Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Silat on February 14, 2005, 01:13:39 PM
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From a friend:
Well, it looks like it is Senate Majority Leader Frist who is going to be eating his words. Remember when Clarke testified in front of the 9/11 Commission that he had tried to warn both Rice and Bush of the danger from Al Qaeda and Frist called him a "damned liar"? Frist bloviated "well, let's just get these documentsunclassified and we'll so who's the liar". The documents have now been unclassified.
Good thing that this didn't come out before Rice's Senate Confirmation hearing or the Republican controlled Senate might have tried to hold her accountable.
February 12, 2005
'01 Memo to Rice Warned of Qaeda and Offered Plan
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 - A strategy document outlining proposals for eliminating the threat from Al Qaeda, given to Condoleezza Rice as she assumed the post of national security adviser in January 2001, warned that the terror network had cells in the United States and 40 other countries and sought unconventional weapons, according to a declassified version of the document.
The 13-page proposal presented to Dr. Rice by her top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, laid out ways to step up the fight against Al Qaeda, focusing on Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan. The ideas included giving "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups "to keep Islamic extremist fighters tied down"; destroying terrorist training camps "while classes are in session" and then sending in teams to gather intelligence on terrorist cells; deploying armed drone aircraft against known terrorists; more aggressively tracking Qaeda money; and accelerating the F.B.I.'s translation and analysis of material from surveillance of terrorism suspects in American cities.
Mr. Clarke was seeking a high-level meeting to decide on a plan of action. Dr. Rice and other administration officials have said that Mr. Clarke's ideas did not constitute an adequate plan, but they took them into consideration as they worked toward a more effective strategy against the terrorist threat.
The proposal and an accompanying three-page memorandum given to Dr. Rice by Mr. Clarke on Jan. 25, 2001, were discussed and quoted in brief by the independent commission studying the Sept. 11 attacks and in news reports and books last year. They were obtained by the private National Security Archive, which published the full versions, with minor deletions at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, on its Web site late Thursday.
Under the heading "the next three to five years," Mr. Clarke spelled out a series of steps building on groundwork that he said had already been laid, adding that "success can only be achieved if the pace and resource levels of the programs continue to grow as planned."
He said the C.I.A. had "prepared a program" focused on eliminating Afghanistan as a haven for Al Qaeda.
It would feature "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups like the Northern Alliance and the destruction of training camps occupied by terrorists. "We would need to have special teams ready for covert entry into destroyed camps to acquire intelligence for locating terrorist cells outside Afghanistan," he wrote, saying that this would either require Special Operations troops or some other "liaison force capable of conducting activity on-the-ground inside Afghanistan." Predator drones, some of which could be armed, would support those forces, he wrote.
Some of what he proposed in the way of support for the Northern Alliance or for Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan to the north, was deleted from the document before it was declassified. But some of the actions he proposed were not intended to be kept secret, like "overt U.S. military action" aimed at the command and control of Al Qaeda and the Taliban's military.
The previously secret documents were at the heart of a fiercely partisan debate over Mr. Clarke's contention, in a book and in public statements, that the Bush administration had ignored his warnings of the imminent danger posed by Mr. bin Laden and his terrorist organization.
The shorter memorandum was written in response to a request for "major presidential policy reviews" worthy of a meeting of "principals," the president's top foreign policy advisers. It began: "We urgently need such a Principals level review on the al Qida network." The word "urgently" was italicized and underscored; the "al Qida" spelling was used in both documents.
"We would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge al Qida poses," the memorandum said.
The principals' meeting on Al Qaeda took place, but not until Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The longer document was titled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat From the Jihadist Networks of al Qida: Status and Prospects." It included a detailed description of the network, saying it was "well financed, has trained tens of thousands of jihadists, and has a cell structure in over 40 nations. It also is actively seeking to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction."
The strategy paper recounted past Qaeda plots against Americans abroad and at home and said an informant had reported "that an extensive network of al Qida 'sleeper' agents currently exists in the U.S." After reviewing steps taken since 1996 to combat Al Qaeda, the document listed further actions required to make the network "not a serious threat" within three to five years.
