Posted on 07/24/2004 7:41:32 PM PDT by NavySEAL F-16
Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.
Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own. )
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Uggggggg...I cant read it
I wonder what most Iraqis would say to this (especially the dead ones)...and I have to also say: WTF cares what the "Islamic world" thinks--they're a bunch of tyrants and thugs. Do we really care what they think?
Please...
Neither does the New York Times. Of course they continued to employee and publish stories by Jayson Blair even as they knew he was a liar.
Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.
Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own.)
What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.
So what now? News coverage of the commission's recommendations has focused on the organizational improvements: a new cabinet-level national intelligence director and a new National Counterterrorism Center to ensure that our 15 or so intelligence agencies play well together. Both are good ideas, but they are purely incremental. Had these changes been made six years ago, they would not have significantly altered the way we dealt with Al Qaeda; they certainly would not have prevented 9/11. Putting these recommendations in place will marginally improve our ability to crush the new, decentralized Al Qaeda, but there are other changes that would help more.
First, we need not only a more powerful person at the top of the intelligence community, but also more capable people throughout the agencies - especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In other branches of the government, employees can and do join on as mid- and senior-level managers after beginning their careers and gaining experience elsewhere. But at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by those who joined young and worked their way up. This has created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity and often mediocrity.
The only way to infuse these key agencies with creative new blood is to overhaul their hiring and promotion practices to attract workers who don't suffer the "failures of imagination" that the 9/11 commissioners repeatedly blame for past failures.
Second, in addition to separating the job of C.I.A. director from the overall head of American intelligence, we must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence. This is the only way to avoid the "groupthink" that hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq. It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department - a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers.
Analysts aren't the only ones who should be reconstituted in small, elite groups. Either the C.I.A. or the military must create a larger and more capable commando force for covert antiterrorism work, along with a network of agents and front companies working under "nonofficial cover'' - that is, without diplomatic protection - to support the commandos.
Even more important than any bureaucratic suggestions is the report's cogent discussion of who the enemy is and what strategies we need in the fight. The commission properly identified the threat not as terrorism (which is a tactic, not an enemy), but as Islamic jihadism, which must be defeated in a battle of ideas as well as in armed conflict.
We need to expose the Islamic world to values that are more attractive than those of the jihadists. This means aiding economic development and political openness in Muslim countries, and efforts to stabilize places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Restarting the Israel-Palestinian peace process is also vital.
Also, we can't do this alone. In addition to "hearts and minds" television and radio programming by the American government, we would be greatly helped by a pan-Islamic council of respected spiritual and secular leaders to coordinate (without United States involvement) the Islamic world's own ideological effort against the new Al Qaeda.
Unfortunately, because of America's low standing in the Islamic world, we are now at a great disadvantage in the battle of ideas. This is primarily because of the unnecessary and counterproductive invasion of Iraq. In pulling its bipartisan punches, the commission failed to admit the obvious: we are less capable of defeating the jihadists because of the Iraq war.
Unanimity has its value, but so do debate and dissent in a democracy facing a crisis. To fully realize the potential of the commission's report, we must see it not as the end of the discussion but as a partial blueprint for victory. The jihadist enemy has learned how to spread hate and how to kill - and it is still doing both very effectively three years after 9/11.
Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, is the author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror."
Getting tired of posts to subscription "news" agencies. If I can't view it as a "free" service then it isn't news. It is a product I have to buy and it isn't going to happen anytime soon. I prefer all opinions, good, bad or indiferent but I am not paying to support them.
Use Bugmenot.com to avoid registration.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1104762/posts
"All across the board, they've been lying, they've been hiding, they've been distorting, and they're attempting to maintain a residual weapons capability," Clarke said in an October 7 [1991] WorldNet television interview. Clarke explained that Iraq is obligated to divulge its nuclear, chemical, biological and missile capabilities because "it agreed under U.N. (Security Council) Resolution 687 to allow this access by the United Nations." ...Clarke said the United Nations inspections team has discovered the same pattern of non-compliance exists in the Iraqi chemical weapons field. "Inspections have already revealed that they had chemical weapons of an advanced type that they did not declare to the United Nations." Furthermore, Clarke said, "They had many more weapons than they've declared, and we suspect that they have weapons hidden away throughout the country that they have not yet yielded up for destruction."
