Ex-Bush aide: Iraq war planning began after 9/11

CNN ^ | 3/20/04 | Corbett B. Daly

[Valin]

A second former Bush administration official is set to accuse top presidential aides, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of planning retaliatory strikes on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, despite briefings from intelligence officials explaining that Iraq likely wasn't responsible.

[dandelion]

ERrr, that's former CLINTON aide, you leftist goons. CLINTON. As in "Eight years and no Osama" CLINTON.

[JulieRNR21]

Richard Clarke's Legacy of Miscalculation

By George Smith Feb 17 2003 01:38AM PT

The retirement of Richard Clarke is appropriate to the reality of the war on terror. Years ago, Clarke bet his national security career on the idea that electronic war was going to be real war. He lost, because as al Qaeda and Iraq have shown, real action is still of the blood and guts kind.

In happier times prior to 9/11, Clarke -- as Bill Clinton's counter-terror point man in the National Security Council -- devoted great effort to convincing national movers and shakers that cyberattack was the coming thing. While ostensibly involved in preparations for bioterrorism and trying to sound alarms about Osama bin Laden, Clarke was most often seen in the news predicting ways in which electronic attacks were going to change everything and rewrite the calculus of conflict.

September 11 spoiled the fun, though, and electronic attack was shoved onto the back-burner in favor of special operations men calling in B-52 precision air strikes on Taliban losers. One-hundred fifty-thousand U.S. soldiers on station outside Iraq make it perfectly clear that cyberspace is only a trivial distraction.

Saddam will not be brought down by people stealing his e-mail or his generals being spammed with exhortations to surrender.

Clarke's career in subsequent presidential administrations was a barometer of the recession of the belief that cyberspace would be a front effector in national security affairs. After being part of the NSC, Clarke was dismissed to Special Advisor for Cyberspace Security on October 9th in a ceremony led by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and new homeland security guru Tom Ridge. If it was an advance, it was one to the rear -- a pure demotion.

Instead of combating terrorists, Clarke would be left to wrestle with corporate America over computer security, a match he would lose by pinfall. Ridding the world of bad guys and ensuring homeland safety was a job for CIA wet affairsmen, the FBI, the heavy bomb wing out of Whiteman Air Force Base -- anyone but marshals in cyberspace.

Information "Sharing" and Cruise Missiles
The Slammer virus gave Clarke one last mild hurrah with the media. But nationally, Slammer was a minor inconvenience compared to relentless cold weather in the east and the call up of the reserves.

But with his retirement, Clarke's career accomplishments should be noted.

In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack. When this nonsense was revealed, it created embarrassment for the Reagan administration and was buried.

In 1998, according to the New Republic, Clarke "played a key role in the Clinton administration's misguided retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which targeted bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan." The pharmaceutical factory was, apparently, just a pharmaceutical factory, and we now know how impressed bin Laden was by cruise missiles that miss.

Trying his hand in cyberspace, Clarke's most lasting contribution is probably the new corporate exemption in the Freedom of Information Act. Originally designed to immunize companies against the theoretical malicious use of FOIA by competitors, journalists and other so-called miscreants interested in ferreting out cyber-vulnerabilities, it was suggested well before the war on terror as a measure that would increase corporate cooperation with Uncle Sam. Clarke labored and lobbied diligently from the NSC for this amendment to existing law, law which he frequently referred to as an "impediment" to information sharing.

While the exemption would inexplicably not pass during the Clinton administration, Clarke and other like-minded souls kept pushing for it. Finally, the national nervous breakdown that resulted from the collapse of the World Trade Center reframed the exemption as a grand idea, and it was embraced by legislators, who even expanded it to give a get-out-of-FOIA-free card to all of corporate America, not just those involved with the cyber-infrastructure. It passed into law as part of the legislation forming the Department of Homeland Security.

However, as with many allegedly bright ideas originally pushed by Richard Clarke, it came with thorns no one had anticipated.

In a January 17 confirmation hearing for Clarke's boss, Tom Ridge, Senator Carl Levin protested that the exemption's language needed to be clarified. "We are denying the public unclassified information in the current law which should not be denied to the public," he said as reported in the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News.

"That means that you could get information that, for instance, a company is leaking material into a river that you could not turn over to the EPA," Levin continued. "If that company was the source of the information, you could not even turn it over to another agency."

"It certainly wasn't the intent, I'm sure, of those who advocated the Freedom of Information Act exemption to give wrongdoers protection or to protect illegal activity," replied Ridge while adding he would work to remedy the problem.

Thanks for everything, Mr. Clarke.


