Forget LIHOP and MIHOP. Worry about what Bush has done since 9/11 [View All]

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/bw/20040415/bs_bw/nf200404150640db009

Blame Bush for What Came After 9/11

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So as the taxi whizzed past the new Time Warner Center, it was somewhat surreal about to spot Clarke standing on the corner with another man, laughing heartily. It's good that Richard Clarke can laugh once in a while because he has taken on the most serious of tasks: Calling to account a Presidency that failed in its vigilance but more important -- used the death of innocents to lead the country into a war it had been longing to wage. snip

TEAR DOWN THE CRITICS. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), the Clarke superior whom his book buries with faint praise, tried to make a cogent case before the September 11 commission on Apr. 8 that the newly arrived Bush Administration had done a reasonable job of pulling guard duty for the republic. All she really needed to say in her public testimony was: "We were new. We were inexperienced. We didn't have our eye on the ball. We're sorry." But she never did that, and what she did say was largely irrelevant and already forgotten. snip

The main aim of the Bush disinformation machine seems to be this: Tear down critics of America's preparedness before the attacks, and, above all, keep the discussions focused on September 11. Because no matter how much or how little you believe in the gospel according to Clarke, most reasonable Americans aren't going to blame the Bushies for failing to foresee and prevent the slaughter of civilians by a band of suicidal zealots.

The truly damning part about Against All Enemies, however, is what Clarke reveals about the Administration's mindset on Iraq. What George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz really have to answer for is the insidious way in which they used the Twin Tower horror to coax the country into supporting an attack on Iraq. snip

So to boil all this down, we went to war, sacrificed thousands of human lives, racked up billions in bills, and flouted the rules of international law for three basic reasons: Israel, oil, and the vengeance of a son whose father didn't finish off Saddam and then was targeted for assassination by the Iraqi Horror Show in 1993? When you think that Bill Clinton was impeached and almost tossed out of office for fooling around with a willing intern and then lying about it, his sins seem like very small potatoes. Very small potatoes indeed.

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