Say it pretty and their hearts and minds will follow.

I'll see your Homer and raise you Diane Lane. ;)

Not bad -- I thought about Jessica Simpson too, but decided that Diane Lane looked more "presidential"....:rolleyes:

I'm up to page 186 of the 9/11 Report. The Richard Clarke involvement during Clinton's administration is beginning to emerge. So far, it looks like he (Clarke) was way ahead of the administration and Congress. He seems to have good analysis and good ideas but lacked backing--either he lacked such skills or other people were more skilled.

The CIA comes off pretty badly so far. They are more concerned with manitaining or increasing funding than they with doing anything.

The FBI is hopelessly hamstrung by its perception of the wall between intel and criminal investigation and by its own failure to pursue terrorist threat analysis. Also, their information streams were so stovepiped that even had unmistakable information come in it is doubtful it would have gotten to the right groups in time to be useful.

Congress was so consumed with pursuing political destruction of opponents for the previous 20 years that its oversight responsibilities were at best, inglorious. The 9/11 Commission indicated this destructive war between Congress and the Presidency was a major distraction for President Clinton, and Clinton's predecessor.

So far, no direct fault attributable to Pres Clinton or anybody else.

----------

It is written in a good, readable style. Th etypeface is so small that its distracting for old farts with reading glasses. Too bad the font size wasn't about 2/3 larger. But that would have put the price probably 1.5x higher. I got my copy from Books a Millin for about $10, tax included.

----------

The historical analysis is very good.

-----------

The first chapter, detailing practically minute-by-minute the events of 9/11 renewed my anger and stoked my desire for revenge. I believe too many Americans have lost touch with that day. This document will remind the reader of everything.

I plan on reading the report myself, is it any different than the media spin version in its entirety?

I wish you would read Clarke's book Medmech. His complaints are extremely valid:

1) On the arrival of the Bush administration, he was told by Dr. Rice that Bush was not interested in information developed on al-Queda by Clarke, and wanted more information on "State Sponsored Terrorism" from Iraq, something Clarke could find no evidence of.

2) Clarke was also promptly demoted, and instead of reporting directly to the National Security Advisor, now reported the "Deputies Committee", chaired by neo-con war criminal Wolfowitz, again a person who had no interest in hearing about al-Queda and on;y wanted information that could be used to justify a war in Iraq.

3) During his entire first seven months in office, neither Bush or Rice held any high levels meetings on terrorism, until three weeks before Sept 11. It is Clarke's assertion that if the President had acted on the red flags Clarke was accumulting in his files, Sept 11 would not have happened - but this was impossible because the President was totally fixated on Iraq, or was otherwise on vacation away from Washington. A real leader, this guy.

Read any other book by any other person close to the situation - Clarke, O'neil, Woodward all tell the same tale, a lazy, disinterested President, disinterested in all but one subject, Iraq.

Reaching back to the Clinton admin also seems to ignore the fact Bush seems to have done nothing about the Cole bombing, which happened only shortly before he took over. To this day, Bush has done very little to combat terrorism, unless you think bombing Iraqi goat farmers is combatting terrorism, which seems to be the rightwing fantasy the rest of us are supposed to swallow.

In the end, this is just like the right wing constantly sayiong "the recession started under Clinton". Thats nice, but Bush did jack **** about it. Same story with al-Queda. The-buck-never-stops-here presidentcy, just more of the same don't-blame-me-blame-Clinton rhetoric.

KV, has the democratic party done anything you disagree with?

I now know why you spend 21 hours a day on this forum.

Everybody looks for what they want to find in it. I read the NY Times 3-page online synopsis and it seems like a different book. But then, the NY Times was interested in only certain aspects--Uranium/Al Queda-Iraq/What did Bush know and when?. That takes about 20 pages altogether and probably another 10 pages or so of footnotes. So the NY Times version covers perhaps 1/20th of the report.

What is depressing is that the government of the United States had senior people who recognized Al Queda as a serious threat. But there was no leadership initiative so nothing got done. Entrenched political and agency turf wars made the problem of lack of leadership even worse. I can only hope things have gotten better since 1990 or so.

Kirk, Clarke's version is Clarke's version. Why bother with his when you can get an exhaustive analysis by reasonably objective experts, practically devoid of partisan political agenda or personal acrimony and which puts everything he (Clarke) says into proper proportion?

Clarke is a minor player in the report. He did some good things, but nothing exceptional. Of course, I'm only about 2/5 into the book. My perspective may change when I get into analysis of the current administration's role during 9/11.

Clarke was the top counter-terrorism executive. Hardly a small player. In my post I am urging you to read all three books, not just Clarke's. Commonalities emerge that paint the picture of a lazy, disinterested chief exec (a deaf man in a room full of blind people, says O'neil ) who was obsessed with Iraq before 911 even happened. I doubt these men got into a room together and organized what they were going to say.

Such is the problem with blind partisan support. There is so much hatred for the current President, that they are totally ignoring, or brushing off the serious issues that affect their party, as well as, the not yet (but soon to be) nominated candidate.

I am sure you all are very concerned on intra-party democratic affairs. Must keep you up nights.

The purpose of the convention is to submit a platform. If there's anything in there that might concern me, I'll get back to you.

If any party is ignoring their own internal problems. its the big spending, big deficit Republicans. I bet we don't hear a peep put of you "fiscal conservatives" at the RNC. Y'all will be too busy screaming about whether men should be banging each others butts.

Kind of gives a new meaning to the Log Cabin Republicans not being "seated" at the convention.

Kirk, those popping veins must be clouding your vision I have critized the Bush admin many times on this forum I have also complimented the Clinton admin on several issues.

While I'm not blinded by seething hatred Manage to find a real world veiw of what happening, I could give a chit about the Republican convention and will likely not watch a single minute of it, unless Alan Keyes speaks or someone that i really wish was in charge.

But I'm dealing with what we got, unfortunatly the guys/gals that could steer us through this crap are dead or don't want to be in politics.

For now W is the man for the job IMO he may not be the best but he's better than the alternitive.

thats my opinion and my thoughts now bring on the omniscience.

One fact to go along with this.. in one of the articles about the Berger flap, a document from 2000 showed Clarke advocating striking al Quaeda targets with Berger scratching a "NO" beside it. This would seem to say Clarke clearly had al Quaeda on his mind...

Read the 9/11 Report and find decide for yourself whether or not Clarke was a major player. FYI, he was an advisor, not a decider.

Clarke's major problem was trying to get CIA to make a definitive statement--they kept insisting on labeling their al Queda report concerning the USS Col as "Preliminary". Because of this, Berger and Clinton were unconvinced that Al Queda was responsible and that's why they didn't move against al Queda in the closing month of the Cinton administration. Had CIA ever made an unequivocal charge against al Queda, I believe Clarke would have had support for his move against al Queda.

What clearly comes across between pages 200 and 208 in the report is that Clarke was quite convinced of the al Queda threat, despite unequivocal evidence. It turns out his hunch was correct. If you were President Clinton, would you have opened attacks based on and advisor's hunch, when neither the FBI nor CIA were unequivocally convinced?

During the transition, the subcabinet level appointees and employees concerned with national security continued their portfolios. There was some rearrangement of senior-level people and some changes in chain of command. Clarke perceived the changes as a demotion. He was no longer in on the principles meetings so he was not privy to decisions at that level, when he had been under Clinton. This meant he still had input to the decisions but no longer had access to the formulation of policy. Thus, he could NOT KNOW what plans were or were not being discussed outside of his chain of command.

Read the book.

Bot