Rice says Clinton is wrong

[johnsmith]

Rice disputes Clinton on terror claims
POSTED: 10:01 a.m. EDT, September 26, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged former President Clinton's claim that he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue al Qaeda, saying in an interview published Tuesday that the Bush administration aggressively pursued the group even before the 9/11 attacks.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.

The newspaper published her comments after Clinton appeared on "Fox News Sunday" in a combative interview in which he defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and said he "worked hard" to have the al Qaeda leader killed. (Watch as Clinton says he tried to kill bin Laden -- 1:18)

"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try; they did not try." (Watch as analysts debate Clinton's effectiveness -- 2:36)

Rice disputed his assessment.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false -- and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," she said.

Rice also took exception to Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News Channel.

In the interview, Clinton accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" and asked: "I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, 'Why didn't you do anything about the Cole?' I want to know how many people you asked, 'Why did you fire Clarke?' " (Watch Clinton blast neoconservatives -- 1:51 )

Rice portrayed the departure of former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke differently, saying he "left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security."

The interview has been the focus of much attention -- drawing nearly 1.2 million views on YouTube and earning the show its best ratings in nearly three years.

Rice questioned the value of the dialogue.

"I think this is not a very fruitful discussion," she said. "We've been through it. The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock, and we know exactly what they said."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, said she saw it differently.

"I just think that my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take this," she told Newsday on Monday.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.




Sorry fellas, her assessment is no more true or false then Clinton's.

[101A]

The coordinated counter-attack is underway...

[nkdlunch]

Just the fact they are responding to Clinton shows they are desperate.

[101A]

Just the fact they are responding to Clinton shows they are desperate.

I think it shows that they are thorough (and that Rove is not being investigated anymore).

[Crookshanks]

Just the fact they are responding to Clinton shows they are desperate.

On the contrary - the fact that Clinton reacted the way he did shows that he is scared to death of what history is now revealing about him and his administration!

He's telling lies and rewriting history in order to preserve his "legacy." He was a slick politician and a well-liked President, but he was quite ineffectual!

[Yonivore]

, there are demonstrable lies in the interview. The guy has no shame.

[boutons_]

There are demonstrable lies in the WHIG/Repug justification for the Iraq war.
The Repugs have no shame.

[johnsmith]

There are demonstrable lies in the WHIG/Repug justification for the Iraq war.
The Repugs have no shame.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, a proven liar goes on an interview and says something and it's fact, but when Rice does it she's a liar with no shame.

Thank you Boutons, this has made my day.

[Yonivore]

Transcript: Clarke Praises Bush in '02

WASHINGTON — The following transcript do ents a background briefing in early August 2002 by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke to a handful of reporters, including Fox News' Jim Angle. In the conversation, cleared by the White House on Wednesday for distribution, Clarke describes the handover of intelligence from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration and the latter's decision to revise the U.S. approach to Al Qaeda. Clarke was named special adviser to the president for cyberspace security in October 2001. He resigned from his post in January 2003.

RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.

Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.

And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, in late January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent.

And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.

What he is saying here is that if Osama bin Laden had surfaced in the 8 months prior to September 11, the Bush Administration would have whacked him; unlike what the Clinton administration did on the several opportunities available to them in the '90's and early '00's.

So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.

The sixth point, the newly-appointed deputies — and you had to remember, the deputies didn't get into office until late March, early April. The deputies then tasked the development of the implementation details, uh, of these new decisions that they were endorsing, and sending out to the principals.

Over the course of the summer — last point — they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance.

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.

QUESTION: When was that presented to the president?

CLARKE: Well, the president was briefed throughout this process.

QUESTION: But when was the final September 4 do ent? (interrupted) Was that presented to the president?

CLARKE: The do ent went to the president on September 10, I think.

QUESTION: What is your response to the suggestion in the [Aug. 12, 2002] Time [magazine] article that the Bush administration was unwilling to take on board the suggestions made in the Clinton administration because of animus against the — general animus against the foreign policy?

CLARKE: I think if there was a general animus that clouded their vision, they might not have kept the same guy dealing with terrorism issue. This is the one issue where the National Security Council leadership decided continuity was important and kept the same guy around, the same team in place. That doesn't sound like animus against uh the previous team to me.

By the way, it would be good to point out, here, that Richard Clarke wasn't fired as Clinton blubbered during the interview, he quit -- after 9/11 -- and after he didn't get a job in Homeland Security that he was wanting.

JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?

CLARKE: All of that's correct.

ANGLE: OK.

QUESTION: Are you saying now that there was not only a plan per se, presented by the transition team, but that it was nothing proactive that they had suggested?

CLARKE: Well, what I'm saying is, there are two things presented. One, what the existing strategy had been. And two, a series of issues — like aiding the Northern Alliance, changing Pakistan policy, changing Uzbek policy — that they had been unable to come to um, any new conclusions, um, from '98 on.

QUESTION: Was all of that from '98 on or was some of it ...

CLARKE: All of those issues were on the table from '98 on.

ANGLE: When in '98 were those presented?

CLARKE: In October of '98.

QUESTION: In response to the Embassy bombing?

CLARKE: Right, which was in September.

QUESTION: Were all of those issues part of alleged plan that was late December and the Clinton team decided not to pursue because it was too close to ...

CLARKE: There was never a plan, Andrea. What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table.

QUESTION: So there was nothing that developed, no do ents or no new plan of any sort?

CLARKE: There was no new plan.

QUESTION: No new strategy — I mean, I don't want to get into a semantics ...

CLARKE: Plan, strategy — there was no, nothing new.

QUESTION: 'Til late December, developing ...

CLARKE: What happened at the end of December was that the Clinton administration NSC principals committee met and once again looked at the strategy, and once again looked at the issues that they had brought, decided in the past to add to the strategy. But they did not at that point make any recommendations.

QUESTIONS: Had those issues evolved at all from October of '98 'til December of 2000?

CLARKE: Had they evolved? Um, not appreciably.

ANGLE: What was the problem? Why was it so difficult for the Clinton administration to make decisions on those issues?

CLARKE: Because they were tough issues. You know, take, for example, aiding the Northern Alliance. Um, people in the Northern Alliance had a, sort of bad track record. There were questions about the government, there were questions about drug-running, there was questions about whether or not in fact they would use the additional aid to go after Al Qaeda or not. Uh, and how would you stage a major new push in Uzbekistan or somebody else or Pakistan to cooperate?

One of the big problems was that Pakistan at the time was aiding the other side, was aiding the Taliban. And so, this would put, if we started aiding the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, this would have put us directly in opposition to the Pakistani government. These are not easy decisions.

Sound's like Clinton should have used the Bush tactic of threatening to bomb them back to the stone age.

ANGLE: And none of that really changed until we were attacked and then it was ...

CLARKE: No, that's not true. In the spring, the Bush administration changed — began to change Pakistani policy, um, by a dialogue that said we would be willing to lift sanctions. So we began to offer carrots, which made it possible for the Pakistanis, I think, to begin to realize that they could go down another path, which was to join us and to break away from the Taliban. So that's really how it started.

QUESTION: Had the Clinton administration in any of its work on this issue, in any of the findings or anything else, prepared for a call for the use of ground forces, special operations forces in any way? What did the Bush administration do with that if they had?

CLARKE: There was never a plan in the Clinton administration to use ground forces. The military was asked at a couple of points in the Clinton administration to think about it. Um, and they always came back and said it was not a good idea. There was never a plan to do that.

(Break in briefing details as reporters and Clarke go back and forth on how to source quotes from this backgrounder.)

ANGLE: So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no — one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the spring months just after the administration came into office?

CLARKE: You got it. That's right.

QUESTION: It was not put into an action plan until September 4, signed off by the principals?

CLARKE: That's right.

QUESTION: I want to add though, that NSPD — the actual work on it began in early April.

CLARKE: There was a lot of in the first three NSPDs that were being worked in parallel.

ANGLE: Now the five-fold increase for the money in covert operations against Al Qaeda — did that actually go into effect when it was decided or was that a decision that happened in the next budget year or something?

CLARKE: Well, it was gonna go into effect in October, which was the next budget year, so it was a month away.

QUESTION: That actually got into the intelligence budget?

CLARKE: Yes it did.

QUESTION: Just to clarify, did that come up in April or later?

CLARKE: No, it came up in April and it was approved in principle and then went through the summer. And you know, the other thing to bear in mind is the shift from the rollback strategy to the elimination strategy. When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the NSPD from one of rollback to one of elimination.

QUESTION: Well can you clarify something? I've been told that he gave that direction at the end of May. Is that not correct?

CLARKE: No, it was March.

