Clarke is, however, one savvy promoter. He got CBS to give him two episodes to promote his book and then he appears on national TV before the 9-11 commission to promote his book - and all this was FREE! I wish I could promote my business as well has he does his book.

I hear he has sold about 500,000 books - so far. Since his take is probably about $4.00 per book, that's a cool $2 million. No bad, not bad at all.

P. T. Barnum would be proud.

Clarke wasn't, in the strictest sense, a civil servant--he served at the pleasure of administrations who kept him on. But I agree with the larger point: Guys that specialize on the trees get pissed off when others focus on the forest. That's true of any level of bureaucracy.

I find Clarke's attacks blatantly partisan. We all F'd up not paying enough attention to terrorism. We didn't elect a government who talked about the importance of facing the terrorist threat. We paid for that mistake, but it's one we all made in electing both Clinton and Bush.

Clarke's giving a pass to the Clinton Administration is nothing more that a hack attempt to influence politics. The sad part is that he's so obvious he screwed that up as well. He's already on record saying Bush continued the Clinton policy. Yet somehow the policy that was sufficient under Clinton was deficient under Bush.

The fact is that we weren't willing to allow inconveniences to intrude on our lives before 9/11. Government takes its cues from the population, not the other way around. Blaming either administration is just an attempt to exonerate ourselves.

Sorry. The whole 'lie' thing isn't going to wash. It is abundantly clear to anyone who isn't blindly partisan that 'Please update and resubmit' is cover-your-ass beaureaucratese for 'wrong answer'.

The frenzy to discredit Clarke is frightening. What is even more frightening is that intelligent, otherwise rational people like you, Dean, buy into this, and promote things like the the bogus 'lie' at the expense of your own credibility. I expect this sort of deeply biased commentary from Reynolds and Lileks and the other members of the horde, but not from you.

From everything I've read and seen (and no, Shep and Ara, I don't just read right-leaning stuff, I read it all)..this guy just had a disagreement with Bush/Rice on the scope of the terror threat...he had a pretty narrow view, that Al-Qaida is just some nebulous organization of international criminals, and the approach should be largely law enforcement related (Kerrey let him off the hook by never asking why Clarke never considered it a "war" during all those 8 years under Clinton)...Bush/Rice considered A-Q an organization funded and aided by nation-states like Afganistan, Iraq, Iran, etc...to me, it's apparent that Clarke is a guy who's very smart, very capable, but he is also myopic, as many career bureaucrats become over years...he could not see the broader picture, and I doubt seriously if Clinton ever challenged Clarke's view...Rice obviously did challenge that view, and Clarke didn't like it, not one bit...

Who is right? Only time will tell...I tend to agree with the Rice theory that A-Q would not be half as strong as its been without state support of some kind...and call me crazy, but nobody has yet to provide me with concrete evidence that Iraq did NOT provide some aid and comfort to A-Q...what was it Rumsfield said? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence...

This is going to take time to sort out...in the short run, I am really, really disappointed in how Clarke missed a genuine opportunity to help his country...he had a chance to be a real force for change, but he blew it because he was angry and he wanted to get even...it's a shame...his credibility will forever be questioned now, and his message (a lot of which is worth hearing) will forever be tainted by his own hubris and desire for revenge...I said it once, I'll say it again...Narcissism has replaced baseball as the National Pastime.

Anacronyms,

So what do you think should be written on a report that you want to have updated with new information and resubmitted?

While the report may have been rejeceted because the administration didn't like the answer, the truth of that assertion is hardly obvious by a request to update the document.

Is it not at all plausible to you that the administration believed that there was a link and also believe that we would uncover information over time that it existed?

Clark made his decision that there was no connection, based on his analysis performed in the past. Is it unreasonable to make him perform a new analysis based on new information? After all, with the increased funding to the Intelligence community and the increase military and intelligence focus on Al-Queda, Iraq, and Afghanistan, is it not possible that we would find something that had been missed for the past several years?

I think that it was at least worth looking into. Clark apparently did not, and the administration seeminly had to pressure him to do so.