Dr. Rice, now the secretary of state, and other administration officials have asserted that the documents did not amount to a full plan for taking on the terrorist network.
"No Al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration," Dr. Rice wrote in an op-ed article for The Washington Post last March. She wrote that Mr. Clarke and his team "suggested several ideas, some of which had been around since 1998 but had not been adopted."
Mr. Clarke had served in high-level government posts since the Reagan administration and stayed on from the Clinton administration. He resigned in February 2003 and last year published a memoir, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror." (Mr. Clarke began writing a column on security matters for The New York Times Magazine this month.)
Nearly nine months before the Sept. 11 attacks, the papers described the danger posed by the bin Laden network and sought to focus the attention of the new administration on what to do about it. But the texts are unlikely to resolve the debate over whether they should have led to more urgent action by the administration.
"I think Condi Rice has at least an arguable case that it's short of a plan," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a security analyst at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. O'Hanlon called Mr. Clarke's memorandums a set of "very dry data points. There's not a heightened sense of, 'Now our homeland is at risk.' "
But Matthew Levitt, who was an F.B.I. counterterrorism analyst in 2001, disagreed. He called the 13-page strategy memorandum "a pretty disturbing document."
Mr. Levitt, now director of terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that whether the document constitutes a "plan," as Mr. Clarke averred and Dr. Rice denied, is "a semantic debate." But he said the experience of reading the original documents for the first time Friday left him with a strong impression of the danger Al Qaeda posed.
"I think it makes the threat look pretty urgent," Mr. Levitt said. "I look at this and I see something that to my mind requires immediate attention."
Asked about the documents at a press briefing on Friday, Richard A. Boucher, the spokesman for the State Department, declined to expand on Dr. Rice's previous comments on the administration's response to Mr. Clarke's warnings.
"The fact that now the memo or letter has been released has - just provides you more information, but I think she's really already discussed all these matters pretty thoroughly," Mr. Boucher said.
Mr. Clarke did not respond to a request for comment.
The two papers were declassified by the National Security Council on April 7, one day before Dr. Rice testified before the 9/11 commission, but were not released publicly until the National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
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not once in there does it say "they are going to fly passenger planes into the WTC"
also direct from your text:
Under the heading "the next three to five years," Mr. Clarke spelled out a series of steps
this was given to her as she took office, and the attacks came in 8 months later nto 3-5 years.
there is no secret document that is going to tell what was going to happen.
this whole thing reminds me of i think it was "a few good men"
"it's all about blame, not who's right or wrong, something bad happened and someone need's to the blamed" or something along that lines.
all you dem's want to blame someone, so you pick Ms. Rice, and any other republican that was in office at the time. what abotu all the democrats in office? you telling me that if a politician had solid proof of an exact attack on the US one political party would ignore it, or allow the attack to happen just to spite the other political party?
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New York Times, April 18th 2001.
"American air forces attack Afghanistan without provocation on President Bush's orders all based on dubious intel and fearmongering by skeerdy cat neocons. Thousands of innocent women and children killed in afghaniostan all to build pipeline for Cheney's oil friends!!! No war for Oil"
New York Times, September 11th 2001.
"Bush stupid attack on Afghanistan caused this AlQaeda response. Bush is evil!"
Thats abot how it would have gone down, lets not forget that the 911 attacks were planned and trained on for 5 years, of which only 7 months were during Bush's first term - the begging of which was hampered by the election lawsits debacle. The rest of those 5 years, well we know who was in office and how agrssovly he pursued BinLaden...
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but lets also not forget that clinton was mired in a republican led sex scandal that made any military move he made succeptable to "wag the dog" accusations.
or at least thats what DID happen when he attempted to target bin laden the first time.
in both cases, it is unfortunate that the administrations were looking the other way.
:)
by the way...where is bin laden these days? have we gotten him yet?
:(
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Originally posted by JB88
but lets also not forget that clinton was mired in a republican led sex scandal that made any military move he made succeptable to "wag the dog" accusations.
or at least thats what DID happen when he attempted to target bin laden the first time.
in both cases, it is unfortunate that the administrations were looking the other way.
