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March 21, 2004
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
It's been a full weekend for me, and so after I got home this evening from Tim's (where we were having another in a series of bon voyage parties for Mike & Jenn), I did a dumb thing and fell asleep for about 90 minutes. Not only does this mean that I'll be up all night, but it also meant that I slept through 60 Minutes, which I really wanted to watch tonight as Richard Clarke became yet another figure close to the Bush administration to admit or charge that Bush was pre-planning an invasion of Iraq long before 2002, and wanted desperately to find evidence connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11 (dare I say manufacture that connection, like they manufactured the "case" for war in Iraq?).
Thankfully, Tim, Mike and Marine's Girl were paying attention, and posted about the story on their sites. Man... Paul O'Neill... David Kay... Karen Kwiatkowski... Richard Clarke... how many more people who were in a position to know have to come forward before the American people realize that the Crawford Cretin and his puppeteers intended to invade Iraq -- with or without a catalyst -- from the day Katherine Harris and Antonin Scalia installed him as president?
"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.
"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'
"He came back at me and said, 'Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."
The right wing attack machine will no doubt be in hgh gear over the next few days, trying to attack Clarke's credibility. Our friend Tom (who to his credit keeps coming back to this lefty site despite how much it would appear to make his blood boil) will probably argue that Clarke has an axe to grind or is trying to sell books. But Tom (and everyone else)... come on. One insider with a grudge, I can understand. Two with ulterior motives... less likely, but possible. But this is happening over and over again... people who were in positions to know come out and either imply or directly say that this administration intended to "get" Saddam, and had it as their end game even upon assuming office. Are we to believe that all these people have axes to grind? (If so, then I'd argue that this president has a bad habit of pissing his inside people off, if so many of them have developed axes to grind in the time they've worked for him.) Or is it more likely that these people are telling the truth, and that this president had a vendetta from the day he moved in and was determined to carry it out even if he had to invent the justification as if it were yellowcake uranium? It would seem that the right wing's just upset because so many of the family insiders are violating omerta on this one.
Another interesting article is in Newsweek this week -- their series, "Storm Warning." It details how two administrations failed to take the necessary action to stop or destroy al Qaeda... Clinton because he, perhaps distracted and rendered impotent by the self-initiated scandal surrounding him, or perhaps out of lack of resolve, failed to step in and end the bureaucratic struggles among his policy makers, thus keeping the US response to al Qaeda paralyzed by governmental in-fighting... and Bush because his obsessive agenda of getting Saddam Hussein precluded him from focusing on any other threat or policy direction.
I'm not absolving Clinton. If there was truly an opportunity to take preventative, preclusive steps and eliminate bin Laden and the threat al Qaeda represented, then he and his administration failed us -- no matter his distractions or the impact of the impeachment hearings on his political capital. If he had the chance to do something to stop al Qaeda, he had taken an oath to do so, and thus failed it. So when we criticize Bush, let's not forget that Clinton had his chances too. But Bush is, to my mind, the far greater traitor to the oath he swore. Ignoring a growing threat to the people he was elected -- oops, I mean appointed -- to protect, all in order to pursue a family blood feud (and reward a few of his oil buddies while at it)? Inexcusable, and unforgiveable.
