Centerfield

I've gotta admit Clarke's credibility looks weaker and weaker. Instapundit linked to a Fox News story from a briefing quoting Clarke himself as saying that as of 2/2001 the Bush policy was to continue the stated Clinton policy on terrorism and increase the resources devoted to Al Queda by five.

So he was either lying then, or he was lying now.

I found another reference to the increase in CIA funding you're talking about. So yeah, it looks like they did that ... and apparently it was Clarke's idea:

"Dick Clarke, when he first came and briefed, presented several ideas, all of which frankly were overseas. He had the idea to increase help for Uzbekistan, which we did. He had the idea to help increase the counterterrorism budget, which we did. These were all ideas, but they were over there."

That's a quote from Dan Wilkinson, Deputy National Security Advisor, on Paula Zahn's show Monday.

It's also the case, apparently, that the administration proposed cutting funding in the FBI's counter-terrorism budget, both before and after 9/11.

Well, perhaps he was lying then. When in an official position, one always says blather about how wonderful things are.

Clarke has not said that he was publically warning that the Adminstration was giving short-shrift to terror. His concerns were expressed privately. Now, he is going public with what previously he expressed privately. So yes, his public statements back then no doubt did not reflect his level of concern.

Just structurally, setting aside the actual integrity of the people involved, ex-officials are more believable because they are only protecting their reputation, not their jobs.

There is also no reason to think that Dick Cohen and Madeleine Albright are coordinating their testimony, whereas it would be surprising if the Administration was not trying to get its people on the same page. I don't say that to disrespect the Administration, but only to say the obvious, incumbent officials cannot speak as freely as retired officials.

The fivefold increase was "authorized but not appropriated."

Clarke answered that question specifically just now in the live testimony. So it was the policy, but it never happened.

There was a great exchange with former Gov. Thompson in which Clarke was asked whether he had testified falsely about something. He said no, the Bush Administration had asked him to highlight the positives, and minimize the negatives. He said it was standard operating procedure in Washington, and he'd done it for many administrations.

There were smiles in the room.

He's refreshingly honest, and knows his shit. This guy is a star.

He reminds me of Ollie North, in a good way. The Democrats thought they had Reagan by the balls, but Ollie North's testimony blew them away.

I say all this does not matter!

Face it, it took a tragedy (9/11) to wake this country and the world up to the true dangers of terrorism. All this finger pointing now just takes our minds from the critical task at hand.

By the way, there's a pretty detailed piece about Dick Clarke and his claims in an article by Fred Kaplan in Slate.

I just read the text of the Clarke testimony today and.... (sigh) I found him very convincing and almost weirdly refreshing. For days we have been hearing political appointments from both administrations skate around this issue and deny responsibility and Clarke simply stated: "I failed you..."

What does this mean? I don't know. I still don't like the fact that the man wrote a book eight months before the election, but that being said, I found him to be truthfull and honest.

I will say this. Neither administration is probably entirely right or entirely wrong. Something that has struck me as odd is that this commission at time appears like it has forgotten the complete shock of 9/11. They flew airplanes into buildings... does anybody not remember watching the television that morning in complete and utter disbelief?

I guess my point is that I am not sure anybody would have done anything differently before 9/11, because 9/11 itself changed the way we look at terrorists. There is no doubt they where dangerous on 9/10, but come on, did anyone really believe they should have been the main focus of our foreign policy?

Tallan is right... none of this really does matter. What matters is how where we go from here. And I admit, although it wasn't enough for me to hang a John Kerry sign from my window, my confidence in the Bush administration was shaken by Mr. Clarke today.

I think you're both right that none of this matters much in the present context.

The real question is what we do now. The answer, in part, is that we stay in Iraq and commit ourselves to building a stable government. And the political rhetoric has gotten distorted on that question.

On the one hand, it's no contradiction to say that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, but that once we did it became a central front in the terror war that must be dealt with decisively.

It's not a contradition, but it's also not a position easily adopted on the Democratic side. There are too many folks angry or upset by the war and just ready to say "enough" -- the energy from the party base would deflate somewhat if Kerry laid out a strong, consistent plan to stay and win in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Kerry can't sound like a strong leader without such a clear, decisive plan.

And, meanwhile, Bush isn't quite the strong leader people thought he was to begin with.

I have to be honest, personally, that the present political climate on foreign policy issues drives me nuts. I don't think the real option for strong leadership is out there for us. I think we would find it, naturally, among the internationalist foreign policy camp ... folks like Hagel, Lugar, Lieberman, Powell ... people with real expertise on these issues and good basic judgment. But the parties don't give us folks like that, even at these critical times when the grown-ups really do need to take over.

RE: "Authorized but not appropriated"--it takes a while to move the money around in the federal government. Tough to spend authorized but unbudgeted monies before Congress gets the budget passed and appropriates them. Seven months and twelve days after Bush was sworn in, the new admin finished their re-assessment and re-formulation of counter-terrorism programs, and it was an expanded and more aggressive version of the previous (Clinton admin) program, with Richard Clarke's fingerprints all over it. Six days later it hit Bush's desk. One day later, the Twin Towers fell. Six days after that, Bush authorized the eradication of the Taliban regime by ground invasion.

By all insider accounts prior to the current primaries, the Clinton administration handoff to the Bush administration on National Security issues was pretty straight-forward and professional, lauded by both, and there were no major operational changes under the then-existing budget.

I didn't find Clarke in the least credible today. He seemed to be trying to convince himself that 9/11 wasn't his (personal) fault. Therefore the Bush admin had to be at fault, and therefore his eight years in the Clinton admin had to be blameless. And after reading through a long list of extremely contradictory statements by Clarke, his credibility was zilch. When was he lying--1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, or this week? Why would it be somehow more credible to believe that he was lying in 2002, when he said about the exact total opposite of what he said this week, than that he might be lying now, with a campaign on and a book to sell and an axe to grind after being demoted and eased out of the White House? Why is he given credit for integrity and honesty as a public servant, when what he said as a public servant conflicts with what he's saying as someone selling a book? How is that "reputation" used to justify his honesty NOW when he's essentially claiming that he was lying for political reasons pretty much the entire time he was establishing that reputation for honesty?

He really lost me when he vehemently insisted that the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant was a chemical weapons factory, despite the fact that it's been pretty conclusively established that it was just a drug plant, and not owned by Bin Laden.

And the Dems would like everyone to forget that Clinton, acting on faulty intelligence he had every reason to believe was accurate, acted unilaterally and aggressively and blew up an "aspirin factory" that was purportedly owned by Bin Laden and purportedly manufacturing WMD's for Iraq. Not real helpful to the current Bush-bashing propaganda, doncha know.

I think the differences between the Clinton and Bush admin's approaches on terrorism (pre-9/11) were pretty minimal. The Clinton admin was more diplomatic and slow-moving, more hesitant to upset world opinion. Poor relations with the military and intelligence communities didn't make it easy for him to actually do much of anything useful militarily without bold and aggressive action, which wasn't Clinton's foreign policy style at all. The Bush admin was prepared to be more aggressive (Yeehaw Texas Cowboy!) but was overtaken by events before it really got grounded and established in office, which pretty much reset the counters.

I'd love to blame the Clinton admin for encouraging the Bin Ladens of the world, leading inexorably and predictably to 9/11, but I just don't see it. Certainly not any more or less than the preceding administrations. The minimal-or-no retaliation approach to foreign terrorist acts goes back at least to Reagan and the 1983 bombing in Beirut, even to Jimmy Carter and Iran. The only exception that pops to mind is the 1986 U.S. attacks on Libya under Reagan. Even after Oklahoma City, we all thought the major threat was overseas, that it was a foreign policy problem. Until it wasn't.

Hindsight is indeed 20/20. And frequently it's tunnel vision as well.

Thanks Tully, everything you say makes good sense. None of this has changed my mind regarding the idea that re-hashing pre-9/11 policy has any value aside from whatever might be learned that can help guide our future efforts. Finger-pointing is not especially valuable unless gross incompetence can be objectively revealed.

Janus, I find your assaults on Condi Rice to be ugly and frankly, quite off-putting. I have seen nothing to suggest that she doesn't have ample game. Impugning government workers' integrity is a last resort to me, and I fail to see how punishing mid-level FBI bureaucrats will accomplish much other than driving competent people away from government service.

just testing plz dont mind

just testing plz dont mind