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by Richard Clarke...
This book is comiing out in a few days (March 22nd)
It is being done in response to the Bush Campaigns attempts to blame the Clinton Administrations policies on terrorism, and accusations of weak responses on terrorism, for the events of 9/11. The book shows how the CLinton Administraion Prevented over 20 attempts by AL Qaeda to attack the U.S. in a manner similar to 9/11, the attempts of Clark and the Clinton Transition team to get the Bush Adminstration to take Al Qaeda seriously, the fact that Clarke and other members of the Clinton Counterterrosim team actually presnted the Bush Administration with evidence that the Al Qaeda attempt would be in the form of flying a super airliner into a large building or several large buildings, and the fact that Al Qaeda succeeded on its very first attempt at terrorism withing the United States after the Bush Administration took office.
This is being done to debunk theBush Campaigns attempt to portray the Clinton Administration as having been weak on terrorism in order to make Bush look like he ios the best choice for the nation regarding terrorism.
Clarkes book places the blame on the Bush Administration, and is quite thorough in describing the many attempts to warn the Bush Administraion that Al Qaeda was the most serious threat that the nation would face during Bush's tenure as president, and that the entire Bush Administration except for George Tenet completely disregarded all intelligence provided to them which indicated that Al Qaeda's threat to the United States was great, and that a terrorist attack was imminent.
The failure to prevent the attack on 9/11 is shown not to be an intelligence failure, but the result of the Bush Administration not giving terrorism a high priority, and so ordering the FBI, CIA, and other Intelligence Agencies not to give it a high priority, as the Bush Administration oedered them to spend more time and much of the intelligence community's resources on international drug trade, and Iraq.
Clarkes book will be out in a matter of days, and other members of CLinton's Administration. like Sandy Berger. are preparing for interviews in which they reveal the repeated attempots to get the Bush Administration to tale Al Qaeda seriously, and the fact that the Bush Administration would wither ignore advice, or completely avoind setting up meetings to discuss the isses as well as massive amounts of good intelligence provided to the Bush Administration which reliably indicated that an attack was forthcoming, while the Bush Administration was triny to twist poor intelligence on Iraq to find a reason to get rid of Saddam, even prior to 9/11.
This is also an attempt by Clinton and his administration to take down the idea that Bush would be the better war time choice for president down a peg, while boosting Kerry's reputation in this area.
I would expect that once Clarkes book comes out, and members of CLintons staff start reporting on their interactions with the Bush Administration regarding terrorism during the transition, that Bush's reputatioan and polling numbers will take another hit within the next month or two.
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