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

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (556278)	3/26/2004 1:34:46 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Bush can't debate....anymore than RICE can TESTIFY! The Wrong War March 26, 2004 By BOB HERBERT The most compelling aspects of Richard Clarke's take on the world have less to do with the question of whether the Bush administration could somehow have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and much more with the administration's folly of responding to the attacks by launching a war on Iraq. The United States had been the victim of a sneak attack worse than the attack at Pearl Harbor. It was an act of war, and the administration had a moral obligation (not to mention the backing of the entire country and most of the world) to hunt down and eradicate the forces responsible. (I walked past the vacant acreage of the World Trade Center site the other day. It was a bitterly cold morning, and the wind slicing across the mournful landscape intensified the memories of the violence and horror - the unspeakable agony of the thousands lost and injured, and the grief of a traumatized city brought temporarily to its knees.) Mr. Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, writes in his book, "Against All Enemies," that despite clear evidence the attacks had been the work of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, top administration officials focused almost immediately on the object of their obsession, Iraq. He remembers taking a short break for a bite to eat and a shower, then returning to the White House very early on the morning of Sept. 12. He writes: "I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were. . . . Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq." Soon would come the now-famous encounter between Mr. Clarke and President Bush in the White House Situation Room. According to Mr. Clarke: "[The president] grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. `Look,' he told us, `I know you have a lot to do and all . . . but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way.' " "I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. `But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this.' " `I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred. . . .' " The president wanted war with Iraq, and ultimately he would have his war. The drumbeat for an invasion of Iraq in the aftermath of the Qaeda attack was as incessant as it was bizarre. Mr. Clarke told "60 Minutes" that an attack on Iraq under those circumstances was comparable to President Roosevelt, after Pearl Harbor, deciding to invade Mexico "instead of going to war with Japan." The U.S. never pursued Al Qaeda with the focus, tenacity and resources it would expend - and continues to expend - on Iraq. The war against Iraq was sold the way a butcher would sell rotten meat - as something that was good for us. The administration and its apologists went out of their way to create the false impression that Saddam and Iraq were somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that he was an imminent threat to the U.S. Condoleezza Rice went on television to say with a straight face, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." With the first anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and Osama bin Laden still at large, George Shultz, a former secretary of state (and longtime Bechtel Corporation biggie) ratcheted up his rant for war with Iraq in an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post. The headline said: "Act Now: The Danger Is Immediate." Mr. Shultz wrote: "[Saddam] has relentlessly amassed weapons of mass destruction and continues their development." Insisting that the threat was imminent, he said, "When the risk is not hundreds of people killed in a conventional attack but tens or hundreds of thousands killed by chemical, biological or nuclear attack, the time factor is even more compelling." Richard Clarke has been consistently right on the facts, and the White House and its apologists consistently wrong. Which is why the White House is waging such a ferocious and unconscionable campaign of character assassination against Mr. Clarke. E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com nytimes.com CC