QUESTION: The elimination of Al Qaeda, get back to ground troops — now we haven't completely done that even with a substantial number of ground troops in Afghanistan. Was there, was the Bush administration contemplating without the provocation of September 11th moving troops into Afghanistan prior to that to go after Al Qaeda?

CLARKE: I can not try to speculate on that point. I don't know what we would have done.

QUESTION: In your judgment, is it possible to eliminate Al Qaeda without putting troops on the ground?

CLARKE: Uh, yeah, I think it was. I think it was. If we'd had Pakistani, Uzbek and Northern Alliance assistance.

I think it should be noted that Clinton almost exclusive used Richard Clarke in his defense of his own policies in the interview with Chris Wallace. Maybe he should have chosen a more sympathetic source -- but, again, maybe there isn't one.

Secretary Rice, in the administration response to this blabber, almost exclusively used the Senate Intelligence Committees findings to support her statements.

[Yonivore]

What was it someone else said? Oh yeah, the hits just keep coming about Clinton's incompetence...

Bill Clinton's attempt at a face-saving, over-the-top response to Chris Wallace during an interview aired on Fox News Sunday has resulted in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responding, saying that much of what Clinton intoned was a lie:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

Rice hammered Clinton, who leveled his charges in a contentious weekend interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, for his claims that the Bush administration "did not try" to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.

The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton's claim that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for the incoming Bush team during the presidential transition in 2001.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice responded during the hourlong session.

Her strong rebuttal was the Bush administration's first response to Clinton's headline-grabbing interview on Fox on Sunday in which he launched into an over-the-top defense of his handling of terrorism - wagging his finger in the air, leaning forward in his chair and getting red-faced, and even attacking Wallace for improper questioning.

Why did Clinton gut American surveillance? Look to the Donkey:

In the past twenty years, there have been at least two high-profile incidents involving leaks. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont was forced to resign from the Senate Intelligence Committee after being tied to a series of leaks in the 1980s. Congressman (later Senator) Robert Torricelli revealed secret information acquired by virtue of his position on the House Intelligence Committee. The information involved a source in Guatemala who had been allegedly been involved in a murder at the behest of then-girlfriend Bianca Jagger. The resulting scandal caused a Clinton Administration “human rights scrub” of human intelligence assets who had been alleged to have connections with criminals or terrorists. Of course, the “human rights scrub” placed the very people who would know about the activities of terrorists and other bad guys off limits to the CIA.

In short, Bill Clinton, embarrassed by Democrats leaking top secret information to the press, decided that instead of cracking down on Democrats, that the best thing to do was to sever the CIA's contact with the very people who would be in the best position to give us information about terrorist activity.

This of course, is the same Bill Clinton that invited terrorist leader Yasser Arafat to the White House on numerous occasions and refused to address Iraq's terrorist threat, even though three of the world's most famous terrorists prior to Osama bin Laden—Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, and the bomb-builder of the 1993 Word Trade Center attacks Abdul Rahman Yasin—lived as Saddam's guests in Baghdad.

The Clinton Adminstration also downplayed the fact that Yasin's bomb was built as a chemical weapon; an ammonium nitrate bomb laced with sodium cyanide. Yasin hoped that the bomb would disperse a cloud of poisonous cyanide smoke, killing thousands in the tower as it went up through the elevator and ventilation shafts. Fortunately, the cyanide was vaporized by the blast instead of dispersed in the smoke, and the tower was not undermined by the blast as he hoped. If Yasin had been successful in his 1993 attempt, the casualties of the 1993 Trade Center Attack would likely have far eclipsed the casualties of 9/11. The Clinton Administration responded by treating the treating the attack as a matter of criminal law instead of urgent national security.

The pattern continued.

20 were killed and 372 were injured in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Clinton Administration did not respond. FBI Director Louis Freeh notes that neither Clinton nor Sandy "Pants" Berger wanted to deal with the fact that Iran was behind the attacks. In the remaining years of his Presidency, Clinton did precisely nothing to bring the bombers to justice. Frustrated by the Clinton Adminstration's inaction, Freeh finally contacted former President George H.W. Bush to move the case forward (my bold):

I had learned that he [former President Bush] was about to meet Crown Prince Abdullah on another matter. After fully briefing Mr. Bush on the impasse and faxing him the talking points that I had now been working on for over two years, he personally asked the crown prince to allow FBI agents to interview the detained bombers.