Yes, it is not good when an administration cannot trust the people that work for them. The real problem though is when we, the citizens, cannot trust the people who work for the administration. We are the ones that matter.

How do you think Clarke stayed there under four different administrations? They were quite diverse! Did he adjust his message to suit each administration he was under? Could that be the reason for appearences of change? What did he say under Reagan and Bush? If it was different then, can we trust him then? Do we really know what he thinks?

In reality, people like Clarke are supposed to be working for us, ultimately. When he was in office, do we have reason to trust the advise he was giving his superiors? Is he the only one to have questions about? The problem for Bush is that he or us might wonder even more than before about those still in office if they are truly trustworthy.

He is definitely angry, but partisan is not the word for it. He either is disgruntled or he hid his views to keep his position and is angry at the people he blames for that perceived necessity to suppress his own views. He seems to be lashing out at people that he blames for problems or difficulties he is or has undergone. I doubt if he is a Democrat.

Does he want Bush to kiss his feet and tell him that he is sorry for how terrible he and his administration treated him? I think that there have been and still are people in the Bush White Houes who need to grow up.

Don't give Clarke too much credit for his promotion ability. CBS is owned by Viacom, Clake's book was published by a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster, which happens to be Viacom's publishing operation.

Clarke got paid to do an infomercial on "60 Minutes", and both he and the companies involved cashed in. Kudos, but he's not promotional genius.

This debate, when it's not simply a personality smear against either Clark, Clinton or Bush (which is what most of the cyber-ink is wasted on) is a policy debate. Does even the most strident Bush-Basher (myself included) seriously think that "W" would not have done everything in his power to prevent 9/11, or Clinton for that matter. Neither would Clarke for that matter. I found him to be a man of integrity and humanity in owning up to his responsibility in 9/11, and gained insight into the difficulty of transition in US government.

Clarke indicated that the Clinton White house had no higher priority that terrorism and that the Bush team, while acknowledging that al Queda, etc. were important, the tactics of the prior administration against this group would be (under a Bush presidency) subsumed into a greater middle east strategy. Unfortunately the terrorists were not operating under the administration's timetable, and that timetable takes much longer than I previously presumed.

Where the Bush Administration and the Bush Campaign intermingle and therefore open up the proverbial can-'o-worms is when Rove, et al. begin the reelection run with images of 9/11 and touting W's leadership. Well Mr. Bush, you got some 'splainin to do. For good or bad, Clarke was in the right place at the right time to explain the institutional problems which may have contributed to our being so blind-sided on 9/11.

Bush want's to run on his leadership in the war on terror. That war started long before Bush took office, indeed we were engaged with terrorism against Americans when W's dad was VP.

I would have so much more respect for Bush, and Condi, and the Anti-terror task force headed by Cheney, if they, like Clarke, would just admit that they were trying to develop a plan, a grand strategy, but missed the signals; and now they have realized that their grand strategy, which wasn't ready by 9/11, was also inadequate, and that an aggressive policy which must sometimes include forcefully controling this long time lawless region. Tell me up front that we adjusted the Powell Doctrine of using overwhelming force with a specific objective and a clear exit strategy by removing that inconvenient exit plan. Tell me that what were are trying for is to remake the Middle East in our own image and that we won't be gone for generations. Don't be coy. I respect honesty and integrity in public officials and am tired of duplicity and sloganism.

Do not yank my chain and expect me to just nod in passive agreement and trust you to do what's best for me. 3000 families trusted the government on 9/11. Show me you really know what the hell you are doing; that the linkage between terrorism control and your Iraq invasion was not the canard of WMD's and terrorist ties, or liberation and mass graves, or torture chambers and democracy. I can be persuaded that a democratic domino theory has appeal. Let's have an HONEST debate about it.

