Reply #1: Aparrently, PBS put out a doc that at least one viewer found [View All]

[HysteryDiagnosis]

to be damning to miss Rice.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/campaign/talk/
Tragically, the Clinton-Clarke plan--which, as one high Bush Administration official conceded, included "everything we've done since 9/11"--sat on the back-burner for 8 months as it was nibbled to death by a low-level Bush Administration policy review. Thus, for 8 months--from January through September 11, 2001--the Bush Administration team, lead by Dick Cheney (in charge of the Administration's task force on terrorism) and Condoleezza Rice dawdled, giving al-Quaeda, fully funded and completely secure at their bases in Afghanistan, ample time to prepare their devastating "suck punch" against the United States. No wonder Condoleezza Rice wants to prevent the American people from learning about the Clinton Administration's Clarke Plan! For the sake of readers and viewers who heard nothing about any of this in the Frontline report, here is a summary of the Clarke Plan, as presented to incoming Bush Administration officials, including C. Rice, in January 2001, quoted from the August 12, 2002 issue of *Time Magazine*:

"Clarke's proposals called for the 'breakup' of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Quaeda was causing trouble . . . would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to 'eliminate the sanctuary' where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. . . . Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. . . . At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. . . . In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to 'everything we've done since 9/11.'"

So when Condoleezza Rice and other Administrative spokespeople try to create the false impression that there was no previously existing American plan to take on the Taliban--and that they had to plan the war in Afghanistan from scratch--they are simply engaging in the typical obfuscatory tactics of bureaucrats who have screwed-up "big time": more specifically, they are trying to protect themselves and their bosses (Bush and Cheney) from the American people's outrage at their 8 fateful months of appalling negligence and incompetence--culminating in the national tragedy of 9/11. It is obvious why Rice, et al, would want to perpetuate this cover-up of the Clarke plan and of the Bush Administrations 8 months of disasterous inaction--but why in the world would FRONTLINE want to implicate itself in this Bush Administration obfuscation of the historical record?

I strongly urge FRONTLINE to post this message and invite the producers of this report to respond.