quote:
Originally posted by keith:
Moore was on the Charlie Rose show last night and ADMITTED that the Bin Laden family was interviewed before leaving the US.He also stated that all of the FBI agents,except for one, that he spoke to,were satisfied regarding the Bin Ladens interview.
During the show,Moore also ADMITTED that the Bin Ladens DID NOT leave the US until commercial flights were resumed.
It seems that Moore will only state the truth when someone confronts him with the cold hard facts.
Fahrenheit 9/11 smashing box-office records
- Thread starter sprintman
- Start date
- Status
Well I don't have an opinion on Moore in general yet as I have only seen Bowling for Columbine which was interesting. When F 9/11 gets here I'll give it a look as it's a bit hard to discuss it with friends here if you have not seen the movie. I'm betting it will be popular here though as there's been no shortage of publicity
Needtoknow, I have more to do with my life than spend hours a day documenting your and your liberal friends lies. Why do you post so many lies? Don't you have any honest argunments?
Here is a short concise summary:
Clarke takes responsibility - discredits fathead Moore
"Clarke said, “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.” Most of the 26 passengers aboard one flight, which departed from the United States on Sept. 20, 2001, were relatives of Osama bin Laden..."
September 20th is a week after flights resumed.
It's tough being a liberal these days. I know you desperately want to believe Moore or Clarke or both. I would pick a better horse, LOL.
Keith.
Start at the top. Clark talked in his book about the super top secret plan on getting Al-Qaeda / Bin Laden that passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. He had to admit under oath that no such plan existed. Indeed, he had previously told reporter Jim Angle and others present that the plan did not exist:
Clarke Praises Bush Team in '02
"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."
The political impact of the 9/11 hearings
"He gave a background briefing in August 2002 where he swore -- he talked about the great glories of the Bush anti-terror policy before 9/11. He told specific facts about what Bush had done. They had made a decision to quintuple the CIA budget for al-Qaida, a whole series of points that he gave on the background to reporters, we have the transcript of that report. If what he said in that background briefing is true, then everything in the book is false. If the book is true, he was lying to those reporters. At some point, he was lying."
Sure, now the spin will be that he lied because he is the fall guy and he is not really a liar. Swell.
Keith.
Fair enough Keith, I'll look at your links meanwhile here's a couple that also should be looked at.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/mikeinthenews/index.php?id=25
http://houseofbush.com/index.php
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/mikeinthenews/index.php?id=25
http://houseofbush.com/index.php
What I dont understand is,every one knows that Moore lied in the "Bowling For Columbine" movie.Why now does every one think he is telling the truth? Why now do so many think that he is standing for what is right?
Moore is interested in one thing,his agenda to remove Bush from office.Why?I can only guess that it is because Bush isnt a liberal as Moore is.
Here is a link regarding Moore and his dribble 9-11 movie, http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/
Moore is interested in one thing,his agenda to remove Bush from office.Why?I can only guess that it is because Bush isnt a liberal as Moore is.
Here is a link regarding Moore and his dribble 9-11 movie, http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/
BNN! Sounds good. That must be where those crazy right wingers like Colmes and Heraldo and Greta go to work.
I see you challenging the republicans challenge to the credibility of Clarke, but no comments on the, ahem, "discrepancies" between Clarke testimony, his book, and his comments to reporters in year 2002.
If you believe Clarke is a straight up, honest guy, that's super but it doesn't change the contrary evidence. Best outcome for Clarke is that he is the fall guy. Arguing his honesty is a waste of both of our time.
Have a nice one.
Keith.
From this Time magazine article,it would seem that Mr.Clarke has trouble keeping his so called 'facts' straight.
Richard Clarke, at War With Himself
Viewpoint: On TV, the former counterterrorism official takes a much harder line against Bush than in his book. That undermines a serious conversation about 9/11
By ROMESH RATNESAR
Thursday, Mar. 25, 2004
Since his appearance on 60 Minutes last Sunday, Richard Clarke has faced a barrage of attacks from Bush Administration officials over his claims that the White House ignored the threat posed by al-Qaeda before Sept. 11 because of its obsession with Iraq. **** Cheney told Rush Limbaugh that Clarke “wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff”; Condoleezza Rice said Monday that "**** Clarke just does not know what he's talking about"; and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, in that same 60 Minutes broadcast said that the White House has found "no evidence" that conversations Clarke claims to have had with President Bush even occurred. Clarke has responded to his critics with a dollop of wistful regret, followed by an adamant refusal to back down. "It pains me to have Condoleezza Rice and the others mad at me," he told Good Morning America. "But I think the American people needed to know the facts, and they weren't out. And now they are."