I get it, the stakes are so high that the Bushies, true believers all, do not believe that failure is an option. It all works together. Bush must remain popular enough at home to change the rest of the world. That's why they would risk crossing the ethics lines in Congress to get a Medicare bill through, even if the numbers were completely out of whack and a few congressmen had to bribed/intimidated/extorted in the process. That's why any critic of the administration is smeared before the public even knows how to spell his or her name. (Clarke is with an "e," right?) That's why fear and bravado are the preferred tools instead of thoughtful debate. It's no longer about what's best for the country or the world. They are convinced they know what's best. They aren't even trying to convince us. They just need to win.

So, while democracy is spread across the planet, it is corrupted at home. That simply makes my head spin. Excuse me but ethics matter. Honesty matters. Integrity and credibility are essential ingredients of a healthy republic. How refreshing was Clarke saying UNDER OATH, that he tried his best but failed and was sorry. Instead of smearing Clarke, and pointing at media bias because more stories paint Clarke favorably, they would be better served by stepping back and examining why he's such a media hero. While he was sitting at the table, being grilled, his calm yet forceful demeanor came across as honest. He was credible despite the administration's best shots. When you have witnesses like that, juries acquit.

I would welcome a substantive debate, and might be swayed, if Dr. Rice would agree with the thrust of Clark's message, instead of vilifying the messenger, and say: "Yes, we were caught with our pants down on 9/11, but it won't happen again if our plan works." Then lay out the plan that by military, financial and diplomatic means the administration wants pacify the entire region. But don't try tricking me with slogans and a pattern of misdirection, don't expect my support for the result when the means were not even fairly presented or honest debate risked, but instead our fears were exploited.

They won't because they can't win that argument, and that is not their plan. They didn't have a plan on 9/11, it was a work in progress, and they've been winging it ever since.

Mark,

How did you miss the whole debate and discussion 18 months ago, when it happened? And must it really be trotted out agian, every time someone comes up and says, "let's go through the whole fucking thing one more time"?

If you missed it, go read up on it. It's big, complex, and over.

Since Dean doesn't seem interested in giving both sides of the story, Clark isn't the only protagonist in this saga whose public statements are being questioned. From the Washington Post:

Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before 9/11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban; the CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats; and Rice's assertion this week that Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.

Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop" and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted. Rice has also given various conflicting accounts. She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies.

Oh, then by all means, smear away....
We wouldn't want to waste our time on something already decided. Wake me in 2008 when it's election time again since this one is already decided.......

More reasons to believe Clarke:

[Outgoing Deputy National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick], who stayed through the first four months of the Bush administration, said, "candidly speaking, I didn't detect" a strong focus on terrorism. "That's not being derogatory. It's just a fact. I didn't detect any activity but what Dick Clarke and the CSG [the Counterterrorism Strategy Group he chaired] were doing." General Hugh Shelton, whose term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff began under Clinton and ended under Bush, concurred. In his view, the Bush administration moved terrorism "farther to the back burner."

America Unbound, p. 76
Ivo Daalder & James Lindsay

Bob Kerrey:

Citing Rumsfeld's testimony and Rice's recent news interviews about a Bush plan to fight al Qaeda before Sept. 11, Kerrey says, "I was briefed this morning on that plan, and I would say fortunately for the administration it's classified because there's almost nothing in it. . . . I mean, it's not, in my judgment, what it was sold to be, and I just -- I have to say that for the record. I would love to get Dr. Rice in front of this commission in the public to have her answer a series of questions about that."

Anonymous CIA officials:

In the summer of 2001, veteran counterterrorism officers privy to reports on al Qaeda threats "were so worried about an impending disaster that one of them told us that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns," according to one of two staff reports issued by the commission yesterday. Senior CIA officials were also frustrated by some Bush appointees who were not familiar with surges in terrorist threat information and questioned their veracity, the report said.

Very dangerous in the long run to have these guys criticising Bush isn't it? Why, it could cost him the election!

Clarke is so bad he might as well be a Bush plant.
Now that the dems have him all polished up as the font of all truth, we find out it was Clarke who authorized the notorious trip of Saudis back home right after 911. Not Bush. Damn.
Then we find he thinks there's an aQ link or an Iraqi link with OKC. Not a lone right-wing wacko Clinton needed for political purposes.
Double damn.

