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

To: pompsander who wrote (750163)	9/26/2006 2:38:24 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Er... parts of the report are to be declassified. (Will be interesting to see where the redactions are... like the, what, '13' pages in the 9-11 Commission report that discussed the Saudi connections to terrorism, al Qaeda, and the 9-11 attacks, that were ENTIRELY BLACKED OUT... every stinking word. :-( I assume that most anything that the admin. can put a positive spin on (immediately prior to the election) will see the light of day, while anything that could hurt them politically will likely remain behind one of those blacked-out sentences. It's only natural.

To: pompsander who wrote (750163)	9/26/2006 2:45:05 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

Bill Clinton and Richard Clarke: Against All Enemies Tuesday, September 26 2006 @ 04:45 AM EDT What did Richard A. Clarke really say about Al Qaeda bbsnews.net BBSNews Analysis 2006-09-26 -- Former president Bill Clinton laid out some clear facts to showman Chris Wallace this past Sunday on the right-wing FoxNews network. This has troubled Republican operatives who have assembled some talking points to hand out to the GOP faithful that are great at volunteering but don't take enough time to read the books, and read the 9/11 Commission report, and actually assess facts rather than White House talking points distributed to a friendly television network and some print commentators. Richard A. Clarke was the former counterterrorism "czar" under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, president of the United States for the last six years or so. He knows a little bit about both administrations and their take on terrorism, and bin Laden, and Al Qaeda. The first talking point being bandied about that we come across in the book is someone making the claim that the connection between bin Laden and an organization called Al Qaeda was "well known" by the time of the Clinton inauguration. This is a very dubious claim, Clarke reports in his book, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" (Free Press 2004) that at the end of June 1993 neither the FBI or the CIA could tell him who were the people or the organization that was behind the first World Trade Center bombing (and then those other terrorists rolled up in the subsequent investigation who were going to bomb the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and the UN. They were caught and sent to jail.) But when Clarke queried the CIA and the FBI with the question "Who are these guys?" They could not tell him. His name "never came up in our meetings in 1993 as a suspect in the World Trade Center attack." In mid 1995 the CIA and the Counter-terrorism Center attached to the White House formed a "virtual station", an operation like a CIA overseas office according to page 148 in Clarke's book account. It is on that same page that it is revealed that the final puzzle pieces fit to show that not only was the mysterious Usama bin Laden a terrorist financier but according to Clarke, bin Laden was Al Qaeda's "mastermind" and this was finally with solid evidence viewed as solid intelligence starting in 1996. National Reviews's Byron York penned a hit piece on Clinton's dress down of Chris Wallace (and by extension of FoxNews) by selectively quoting from Clarke's book. And those that actually take the time to read it or who have read it will understand what York and now the Washington Times piling on are trying to do. And that is obscure what Richard A. Clarke actually wrote about Clinton and still get people to not buy the book. Because if they do read the book they will get a glimpse into the thinking of the current administration and just how of little concern bin Laden was to them. York writes: "On page 204, Clarke vents his frustration at the CIA's slow-walking on the question of killing bin Laden. 'I still to this day do not understand why it was impossible for the United States to find a competent group of Afghans, Americans, third-country nationals, or some combination who could locate bin Laden in Afghanistan and kill him,' Clarke writes. 'I believe that those in CIA who claim the [presidential] authorizations were insufficient or unclear are throwing up that claim as an excuse to cover the fact that they were pathetically unable to accomplish the mission.'" What is also pathetic is what York leaves out. He quotes one sentence, leaves out the meat and quotes the last sentence to obscure what Clarke actually wrote in the middle of the two sentences. Here it is for our readers: "Some have claimed tha the lethal authorizations were convoluted and thr "people in the field" did not know what they could do. Every time such an objection was raised during those years, an additional authorization was drafted with the involvement of all the concerned agencies, and approved by the president's signature. The Principals and the President did want to open the Pandora's box that the Israeli's had found after Munich, they did not want a broad assassination policy and a hit list, but the President's intent was very clear: kill bin