:)
by the way...where is bin laden these days? have we gotten him yet?
:(
Yep JB88, I agree, it's the same sort of bad political attitude.
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""a republican led sex scandal """
who was charged with sexual harassment and who lied to the grand jury?
damm rightwing neocon sex nazis, yall can't have no fun around here no mo.
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I think the point of the information that clarke gave is that Bush had his sights on Saddam, And because of that he paid no attention to the Osama factor. And to be honest it still seems like he is paying no attention to Osama. I might have been a lot more behind the iraqi war had we caught osama first. Instead of the 20,000 or whatever we got in afghanistan now we should have put we we've got in Iraq over there until we caught him.
Clarke is obviously upset because I think he believes had the incoming government been more willing to spend money,interests, resources on Al-qaida rather than Saddam, we possibly could have A)uncovered the plot b)caught/killed osama. Just my opinion but you don't start a second fight when the 1st one is not over or showing any signs of concluding.
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Originally posted by JB88
but lets also not forget that clinton was mired in a republican led sex scandal that made any military move he made succeptable to "wag the dog" accusations.
WTF do dogs have to do with this?
and oh yeah, blojobs in the oval office (mine and your oval office) while conducting govenrment business is NOT part of his "personal life".
oh yeah, perjury is a felony too.
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after tora bora benladen has not been seen on vidio tape, the boy be dead, audio tapes do not count, show me the money shot.
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Originally posted by john9001
after tora bora benladen has not been seen on vidio tape, the boy be dead, audio tapes do not count, show me the money shot.
I have seen several video's of him after tora bora. hell if I remember right there was one released about a month ago.
edit:sorry it was in novemeber
hate to link al-jazeera but anway
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.htm
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Originally posted by JB73
WTF do dogs have to do with this?
and oh yeah, blojobs in the oval office (mine and your oval office) while conducting govenrment business is NOT part of his "personal life".
oh yeah, perjury is a felony too.
ya, but that s not the point that i was trying to make 73. nobody would content that he didnt do what he did, but the fact remains that entire episode wasted valuable time and resources which could have been being used to look at external problems rather than politically motivated internal two party warfare.
its called divide and conquer and we would be doing ourselves a grave disservice at this point in our history to continue to make ourselves ripe for attacks like 9/11 in the future due to our own inability to worry about which side sends up a quarterback.
i never liked one thing about the clinton investigation. not because i thought what he did was right, but because it was never really about right and wrong. it was about seizing power.
partisan bickering and powerplays haved only served to weaken us in the end.
IMHO.
i hope that america can get its eyes back on the ball and set this crap aside long enough to see a leader that we can all follow emerge.
i do have to give bush credit, he has turned down the rhetoric enough that it has become appearant that he is prepared to at least try reaching out to all parties involved.
thank god. if he didnt, you know there would be an investigation somewhere that would drain us even further.
and you know they'd find something. there isnt a politician alive that they wont.
my .02
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i'll take that... but i still dont get the wagging the dog thing...
W.I.T.H. is that?
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Originally posted by Raider179
I think the point of the information that clarke gave is that Bush had his sights on Saddam, And because of that he paid no attention to the Osama factor. And to be honest it still seems like he is paying no attention to Osama. I might have been a lot more behind the iraqi war had we caught osama first. Instead of the 20,000 or whatever we got in afghanistan now we should have put we we've got in Iraq over there until we caught him.
Clarke is obviously upset because I think he believes had the incoming government been more willing to spend money,interests, resources on Al-qaida rather than Saddam, we possibly could have A)uncovered the plot b)caught/killed osama. Just my opinion but you don't start a second fight when the 1st one is not over or showing any signs of concluding.
yep.
its pretty obvious aint it?
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Originally posted by JB73
i'll take that... but i still dont get the wagging the dog thing...
W.I.T.H. is that?
its the movie "wag the dog" where the president gets caught up in a scandal so they wage a false war to cover it up.
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hmm never heard of it.