After his Saturday meeting with now-King Abdullah, Mr. Bush called me to say that he made the request, and that the Saudis would be calling me. A few hours later, Prince Bandar, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington, asked me to come out to McLean, Va., on Monday to see Crown Prince Abdullah. When I met him with Wyche Fowler, our Saudi ambassador, and FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson, the crown prince was holding my talking points. He told me Mr. Bush had made the request for the FBI, which he granted, and told Prince Bandar to instruct Nayef to arrange for FBI agents to interview the prisoners.

Several weeks later, agents interviewed the co-conspirators. For the first time since the 1996 attack, we obtained direct evidence of Iran's complicity. What Mr. Clinton failed to do for three years was accomplished in minutes by his predecessor.

The Clinton Administration’s response? According to Freeh, they buried the evidence collected after a series of "damage control" meetings. It was only after Clinton exited office and President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice got involved that charges were brought forth against the conspirators on June 21, 2001, five years after the attacks, and just four months after President Bush took office.

That pattern continued.

More than 200 were killed and more than 4,000 were wounded in simultaneous 1998 car bomb explosions on the U. S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Clinton responded by firing cruise missiles at the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and at nearly empty al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Physical targets were destroyed, but only 20 terrorists were thought to have been killed, and Clinton Secretary of Defense William Cohen said that killing bin Laden, "not our design." Legally, a handful of terrorists were captured, tried, and convicted. Many more terrorists associated with the plot remained free.

Clinton's most robust response to terrorism was still ineffective.

Five months before Clinton left office, 17 sailors were killed and 39 were wounded when the U.S.S. Cole was hit by an al Qaeda suicide boat bomber while refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden. The rules of engagement prevented Cole guards from firing upon the approaching vessels without direct order from senior officers. According to Wikipedia:

Petty Officer Jennifer Kudrick said that if the sentries had fired on the suicide craft "we would have gotten in more trouble for shooting two foreigners than losing 17 American sailors."

Bill Clinton left office having never paid more than lip service to finding or destroying those behind the attack. On November 2, 2002, an armed Predator drone operated by the CIA killed Abu Ali al-Harithi and five other terrorists traveling with him in Yemen. The bombing's mastermind, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was captured that same month and is currently being held by the United States at an undisclosed location.

Bill Clinton did next to nothing to attack al Qaeda in response to four terrorist attacks on the United States during his eight years in office. That he would feign outrage and falsify excuses for his inaction is to invite the criticism he so richly deserves.

[Crookshanks]

Thank you, Yoni, for finding Richard Clarke's own words to refute Clinton. Of course, Clinton never let facts or the truth stand in his way before; just the same as many of the posters on this forum!

[101A]

"I did not go soft on that terrorist...Mr. Bin Laden".

[clambake]

Some of the posters here have no interest in the truth. If they did, they would show a little Iraq outrage.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Some of the posters here have no interest in the truth. If they did, they would show a little Iraq outrage.

Of course not. If they were honest enough to admit Iraq was a mistake then they would have to admit they have been wrong all along..Good luck with that!

[George Gervin's Afro]

What was it someone else said? Oh yeah, the hits just keep coming about Clinton's incompetence...

Bill Clinton's attempt at a face-saving, over-the-top response to Chris Wallace during an interview aired on Fox News Sunday has resulted in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responding, saying that much of what Clinton intoned was a lie:


Why did Clinton gut American surveillance? Look to the Donkey:


In short, Bill Clinton, embarrassed by Democrats leaking top secret information to the press, decided that instead of cracking down on Democrats, that the best thing to do was to sever the CIA's contact with the very people who would be in the best position to give us information about terrorist activity.

This of course, is the same Bill Clinton that invited terrorist leader Yasser Arafat to the White House on numerous occasions and refused to address Iraq's terrorist threat, even though three of the world's most famous terrorists prior to Osama bin Laden—Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, and the bomb-builder of the 1993 Word Trade Center attacks Abdul Rahman Yasin—lived as Saddam's guests in Baghdad.

The Clinton Adminstration also downplayed the fact that Yasin's bomb was built as a chemical weapon; an ammonium nitrate bomb laced with sodium cyanide. Yasin hoped that the bomb would disperse a cloud of poisonous cyanide smoke, killing thousands in the tower as it went up through the elevator and ventilation shafts. Fortunately, the cyanide was vaporized by the blast instead of dispersed in the smoke, and the tower was not undermined by the blast as he hoped. If Yasin had been successful in his 1993 attempt, the casualties of the 1993 Trade Center Attack would likely have far eclipsed the casualties of 9/11. The Clinton Administration responded by treating the treating the attack as a matter of criminal law instead of urgent national security.

