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• Thursday, January 8, 2009 09:54 AM

  That's because Richard Clarke was CALLED OFF by Condoleeza Rice

  How long do you want to do this dance for? You just want documentation is that it? Before citing Clarke to, in any way, defend the Bush Administration's actions in the run-up to 9/11 let ALONE Condoleeza Rice's you should really delve into what he said.

  Here is Clarke's testimony from the ACTUAL 9/11 Commission.

  ROEMER: Do you get a response to this urgent request for a principals meeting on these? And how does this affect your time frame for dealing with these important issues?

  CLARKE: I did get a response, and the response was that in the Bush administration I should, and my committee, counterterrorism security group, should report to the deputies committee, which is a sub-Cabinet level committee, and not to the principals and that, therefore, it was inappropriate for me to be asking for a principals' meeting. Instead, there would be a deputies meeting.

  ROEMER: So does this slow the process down to go to the deputies rather than to the principals or a small group as you had previously done?

  CLARKE: It slowed it down enormously, by months. First of all, the deputies committee didn't meet urgently in January or February. Then when the deputies committee did meet, it took the issue of Al Qaida as part of a cluster of policy issues, including nuclear proliferation in South Asia, democratization in Pakistan, how to treat the various problems, including narcotics and other problems in Afghanistan, and launched on a series of deputies meetings extending over several months to address Al Qaida in the context of all of those inter-related issues. That process probably ended, I think in July of 2001. So we were ready for a principals meeting in July. But the principals calendar was full and then they went on vacation, many of them in August, so we couldn't meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September.

  …

  ROEMER: You then wrote a memo on September 4th to Dr. Rice expressing some of these frustrations several months later, if you say the time frame is May or June when you decided to resign. A memo comes out that we have seen on September the 4th. You are blunt in blasting DOD for not willingly using the force and the power. You blast the CIA for blocking Predator. You urge policy-makers to imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead at home or abroad after a terrorist attack and ask themselves what else they could have done. You write this on September the 4th, seven days before September 11th.

  CLARKE: That's right.

  ROEMER: What else could have been done, Mr. Clarke?

  CLARKE: Well, all of the things that we recommended in the plan or strategy -- there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options -- but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were done. They were done after September 11th. They were all done. I didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in February

  —libertyson Read libertyson's other letters
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