Are they? The accounts of high-level conversations and meetings given by Clarke in various television appearances, beginning with the 60 Minutes interview, differ in significant respects from the recollections of a former top counterterrorism official who participated in the same conversations and meetings: Richard Clarke. In several cases, the version of events provided by Clarke this week include details and embellishments that do not appear in his new book, Against All Enemies. While the discrepancies do not, on their own, discredit Clarke's larger arguments, they do raise questions about whether Clarke's eagerness to publicize his story and rip the Bush Administration have clouded his memory of the facts.
Perhaps Clarke's most explosive charge is that on Sept. 12, President Bush instructed him to look into the possibility that Iraq had a hand in the hijackings. Here's how Clarke recounted the meeting on 60 Minutes: "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'.....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.'" After Clarke protested that "there's no connection," Bush came back to him and said "Iraq, Saddam — find out if there's a connection." Clarke says Bush made the point "in a very intimidating way." The next day, interviewed on PBS' The NewsHour, Clarke sexed up the story even more. "What happened was the President, with his finger in my face, saying, 'Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaeda, a memo on Iraq and the attacks.' Very vigorous, very intimidating." Several interviewers pushed Clarke on this point, asking whether it was all that surprising that the President would want him to investigate all possible perpetrators of the attacks. Clarke responded, "It would have been irresponsible for the president not to come to me and say, ****, I don't want you to assume it was al-Qaeda. I'd like you to look at every possibility to see if maybe it was al-Qaeda with somebody else, in a very calm way, with all possibilities open. That's not what happened."
How does this square with the account of the same meeting provided in Clarke's book? In that version, Clarke finds the President wandering alone in the Situation Room on Sept. 12, "looking like he wanted something to do." Clarke writes that Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room" — an impetuous move, perhaps, but hardly the image that Clarke depicted on television, of the President dragging in unwitting staffers by their shirt-collars. The Bush in these pages sounds more ruminative than intimidating: "I know you have a lot to do and all, but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way." When Clarke responds by saying that "al-Qaeda did this," Bush says, "I know, I know, but see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred....." Again Clarke protests, after which Bush says "testily," "Look into Iraq, Saddam."
Nowhere do we see the President pointing fingers at or even sounding particularly "vigorous" toward Clarke and his deputies. Despite Clarke's contention that Bush wanted proof of Iraqi involvement at any cost, it's just as possible that Bush wanted Clark to find disculpatory evidence in order to discredit the idea peddled by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Baghdad had a hand in 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush rejected Wolfowitz's attempts to make Iraq the first front in the war on terror. And if the President of the United States spoke "testily " 24 hours after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, well, can you blame him?
Clarke's liberties with the text don't stop there. On 60 Minutes he said that after submitting to the White House a joint-agency report discounting the possibility of Iraqi complicity in 9/11, the memo "got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer.'" The actual response from Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, shown later in the program, read "Please update and resubmit." On 60 Minutes, Clarke went further, saying that Bush's deputies never showed the President the joint-agency review, because "I don't think he sees memos that he wouldn't like the answer." This is pure, reckless speculation. Contrast that with the more straightforward account in Against All Enemies: after his team found no evidence of Iraqi involvement, Clarke writes that "a memorandum to that effect was sent up to the President, and there was never any indication that it reached him."