The pattern continued.

20 were killed and 372 were injured in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Clinton Administration did not respond. FBI Director Louis Freeh notes that neither Clinton nor Sandy "Pants" Berger wanted to deal with the fact that Iran was behind the attacks. In the remaining years of his Presidency, Clinton did precisely nothing to bring the bombers to justice. Frustrated by the Clinton Adminstration's inaction, Freeh finally contacted former President George H.W. Bush to move the case forward (my bold):


The Clinton Administration’s response? According to Freeh, they buried the evidence collected after a series of "damage control" meetings. It was only after Clinton exited office and President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice got involved that charges were brought forth against the conspirators on June 21, 2001, five years after the attacks, and just four months after President Bush took office.

That pattern continued.

More than 200 were killed and more than 4,000 were wounded in simultaneous 1998 car bomb explosions on the U. S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Clinton responded by firing cruise missiles at the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and at nearly empty al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Physical targets were destroyed, but only 20 terrorists were thought to have been killed, and Clinton Secretary of Defense William Cohen said that killing bin Laden, "not our design." Legally, a handful of terrorists were captured, tried, and convicted. Many more terrorists associated with the plot remained free.

Clinton's most robust response to terrorism was still ineffective.

Five months before Clinton left office, 17 sailors were killed and 39 were wounded when the U.S.S. Cole was hit by an al Qaeda suicide boat bomber while refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden. The rules of engagement prevented Cole guards from firing upon the approaching vessels without direct order from senior officers. According to Wikipedia:


Bill Clinton left office having never paid more than lip service to finding or destroying those behind the attack. On November 2, 2002, an armed Predator drone operated by the CIA killed Abu Ali al-Harithi and five other terrorists traveling with him in Yemen. The bombing's mastermind, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was captured that same month and is currently being held by the United States at an undisclosed location.

Bill Clinton did next to nothing to attack al Qaeda in response to four terrorist attacks on the United States during his eight years in office. That he would feign outrage and falsify excuses for his inaction is to invite the criticism he so richly deserves.

I notice there is no mention of Clinton catching and imprisoning of the 1993 WTC bombers. That's wierd then that would mean he actually did something.. I am trying to figure out if Yoni is stupid or just a hypocrite?

Another omission by Yoni..the Khobar towers incident. Iran was supposedly behind that and not Al-Qaeda..seems to me that is a state issue rather than a terrorism issue..

Before you respond Yoni think about what Bush just did about Iran being behind the Hezbollah conflict with Israel.. does that mena Bush is not doing anything to combat terror?

Sorry he did do something he invaded a country that had nothing to do with terrorism that affected the security of the USA..

The Rules of engagement our now Clinton's fault?


Bill Clinton did next to nothing to attack al Qaeda in response to four terrorist attacks on the United States during his eight years in office. That he would feign outrage and falsify excuses for his inaction is to invite the criticism he so richly deserves.[/

UNfortunately the right wing blogger couldn't get away with saying Clinton didn't do nothing.. so he said "he did next to nothing"..that's freaking hilarious..

sort of like condi saying "he did not give us a comprehensive strategy to fight al-qaeda"..he did give them a comprehensive startegy just not one that was focused on AL-Qaeda.. one that was a broad view on terror.. Like against state sponsored terrorism (see Iran)

[Yonivore]

From HayZeus:

Normally, news of CBS doing damage control for the Clintons on one of its programs would be of the “dog bites man” variety. However, today’s attempt resulted in some unintentional hilarity as their reliably anti-Bush terrorism expert is none other than Mike “Anonymous” Scheuer. Mr. Scheuer was the head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit at the time to which Mr. Clinton refers when he lays the blame for not capturing Bin Laden at the feet of the CIA and the FBI.

You can kind of see what's coming, can't you.

Moreover, Mr. Scheuer has been vocal in the past about his feeling that his unit was repeatedly frustrated by the Clinton administration’s lack of willpower concerning terrorism, going so far as to suggest that the lackadaisical at ude of Clinton, along with Sandy Burger and Richard Clarke, actually abetted Al-Qaeda.

Go grab some laughs yourself. CBS forgot to do it's Homework ... Again.