George Smith is a Senior Fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, a defense affairs think tank and public information group. He also edits the Crypt Newsletter and has written extensively on viruses, the genesis of techno-legends and the impact of both on society.

http://www.securityfocus.com/printable/columnists/143

[nuconvert]

And the problem with wanting to go after Saddam after Sept. 11th is what?

[ambrose]

What happened to the leftist conspiracy theory that Bush began planning for the Iraq war the day he took office?

[Valin]

I'll get back to you on that.



don't wait up..it may take a while.

[Valin]

In 1986, as a State Department bureaucrat with pull, he came up with a plan to battle terrorism and subvert Muammar Qaddafi by having SR-71s produce sonic booms over Libya. This was to be accompanied by rafts washing onto the sands of Tripoli, the aim of which was to create the illusion of a coming attack.

I don't know weather to laugh or cry.

[nuconvert]

I think it's still out there.

And the problem with that, is what?

[JulieRNR21]

What really annoys me is that this guy worked for Clinton a long time, is obviously sour grapes for losing his job & yet will be portrayed by the biased press as 'Bush Aide'.

[nuconvert]

I laughed. Go ahead.....

[Eva]

One more time, wasn't Clarke a Clinton hold-over? The guy cannot make public statements about top secret meetings and discussions unless he is lying. He would be arrested.

[RoseofTexas]

I don't have the stomach to read this CRAP, so I'll just skip it! Anyway, it's a CNN exclusive, aka BULLSHIT!!

[Steve Eisenberg]

What happened to the leftist conspiracy theory that Bush began planning for the Iraq war the day he took office?

What theory? Bush inherited the low-level no-fly-zone war from Clinton. Our troops were occupying parts of Northern Iraq. We were bombing the Iraqi military every few weeks ever since 1991. We were planning war because we were at war. Indecisive war, that is, precisely the kind candidate Bush said he didn't like. Of course the Bushies planned, or at least took over the Clinton plans.

From the mouth of a 95 year old non-partisan man, Alistair Cooke, who knows where the bodies are buried:

President Clinton fretted over this problem as much as anyone and had plans to go into Iraq to enact, on his own if must be, "serious consequences", when Miss Lewinsky became a figure of fate, as significant as Napoleon's mistress, Madame Waleska.

By the time Clinton was ready to mobilise an American or allied force he didn't possess the moral authority to invade Long Island.

There is complete amnesia over the history of our twelve year war with Iraq.

[AF68]

I would hope that the Iraq war planning began after 9-11. I just heard on Fox News today that there is now irrefuable documentation linking Al-Qaeda to the Iraqi intelligence agency in Damascus before 9-11. Clarke is just another bitter do-nothing has-been hawking his book.

[ladyinred]

Well DUH!

Bush At War, a book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward said this right after the war started. Why is this supposed to be a big deal? Of course a war on terror would include the terrorist Saddam.

[Valin]

I would hope that the Iraq war planning began after 9-11.

In the run up to the war one of the reasons given why we shouldn't go into Iraq was "it takes us away from the WOT. a thought occured to me that maybe the reverse was true, that 9-11 got in the way of taking out Saddam.
(note) I have absolutely no proof to back this up, just a thought that came into my(so called) brain.

I just heard on Fox News today that there is now irrefuable documentation linking Al-Qaeda to the Iraqi intelligence agency in Damascus before 9-11.

Could you provide a link or more on this? Thanks

[GeronL]

WAIT, I thought that other guy said the war planning started on Bush's first days in office??? which was it??

[Ruth A.]

"Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq ... We all said, 'but no, no, al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan,'" Clarke said in the interview. "And Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.' I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with [the September 11 attacks].'"

This quote doesn't ring very authentic of Rummy's speaking style. My goodness, convincing dialog should be important in these types of books.

BTW, where are all the Clinton quotes about Iraq. I think I remember hearing this joker along with Sandy Berger (I think I have the name right) when the missiles were fired at a tent in Afghanistan: the sounded like they were peeing in their pants during the announcement--though they were here standing on USA soil.

[AF68]

I think it was Monsoor Ijaz that mentioned it during an interview.

[Williams]

Liberals could announce that your grandfather is older than your father and make it sound like a scandal. Two things seem obvious to me. We attacked Afghanistan first, not Iraq. So the terrible "mistake" of going right after Iraq never happened. Second, we DID next attack Iraq. So how is it big news that after 9-11 the Bush Adm. started talking about attacking Iraq?? Finally, how could Clarke know on 9-12 that Iraq wasn't involved in 9-11??