In a few other instances, Clarke's televised comments seem designed to disparage the President and his aides at all cost, omitting any of the inconvenient details — some of which appear in the pages of his book — that might suggest the White House took al-Qaeda seriously before Sept. 11. Bush, Clarke says, "never thought [al-Qaeda] was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his national security advisor to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject." This has been a constant refrain in Clarke's public statements — that Bush's failure to call a "Principal's Meeting" of his cabinet to discuss terrorism until the week before Sept. 11 showed a lack of interest in al-Qaeda. While it is technically true that the White House did not hold a Cabinet-level meeting on al-Qaeda until Sept. 4, the charge is still misleading, since Bush, as early as April 2001, had instructed Rice to draft a strategy for rolling back al-Qaeda and killing bin Laden, saying he was tired of "swatting flies" —, a line Clarke does include in his book. Rice's response was to task a committee of deputies to study the U.S.'s options for rolling back the Taliban; the group ultimately concluded that the U.S. should increase its support to the Northern Alliance and pressure on Pakistan to cooperate in a campaign to remove the Taliban. It was essentially the same plan Clarke had drafted during the Clinton Administration. As his book details, the plan was scuttled by intransigence at the CIA and the Pentagon, neither of which Clinton wanted to confront head-on.
While Clarke claims that he is "an independent" not driven by partisan motives, it's hard not to read some passages in his book as anything but shrill broadsides. In his descriptions of Bush aides, he discerns their true ideological beliefs not in their words but in their body language: "As I briefed Rice on al-Qaeda, her facial expression gave me the impression she had never heard the term before." When the cabinet met to discuss al-Qaeda on Sept. 4, Rumsfeld "looked distracted throughout the session." As for the President, Clarke doesn't even try to read Bush's body language; he just makes the encounters up. "I have a disturbing image of him sitting by a warm White House fireplace drawing a dozen red Xs on the faces of the former al-Qaeda corporate board.....while the new clones of al-Qaeda....are recruiting thousands whose names we will never know, whose faces will never be on President Bush's little charts, not until it is again too late." Clarke conjured up this chilling scene again on 60 Minutes. Only in this version he also manages to read Bush's mind, and "he's thinking that he's got most of them and therefore he's taken care of the problem." The only things missing are the black winged chair and white cat.
Leaving aside the fact that Bush never fails to insist that the terror threat is as great today as it was on 9/11, these passages reveal the polemical, partisan mean-spiritedness that lies at the heart of Clarke's book, and to an even greater degree, his television appearances flacking it. That's a shame, since many of his contentions — about the years of political and intelligence missteps that led to 9/11, the failure of two Administrations to destroy al-Qaeda and the potentially disastrous consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — deserve a wide and serious airing. From now on, the country would be best served if Clarke lets the facts speak for themselves.
Richard Clarke, at War With Himself
Viewpoint: On TV, the former counterterrorism official takes a much harder line against Bush than in his book. That undermines a serious conversation about 9/11
By ROMESH RATNESAR
Thursday, Mar. 25, 2004
Since his appearance on 60 Minutes last Sunday, Richard Clarke has faced a barrage of attacks from Bush Administration officials over his claims that the White House ignored the threat posed by al-Qaeda before Sept. 11 because of its obsession with Iraq. **** Cheney told Rush Limbaugh that Clarke “wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff”; Condoleezza Rice said Monday that "**** Clarke just does not know what he's talking about"; and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, in that same 60 Minutes broadcast said that the White House has found "no evidence" that conversations Clarke claims to have had with President Bush even occurred. Clarke has responded to his critics with a dollop of wistful regret, followed by an adamant refusal to back down. "It pains me to have Condoleezza Rice and the others mad at me," he told Good Morning America. "But I think the American people needed to know the facts, and they weren't out. And now they are."
Are they? The accounts of high-level conversations and meetings given by Clarke in various television appearances, beginning with the 60 Minutes interview, differ in significant respects from the recollections of a former top counterterrorism official who participated in the same conversations and meetings: Richard Clarke. In several cases, the version of events provided by Clarke this week include details and embellishments that do not appear in his new book, Against All Enemies. While the discrepancies do not, on their own, discredit Clarke's larger arguments, they do raise questions about whether Clarke's eagerness to publicize his story and rip the Bush Administration have clouded his memory of the facts.
