Richard Clarke soundbite that is reverberating around the world...

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

"I find it outrageous that the President is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it." - Richard Clarke


This is what I have been waiting to hear from someone in a position in the Bush White House to know what went on in the runup to 9/11 and how they chose to fight the war on terror by going after Saddam Hussein and not Osama bin Laden.

[maddezmom]

1. yup, have seen coverage on CNNI and BBC World

several times today. And they cut in this am on CNNI to show Condi on Daybreak.

[Desertrose]

2. I know...how long have we waited

and finally someone had the intestinal fortitiude from the bush side to say it out loud...


Now Kerry...take this and run with it man!!!


Dennis has....
http://www.kucinich.us/pressreleases/pr_032204.php
Kucinich: Disclosure That Administration Manufactured Crisis to Invade Iraq No Surprise
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 22, 2004


"More evidence continues to emerge every day," said Kucinich, "that the statements I made on the floor of the House of Representatives in opposition to the President's war resolution in 2002 were correct."

In his speech on the House floor on October 10, Kucinich stated, "Iraq was not responsible for 9/11….There is no proof Iraq worked with al-Qaeda to cause 9/11." A day earlier, he challenged the Bush administration regarding "serious and substantial questions" and "contradictory" information supplied to the Senate to justify passage of the carte blanche resolution, including a letter from CIA Director George Tenet calling it "unlikely" that Iraq would initiate an attack against the U.S. if not provoked.

more....

Peace
DR

edited to paste in the part I missed the first time....

[74dodgedart]

3. I like this one....

"And I said, 'Paul, there hasn't been any Iraqi terrorism against the United States in eight years!' And I turned to the deputy director of the CIA and said, 'Isn't that right?' And he said, 'Yeah, that's right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States."

It seems like someone ought to ask Wolfowitz and the Deputy Director
to confirm this or point to any Iraqi terrorism against the US.

Clearly, Iraq is not "central" to the War on Terrror.

[9215]

8. That is what struck me the hardest on 60 minutes, though

the whole segment was dynamite. Clarke nailed every point and answered some potentially difficult questions with ease. It's like Bugliosi in "Betrayal" going after the SOTUS sleaze after selection 2000.

The response from the White House was simply a denial in the face of multiple independent corroborations from other credible sources.

The Bushies were hell bent on war with Iraq and the war on terror is left lying in the lurch. BLAM!! The MOFO's attacked the wrong country! BLAM! 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, all the money traced to Al Qaeda goes through Saudi Arabia (John O'Neill--FBI guy who nailed this down before he died in the WTC). Plenty of "dictators" in the world, why pick this one?

Now drag all the others up who talked about pressure to manufacture phony intelligence--Plame, Wright, Larson,-- and the FBI agents like Rowley whose alarming intel was ignored.

And the close family connections between the Bushies and House of Saud!

etc., etc.

[Nicholas_J]

10. When you add to this

Paul O'Nells refernces to a memo dates January 2001, just days after the inauguration referring to strategy for Post Saddam Iraq, you have a very, very strong indication of what the Bush administration was lokking for from the start.

[flpoljunkie]

12. Richard Clarke will testify publicly before 9/11 Commission this very week

This could get really interesting when he repeats these damning allegations before the 9/11 Commission.

The Bush administration seems to be in full panic mode. Marc Racicot has racheted up the personal attacks--tonight he is calling Richard Clarke's accusation "malevolent" and the White House, according to CNN's John King, is saying they feel "deeply betrayed."

Bush administration in "deep doo doo"-- to borrow a phrase from H.W. Bush.

[Cuban_Liberal]

4. Let me hear an 'A-men!"

:thumbsup:

[ronnykmarshall]

11. AAAAAAAA men!

AAAAAAA men! AAAAA Amen! Amen! Amen! Sing it to me sisters!

[Leilani]

5. After 3 long years

We have a truth teller.

If this story gains legs, they will stop at nothing to ruin him.

Now they're saying he's partisan, out of the loop, bitter, etc. You ain't seen nothing yet, if the media investigates.

It's now up to the media..will they do their job?

[flpoljunkie]

6. More damning Clarke quotes from his appearance on "Good Morning America"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15565-2004Mar22.html

Interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America" about his book, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," Clarke said this morning that the day after the Sept. 11 attacks, "the president, in a very intimidating way, left us -- me and my staff -- with the clear implication that he wanted us to come back with the word that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9/11 because they had been planning to do something about Iraq from before the time they came into office."

Clarke said Bush "didn't ask me about al Qaeda. I think they had . . . a plan from day one that they wanted to do something about Iraq. And while the World Trade Center was still smoldering, while they were still digging bodies out, people in the White House were thinking -- ah, this gives us the opportunity we've been looking for to go after Iraq."

Clarke said that after debating for a week after Sept. 11 whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan, the administration decided that "they had to do Afghanistan first" because it was obvious that al Qaeda, which was based in Afghanistan, was behind the attacks. But he said the response "was slow and small" and the Bush administration did not go all out to send troops into Afghanistan and eliminate al Qaeda and bin Laden because it was holding back a larger effort for Iraq.

"We should have put U.S. special forces in immediately, not many weeks later," Clark told ABC. "U.S. special forces didn't get into the area where bin Laden was for two months, and we tried to have the Afghans do it. You know, basically the president botched the response to 9/11. He should have gone right after Afghanistan, right after bin Laden. And then he made the whole war on terrorism so much worse by invading Iraq."

[samsingh]

7. that's a great quote

brilliantly balanced and truthful.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Remember when Cynthia McKinney said that Bush LIHOP 9/11?

How Cynthia was savaged by some of the very people that are today gushing for enthusiasm about Richard Clark?

Was this a case of an African-American woman having less value than a white male? Or is this the hypocrisy of a political establishment that considered Cynthia to be inconvenient and embarrassing for what she said, but finds it politically expedient today to endorse Clark for repeating the same allegations that Cynthia made two years earlier?

Zell Miller and his right wing cohorts, including many in the Israel lobby, helped silenced Cynthia McKinney in 2002 for saying what Clark is saying today.

Cynthia was right then, and she is right now!