Richard Clarke at the Center for American Progress, 01.09.07

Yesterday, on the eve of President Bush's pitch for a surge, former Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke gave an important speech at the Center for American Progress.

The event doesn't seem to have been covered by any of the major media, and so far I've only found one scant reference to it in the so-called blogosphere. I saw it last night on CSPAN, but so far there doesn't seem to be a video of the talk in the CSPAN archives (and nothing on YouTube, either). CSPAN2 aired the speech again this morning. Here are some of the highlights that I jotted down:

We're now going to be told that we have to escalate in Iraq because, whatever may have been the truth in the past, Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror. Perhaps they'll even admit that we've made it the central front in the war on terror.

By being [in Iraq], we are attracting terrorists, and we are affording terrorists an opportunity to get trained by attacking US and coalition forces.

We are now unable to successfully participate in the battle of ideas in the Islamic world because the United States is discredited in the Islamic world.

Whether it's Islamic fundamentalist terrorists or some other form of terrorism that emerges over the next 20 years, we will probably see terrorism again in the United States. And many of the vulnerabilities that we identified in the late 1990s, many of the vulnerabilities that were identified by the 9/11 Commission, remain unaddressed.

So. There are a lot of things that we can do—most of which we cannot do successfully, at the level that we need to do, while we're in Iraq. Because we don't have the money, because Iraq is taking all of the money, because we don't have the attention of the administration for these other issues—the sustained, high-level attention to make things happen; and in many cases because we do not have adequate US troops to perform the activities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The longer we stay in Iraq, these issues will continue to fester.

As we know, counter-insurgencies take seven years, ten years, to be successful, if they're ever successful. If we leave ten years from now, seven years from now, three years from now, how will that be different, how will that affect our ability to do all these other important things compared to if we left this year, and next? I believe that in either case, whether the last US combat force unit leaves 12 months from now, or seven years from now, the result will be largely the same.

In this case we have to face the truth that there is going to be a bad outcome in Iraq, no matter what we do. The administration has created circumstances in which there is no good outcome.

Is it worth another 3,000 dead Americans? Is it worth another 100,000 dead Iraqis?

Now, I know that Iraq and Vietnam are very different, and that most analogies between them fail. But it does strike me that this threat of the 'regional war' is very similar to the 'Domino Theory' in Vietnam.

They're smarter than we are. They understand the region: they've lived there forever. None of those governments are going to introduce large military units to fight each other in Iraq.

The threat of some 'broader regional war,' which is always undefined . . . is, I think, largely fictitious.

I think the Bush-McCain Escalation Plan delays the day when we can begin to seriously address the remaining threats from fundamentalist Islamic terrorism and it makes it more difficult to achieve addressing those threats, because it delays the day, and those threats get worse as a result.

I've come to the sad conclusion that the President is probably motivated by a desire to avoid or delay the judgment of history, to move the failure of Iraq into the next administration.

They are unable to admit error; they are unable to admit failure.

Bush reminds me in doing this escalation of a gambler who came to the table and was given a lot of chips, and repeatedly made what at that time were foolish bets, what everyone looking on at the time knew were foolish bets, and he depleted all of those chips, and he's now left borrowing chips in a last, double-down attempt at leaving the table with some chips, with some face. In order to save face, he is not only borrowing money, our grandchildren's money, by running up the debt, but he is also gambling with the lives of Americans, he's gambling with the lives of Iraqis, and he's gambling with US national security.

Clarke spoke for about forty minutes, only occasionally glancing at notes. Afterwards, as he was walking off the stage, one of the audience members asked him if it would be possible to get a copy of his speech. "There isn't one," he responded.