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Originally posted by bilmore
Here's the pertinent part in my mind:
"January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.
And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, mid-January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent. . . .
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I guess the contradiction in this statement is that he uses the term "vigorously pursue"? If not I guess I miss why this is pertinent. At any rate, vigourousness is in the eye of the beholder, and frankly I can't call the guy's integrity into question because he used the term "vigorous" but now disagrees with the admin's policy.
I don't think Clarke has ever said terrorism wasn't an important issue to the admin. I think he's saying it wasn't important enough. After chairing many cabinet level working group meetings during the Clinton admin, Clarke's staff was removed by Rice, who also said he as counterterrorism czar needed to work his policy recommendations out at the deputy level (and thus the proposals would then have to work their way through another level of review at the principal level before reaching the president).
Clarke has contrasted this deemphasis to the activities of the Clinton admin at the time of the foiling of the '99 plot to blow up LAX. There was a principal-level meeting almost every day, at which each dept head was asked what they were doing to stop terorrist attacks. This made each of them go back to their subordinates and shake the tree for info, which Clarke points out might have shaken loose the FBI info about foreigners wanting to learn how to fly planes but not land them, among other clues.
It was Rice's prerogative to use Clarke in this way, of course. I just wish we could hear her testimony as to why she felt that doing things her way would be better.
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The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.
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"Those issues" he lists as being on the table are aiding the Northern Alliance, which the Clinton admin had talked about (along with attacking the Taliban directly) but didn't feel that they had the juice as an outgoing admin, Pakistan, who was ignoring the sanctions against teh Taliban, and Uzbekistan, which I admit I know nothing about. AFAIK no action was taken on any of those fronts prior to 9/11. How does that indicate that the Bush admin was getting stuff done, contrary to what Clarke is saying now?
edited for spelling