Perhaps Clarke's most explosive charge is that on Sept. 12, President Bush instructed him to look into the possibility that Iraq had a hand in the hijackings. Here's how Clarke recounted the meeting on 60 Minutes: "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'.....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.'" After Clarke protested that "there's no connection," Bush came back to him and said "Iraq, Saddam — find out if there's a connection." Clarke says Bush made the point "in a very intimidating way." The next day, interviewed on PBS' The NewsHour, Clarke sexed up the story even more. "What happened was the President, with his finger in my face, saying, 'Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaeda, a memo on Iraq and the attacks.' Very vigorous, very intimidating." Several interviewers pushed Clarke on this point, asking whether it was all that surprising that the President would want him to investigate all possible perpetrators of the attacks. Clarke responded, "It would have been irresponsible for the president not to come to me and say, ****, I don't want you to assume it was al-Qaeda. I'd like you to look at every possibility to see if maybe it was al-Qaeda with somebody else, in a very calm way, with all possibilities open. That's not what happened."
How does this square with the account of the same meeting provided in Clarke's book? In that version, Clarke finds the President wandering alone in the Situation Room on Sept. 12, "looking like he wanted something to do." Clarke writes that Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room" — an impetuous move, perhaps, but hardly the image that Clarke depicted on television, of the President dragging in unwitting staffers by their shirt-collars. The Bush in these pages sounds more ruminative than intimidating: "I know you have a lot to do and all, but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way." When Clarke responds by saying that "al-Qaeda did this," Bush says, "I know, I know, but see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred....." Again Clarke protests, after which Bush says "testily," "Look into Iraq, Saddam."
Nowhere do we see the President pointing fingers at or even sounding particularly "vigorous" toward Clarke and his deputies. Despite Clarke's contention that Bush wanted proof of Iraqi involvement at any cost, it's just as possible that Bush wanted Clark to find disculpatory evidence in order to discredit the idea peddled by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Baghdad had a hand in 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush rejected Wolfowitz's attempts to make Iraq the first front in the war on terror. And if the President of the United States spoke "testily " 24 hours after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, well, can you blame him?
Clarke's liberties with the text don't stop there. On 60 Minutes he said that after submitting to the White House a joint-agency report discounting the possibility of Iraqi complicity in 9/11, the memo "got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer.'" The actual response from Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, shown later in the program, read "Please update and resubmit." On 60 Minutes, Clarke went further, saying that Bush's deputies never showed the President the joint-agency review, because "I don't think he sees memos that he wouldn't like the answer." This is pure, reckless speculation. Contrast that with the more straightforward account in Against All Enemies: after his team found no evidence of Iraqi involvement, Clarke writes that "a memorandum to that effect was sent up to the President, and there was never any indication that it reached him."
In a few other instances, Clarke's televised comments seem designed to disparage the President and his aides at all cost, omitting any of the inconvenient details — some of which appear in the pages of his book — that might suggest the White House took al-Qaeda seriously before Sept. 11. Bush, Clarke says, "never thought [al-Qaeda] was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his national security advisor to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject." This has been a constant refrain in Clarke's public statements — that Bush's failure to call a "Principal's Meeting" of his cabinet to discuss terrorism until the week before Sept. 11 showed a lack of interest in al-Qaeda. While it is technically true that the White House did not hold a Cabinet-level meeting on al-Qaeda until Sept. 4, the charge is still misleading, since Bush, as early as April 2001, had instructed Rice to draft a strategy for rolling back al-Qaeda and killing bin Laden, saying he was tired of "swatting flies" —, a line Clarke does include in his book. Rice's response was to task a committee of deputies to study the U.S.'s options for rolling back the Taliban; the group ultimately concluded that the U.S. should increase its support to the Northern Alliance and pressure on Pakistan to cooperate in a campaign to remove the Taliban. It was essentially the same plan Clarke had drafted during the Clinton Administration. As his book details, the plan was scuttled by intransigence at the CIA and the Pentagon, neither of which Clinton wanted to confront head-on.
While Clarke claims that he is "an independent" not driven by partisan motives, it's hard not to read some passages in his book as anything but shrill broadsides. In his descriptions of Bush aides, he discerns their true ideological beliefs not in their words but in their body language: "As I briefed Rice on al-Qaeda, her facial expression gave me the impression she had never heard the term before." When the cabinet met to discuss al-Qaeda on Sept. 4, Rumsfeld "looked distracted throughout the session." As for the President, Clarke doesn't even try to read Bush's body language; he just makes the encounters up. "I have a disturbing image of him sitting by a warm White House fireplace drawing a dozen red Xs on the faces of the former al-Qaeda corporate board.....while the new clones of al-Qaeda....are recruiting thousands whose names we will never know, whose faces will never be on President Bush's little charts, not until it is again too late." Clarke conjured up this chilling scene again on 60 Minutes. Only in this version he also manages to read Bush's mind, and "he's thinking that he's got most of them and therefore he's taken care of the problem." The only things missing are the black winged chair and white cat.
