Did Bush Press For Iraq 9/11 Link?

Did Bush Press For Iraq 9/11 Link?

http://www.planetnetopia.com/forum/topics/id_3/

Richard Clarke

Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism advisor, talks about September 11.

“I find it outrageous that the President is running for re-election
on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He
ignored it.”
Richard Clarke

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then
top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the
attacks, despite being told there didn’t seem to be one.

The charge comes from the advisor, Richard Clarke.

The administration maintains that it cannot find any evidence that
the conversation about an Iraq-9/11 tie-in ever took place.

Clarke also tells CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl that White
House officials were tepid in their response when he urged them
months before Sept. 11 to meet to discuss what he saw as a severe
threat from al Qaeda.

“Frankly,” he said, “I find it outrageous that the President is
running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great
things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for
months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe.
We’ll never know.”

Clarke went on to say, “I think he’s done a terrible job on the war
against terrorism.”

The No. 2 man on the president’s National Security Council, Stephen
Hadley, vehemently disagrees. He says Mr. Bush has taken the fight
to the terrorists, and is making the U.S. homeland safer.

Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq,
even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.

Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initally thought
Rumsfeld was joking.

Clarke is due to testify next week before the special panel probing
whether the attacks were preventable.

His allegations are also made in a book being published
Monday, “Against All Enemies.”

Clarke helped shape U.S. policy on terrorism under President Reagan
and the first President Bush. He was held over by President Clinton
to be his terrorrism czar, then held over again by the current
President Bush.

Clarke tells what happened
behind the scenes at the White House before, during and after Sept.
11.

When the terrorists stuck, it was thought the White House would be
the next target, so it was evacuated. Clarke was one of only a
handful of people who stayed behind. He ran the government’s
response to the attacks from the Situation Room in the West Wing.

“I kept thinking of the words from ‘Apocalypse Now,’ the whispered
words of Marlon Brando, when he thought about Vietnam. ‘The horror.
The horror.’ Because we knew what was going on in New York. We knew
about the bodies flying out of the windows. People falling through
the air. We knew that Osama bin Laden had succeeded in bringing
horror to the streets of America,” he tells Stahl.

After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and
his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how
to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected
the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden
and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned
to Iraq.

“Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq,” Clarke said to
Stahl. “And we all said … no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We
need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren’t any good
targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq.
I said, ‘Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but
Iraq had nothing to do with it.

“Initially, I thought when he said “There aren’t enough targets in–
in Afghanistan” I thought he was joking.

“I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection but the
CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting
there saying we’ve looked at this issue for years. For years we’ve
looked and there’s just no,

More?

http://www.planetnetopia.com/forum/topics/id_3/

__________________
“The Truth may not always win, but it is always right.”

• “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president or
that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the
American public.”
–President Theodore Roosevelt

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his
government.
— Edward Abbey

“A popular government without popular information or the means of
acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps
both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean
to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power
knowledge gives.” James Madison

Liars are usually easily discredited; it’s the truth-tellers who
need to be destroyed.

When fools lie, people die

==========================================
You know your worth when your enemies praise your architecture of
aggression.

Take Action, Make a Call.
Ask for any rep you want too.
202/224-3121