Dean,

Without mind reading or a time machine, there is an utter lack of evidence that Clarke lied. On the one hand Clarke claimed he was told "Wrong answer. Do it again." On the other hand, Hadely says that he just wanted the report updated with new information and resubmitted, which is what was written on the document.

To me it looks like Clarke has the habit of trying to read between the lines to figure out what people want, and he thinks he is good at figuring out their motivations, which he then internalizes as the way things really happened. I've seen this pattern about 15 million times in the comments in this blog alone. Ironically, I'm doing to Clarke what he did to the rest of the administration.

If I am correct, than Clarke isn't a liar, but maybe he isn't such a great judge of character. If I am incorrect, I think I've still provided a reasonable enough explanation that you can't call Clarke a liar.

You don't toss it around casually, Dean, and I applaud you for it, but passion, deep involvement and sloppy thinking are nearly always just as good an explanation as "that so and so lied".

Yours,
Wince

Oops. Replace "an utter lack of" with "insufficient", above. In this case I can't state things too diplomatically.

Yours,
Wince

Mark - you claim to be willing to be convinced. Yet you are completely certain there is no "exit plan". Does the Transfer Of Sovereignty count? Or will an "exit plan" not exist until after all the troops are home from Iraq forever? Or are you determined that because it wasn't run according to your plans and an "exit plan" made completely public and announced in a prime time news conference, it doesn't exist and the administration had no interest in one?

Honest debate on what, precisely? The reasons to go into Iraq? They were mentioned time and again, not all of them every time, but overlapping. Then we decided (for the sake of more allies) to try to get the UN officially behind us, and the UN didn't give a damn about anything but its own Resolutions and WMDs, so that was the case most loudly made from then on. You missed this how?

Is it that you CAN BE persuaded about a domino theory, or that you WOULD HAVE BEEN if that was the loudest argument made? What's stopping you from persuading yourself? Why is it Bush's fault if someone irrevocably denies the possibility of his argument being allowed?

As for "That's why fear and bravado are the preferred tools instead of thoughtful debate. It's no longer about what's best for the country or the world. They are convinced they know what's best. They aren't even trying to convince us. They just need to win." - paranoid, much? Assuming the absolute worst explanation for even the most innocuous circumstances, much?

Would you be swayed at all by a reminder that Clarke claimed that Rice 'appeared' to know nothing about Al Qaeda in a talk... MONTHS after she gave some kind of public presentation on them? (I do not remember the details, I know dozens of others have documented this on their blogs. I think John Cole at http://www.balloon-juice.com is one of them).

Does that contradiction increase Clarke's credibility in your eyes? Really?

Does a plan not count unless it's publicized and made available to the enemy? Does no strategy exist unless CNN covers it, unless Geraldo Rivera (damn Fox for hiring him) can diagram it in the sand? Ever hear of OPSEC?

Things aren't classified for the sake of classifying them, y'know. And "Need to Know" means exactly that. Just because you WANT to know, doesn't mean you NEED to, nor does it mean it's possible to tell you without the ENEMY finding out along with you.

Say no more! (wink) It's National Security then. Why heavens, you should have just said so. I feel so much better. By all means, bomb away.

Mark,

Dave made a good argument. It is NOT best for the public to know everything. Loose lips DO sink ships. Would you have gone after FDR like this? If not, be fair and treat the Bush Administration the same.

Yours,
WInce

We have a right to know the exit plan, how long we are going to have the troops in Iraq. We are going to transfer the government, but how many troops are to remain? While they are there, will it be like post-WWII Germany or the Reconstruction South? Declaring governing authority to have been transferred does not always mean self-government has been returned. We have a right to know.

These are foreign policy questions that we have a right to decide. The government is to be representing our views on these matters, not theirs. We have a open and free society, and if one wants a country where the enemy is prevented from learning anything about one's foreign policy debates by cutting the people out of the discussion, they can move to a country such as Egypt.

