From Tapped:
A BUSH PRIORITIES READER. Since Condoleezza Rice seems to have pulled
the assignment of defending the administration from former
counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's rather explosive allegations
about Bush's mishandling of al-Qaeda this seems like a good time to
note that Rice's pre-election essay on Republican foreign policy
priorities (of which, Tapped readers will recall, al-Qaeda is not one)
is, in fact, available online courtesy of the Council on Foreign
Relations.
On the same site you can also find the thoughts of current US Trade
Representative Robert Zoellick on how a Republican president would
conduct foreign policy. Once again, terrorism is not so much as
mentioned, although "evil" and people "who are hard at work to develop
nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to
deliver them" do get a plug. Ron Suskind also has a memo written by Don
Rumsfeld in the early weeks of the administration in which, once again,
missile defense and Iraq figure prominently as threats, while al-Qaeda
goes unmentioned.
So if the administration really was making terrorism a priority, they
seem to have decided for some reason to keep it a secret, not only from
the public, but from the Secretary of Defense as well. Also courtesy of
the Council on Foreign Relations you can see candidate statements on
the issue of terrorism. Both Bush and Gore had some tough talk to offer
(Bush: "Our response will be devastating"; Gore: "America will hunt you
down and stop you cold") but when you get down to specific proposals,
Gore offers actual ideas for homeland security while Bush -- you
guessed it -- "supports . . . installing missile defense systems."
Atrios, meanwhile, notes what appears to be at least one outright lie
in Rice's op-ed. The really important issue here, of course, isn't just
that they got in wrong before 9/11 but that they've continued the same
misguided set of priorities even after having been proven wrong by any
reasonable standard.
UPDATE: See also this document from the Justice Department obtained by
the Center for American Progress where counterterrorism is pointedly
nothighlighted as one of John Ashcroft's priorities as late as August
2001. Unlike Rice and Rumsfeld, Ashcroft at least doesn't go so far as
to imply that the subject should be totally ignored, it's just less
important than catching drug dealers.
--Matthew Yglesias
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Tom Beck
my LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/tomfodw/
"I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never thought I'd
see the last." - Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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- Re: Rice Responds to Clarke The Fool
- Tom Beck
