Condi Lies.. Again
After Bill Clinton's smackdown of Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, the Bush Administration sent Condi out again to defend their actions pre-9/11. One of their lines of attack on Clinton has been concerning his statement that Clarke was "demoted" by the Bush Administration. Here's what Condi said on that point:
She also said Clinton's claims that Richard Clarke - the White House
anti-terror guru hyped by Clinton as the country's "best guy" - had been demoted
by Bush were bogus.
"Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened. And
he left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security, some
several months later," she said.
Now, Condi knows better. But she just can't help it. As Condi well knows, Clinton wasn't referring to Clarke leaving AFTER 9/11. He was referring to what happened to Clarke when Bush and Condi and the crew took office on January 20, 2001. You see, under Clinton, Richard Clarke's position as counterterrorism czar was a cabinet level postion, so Clarke met with the principals directly, showing how important the terrorism issue was for the Clinton Administration.
Yet when Bush took power, he demoted Clarke's position -- it was no longer a Cabinet level position and Clarke was told to meet with the deputies and run things through them before he could deal with the principals, which, as Clarke and the 9/11 Commission detail, was an extremely inefficient and bureacratic process that resulted in Clarke's warnings being ignored by the top Bush officials, including -- GUESS WHO? -- Condi. (Condi was obsessed with missile defense, China and -- surprise, surprise -- Iraq, so Clarke was viewed as chicken little). So, by not continuing the cabinet level status of the top counterterrorism official in the U.S. government, the Bush Administration made crystal clear its view of the importance of the issue of terrorism before 9/11: it simply wasn't important
Condi also had this to say:
The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton's claim that he "left
a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for the incoming Bush team during the
presidential transition in 2001.
"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice
responded during the hourlong session.
Oh really? Then what is this?
On January 25, 2001, 5 days after Bush entered office, Clarke sent Condi a detailed memo about Al Qaeda and terrorist concerns. The memorandum attached -- guess what? -- a detailed plan, or "comprehensive strategy", to fight Al Qaeda, written by Clarke in 2000. See it for yourself here.
Condi, I think your pants are on fire again.
BTW, I also recommend Keith Olbermann's commentary about the Clinton Fox interview. You can read it or watch it in its entirety here. But one point, about the allegation made in "Path to 9/11" and by right wingers, that the Lewinsky scandal and Starr investigation, caused Clinton to be distracted, gets Olbermann particularly incensed:
Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to
9/11." Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply
put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new
and improved history.
The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica
Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.
The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this
slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it—who try to
sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag
Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews—have simply skipped past its most glaring
flaw.
Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for bin
Laden in 1998 because of the Monica Lewinsky nonsense, why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on
Aug. 20, of that year? For mentioning bin Laden by name as he did so?
That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The
Dog."
Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s
judgment.
Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri—the future attorney general—echoed
Coats.
Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.
And of course, were it true Clinton had been “distracted” by the Lewinsky
witch-hunt, who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?
Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two
years?
Who corrupted the political media?
Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the
counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had
warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from
the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?Who preempted them in order to strangle us with the trivia that was, “All Monica All The Time”?
Who distracted whom?
It's a sad state of the current news establishment when it takes a former SportsCenter anchor to be a truthteller.