Let me add this little nugget:

No, sir, I don’t think so. The president seems to be able, the former president seems to be able to deny facts with impugnity. Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger, and Mr. Richard Clarke refused to kill him. That’s the bottom line. And every time he says what he said to Chris Wallace on Fox, he defames the CIA especially, and the men and women who risk their lives to give his administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden.

[George Gervin's Afro]

AP, CNN uncritically reported Rice's misleading response to Clinton interview
http://mediamatters.org/items/200609260006

I love Media Matters


In a September 25 discussion with the New York Post editorial board, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice purported to debunk former President Bill Clinton's recent assertion that the Bush administration failed to adequately address the growing terrorism threat during the eight months prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But Rice's counter-arguments -- that the Bush White House "was at least as aggressive as" the Clinton administration, that counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke was not demoted, and that the White House did not receive a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy from the outgoing Clinton national security team -- do not stand up to scrutiny. Nonetheless, news outlets such as the Associated Press and CNN have reported her remarks without challenge.

On the September 24 edition of Fox News Sunday, Fox Broadcasting Co. aired a taped interview between host Chris Wallace and Clinton, which included a contentious exchange regarding his administration's record on terrorism. During this discussion, Clinton conceded that he "tried and failed" to stop Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but noted that the Bush administration "had eight months to try; they did not try." Clinton further stated, "When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Clarke, who got demoted."

In a September 26 article, New York Post correspondent Ian Bishop recounted Rice's comments to the newspaper the previous day:
"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false -- and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.
The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton's claim that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for the incoming Bush team during the presidential transition in 2001.
"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice responded during the hourlong session.
[...]

"I would just suggest that you go back and read the 9/11 commission report on the efforts of the Bush administration in the eight months -- things like working to get an armed Predator [drone] that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important," Rice added.

She also said Clinton's claims that Richard Clarke -- the White House anti-terror guru hyped by Clinton as the country's "best guy" -- had been demoted by Bush were bogus.
"Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened. And he left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security, some several months later," she said.
[...]
Rice cited the final 9/11 commission report to substantiate her claims, while Clinton relied on Clarke's book as the basis for many of his rehashing the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I think this is not a very fruitful discussion. We've been through it. The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock and we know exactly what they said," she added.

But Rice's claim that the Bush administration's efforts "in the eight months was a least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years" is rebutted by the 9-11 Commission report -- the do ent she cited as the basis for her rebuttal. Indeed, as the weblog Think Progress noted, the report details how the Bush White House failed to react forcefully upon receipt of the now-famous August 6, 2001, CIA memo led "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." The memo stated that, although the FBI had "not been able to corroborate" a 1998 report that bin Laden was seeking to "hijack a U.S. aircraft," "FBI information since that time indicate[d] patterns of su ious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."

The 9-11 Commission stated that it "found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States" -- this despite the fact that "[m]ost of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented."

By contrast, the 9-11 Commission report recounted the Clinton administration's far more aggressive response to a similar CIA memo received in 1998, led "Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks." From the report:

The same day, Clarke convened a meeting of his CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] to discuss both the hijacking concern and the antiaircraft missile threat. To address the hijacking warning, the group agreed that New York airports should go to maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports. The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York area airports.

Rice's subsequent claim that, contrary to Clinton's assertion, Clarke was not demoted by the Bush administration is simply false. While her statement that Clarke retained his post as counterterrorism czar until after 9-11 is technically true, it ignores entirely the fact that Rice herself "downgraded" that position upon taking office, as Clarke explained in his book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (Free Press, 2004), and as Media Matters for America noted. According to Clarke, in January 2001, Rice stripped him of principal status, a move that excluded him from the National Security Council Principals Committee.

From the book:
Rice decided that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism would also be downgraded. No longer would the Coordinator be a member of the Principals Committee. No longer would the CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] report to the Principals, but instead to a committee of Deputy Secretaries. No longer would the National Coordinator be supported by two NSC Senior Directors or have the budget review mechanism with the Associate Director of OMB [Office of Management and Budget]. [Page 230]
Clarke's exclusion from the Principals Committee had significant consequences. No longer a "principal" himself, Clarke had to lobby Rice and others in order to organize a meeting of the committee on the Al Qaeda threat. While he first requested the meeting on January 25, 2001, nearly eight months passed before it finally occurred -- a week before 9-11.

