Practicalmadness

Richard Clarke, who was a top anti-terrorism adviser to the Clinton and Bush II administrations, has gone public on 60 Minutes with certain…revelations. It has been previously reported that Clinton left office having briefed (or at least left a Post-It for) Pres. Bush regarding al Qaeda; there are rumblings that such a warning even included specific mention of a major al Qaeda operation that turned out to be the Sept. 11 attacks.

So what did the Bush people do about it? Nothing.

“We had a terrorist organization that was going after us! Al Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months.

“There’s a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too. But on January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently — underlined urgently — a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo— wasn’t acted on.

“I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back. They wanted to work on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years.”

Clarke finally got his meeting about al Qaeda in April, three months after his urgent request. But it wasn’t with the president or cabinet. It was with the second-in-command in each relevant department. For the Pentagon, it was Paul Wolfowitz.

Clarke relates, “I began saying, ‘We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.’ Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, ‘No, no, no. We don’t have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.’

Clarke went on to add, “There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever.”

So at the risk of stating the obvious, here’s the logic that the Bush administration is asking us to accept in voting for their second term:

• We were attacked on Sept. 11th by terrorists.
• We had no idea and could not possibly have prevented it. If we could have, it was the FBI and CIA’s fault. We have solved this problem by creating a new government department which includes the FBI, but not the CIA. Since then, we have blamed the CIA for anything that goes wrong.
• We went to war in Afghanistan and overthrew a brutal Islamic regime that was harboring al Qaeda. We still have troops there, although we never captured or killed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar or al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. By all indications, the Taliban is regrouping to overthrow the weak provisional government. Again.
• We went to war in Iraq because somebody (may have been the CIA over here, who may have been smoking crack, or someone in British intelligence, who may have been smoking British crack) told us Saddam had inquired as to the possibility of kinda sorta maybe purchasing some Nigerian yellowcake, clear evidence of a major WMD program that can only be for one purpose: making nuclear airplanes and attacking the U.S. with chemical shoe bombs.
• Even if the yellowcake connection didn’t pan out, we read in an Italian tabloid about a guy who had talked to a guy who knew a guy who had heard from somebody’s wife’s trainer’s shrink’s cleric that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were (gasp!) both facing Mecca at the same time on the same day — clear evidence of conspiracy that was only substantiated when both evildoers issued videotapes that included an Arabic word that could be translated either as “crusader” or “croissant”.

• The connection between 9/11 and Iraq becomes more tenuous here; of course it’s not because of Islam, because Saddam’s was a largely secular regime. And it can’t be because of the oil, because everybody knows that al Qaeda’s money comes from construction. And it can’t possibly be because following the policy of punishing nations that harbor al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists would eventually lead to us bombing the hell out of every Starbucks in Riyadh.

  We can only assume that it’s because an American spy in Baghdad heard Saddam clapping at the television during news coverage of the 9/11 attacks. Was he watching CNN, or was he watching, perhaps, Predator? Was he clapping at the charred flesh of innocent victims in NYC, Washington and Pennsylvania, or was he just getting to that moment when Jesse Ventura gets killed by an alien monster? Since Saddam is an evildoer — and thus would clearly be spending his evenings plotting our doom, and never watching movies — we can only assume that he was applauding the terrorist attacks.

  Holy shit! Applauding the terrorist attacks??? Bin Laden applauds terrorist attacks! He always applauds terrorist attacks! There! There’s the connection!

• Meanwhile (mumble mumble) shitty economy (mumble) outsourcing to Bangalore (mumble mumble) two hours to get through airport checkin (mumble) Colin Powell is a sad, sad shell of a man.

I think I can see a case for re-electing Bush in there somewhere. But then again, I’m crazy.