Leaving aside the fact that Bush never fails to insist that the terror threat is as great today as it was on 9/11, these passages reveal the polemical, partisan mean-spiritedness that lies at the heart of Clarke's book, and to an even greater degree, his television appearances flacking it. That's a shame, since many of his contentions — about the years of political and intelligence missteps that led to 9/11, the failure of two Administrations to destroy al-Qaeda and the potentially disastrous consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — deserve a wide and serious airing. From now on, the country would be best served if Clarke lets the facts speak for themselves.
Ok Keith I looked at the Fox News (Bush News Network) link and I appreciated the PBS link although you need to read the entire piece but here's an except you didn't post.
Mistake of the GOP to attack Clarke's credibility?
RAY SUAREZ: You opened in by calling it a mistake to go after Clarke on the part of the administration. If it's a mistake, the rest of the GOP isn't necessarily hearing it. Senate Majority Leader, Mr. Frist, is now asking for permission to declassify testimony given by Richard Clarke when he was the counterterrorism adviser in order to compare what he told the commission this week and what he told Congress two years ago. Earlier in the day before Frist made his call, Minority Leader Tom Daschle said, well, if he lied, try him for perjury, sort of calling Frist out almost. So it looks like it's not over.
DAVID BROOKS: I think politically it was a mistake for the administration. I don't think it is a mistake to talk about Richard Clarke's credibility. That's very much at issue. Many people who have seen worn testimony by him, John Lehman, Christopher Shays, Bill Frist, have all said there is incredible contradictions between the sworn testimony in private and what he has given in his book.
We've seen it in the press. Just one example. He gave a background briefing in August 2002 where he swore -- he talked about the great glories of the Bush anti-terror policy before 9/11. He told specific facts about what Bush had done. They had made a decision to quintuple the CIA budget for al-Qaida, a whole series of points that he gave on the background to reporters, we have the transcript of that report. If what he said in that background briefing is true, then everything in the book is false. If the book is true, he was lying to those reporters. At some point, he was lying.
RAY SUAREZ: He dealt with that, Mark, didn't he, during his testimony?
MARK SHIELDS: I think his explanation is perhaps more understandable in Washington than it is outside of Washington. I mean that, well, staff people at the White House always do, for every president, put the best spin on it they can. Whoever the president's latest economic adviser goes out and says well, the economy is really growing, boy, corporate profits are up, the fact that we haven't produced any jobs, we just don't mention. That's what he says he was doing. I think there are discrepancies, I would say maybe inconsistencies and contradictions. That's fine. That's fine.
What the administration decided to do was to go good cop-bad cop on him. We had Colin Powell being very responsible, George Tenet, even Donald Rumsfeld in their public testimony. Behind that, were the bad cops: **** Cheney, saying he is out of the loop. And they got so bad -- and Condi Rice -- that they started contradicting each other and stepping on their story. As they criticized him, they got a blowback on themselves. Condi Rice, for example, said that we had a plan, military operation plan for the Taliban in Afghanistan in place before 9/11. **** Armitage, the deputy secretary of State, says that's not true. **** Cheney, the vice president says he was out of the loop. She says no, he wasn't out of the loop.
end quote
Now here's Clake's Testimony from 911 Commission:
TRANSCRIPT:
JAMES THOMPSON, COMMISSION MEMBER: In August of 2002, you intended to mislead the press, did you not?
RICHARD CLARKE: No. I think there is a very fine line that anyone who's been in the White House, in any administration, can tell you about. And that is when you are special assistant to the president and you're asked to explain something that is potentially embarrassing to the administration, because the administration didn't do enough or didn't do it in a timely manner and is taking political heat for it, as was the case there, you have a choice. Actually, I think you have three choices. You can resign rather than do it. I chose not to do that. Second choice is...