In her remarks to the Post, Rice further claimed that the Clinton national security team did not pass on a "comprehensive anti-terror strategy," as Clinton had asserted in the Fox interview. But again, the 9-11 Commission report contradicts Rice's claim.

According to the report, near the end of 2000, the CIA and the National Security Council drew up policy papers that laid out anti-terrorism strategies for the succeeding administration. While the report said that the CIA/NSC memo, known as the "Blue Sky memo" was not "discussed during the transition with incoming top Bush administration officials," its ideas were nonetheless presented as options by the CIA to the Bush administration. Clarke and his staff also drafted a counterterrorism strategy memo in the waning days of the Clinton administration, which the 9-11 Commission described as "the first such comprehensive effort since the Delenda plan" -- a paper written by Clarke in 1998 laying out a strategy to "immediately eliminate any significant threat to Americans" from the "Bin Ladin network." The commission wrote that the policy paper produced by Clarke in 2000 -- led "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al Qida [sic]: Status and Prospects" -- "reviewed the threat and the record to date, incorporated the CIA's new ideas from the Blue Sky memo, and posed several near-term policy options."

Clarke, the report noted, presented his policy paper to Rice and other senior national security staffers when he requested the principals committee meeting on Al Qaeda:

Within the first few days after Bush's inauguration, Clarke approached Rice in an effort to get her -- and the new President -- to give terrorism very high priority and to act on the agenda that he had pushed during the last few months of the previous administration. After Rice requested that all senior staff identify desirable major policy reviews or initiatives, Clarke submitted an elaborate memorandum on January 25, 2001. He attached to it his 1998 Delenda Plan and the December 2000 strategy paper.

"We urgently need ... a Principals level review on the al Qida network," Clarke wrote.

Despite these clear flaws undermining Rice's rebuttal, the Post reported her comments without challenge. In turn, the Associated Press reported her claims in a September 26 article headlined "Rice Challenges Clinton on Terror Fight":

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged former President Clinton's claim that he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue al-Qaida, saying in an interview published Tuesday that the Bush administration aggressively pursued the group even before the 9/11 attacks.
"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.
[...]

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," she said.
Rice also took exception to Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.
"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News Channel.

In the interview, Clinton accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" and asked: "I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, 'Why didn't you do anything about the Cole?' I want to know how many people you asked, 'Why did you fire Clarke?'"
Rice portrayed the departure of former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke differently, saying he "left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security."

Like the Post, the AP article failed entirely to check Rice's claims against the 9-11 Commission's actual findings. Furthermore, the article included no Democratic response beyond a quote from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) saying, "I just think that my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take this."

Similarly, CNN correspondent Carol Costello uncritically reported Rice's rebuttal on the September 26 edition of American Morning.

From the September 26 edition of CNN's American Morning:
COSTELLO: It is turning into quite a juicy battle of words. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interviewed by The New York Post editorial board in New York, and boy, did she fire back at Bill Clinton, calling his interview on Fox "passionate." And while she didn't call Mr. Clinton a liar, she certainly intimated he wasn't telling it like it was.

For example, President Clinton told Fox his administration had left a detailed plan about what to do about Al Qaeda. Secretary Rice fires back. Quote, she says, "What the Bush administration did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years. We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight Al Qaeda. The notion that somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false."

Question from the New York Post: "So you're saying Bill Clinton is a liar?"
Secretary Rice: "No, I'm just saying that, look, there was a lot of passion in that interview and I'm not going to -- I would just suggest that you go back and read the 9-11 Commission report on the efforts of the Bush administration in that eight months."

About former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, whom President Clinton cited a number of times, Secretary Rice says he was not fired, he left on his own accord when he was not promoted to deputy director of Homeland Security.
You can see the entire interview, of course, in the New York Post online.

[Spurminator]

I'm glad the focus is finally on the important things...

[101A]

GGA,

Bad cut and paste job.

Reformat and resubmit.

[boutons_]

OK, Condi, here's what the 9/11 report says about the LACK OF RESPONSE by you, dubya, and all the other tax-cuts-first-last-always-and- -NatSec Repugs in the White House:


In sum, the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat.

They did not have direction, and did not have a plan to ins ute.

The borders were not hardened.

Transportation systems were not fortified.

Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat.

54 State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI’s efforts.

The public was not warned.

==============

As director of the NATIONAL SECURITY Agency, you blew it, , along with all of dubya's Exec branch chair-wamers, ass-kissers, and slime-bots.