In a searing, book-length indictment of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism stategy, Richard A. Clarke, The White House’s former counterterrorism director, says that the Bush White House failed to take the al Qaeda threat seriously before Sept. 11, 2001, and by Sept. 12 was trying to pin the attack on Iraq.
Barton Gellman writes in the Washington Post: For Clarke, then in his 10th year as a top White House official, that day marked the transition from neglect to folly in the Bush administration’s stewardship of war with Islamic extremists. His account — in Against All Enemies, which reaches bookstores today, and in interviews accompanying publication — is the first detailed portrait of the Bush administration’s wartime performance by a major participant.
Acknowledged by foes and friends as a leading figure among career national security officials, Clarke served more than two years in the Bush White House after holding senior posts under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He resigned 13 months ago yesterday.
“The president, he said, ‘failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks.’ The rapid shift of focus to Saddam Hussein, Clarke writes, ‘launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide.’”
The charges, quite obviously, go right to the heart of Bush’s re-election campaign strategy, which has consistently sought to position the sitting president as as a ‘war president’ whose vision and leadership have made the United States a far safer country. Needless to say, given Clarke’s revelations, The White House finds itself in massive damage control today.
The first salvo of Clarke’s media tour came last evening, on the CBS news affairs programme, 60 Minutes. CBSNEWS.com has a full report on the segment, and a video excerpt. Here’s Joie Chen summing up the interview — and the White House response — on the CBS Evening News.
The New York Times’ Paul Krugman also weighs in.

On this first day back to school after the spring break, Mark Fiore reflects on the education system, and the cutbacks which have led to no paper or pencils, old textbooks (if they exist at all), round after round of layoffs, library, drama, extracurricular, field trip, public health nurse and other cutbacks, school closures, the demonizing of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, and oh so much more.

“We will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free.”
— George Bush, March 17, 2003, televised address.

A year after Bush’s lofty promise, how are Iraqi women and families faring under US occupation?
Newspaper headlines attest to the ongoing lack of state security in Iraq. Less examined is the status of human security, the right of Iraqi women and families to have their basic needs met and their human rights respected, protected and fulfilled. After a year of “liberation” at the hands of the US military, most Iraqi women find that they are much worse off.
Since the “end of hostilities”, ongoing military violence and a spike in violence against women in Iraq has curtailed all aspects of women’s lives, preventing many from leaving home, even for food, water or medical treatment, or to go to work or school. Conditions of daily life are deteriorating, rather than improving, with most of Iraq still experiencing power outages for an average of 16 hours a day.
Children sleep in the streets between rising piles of uncollected garbage. Drinking water is contaminated, and there are 12-hour waits to buy gasoline or cooking fuel, (and) no telephone or postal service.
Iraqi women have had to intensify their work hauling water, preparing food and caring for children traumatized by bombing, disease and malnutrition.
For more information on living conditions for women and children in Iraq, read this report, filed by Madre’s Associate Director, Yifat Susskind.

The lead editorial in the spring issue of Ms. Magazine — written by Editor-in-Chief Elaine Lafferty — expresses outrage at the recent prosecution and conviction of Martha Stewart, and asks women to speak out.
“The issue is proportionality. John Ashcroft’s Justice Department spent millions of dollars overzealously pursuing a case in which Martha Stewart saved herself $52,000 in stock losses by following an insider stock tip. And she wasn’t even prosecuted for that — she was busted for lying about whether or not she’d sold her stock based on that tip.

We certainly believe in the judicial system, and in going after “bad guys,” including rich white collar criminals who use their power and connections to make money off the backs of small investors. Let’s just go after the real bad guys, and put Martha Stewart into perspective.
For example, we can’t wait for indictments to come down on Bush crony Kenneth Lay of Enron, contributed thousands to the Republican Party, who sold off $80 million in company stock while telling his employees to keep buying. When those employees found out that Enron’s profits were created by smoke-and-mirror accounting, many lost their retirement nest eggs.
We’re also concerned about Vice President Dick Cheney’s sale of Halliburton stock in 2000, on which he made $18.5 million. The price of stock then was $52/share; sixty days later, when reports of poor earnings surfaced, it dropped to $13/share.
Ordinary investors lost their life savings. Mr. Cheney is now being sued in civil court — but not by the federal government — for being part of a conspiracy to overstate company profits.
… These are scary times we’re living in. Our government is creating and exploiting fear. If you’re on a list of people who support progressive causes, you could potentially not be allowed on an airplane flight. If you’re accused of being a terrorist — just accused — you aren’t even allowed a lawyer. As I write this, I anticipate my name will move to the top of the list for an IRS audit.
But it’s time for all of us to speak out against fear and intimidation. And it’s time for Ms. to join the chorus of those who believe that Martha Stewart was taken down because she’s that bitchy Martha Stewart. The punishment should fit the crime, and Martha Stewart going to prison is wildly wrong, overzealous, and disproportionate.”

Jonathan D. Glater, writing in The New York Times, provides further perspective on Ms. Stewart’s conviction, exploring the notion that the decision by the state to prosecute Ms. Stewart was motivated by the desire to take down a popular and very public female chief executive, that she had become a target for prosecution because she supported members of the Democratic Party, and that justice officials went after her simply because she was not a member of the old-boys network.