Misplacing $1.2 billion is quite an achievement for a government agency other than the Pentagon. Yet, that's what Homeland Security and/or its predecessors did. (Spotted via Talk Left)
But I don't suppose MS-NBC, which seems obsessed with “is Clarke a liar” (a White House spin point directed by GW Bush personally) will care very much.
Here's a really smart question: Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: March 21, 2004 – March 27, 2004 Archives—if the administration is willing to waive the “background” status of comments made by Richard Clarke in August 2002, presumably without his consent, why won't it do the same thing for the person(s) who outed Ms. Plame to Robert Novak?
Wouldn't it be nice if someone asked this question at a white house press conference?
Brad DeLong explains what Richard Clarke is too diplomatic to say straight out:
If there is one thing clear from reading Against All Enemies, it is that Clarke is f***ing apeshit. I've never seen anyone so apeshit. Clarke had thought he was leading a successful counterterrorism effort against al Qaeda, and then at the start of 2001 these idiot neocon Cold Warriors came in and messed everything up with bureaucratic bull****. Because the Bush administration blocked his plans, September 11, 2001 happens and 3,000 Americans die. And then the White House takes 911 as a poiltical football and runs with it. And then it uses 911 as a phony excuse to launch a war on Iraq that—in Clarke's estimation—greatly strengthens al Qaeda.
And I had thought that Paul O'Neill was mad at and disgusted with the George W. Bush administration…
Actually, by all accounts, Clarke just uses nicer words to say it.
Via Dan's Washpost column, a link to a valuable but depressing compilation from the Center for American Progress: White House Intimidation, a list of folks the Bush team has tried to silence or punish for speaking. Proving they at least understand that it's better to be feared than loved.
Bill Clinton's greatest failing as a President may be that he never really understood that lesson and tried to reward his enemies too often, emboldening congress and others to walk right over him. (No need to mention his second greatest failing, although it may be related to the first.) This is the other extreme.
Daily Kos on Clarke — it's not that he's new so much that he's credible and impossible to ignore. And, oh yes, the administration appears to have no substantive response in its arsenal. None. None.
By their own right, the Clarke stuff is not that significant. Or at the very least, not too original. He has said little that we didn't already know around these parts.
But what Clarke has done is simply add fuel to charges alredy floating around — from Paul O'Neil, from David Kay, from others. One person making charges might be spun as the rantings of a disgruntled former employee, or the machinations of a political enemy. But as more of these former officials come out, the damage they wreak on the administration rises exponentially.
We are seeing confirmation upon confirmation upon confirmation. The numbers of whistleblowers are too many to easily dismiss. The news media is no longer doing so, and the administration is reduced to calling in Rush Limbaugh to plead their case (Cheney: Our top counter-terrorism official was “out of the loop” on terrorism matters. And that's their defense!)
If there is no substantive response in the arsenal, that leaves the politics of personal destruction. But how many skeletons can there be in the closet of a guy who held all the highest clearances we have for 20+ years?
So far the best comment on the Clarke fallout I've seen is Billmon, who points out how bad it looks for Dr. Rice to refuse to testify to the 9/11 commission. Even if there is a valid separation of powers argument, isn't it the case the “9/11 changes everything”? Or so we've been told… [A commentator on the Billmon site says that not only did the NYT assign Judith Miller to the story, a very weird choice indeed, but it apparently buried the story on page 17! Surely not? The Post, at least, front-paged it.]
Apparently there's also a great 9/11 article in the Wall St. Journal, showing all the inconsistencies in the administration's story about what it did on 9/11, but that's subscription only online so I'll have to chase up a hardcopy…
And, White House Reels From Insider Expose.
And, today's event, the Center for American Progress website publishes newly revealed internal FBI and Justice Department documents that it says substantiate several of Clarke's charges of Bush administration inattention to terrorism in the face of “repeated warnings”.
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