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that surpizes me. truly.
its was so common its kitsch.
consider yourself lucky.
:)
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looked it up on IMDB....
LMFAO can you say liberal propaganda LOL looks like a bill clinton documentary (or at least as much of a documnetary MM would make).
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Originally posted by JB73
looked it up on IMDB....
LMFAO can you say liberal propaganda LOL looks like a bill clinton documentary (or at least as much of a documnetary MM would make).
ya, it was what everyone was saying at the time.
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Originally posted by JB73
"it's all about blame, not who's right or wrong, something bad happened and someone need's to the blamed" or something along that lines.
all you dem's want to blame someone, so you pick Ms. Rice, and any other republican that was in office at the time. what abotu all the democrats in office? you telling me that if a politician had solid proof of an exact attack on the US one political party would ignore it, or allow the attack to happen just to spite the other political party?
Hmmm Im not a dem but it sure is easy to get you cult of Bush members all twitchy.
I posted this because the admin denied that Clark had ever done what these documents show he did do. So stick with the subject matter.
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The memo didnt contain the names of the hijackers so really..what did you want Coni to do?
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Hindsight is a beautiful thing, it's ALWAYS 20/20. With that said, I dont think very many of us would have considered Al-Qaeada a viable threat to America before 9-11. I also dont think very many people in our gov't thought Al-Qaeada was a viable threat either. Obviously many of us were wrong about Al-Qaeada.
Clinton had 3 different opportunities to take out bin-Laden but chose not to. If Clinton had chosen differently, this whole thread wouldnt exist. By the time Bush got into office bin-Laden's plan for 9-11 was nearly complete. I dont think we could have found out enough information to stop the attacks in time.
I think the most notable thing done since 9-11 is the greater cooperation amongst all the intelligence agencies. For far to long America's intell services acted more like rivals than team mates. Our Presidents can only act on the information they are given. That information needs to be timely and accurate. I think our intel services are headed in the right direction now.
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The man paid to decide if they were a threat very much thought they were.
Its presented as an intellience failure, but clearly it was a leadership failrure.
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Is this the same Clark who said Rice wasn't even aware of Al Qaeda until after 911?
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Originally posted by Elfie
By the time Bush got into office bin-Laden's plan for 9-11 was nearly complete. I dont think we could have found out enough information to stop the attacks in time.
I think the most notable thing done since 9-11 is the greater cooperation amongst all the intelligence agencies. For far to long America's intell services acted more like rivals than team mates. Our Presidents can only act on the information they are given. That information needs to be timely and accurate. I think our intel services are headed in the right direction now.
http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/moussaouiindictment.htm
We had Zacarias Moussaoui incarerated pre 9/11. He was alledgely one of the pilots. Would have been a big break had we got him to talk.
Seen the info on the Pentagons new intelligence unit? Cooperation is not exactly what they were going for on that one.I think I might actually agree with some aspects of this but basically I think they are taking the power from CIA so they can close it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29414-2005Jan22.html
I know its wp but its been confirmed by a few other sources So I will believe it until denied or told otherwise.
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Originally posted by Pongo
The man paid to decide if they were a threat very much thought they were.
Its presented as an intellience failure, but clearly it was a leadership failrure.
Damn good way to put it Pongo.
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I really think some people should actually read the 911 report.
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IMHO we should move on. I mean really folks I dont ever want to forget 9/11 but lets drop this whole blame game and focus on the future. And no I dont mean "forget" anything so that we are doomed to repeat it. Its just that the whole finger pointing BS is getting very very old. And i dont recall hearing all this self rightgegeous finger pointing BEFORE she got the promotion. so can we simple agree that yes a ball was dropped? Who dropped it will never really be known since it happened on many levels. And there isnt really 1 document that is the be all end all disclosure to it. We really need to ban together to seek out and destroy the friggin terorists. Not continually attack each other. Thats what they want. AND while we are bashing each other we arent paying enough attention to what the nuts that want to kill us are doing.
