They've taken a damaging hit, and they know it

So they're pulling out all the stops. Condi on every government friendly news medium, Rumsfiend and Bush spitting out more lies tyring to smear Clarke and do damage control all at the same time. Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, fer crissakes. Fox News publishing an old Clarke background report that all officials and journalists alike understand are to remain anonymous. And now...

Leading congressional Republicans announced plans Friday to seek declassification of 2-year-old testimony from Richard Clarke, hoping to show discrepancies between his recent criticisms of the Bush administration's terrorism policies with flattering statements he made as a White House aide.

  article

All of this tells me that Clarke's testimony is 100% correct.

He was certainly correct when he said he understood they would "unleash their dogs" on him.

California Rep. Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, also wants to see more information disclosed, including 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's report addressing the involvement of a foreign government in supporting some of the 19 hijackers — an item of dispute with the Bush administration.

"This is selective declassification, in my view, and it is all about discrediting an administration critic," Harman said.

Sure it is. And Clarke has already explained his official statements on behalf of the administration for whom he worked at the time as the politics of the position and being asked to hype up the good stuff and downplay the bad.

They know they've been hit. Broadside.

And, P.S., according to Josh Marshall...

(Bear in mind that top White House aides have told the press that the president personally initiated and is directing this campaign against Clarke. Not outside rabble-rousers, not nefarious aides operating on their own account, but the president himself. This is all his doing, according to his own staffers.)

Where's Karl?

But that may be true, as I have a feeling he himself came up with that stupid, disgusting, incomprehensively calloused and tasteless slide show. He certainly had to approve it, since he presented it.

And, I read somewhere else that Condi Rice has actually been asking to testify before the 9/11 Commission, but that Himself has forbidden it. If I come across that again, I'll post the link.