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.
