----- Original Message ----- From: "iaamoac" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 9:39 PM Subject: Question Regarding Richard Clarke
> As I have noted previously, I spent much of last week and weekend > away from the Internet and my usual news sources. (Ironically, I > was helping run an educational event for high school students.) > > Anyhow, as such I have missed much of the Richard Clarke brouhaha, > and despite having read much about it, I still remain somewhat > puzzled by the whole thing. Thus, I was wondering if one of the many > anti-war or left-wing Brin-L'ers here could post a short summary or > set of bullet-points regarding what they consider to be Clarke's most > salient accusations? i.e. what wrongdoing is Clarke accusing the > Bush Administration of? I think the most fundamental criticism Clarke has is underestimating the importance of the threat posed by AQ while focusing on state sponsored terrorism. There are a few examples he gave of this. 1) The plan he proposed early in 2001 for dealing with AQ was back burnered for over half a year to make sure the right bureaucratic hoops were jumped through. It wasn't a matter of taking time to review the proposal, there were long stretches where it just sat. 2) This was a result of a downgrade of terrorism at the White House. He use to report at the principals level, he now reported one level down. One problem with this is that the time between reviews one level down was much longer, lengthening the time to response. 3) The FBI downgraded the importance of terrorism also. It wasn't on the highlighted list of the Administration stating which of the Clinton priorities were still high priority for them. 4) When there was a spike in the danger indication under Clinton, the principals had daily meetings on it to help "shake the bushes" for information. Clarke stated this help break the millennium plot in the US. When the same spike occurred in the summer of '01, Clarke stated that the Bush White House wanted him to go through a much longer process before it reached the principals. As a result, their first meeting on it was months after the spike. Clarke said he would have hoped that sharing information at the top level and having them champion the cause at lower levels would have worked as it did earlier. 5) Bush had a laser like focus on state sponsored terrorism by Iraq, Iran and North Korea from the start, and looked at everything through that lens. After 9-11, he pushed folks to find a connection with Iraq. When they couldn't, he went into Afghanistan first, but still maintained focus on Iraq. As a result, Afghanistan was undersupported, and the Taliban and AQ were pushed out of power, but not vanquished. I think of all the complaints, #4 is the most serious. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
