More on Clarke, Iraq, Rumsfeld and the Administration

One more comment on the pasage from the Stahl interview that Brad DeLong quotes:

Clarke was surprised that the attention of administration officials was turning toward Iraq when he expected the focus to be on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. "They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12," says Clarke. The top counter-terrorism advisor, Clarke was briefing the highest government officials, including President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

which Brad thinks shows "the national security side of the Bush administration is an even more disgraceful clown show than the domestic policy side as told by Paul O'Neill to Ron Suskind in The Price of Loyalty."

However, I would note the following:

Given that we soon turned out attention to al Qaeda and ended up bombing Afghanistan, it is rather obvious that even if the initial reaction was Iraq, the administration didn't stay there.

Again, consulting Woodward's Bush at War, "Cheney thus joined Powell, Tenet and Card in opposing action on Iraq. Rumsfeld had not committed. To anyone keeping a tally, it was 4 to 0 with Rumsfeld abstaining" (91).

So, where's the evidence of this hellbent focus on Iraq exclusively? And also, since Brad wants to impeach Cheney, it seems that even he wasn't on the "we have t get Iraq now" bandwagon, so the argument that the Clarke revelations are some bombshell continues to strike me as a weak proposition.

Posted by Steven Taylor at March 21, 2024 02:24 PM | TrackBack