Against Selected Enemies (Richard Miniter on Clarke)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | April 1, 2004 | RICHARD MINITER

[neverdem]

A year ago, I thought Richard A. Clarke, President Clinton's counterterror czar, was a hero. He and his small band of officials fought a long battle to focus the bureaucracy on stopping Osama bin Laden long before 9/11. For my own book, I interviewed Mr. Clarke extensively and found him to be blunt and forthright. He remembered whole conversations from inside the Situation Room.

[jwalsh07]

Relentless and incredibly inept.

[FairOpinion]

Clarke clearly views Bush the enemy, not Bin Laden.

A pathetic Dem shill.

[MNJohnnie]

Relentless and incredibly inept.

Especally as his clear goal with the book is a "get-even with Condi and Bush for demoting me" which is gloriously backfiring on him.

[Texasforever]

Perjury should be the least of Clarke's worries.

[neverdem]

Relentless and incredibly inept.

I assume you're referring to Clarke, unless you correct me.

[Wilhelm Tell]

He fails to mention that President Clinton's three "findings" on bin Laden, which would have allowed the U.S. to take action against him, were haggled over and lawyered to death.

This is the result of the naive liberal view that terrorism is a traditional crime problem and not an act of war. This allows the traditional liberal knee-jerk reaction to kick in -- a way must be found to exonerate or at least "understand" the criminal (or terrorist), who is merely "misguided" because America is --racist-sexist-homophobic-imperialist-is too wealthy-has too much poverty-has too many guns-has too much personal freedom-has too many SUVs-is "insensitive"-is ruining the environment-- from there it is a short step from blaming the victim to disarming the victim.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

I had forgotten about the evacuation of the bin Laden clan from the US after 9/11. Just one of those things that slipped through the cracks. Wonder what the whole story is there?

[MEG33]

"But Mr. Clarke was NOT a Bush insider.."

Clarke will be devastated to hear that anyone,especially Miniter, noticed that fact.

[alwaysconservative]

Thanks so much for posting this! I've just finished Miniter's book "Losing bin Laden", and found it endlessly fascinating when juxtaposed against the recent Clarke revelations. This article underscores that while Clarke has the attention of the media because of his book and his efforts to shill for the Dims (x42 especially), Miniter has the facts. This is one of the most eviscerating attacks against Clarke yet.

[lysie]

Miniter's response to Clarke's book.

[Peach]

Thanks for the ping, lysie.

Clarke has made a few "mistakes". Heheheh

[MEG33]

"Clarke was not a Bush insider,Clarke was not a Bush insider"..I want Clarke to hear those words over and over.

[MEG33]

I just saw the MoveOn ad featuring the voice of Clarke.Clarke decries it but he is now part of the campaign to defeat the President and it may as well be seen as official.

[q_an_a]

without the web, most of us would be in the dark about the slimy ways of Clarke and Klinton.

[ReleaseTheHounds]

Reading between the lines of this review by Miniter, I now think I understand Richard Clarke and his motivation.

When he started writing this book, he probably started it off as an honest and frustrated accounting of his decades in public service and the fight on terror. As he got into the process, perhaps as he started seeking a publisher, he realized: if I tell what I truly believe, everyone will hate me and I'll come across as a self-serving "outsider" in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations. I have to choose sides if this book is going to be a success... Who controls the mainstream media? Who will give me the best buzz? Who will get those mindless American consumers to buy this book? How do I get the most "bang" for my views? Do I want to make my public confession on "60 Minutes" or "Fox & Friends"?

With this in mind, Clarke made his choice: whitewash the years of neglect by Clinton. Spin the events (not lie, just change the emphasis and "tenor") to excuse the feckless policies -- as a matter of fact, pick up the old mantra (this will play well in the media) that Clinton couldn't carry out Clarke's bold counter-terrorism because of those Republican scandal mongers. This won't sit well with the Bushies and the right-wing media, but you can count on the Clintonoids and that 90% of the mainstream media to do everything in their power to defend, extend and promote this "revisionist history".

Clarke probably did feel that Bush's focus on Iraq was mistaken and used that excuse for slanting his story (which I guess he started before the Iraq war began)... When the 9-11 Commission was scheduled, it became a very convenient publishing target date.

Like most career bureaucrats, Clarke probably feels the politicians are beneath him and stupid for not lapping up their policy prescriptions without question -- and I'm sure he has always sided with the Democrats for their "world view".

This is an opportunist of the first order -- and he's making $ millions as a result of this calculation. While Condi will expose his distortions, I'm sure it will be difficult to expose these as outright "Lies" because the mainstream media won't allow that to happen.

[OESY]

Interesting but, IMHO, overly generous concluding paragraph:

In recent days we have been subjected to a great deal of Mr. Clarke, not least to replays of his fulsome apology for not doing enough to prevent 9/11. But he has nothing to apologize for: He was a relentless foe of al Qaeda for years. He should really apologize for the flaws in his book.

[maica]

If you only read one FR article today, this is the one to read.

****

BTW, Bob Kerrey on Fox and Friends, said that the committee has a list of questions from "the families" that have to be answered. I bet that none of them are the questions raised by Miniter, here.

The commissioners are going to use the fact that the Bush Administration was trying to get Congress to authorize more money for the missile defense program as "evidence" that they were not focused on the threat from terrorists.

[cyncooper]

Mr. Clarke misstates a range of checkable facts. The 1993 U.S. death toll in Somalia was 18, not 17. He writes that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed became al Qaeda's "chief operational leader" in 1995; in fact, he took over in November 2001. He writes (correctly) that Abdul Yasim, one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, fled to Iraq but adds the whopper that "he was incarcerated by Saddam Hussein's regime." An ABC News crew found Mr. Yasim working a government job in Iraq in 1997, and documents captured in 2003 revealed that the bomber had been on Saddam's payroll for years.

Breathtaking. Polishing up the legacy of Clinton AND Saddam?

[cyncooper]

Here's the thing: Clarke says he voted McCain in the 2000 primary and Gore in the general.

Connecting the dots, one can surmise his McCain vote was meant, as many dems were doing during that time, as an effort to oust Bush as the Republican nominee. So, we can deduce he has actually been anti-Bush well before the election.

Taking that into account, others have pondered if the drawn out election drove him 'round the bend and then when Rice was apprised, immediately upon taking up her new position, of concerns about Clarke's past performance and he was removed from his former duties of briefing the Cabinet, perhaps, the theory goes, he turned outright malignant against the administration.

Yes, he gave briefings lauding the Bush actions and such, but perhaps he was playing both sides in order to accumulate enough material for the book he was already planning on penning?

Something is very wrong with Richard A. Clarke.