THOMPSON: Why was that, Mr. Clarke? You finally resigned because you were frustrated.
CLARKE: I was, at that time, at the request of the president, preparing a national strategy to defend America's cyberspace, something which I thought then and think now is vitally important. I thought that completing that strategy was a lot more important than whether or not I had to provide emphasis in one place or other while discussing the facts on this particular news story.
The second choice one has, Governor, is whether or not to say things that are untruthful. And no one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.
In any event, the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did.
I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration.
THOMPSON: But you will admit that what you said in August of 2002 is inconsistent with what you say in your book?
CLARKE: No, I don't think it's inconsistent at all. I think, as I said in your last round of questioning, Governor, that it's really a matter here of emphasis and tone. I mean, what you're suggesting, perhaps, is that as special assistant to the president of the United States when asked to give a press backgrounder I should spend my time in that press backgrounder criticizing him. I think that's somewhat of an unrealistic thing to expect.
THOMPSON: Well, what it suggests to me is that there is one standard of candor and morality for White House special assistants and another standard of candor and morality for the rest of America. I don't get that.
CLARKE: I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics.
end quote
Now here's a link to a real comment about the Bush Regime and Clark's briefing.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/edward_wasserman/8356592.htm?1c
Now here's also what Clark says, think the Bush (Secrecy is Everything) Regime will be forthcoming?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/28/clarke/
Clarke wants all testimony, records declassified
Ex-counterterrorism aide: 'Not just a little line here and there'
Mistake of the GOP to attack Clarke's credibility?
RAY SUAREZ: You opened in by calling it a mistake to go after Clarke on the part of the administration. If it's a mistake, the rest of the GOP isn't necessarily hearing it. Senate Majority Leader, Mr. Frist, is now asking for permission to declassify testimony given by Richard Clarke when he was the counterterrorism adviser in order to compare what he told the commission this week and what he told Congress two years ago. Earlier in the day before Frist made his call, Minority Leader Tom Daschle said, well, if he lied, try him for perjury, sort of calling Frist out almost. So it looks like it's not over.
DAVID BROOKS: I think politically it was a mistake for the administration. I don't think it is a mistake to talk about Richard Clarke's credibility. That's very much at issue. Many people who have seen worn testimony by him, John Lehman, Christopher Shays, Bill Frist, have all said there is incredible contradictions between the sworn testimony in private and what he has given in his book.
We've seen it in the press. Just one example. He gave a background briefing in August 2002 where he swore -- he talked about the great glories of the Bush anti-terror policy before 9/11. He told specific facts about what Bush had done. They had made a decision to quintuple the CIA budget for al-Qaida, a whole series of points that he gave on the background to reporters, we have the transcript of that report. If what he said in that background briefing is true, then everything in the book is false. If the book is true, he was lying to those reporters. At some point, he was lying.
RAY SUAREZ: He dealt with that, Mark, didn't he, during his testimony?
MARK SHIELDS: I think his explanation is perhaps more understandable in Washington than it is outside of Washington. I mean that, well, staff people at the White House always do, for every president, put the best spin on it they can. Whoever the president's latest economic adviser goes out and says well, the economy is really growing, boy, corporate profits are up, the fact that we haven't produced any jobs, we just don't mention. That's what he says he was doing. I think there are discrepancies, I would say maybe inconsistencies and contradictions. That's fine. That's fine.
What the administration decided to do was to go good cop-bad cop on him. We had Colin Powell being very responsible, George Tenet, even Donald Rumsfeld in their public testimony. Behind that, were the bad cops: **** Cheney, saying he is out of the loop. And they got so bad -- and Condi Rice -- that they started contradicting each other and stepping on their story. As they criticized him, they got a blowback on themselves. Condi Rice, for example, said that we had a plan, military operation plan for the Taliban in Afghanistan in place before 9/11. **** Armitage, the deputy secretary of State, says that's not true. **** Cheney, the vice president says he was out of the loop. She says no, he wasn't out of the loop.
end quote
Now here's Clake's Testimony from 911 Commission:
TRANSCRIPT:
JAMES THOMPSON, COMMISSION MEMBER: In August of 2002, you intended to mislead the press, did you not?