We were living in a democratic republic the last time I checked. I do not even need to prove my right to know. It is the government's job to show why something must remain classified, not our job to show it should not.

The Wall Street Journal mentioned recently two problems that the administration has, too great a penchant for secrecy and too great an aversion to ever admitting that it was wrong. Both are rather correctly stated.

We were given specific reasons to go to war. We have not found the WMDs, the very reason given. Various goods have come from the war, but they were not the argument given by the administration. One can claim that they had all sorts of reasons that they could not reveal. Perhaps they did have them.

However, we had a right to know them, in that case. It is the adminstration's job to convince us that the war was correct. We need to know exactly why the administration wants it to decide this. We elect people to do the will of the people, not guardians to guide us by their supposed superior wisdom.

We do not merely trust governmental officials to do what is right or to have good reasons. Mark Adams, would you have preferred if Bush had spoken before the war as does our friend Arnold Harris? That way, you would know exactly why we were to be going to war, and we, the citizens, could actually debate whether we should or not? If we don't agree with it, we vote for people who agree with us.

"We have a right to know the exit plan."

Uh, how many wars in the last 200 years even had any such thing as an exit plan?

Second, pretending for five seconds that such a mostly-mythical beast did exist, what kind of idiot would reveal more than the vaguest things about it? For if you publish such a beast, you give your enemy all sorts of opportunities to try to artificially rig circumstances to make you leave early.

Did we have an "exit plan" for Japan? For Germany? For South Korea? For the Phillipines? For Puerto Rico? For Italy? Of course not. Exit plans are enetirely abnormal, and when they do exist, they are almost always kept secret.

More to the point: if we do what our leaders have said needed doing, then with any luck we'll still be in Iraq 10, maybe even 20 years from now. One of the primary reasons for going to Iraq in the first place was so we could have a permanent military base of operations there. The administration could never say that out loud of course, but intelligent observers knew all along that this is what they had in mind. Most people aren't fools, after all, and understand implicitely both why that's a good idea and why the administration couldn't say it openly.

If there is an exit plan, it needs to be kept under tight wraps. Otherwise, all the plan should be is, "We stay in until we establish stability and reforms in the region, or until it becomes clear that our efforts in that regard will fail. And it's gonna take a decade or two to figure that out.

So, what you are saying is that Bush actually did deceive the public about the real reason for invading Iraq, but that the smart people really understood what was going on [wink, wink] and, in any event, the end justifies the means.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2097803/

shep,

Good to know you've finally identified the smart people here. Bush '04!

Yours,
Wince

Let us recall who talked first about the need for an exit plan, about not getting involved without one. I believe it was Bush, was it not?

Nonetheless, what I said still stands. If there was no exit plan, admit it. Remember where this idea came from.

However, the people had a right to know what type of war we were going in for before we went into it. If it was going to be 10-20 years as Dean suggests, the people should have been able to know that. We have a right to know what the administration has in mind for this country. If the people knew the length of time and the scale of the operation, if Dean is correct, then, yes, they should have been informed of that before the war. Giving another, more limited reason, and speaking of troops only being there for a shorter time when all along you had much longer and deeper involvement, as well as another set of reasons, is dishonest.

I do not care why the administration might have thought they could not say such plans out loud. There is no reasons of state sufficient for deceiving the people to go along with a much longer, prolonged war than they were told. If the people do not want to be in such a long war, they have a right to know if Bush has that intention. If this means that Bush loses, and cannot carry it out, so be it. That means he did not sell it to the people. However, we must decide in the end if we wish our president to involve us in such a conflict.

The plan should be, "We stay in until we establish stability and reforms in the region, or until it becomes clear that our efforts in that regard will fail. And it's gonna take a decade or two to figure that out.

Funny, we were never given that as the reason before the war, nor given such duration as the likely length. If Dean is right, then Bush was dishonest, and just saying he had good reasons for it does not change this. They are there to do the will of the people, not what they think the will of the people should be.

