You did not answer any of the questions I raised. You simply ignored the questions. Here they are again:
Why was Saddam harboring the man indicted for mixing the explosive used in the '93 WTC bombing?
BTW, the '93 WTC bombing was an AQ action - the mastermind - Ramzi Yousef - is a nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key bin Laden aide who planned the 9/11 operation. Mohammed has admitted to interrogators that he and Yousef planned the 911 attacks together years ago.
After you answer that, could you explain why Richard Clarke claimed Iraqi intelligence had made VX gas available to the Al Shifa pharma factory in Khartoum which bin Laden had an interest in?
And then can you explain why the Clinton Justice Department said in an indictment of bin Ladin that there was an understanding between Iraq and Al Qaeda that Iraq would help Al Qaeda obtain WMD's?
Now on Clarke and his contradictions and lies:
Edward Jay Epstein caught one Clarke lie on the very dust jacket of Clarke's book:
Richard A. Clarke makes assertions in his book Against All Enemies that can be easily checked against external and unambiguous sources. Is Clarke truthful in verifiable assertions he makes?
Answer:
No, in at least one instance Clarke totally fabricates a position he attributes to another author's book, and then use his fabrication to discredit that author's position.
On p.95 of his Against All Enemies, Clarke states that author Laurie Mylroie had asserted "Ramzi Yousef was not in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan but lounging at the right hand of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad." He then debunks this "thesis" by stating that, in fact, Ramzi Yousef "had been in a U.S. jail for years," which was true.
Obviously, if Yousef had been in prison in America, he could not be in Baghdad at the right hand of Saddam, and Mylroie's theory was demonstratively untrue-- a discreditation he considers important enough to feature on the back dust jacket of his book.
The problem here is that the straw man Clarke demolishes is an invention entirely of his own creation. Mylroie did not write anything remotely like it. On the contrary, she explicitly states on p. 212 of her book Study Of Revenge, "Ramzi Yousef was arrested and returned to the U.S. on February 7, 1995." While she questions the provenance of documents he used prior to his capture in 1995, she does not claim in her book that Yousef resides anywhere but a maximum security federal prison.
Clarke simply himself makes up the absurd assertion Yousef was in Baghdad with Saddam, falsely attributes it to Mylroie, then uses it to discredit Mylroie.
Collateral question:
Why Did Clarke go to such extreme lengths-- including a blatant fabrication-- to discredit Mylroie's book?
edwardjayepstein.com
Clarke's main claim is that, unlike the Clinton administration - which he said had "no higher priority", the Bush administration "ignored terrorism". This is in direct conflict with what Clarke said in 2002:
So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.
The sixth point, the newly-appointed deputies — and you had to remember, the deputies didn't get into office until late March, early April. The deputies then tasked the development of the implementation details, uh, of these new decisions that they were endorsing, and sending out to the principals.
Over the course of the summer — last point — they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance.
And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda.
.....
JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?
CLARKE: All of that's correct.
.....
ANGLE: So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no — one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the spring months just after the administration came into office?
CLARKE: You got it. That's right.
foxnews.com
And lastly, I'll close with an excerpt from a Charles Krauthammer essay in which he shows Clarke contradicting his recent claim that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than terrorism:
The "Frontline" interviewer asked Clarke whether failing to blow up the camps and take out the Afghan sanctuary was a "pretty basic mistake."
Clarke's answer is unbelievable: "Well, I'm not prepared to call it a mistake. It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues. . . . There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals."
This is significant for two reasons. First, if the Clarke of 2002 was telling the truth, then the Clarke of this week -- the one who told the Sept. 11 commission under oath that "fighting terrorism, in general, and fighting al Qaeda, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration -- certainly [there was] no higher priority" -- is a liar. |