RICHARD CLARKE: No. I think there is a very fine line that anyone who's been in the White House, in any administration, can tell you about. And that is when you are special assistant to the president and you're asked to explain something that is potentially embarrassing to the administration, because the administration didn't do enough or didn't do it in a timely manner and is taking political heat for it, as was the case there, you have a choice. Actually, I think you have three choices. You can resign rather than do it. I chose not to do that. Second choice is...
THOMPSON: Why was that, Mr. Clarke? You finally resigned because you were frustrated.
CLARKE: I was, at that time, at the request of the president, preparing a national strategy to defend America's cyberspace, something which I thought then and think now is vitally important. I thought that completing that strategy was a lot more important than whether or not I had to provide emphasis in one place or other while discussing the facts on this particular news story.
The second choice one has, Governor, is whether or not to say things that are untruthful. And no one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.
In any event, the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did.
I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration.
THOMPSON: But you will admit that what you said in August of 2002 is inconsistent with what you say in your book?
CLARKE: No, I don't think it's inconsistent at all. I think, as I said in your last round of questioning, Governor, that it's really a matter here of emphasis and tone. I mean, what you're suggesting, perhaps, is that as special assistant to the president of the United States when asked to give a press backgrounder I should spend my time in that press backgrounder criticizing him. I think that's somewhat of an unrealistic thing to expect.
THOMPSON: Well, what it suggests to me is that there is one standard of candor and morality for White House special assistants and another standard of candor and morality for the rest of America. I don't get that.
CLARKE: I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics.
end quote
Now here's a link to a real comment about the Bush Regime and Clark's briefing.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/edward_wasserman/8356592.htm?1c
Now here's also what Clark says, think the Bush (Secrecy is Everything) Regime will be forthcoming?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/28/clarke/
Clarke wants all testimony, records declassified
Ex-counterterrorism aide: 'Not just a little line here and there'
It opened here last night for previews. Official release 29th July. It was a major topic on all the Morning TV shows today. MM is on our version of 60 Mins this Sunday evening.
On the news a few nights ago,Moore's so called documentary about 9-11 had finally hit the 80 million dollar mark.This is a looooong way from a box office hit.
It's got the nutcase right wing talking heads frothing at the mouth, it can't be all bad.quote:
Originally posted by motorguy222:
On the news a few nights ago,Moore's so called documentary about 9-11 had finally hit the 80 million dollar mark.This is a looooong way from a box office hit.
It's got the nutcase right wing talking heads frothing at the mouth, it can't be all bad.
With all due respect XS650,I would be considered by many to be what you call a 'right wing nutcase'.I am labeled this because I am against homosexuality and many other things on the liberal agenda.I am a conservative and don't mind being called such,but,I am not a 'right wing nutcase'.I do call people liberal if I believe that they are such but I don't make them out to be raving lunatics or 'nutcases',this would be wrong on my part.
While I don't agree with the liberals point of view,they have the right to state their opinion.
When a person is called a fanatical name just for standing for what they believe and stating their opinions,then the name caller is out of line.
A conservative person has just as much right to speak their opinions and stand for their beliefs just as any liberal does.
What is ironic in many instances,is that most if not all liberals seem to think that conservatives should be seen and not heard.They seem to think that a person that disagrees with the liberal agenda are as you put it,"right wing nutcases".
We are NOT nutcases but are in fact very intelligent citizens that still hold fast to Traditional Morals and Values ,this is something that is DESPERATELY needed by most in our day and time.
XS650,by your response,I could label you a left wing anti-American,Liberal Socialist.In all honesty,I dont think you would be to happy with such if I actually did so.
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If a movie that cost 130 million bucks makes 150 million dollars, is that a blockbuster? How much money did Moore's movie cost to make? A couple million? Better calculate again.
Well he IS from California--those are compliments in that state.
Just curious why the "mainstream media" has no "label" for the screaming hard core leftists that they feature in the news everyday. I've never seen the term "left wing nut" or even leftist socialist used. That's probably because they themselves are shall we say "left leaning" and don't want to cast aspersions on their own
Whimsey
MG222 thats a lot of box office when you consider it hasn't been released in most countries.
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