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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
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
1.) A conservative estimate of the number of innocent people killed (not including militants) by Bush's wars so far. 2.) From a humanitarian perspective a figure which dwarfs all the other figures given in this article.
100,000 people is roughly equivalent to:
4 square miles of New York City
or the entire population of any one of the following cities:
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Berkeley, California
High Point, North Carolina
The number of "terrorists" created as a result of these deaths is unknown.
"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." --Thomas Jefferson
When Obama becomes President in 12 Days and the icecaps suddenly grow,the encomomy booms,our image is restored and the whole world loves us again. What will you have to write about?
"There were no BIG terrorist attack on the U.S. soil before Bush either."
That's absolutely false. Have you forgotten what happened on April 19, 1995? And then there was the bombing of the WTC in February 1993. Seven people were kiled in that attack. However, thousands would have been killed if the attack had gone as planned. According to U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy during the life-sentencing of several of Ramzi Yousef’s conspirators in that attack, "If the sodium cyanide had vaporized it is clear that what would have happened is that cyanide gas would have been sucked into the North Tower and everyone in the North Tower would have been killed."
"In fact a few were prevented under Clinton."
Can you name one that was prevented?
"The whole argument that we have had no terrorist attack since 9/1 and are safer to justify Bush's failure's is just bull shit."
So al Qaeda has attacked in England,Spain, Indonesia and elsewhere,but it's just plain luck that they have not struck the U.S. again?
"Our invasion of Iraq had not made us safer, but created more enemies in the middle east."
Can you prove that statement?
"Iraq is now run by religious zeolots."
Absolutely false.
"AND Groenhagen, you have made some valid points, so stick to the facts and don't get smarmy about Obama just because your candidate and his idiot sidekick weren't elected!"
They weren't? Then why are Obama and his idiot sidekick Biden being sworn in later this month?
My thoughts over the past 8 years could fill a Ryder rental truck. None of them very optimistic or positive, when it comes to twig. But this writing and our view should go beyond the symptoms and try to address the cause(s). Sure, a sea change always catches some unaware, and many drown. This tectonic shift may result in an entirely different world economy, a new map, and new ways of doing things. Just look at the governors anxious to grab some "rescue" money and to build more ROADS! Unbelievable. Preposterous. Always thinking of how we did things in the 1950s (just before our civilization peaked), and eager to keep "the party" going. The question is do we apply a tourniquet, a cast, or choose amputation? That is the triage that is likely to become necessary; and we had better hope the surgeon is an elected person (but not an Illinois governor), instead of a camouflage-clad nut from northern Idaho or a Bible-swallowing maniac from Waco. The moral decay evident in this country and perhaps through most of the world lies beneath nearly all our problems -- always has been. We have much to show for 10,000 years of "progress" and "prowess," but in truth we are pretty much the same beings we were then. Here in the USA, where what one HAS became vastly superior in so many minds to what one does or IS, we showed real "leadership" over the past four decades or so. I truly am convinced that the canary died in our coal mine on November 22, 1963. A very imperfect chief executive was removed by a group of even more corrupt, cynical, misguided, IMMORAL people. Our faith in common solutions has suffered since. As for me, I HATE a "DIY" world. So in 2000 and 2004 the American electorate chose not to seat a President smarter than it was. It did anyway. The vast majority of THE BLAME is to be found IN THE MIRROR.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