"Newsweek, Nov 16,[1998] explained US decision making prior to Iraq's Oct 31 decision to suspend UNSCOM monitoring, "Maintaining sanctions is at the heart of the new US strategy . . . The blueprint was developed last spring by the National Security Council, in response to a plea from national security adviser Sandy Berger. During last February's standoff, a frustrated Berger called one senior official, Richard Clarke, in the middle of the night and complained, astonishing (given all the war talk), that 'we have no strategy on Iraq.' . . . After an extensive study, an ad hoc group pulled together by Clarke concluded-in papers so sensitive they were never circulated below the deputy cabinet level-that, short of invasion, the United States had no good military options on Iraq. Airstrikes were not going to topple Saddam or force him to give the United Nations unfettered access. And UN inspections were overrated: it was simply not feasible to track down all of Saddam's biochemical stash." "
I'm guessing this idiot hasn't even read the report. If he had he would have a greater appreciation for the degree to which he has been discredited.
As opposed to the old U.S. strategy, which was...maintaining sanctions.
"Terrorism: It's a tactic, not an enemy." Ahhh, the dictionary definition defense. Yes, Bush has declared war on the tactic of bombing innocent people. And?
Clarke is just mad and envious; history will remember that it was Bush who was the first president to mount a concerted campaign to defeat terrorism, both the tactic AND the ideology that drives the use of such means, and Clarke had nothing to do with it.
He needn't feel lonely. The commission discredited most things including themselves. The report was for everybody and for nothing. Partisans from the Dem or Pubbie side can find instances bolstering rheir side of the argument. Meanwhile the election contest continues the blame game and the preparations for improved security get shoved in the drawer until after the coronation.
But Clark and Clinton did even less.
Clarke, Gorelick, and Richard Ben Vineste did their damage to Bush by mucking up the public hearings with partisan attacks on Bush. That was their mission..mission accomplished. This is Clarke, taking one final whack at Bush..he's the only one who can do it now, as Gorelick and Ben Vineste must stand by the Report.
To clear Clinton of any blame, Clark writes:
"Had these changes been made six years ago, they would not have significantly altered the way we dealt with Al Qaeda; they certainly would not have prevented 9/11"
To dispute the Report findings, Clark writes:
"Unfortunately, because of America's low standing in the Islamic world, we are now at a great disadvantage in the battle of ideas. This is primarily because of the unnecessary and counterproductive invasion of Iraq"
This is the line of attack Kerry won't dare make directly. He'll let Clark, Cleland, and Moore make it for him.
One does have to wonder is Richard Clarke was influential in helping Sandy the Burglar in pin pointing which documents needed lifting. After all Richard Clarke worked under Sandy the Burglar and was writing his book during this time frame.
"Richard A. Clarke, the former special adviser to the president for cybersecurity, has joined Arlington, Va.-based Good Harbor Consulting LLC as chairman. Clarke joins Roger Cressey, president of the firm, who served as Clarke's chief of staff at the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and before that as the director for Transnational Threats on the National Security Council.
Good Harbor Consulting plans to target a wide range of corporate clients, from the Fortune 500 to small technology start-ups, providing strategic consulting services in the areas of homeland security, cybersecurity, protection of critical infrastructure and counterterrorism.
John Tritak, former director of the Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office and a longtime government thought leader on cybersecurity issues, has also joined the firm as its CEO, said Good Harbor.
In addition to the core team of Clarke, Cressey and Tritak, the company will rely on what Cressey calls a "network of subject matter experts" and has been negotiating a partnership for the past several weeks with another major security consulting business.
Cressey and Clarke plan to focus on four key areas: strategic planning, product and business strategy evaluation, partnership opportunities and strategic security risk assessment.
"For too many companies, Washington is a jumble of acronyms and an indecipherable procurement maze," according to the company's new mission statement. "Good Harbor uses its unique combination of experience in the halls of government and with the information technology industry to provide clients with partnership opportunities to better negotiate the U.S. government space and the critical infrastructure vertical markets."
Howard Schmidt, a former White House colleague of both Clarke and Cressey who is now chief security officer at eBay Inc., called the new venture a "natural progression" for Clarke and Cressey, given the years the two spent working together in government. When asked about his own plans, Schmidt said he also had considered going into private practice as a consultant and may still do so on a part-time basis.
Clarke announced in January that he was stepping down from his cybersecurity role in the U.S. government, ending a career at the National Security Council that had spanned three administrations (see story). His career was characterized by a concerted effort to enhance the government's relationship with the private-sector operators of critical infrastructure.
Shortly after leaving government, he testified at a congressional hearing that he didn't think the Bush administration was moving fast enough in organizing the National Cyber Security Center (see story). Clarke also called on Congress to fund vulnerability scanning sensors on all federal networks, and he recommended that federal agencies outsource cybersecurity projects and withhold money from vendors if the agencies get failing cybersecurity grades. "
Beyond these financial ties, Cressey serves as NBC/MSNBC analyst, and Richard Clarke is ABC's analyst.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.