Clinton's Final Paper Refutes Clarke Assertion
From the Washington Times:The final policy paper on national security that President Clinton submitted to Congress — 45,000 words long — makes no mention of al Qaeda and refers to Osama bin Laden by name just four times.
The scarce references to bin Laden and his terror network undercut claims by former White House terrorism analyst Richard A. Clarke that the Clinton administration considered al Qaeda an "urgent" threat, while President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "ignored" it.
The Clinton document, titled "A National Security Strategy for a Global Age," is dated December 2000 and is the final official assessment of national security policy and strategy by the Clinton team. The document is publicly available, though no U.S. media outlets have examined it in the context of Mr. Clarke's testimony and new book.
Matt's Chat
I'll agree with a sentiment expressed in the closing paragraphs: I'm less interested in word counting and finger pointing and am more concerned with fixing the problems and completing the task at hand.The War on Terror is progressing nicely. We've learned from our mistakes along the way and are making siginificant progress. The hand wringing over when did we know and when did we know it is pointless. Our intelligence community bungled it. Our government dropped the ball. Let's apply our lessons learned and get on with it already.
Now, I can hear the hamsters now: "But, Matt, that's a rather crass attitude to take." The Blame Game is not going to bring those people back. I'm sorry, it just isn't. The only purpose this serves is political and that smells bad. BAD. You really want to know who is responsible for 9/11, I'll tell you...
AL QAEDA.
Mark's Remarks
Amen, Matt, but hamsters will not let it go, until like all their attacks, it comes back to bite them on the Butt! More Americans are doing their own research, and more are coming to the conclusion that if a ball was dropped, it wasn't dropped by the former Texas Rangers' owner (if you know who I mean). This will be another self-destructive binge in lunacy by the left, and they will still come up with ways to blame Republicans and a vast conspiracy, just as they did in Florida, even though EVERY SINGLE recount showed Bush winning, somehow they still talk "selected not elected." Grow up, people, and lets get to the task at hand....fixing the problems....
Even the guy he cursed then praised (is that like voting for it before voting against it?) is showing Clarke to be a liar, as is shown in this Clinton report. Funny, the media at large hasn't checked this out or reported it much.....why is that? We wouldn't want to be hoping this smear book trashes Bush's reelection chances, would we? We wouldn't want to influence the elections, would we Dan, Tom, and Pete?
