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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (36307)	3/23/2004 9:56:35 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793905

For Bush administration, help from an unlikely source BY KEN FIREMAN - Newsday.com WASHINGTON BUREAU March 23, 2004, 8:54 PM EST WASHINGTON -- When it really needed it, the beleaguered Bush administration found some succor Tuesday from an unlikely and potentially dangerous source: the commission investigating the 9/11 terror attacks. Just as the administration was launching a frantic effort to fend off the allegations of former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke that it failed to take al-Qaida seriously before 9/11, the commission delivered a couple of priceless gifts. The first was a new staff report revealing that the previous administration -- the one headed by some guy named Clinton -- had three opportunities in 1998 and 1999 to launch lethal strikes at Osama bin Laden but failed to pull the trigger. Each time, according to the report, senior officials overruled field operatives on the grounds that the intel was uncertain and the risk of "collateral damage" great. The second came from two of those Clinton-era officials, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William Cohen. Both responded to pointed questions from panel members about why they had not sought to attack al-Qaida more aggressively by pleading that the pre-9/11 political climate simply would not have supported such a policy. It was not lost on those listening, either in the cavernous Senate hearing room or the broader rings of Washington's power structure, that this rationale cuts two ways. If it excuses the Clinton administration's conduct, it also offers a defense for the Bush crew against Clarke's volatile accusation that they didn't do enough before 9/11 to take out al-Qaida. The current defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, made precisely that point later in the day. Of course, Bush's peril is hardly over. Clarke is scheduled to testify Wednesday and can be expected to repeat his allegations that the president and his top aides badly underestimated the al-Qaida threat, were obsessed with Saddam Hussein and botched the war on terror by launching an unnecessary conflict in Iraq. Tuesday, Clarke added another charge during an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America": that Rumsfeld sought and obtained from Bush a written directive to begin planning the invasion of Iraq right after 9/11, despite the utter lack of evidence tying Hussein to the terror attacks. White House spokesman Scott McClellan at first appeared to deny that charge, calling it "revisionist history," but then seemed to qualify that statement by adding that the administration regarded Iraq as a "serious threat" at the time. Bush offered his first public response to Clarke. "Had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September the 11th, we would have acted," he said. "We have been chasing down al-Qaida ever since the attacks. ... We're still pursuing them, and we will continue to pursue them so long as I am the president of the United States." Whether that period of time turns out to be only the next 10 months, or four years and 10 months, may well hinge on how the public comes to judge this controversy. That's how high the political stakes are. Bush's response to 9/11 and his prosecution of the war on terror are central elements of his re-election campaign. There's a good reason for this; it's the one issue on which voters clearly think Bush is doing a good job at the moment. An ABC-Washington Post poll taken earlier this month, for example, found that 63 percent of those surveyed approved of Bush's handling of the war on terror. The same survey found that majorities disapproved of his performance on nearly every other issue, including the economy, Iraq, Social Security, health insurance, the budget deficit and prescription drugs for the elderly. Clarke thus represents Bush's worst nightmare: an undeniable insider with no obvious history of partisanship who has challenged his performance on the one issue that he cannot afford to surrender. The predictable result has been a furious onslaught aimed at discrediting Clarke and his account. Administration officials have simultaneously sought to portray Clarke as "out of the loop" and yet culpable for the failure to scotch the terrorist menace. They accuse him of hypocrisy for failing to raise his concerns while still in government, partisanship for making them now in an election year, and vindictiveness arising from the fact that he was demoted. Clarke's response is that such attacks seek to divert attention from the main issue: Bush's performance before and after 9/11. He told ABC that he expects it to go on. "I'm getting a bulletproof vest," he said. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.