All is forgiven because this really wasn't a war. That requires an act of congress after a (hopefully) honest and informed debate. This was no war, merely a reposition of troops in force.

So if it's not stated explicitly as 'war' in a bill by Congress, it's not a war? Cuz, y'know, there was that inconvenient thing that authorized use of force.

As for the duration - how many times has Bush said 'As long as it takes'? I certainly remember him saying it, so it was at least once in a major speech, since I tend to miss anything less than the Really Big Ones.

Let me interject some reality here - if you say 'we will leave by this date, period', you've just given the enemy the date to wait for before they reverse everything you've done. Do you honestly believe that Al Qaeda, Iran's Mullahs, the Ba'athists in Syria don't ever turn on CNN to see what we're saying?

"As long as it takes". That's not only the answer which HAS BEEN GIVEN, it's the ONLY appropriate answer that allows us to fix the problem instead of taking a placebo to make us think the symptom has disappeared.

Of course, as long as it takes depends on what that "it" is, does it not?

Nonetheless, the war was because Saddam had the WMDs, or so it was thought. I still recall the reaction when one general spoke of the possibility of needing the troops there for two years. The administation seemed quick to rebut that one. Not that long.

No, there was talk of how long the troops were to be there. No specific date was ever given. However, a general idea was in mind.

Injecting a bit of reality, the only way that we can make sure that Al Qaeda, Iran's Mullahs, the Ba'athists in Syria don't reverse everything we've done is to remake the entire region. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia would all have to have regime changes as well. One cannot stop at the borders of Iraq if ensuring the permanence of a peaceful, pro-Western Iraq is what we aim for. Otherwise, we would have to keep troops in there forever to do the same.

However, these were not our goals for going in. We removed Saddam. Apparently, we found no WMDs. The intelligence was wrong. I can live with that. Part both Clinton's and Bush's administrations faults, as well as the basic post-Cold War lack of concern for such matters. We let our defenses down. There is enough blame to cover quite a number of people of all political stripes.

Now we must see to it that a new government gets put into place. A provisional government is to take place this summer, a permanent constitution is to be written by this, and elections held. By the time of the elections, the various institutions in Iraq should be in place.

We can help the Iraqis fight off threats to their new democracy, as we do with Israel, after this, but our troops should not be there. We did what we aimed for. We removed a regime we thought had the WMDs, we rebuilt the necessary institutions so that a representative government could be formed, and, beyond foreign aid to a fragile democracy, we then accomplished our mission.

Our goal was the threat of Saddam, not remaking Iraqi, Arab, or Muslim society, not making sure that the people and their government always make the choices we want them to. We are going to have to allow the Iraqi government to defend itself, although with our foreign, with its own defenses.

When we leave, it is not going to be secret. You can't pull out all those troops, even gradually, without the enemy noticing. This is the equivalent of saying one really does not trust the Iraqis to run their own country, or at least not until we've remade their society into one we approve of.

As to your last point, Lib, you're right.
As in several other places against which we warred, like Germany or Japan.
An exit plan does not necessarily mean an exit date.
Those crying for an exit date, to the extent they're smarter than a sea slug know what it means. It means they hope for disaster.

I do not know if I would say that those that insist on a specific exit date, rather than a specific exit plan, which I believe I covered in my last comment, are wishing for disaster.

What you are saying is that there is a large segment of the population that want many more American lives to be lost for nothing. Do you really believe that? I find that rather unlikely! I am careful before accusing people of wishing massive losses of life to occur.

The Iraqi government was not complying with the UN resolutions, we invaded overthrew Saddam, and now enforced the resolutions. Apparently, the WMDs were not there. We should just admit that.

The Spanish government lost the election, not merely because of the terrorist attack, but because the government tried to claim that the ETA did it when it was evident that Islamists did it instead. People perceived this as playing politics with terrorism. It was a lack of trust, not the attack itself. Something to remember.

If the people elect a government that we might not care for, that is their affair. When that government takes place, we will have achieved our goal. It was about Saddam's supposed WMDs and the UN resolutions, was it not?