Soooo GET OVER IT!! Suck it up and MOVE on!! Jeesh
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Originally posted by WilldCrd
IMHO we should move on. I mean really folks I dont ever want to forget 9/11 but lets drop this whole blame game and focus on the future. And no I dont mean "forget" anything so that we are doomed to repeat it. Its just that the whole finger pointing BS is getting very very old. And i dont recall hearing all this self rightgegeous finger pointing BEFORE she got the promotion. so can we simple agree that yes a ball was dropped? Who dropped it will never really be known since it happened on many levels. And there isnt really 1 document that is the be all end all disclosure to it. We really need to ban together to seek out and destroy the friggin terorists. Not continually attack each other. Thats what they want. AND while we are bashing each other we arent paying enough attention to what the nuts that want to kill us are doing.
Soooo GET OVER IT!! Suck it up and MOVE on!! Jeesh
yeah your right people shouldnt be held accountable for things they did or did not do in the past. I mean dont judge a book by its contents. lol thanks daily show....Sorry but until condi shows she is not a mouthpiece for the administration and shows she has her own thoughts I will continue to believe she was chosen because she does as she is told.
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Originally posted by Raider179
yeah your right people shouldnt be held accountable for things they did or did not do in the past. I mean dont judge a book by its contents. lol thanks daily show....Sorry but until condi shows she is not a mouthpiece for the administration and shows she has her own thoughts I will continue to believe she was chosen because she does as she is told.
And another one completely misses the point.
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Originally posted by WilldCrd
IMHO we should move on. I mean really folks I dont ever want to forget 9/11 but lets drop this whole blame game and focus on the future. And no I dont mean "forget" anything so that we are doomed to repeat it. Its just that the whole finger pointing BS is getting very very old. And i dont recall hearing all this self rightgegeous finger pointing BEFORE she got the promotion. so can we simple agree that yes a ball was dropped? Who dropped it will never really be known since it happened on many levels. And there isnt really 1 document that is the be all end all disclosure to it. We really need to ban together to seek out and destroy the friggin terorists. Not continually attack each other. Thats what they want. AND while we are bashing each other we arent paying enough attention to what the nuts that want to kill us are doing.
Soooo GET OVER IT!! Suck it up and MOVE on!! Jeesh
So they totally reorganize the american intelligence comunity while ruhmsfeld creates his own intelligence agency that will tell him what the president wants to hear.
The intelligence comunity is totally ignored to force the invasion of Iraq.
Bush has specifically surounded himself with people that will "advise" him only with the advise he wants.
And you think its time to move on. who cares who knew what. Who cares if the FAA was also warned about the terrorists well before 9/11.
Doenst matter.
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Originally posted by Pongo
Who cares if the FAA was also warned about the terrorists well before 9/11.
how well before? more than 9 months? i have heard up to 2 years before.
then why did the previous administration cut intelligence and military at every chance he had?
why was nothing done back then?
maybe they were too busy stealing towels and trashing the white house that last year
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Originally posted by JB73
looked it up on IMDB....
LMFAO can you say liberal propaganda LOL looks like a bill clinton documentary (or at least as much of a documnetary MM would make).
Keep in mind Wag The Dog came out loooong before Clintons sex scandal and the the war in Bosnia.
A case of reality imitateing fiction ...... look when the movie came out let alone the book.....
It's kind of creepy.......
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here's another articale on teh subject of the hidden '9/11' report
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0211-12.htm
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Originally posted by Manedew
Keep in mind Wag The Dog came out loooong before Clintons sex scandal and the the war in Bosnia.
A case of reality imitateing fiction ...... look when the movie came out let alone the book.....
It's kind of creepy.......
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here's another articale on teh subject of the hidden '9/11' report
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0211-12.htm
Wag the dog released (movie) 12/25/97
http://www.hollywood.com/movies/detail/movie/172348
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Originally posted by WilldCrd
And another one completely misses the point.
Oh i guess because I have an opinion on it the terrorists won huh? lmao didnt miss the point just have seen it before, discussed it before and just dont find it very smart to just forget things especially when 3000 americans have lost their lives. IMO if they dropped it once probably gonna drop it again and instead of getting some new people in there or fixing the system they promote and give medals to these people.