Laden." In other words, York's central claim that Clinton did not want bin Laden dead is a sham. But he does not stop there in misrepresenting what Richard Clarke wrote. Consider another egregious example where he actually puts words in Clarke's writing that do not exist when York claims Clarke's claim was that Bill Clinton "the commander-in-chief was not in command." York correctly reports the page number and then solidly went astray from what Clarke wrote by seeming to try and use the quote: "In the absence of a bigger provocation from al Qaeda to silence his critics, Clinton thought he could do no more." To make it look like Clinton just did nothing. In fact, here's what Clarke wrote at the start of page 225 that York selectively quoted from: "Clinton left office with bin Laden alive, but having authorized actions to eliminate him and to step up the attacks on al Qaeda. He had defeated al Qaeda when it had attempted to take over Bosnia by having its fighters dominate the defense of the breakaway state from the Serbian attacks. He had seen earlier than anyone that terrorism would be the major new threat facing America, and therefore had greatly increased funding for counterterrorism and initiated homeland protection programs. He put an end to Iraqi and Iranian terrorism against the United States by quickly acting against the intelligence services of each nation." York left that out. And he also left out the central conclusion from page 225 that ends with a finishing paragraph on page 226. Richard Clarke makes clear in his book, and at the very spot that York chose to quote from, that a lot was done by the Clinton administration to deal with terrorism. And Clinton made it what some termed as an "obsession" that the incoming Bush administration should put al Qaeda at the top of the White House todo list. Clarke wrote: "When Bill Clinton left office many people, including the incoming Bush administration leadership, thought that he and his administration were overly obsessed with al Qaeda. After all, al Qaeda had killed only a few Americans, nothing like the hundreds of Marines who died at the hands of Beirut terrorists during the Reagan administration or the hundreds of Americans who were killed by Libya on Pan Am 103 during the first Bush's administration. Those two acts had not pro-voked U.S. military retaliation. Why was Clinton so worked up about al Qaeda and why did he talk to President-elect Bush about it and have Sandy Berger raise it with his successor as National Security Advisor, Condi Rice? In January 2001, the new administration really thought Clinton's recommendation that eliminating al Qaeda be one of their highest priorities, well, rather odd, like so many of the Clinton administrations's actions, from their perspective." Right-wing Republicans do not want the public to read Clarke's book. They are trying to put an image of its content out there that glosses over the facts and the political realities prior to September 11th, 2001. They want you to conveniently ignore the smear campaigns going on, that were stirring rumors of Clinton's actions being driven by the Lewinsky affair. And they don't want you to know that Clarke firmly puts those notions to rest. President Clinton at the time took many decisive actions against terrorism and rightly recognized that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that was fair to Arabs and Jews alike would drain the swamp of terrorism by going after the main root cause of the tension. Republicans do not want you to read this book because it is told by a man with no huge axe to grind nor does he stand to gain anything. His telling in his book comports easily with verifiable sources, it's an easy read even though it is packed with a lot of information both during the Clinton administration and the second Bush administration whose current commander in chief is George W. Bush. The gist of Clarke's book echos the rest of the reports and commissions coming out of late. The United States was attacked by a terrorist operation named al Qaeda that had been funded by Usama bin Laden; instead of staying on the course of getting bin Laden and tending to root causes, such as the U.N. Resolutions outstanding in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S. attacked Iraq. And now reaping what the experts said would happen America is less safe and continues to be as long as the "stay the course" gang remains in power. Republicans really do not want voters reading this book by ex-terrorism czar Richard Clarke. That's why they are quoting around what he really wrote rather than the full facts of what he wrote that have held up to extreme scrutiny. ###

To: pompsander who wrote (750163)	9/26/2006 6:08:43 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Iraq Is 'Cause Celebre' for Extremists U.S. Intelligence Report Says Iraq Has Become 'Cause Celebre' for Islamic Extremists The Associated Press abcnews.go.com <Bush to release 'part' of Intel. Assessment....> WASHINGTON - An administration intelligence report says Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the United States in the Muslim world. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures