- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
"Well, given that Condoleezza Rice's stated goal was to get George W. Bush RE-ELECTED can we then charge that if she believed the PDB was that important she certainly would NOT have said so. Give me a break."
When did Rice state that that was her goal? And, again, Richard Ben-Veniste agreed with Rice when she said there were no specifics in the Augst 6 PDB. You may be unfamiliar with Ben-Veniste, but I think it's safe to say he supported John Kerry in 2004.
Clarke denied he was working with the John Kerry campaign in 2004. However, he admitted that he had voted for Al Gore in 2000, his close friend, Rand Beers, was a national security adviser to Kerry’s campaign, and, although Clarke claimed to be a registered Republican, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that "his only listed political contributions during the two most recent election cycles have gone to former colleagues running as Democrats for Congress."
While Clarke argued that he did not have a political agenda, the American people saw things differently. A Rasmussen Reports survey conducted on March 29-30, 2004 found that 50 percent of the respondents believed Clarke was making his accusations about President Bush "either to sell his book or to help John Kerry’s campaign." Just 39 percent believed Clarke was "merely a concerned citizen telling the truth about what he saw." A Newsweek poll found similar results: "Half of those polled said they thought Clarke was motivated by personal and political reasons, while 25 percent said he was a dedicated public servant."
