for President Bush," said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, was killed. nydailynews.com