Follow the bouncing story line. Richard Clarke, the White House former antiterrorism tsar, wasn't in the White House antiterror loop, Vice President Dick Cheney says.
No, wait, he was in the loop, says National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice; he is just wrong about what was going on in the loop.
But, truth be told, it doesn't matter whether he was in or out of the loop because, according to Senate majority leader Bill Frist, and the White House, and various voices on the right, he is a disloyal, lying war profiteer.
The double-talk emitting from the White House and the Capitol this past week has been truly entertaining...
The point here should not be to look for a scapegoat for the terrorist attacks. There is no proof that anyone could have prevented them. But between the inconsistent stories coming out of the Bush administration and the seriousness of the allegations being leveled, the response from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has to be more than, "Well, that's not what he said before, and he's a jerk." That, however, is essentially the message....
If you've forgotten what it looks like when the wheels come off an administration, you're seeing it happen before your eyes.
Christian Science Monitor article
No, wait, he was in the loop, says National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice; he is just wrong about what was going on in the loop.
But, truth be told, it doesn't matter whether he was in or out of the loop because, according to Senate majority leader Bill Frist, and the White House, and various voices on the right, he is a disloyal, lying war profiteer.
The double-talk emitting from the White House and the Capitol this past week has been truly entertaining...
The point here should not be to look for a scapegoat for the terrorist attacks. There is no proof that anyone could have prevented them. But between the inconsistent stories coming out of the Bush administration and the seriousness of the allegations being leveled, the response from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has to be more than, "Well, that's not what he said before, and he's a jerk." That, however, is essentially the message....
If you've forgotten what it looks like when the wheels come off an administration, you're seeing it happen before your eyes.
Discounting the possibility that the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, is secretly a publicist for the Free Press, one must assume that the Bush administration really is angry at its former counterterrorism czar, and isn't simply trying to help him sell more books. But if President Bush and his advisers were hoping that their loud pre-emptive attacks on ''Against All Enemies'' would make this book go away, they were sadly mistaken. Richard A. Clarke knows too much, and ''Against All Enemies'' is too good to be ignored.
The explosive details about President Bush's obsession with Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks captured the headlines in the days after the book's release, but ''Against All Enemies'' offers more. It is a rarity among Washington-insider memoirs - it's a thumping good read.
...[Steve Coll's] ''Ghost Wars'' also corroborates many of Clarke's assertions that counterterrorism policy was largely ignored by the new Bush administration before Sept. 11. Coll notes, as does Clarke, that the Bush team didn't hold its first cabinet-level meeting on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan until Sept. 4, one week before the twin towers fell.
New York Times book review - Against All Enemies; Ghost Wars
The explosive details about President Bush's obsession with Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks captured the headlines in the days after the book's release, but ''Against All Enemies'' offers more. It is a rarity among Washington-insider memoirs - it's a thumping good read.
...[Steve Coll's] ''Ghost Wars'' also corroborates many of Clarke's assertions that counterterrorism policy was largely ignored by the new Bush administration before Sept. 11. Coll notes, as does Clarke, that the Bush team didn't hold its first cabinet-level meeting on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan until Sept. 4, one week before the twin towers fell.
In a few months former diplomat Joseph Wilson, will publish his book, an account of the build-up to the war in Iraq, called The Politics of Truth. Wilson last summer accused the White House of ignoring evidence in its efforts to show Iraq had WMD. The White House responded by leaking the identity of Wilson's wife, an undercover CIA operative.
That scandal led to a criminal investigation of White House staff, which is still ongoing.
article
That scandal led to a criminal investigation of White House staff, which is still ongoing.
Brace yourselves.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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