Today's Nuze: March 25, 2004

Thursday, March 25, 2004

RICHARD CLARKE EITHER IS .. OR WAS .. A LIAR

The proceedings of the committee to elect John Kerry President continued yesterday, this time with walking contradiction Richard Clarke testifying. This is the guy that wrote the book blaming 9/11 on President Bush and praising Bill Clinton's 8 years of inaction on terrorism as somehow better. What an absolute crock...perhaps he's been hired to revise the Clinton legacy because the facts just aren't on this guy's side.

Surprisingly, this egomaniac's head actually fit through the door of the hearing room. Clarke kicked off his testimony with an apology to "the loved ones of the victims of 9/11....your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you." His statement should have more truthfully been "to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11...the Clinton administration failed you. Prior to the slaughter of your loved ones on 9/11 by Islamic terrorists, Bill Clinton turned down the direct handover of Osama Bin Laden on numerous occasions. The Clinton administration refused to allow the CIA to kill Bin Laden, with only capture as the stated policy. Those entrusted with protecting you, including myself, were abject failures who viewed terrorism as a law enforcement problem. And don't forget to buy my book."

Well ... let's get to the rest of Clarke's testimony. We can basically wrap it up this way. Clarke told the commission, as he told America in his book, that the Bush administration did virtually nothing to address the threat of Al Qaeda until the attacks of 9/11. Nothing. He said that Bush was virtually unprepared to act as though it's a major problem.

Uh oh. Small problem. The White House was a few steps ahead of Clarke yesterday ... as was Fox News Channel. Jim Angle is a reporter for Fox. As the news about Clarke's book started to hit Angle remembered a briefing he received from a White House spokesman in August of 2002. That briefing was for background. That means that the seven reporters on the telephone conference call could not identify who their source was .. .only what their source said. Angle remembered that the person who delivered that briefing was ... Richard Clarke.

As luck would have it, Angle had a recording of that briefing. He listened to it and found that what Clarke was saying then was markedly different from what Clarke was saying now. So Angle went to the White House to seek permission to release a transcript of that 2002 briefing, and to identify Richard Clarke as the source. The White House, after conferring with the National Security Council, agreed.

So what did Clarke have to say in the 2002 briefing?

Let's start with a statement Clarke made to the 9/11 Commission yesterday. Clarke told the commissioners that early on in the Bush administration he told the president: " ... and I said, well, you know, we've had this strategy ready ... ahh ... since before you were inaugurated. I showed it to you. You have the paperwork. We can have a meeting on the strategy anytime you want."

So .. there's Clarke telling the media and the commissioners yesterday that he had presented paperwork to Bush on a strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda and was ready to discuss it. But what did he say to Jim Angle in 2002? This: "I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush Administration."

Lying then? Or lying now?

And what about this "Bush did virtually nothing" claim?

In the 2002 background briefing Clarke said: "When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that triggered the NSPD (National Security Presidential Directive) from one of roll back to one of elimination." "NSPD" is National Security Presidential Directive. So Clark was telling reporters in August of 2002 that the directive from the president in March of 2001 was to stop swatting at flies ... to eliminate Al Qaeda. This is what calls doing virtually nothing?

In the 2002 briefing Clarke also told Angle and the rest of the reporters that Bush had ordered an increase in CIA resources by five times .. .including funding for covert actions against Al Qaeda. Again ... doing virtually nothing?

Here's the kicker. It comes from the transcript of the 2002 Clarke briefing ... near the end.

Jim Angle: "So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no -- one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the months just after the administration came into office?

Richard Clarke: "You got it. That's right.

So .. while the terrorist threat was increasing Clinton made no changes in his plan of action against terrorism during the last two years of his presidency, but Bush got on the stick immediately. That is what Clarke is now describing as "doing virtually nothing."

Obviously Clarke is lying. We just have to figure out which statements are the lies? Was he lying in 2002 when he was working in the Bush White House? Or is he lying now when he's trying to sell a book?

Figure it out.

There's much more on the show today ... including audio. Be sure to be tuned in.

CLINTON STOPPED CIA FROM KILLING BIN LADEN

This has been out there for awhile, but the 9-11 commission is finally confirming it as fact. This should tell you everything you need to know about the Clinton administration and their policy of terrorist appeasement for 8 years.

Announcing some of its preliminary findings yesterday, the commission confirmed that President Clinton ordered the CIA to take Osama Bin Laden alive or not at all. The following statement read at yesterday's session says it all: "CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try and capture Bin Laden." A former CIA station chief said "We always talked about how much easier it would have been to try to kill him." A former CIA official told NBC News last week that White House orders to spare Bin Laden's life cut the chances of getting him in half. Once again, they viewed terrorism as a law enforcement problem, worrying about Bin Laden's rights instead of just unleashing the CIA to exterminate him.

If this commission wants to lay blame for policy failures that led to 9/11, then they need to do it where it belongs, with the Clinton administration and Richard Clarke.

IN CASE YOU NEEDED FURTHER CONFIRMATION THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS

Yesterday a Palestinian terrorist suicide bomber approached soldiers at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank. The soldiers were on high alert, because they had captured an 11-year-old boy with a bomb hidden in his bag just last week. They noticed the teenager had something under his sweater and pointed their rifles at 14-year-old Hussam Abdo.

The soldiers ducked behind a concrete barrier, and with guns pointed at Abdo, ordered him to remove his sweater, revealing the standard-issue gray vest used by Palestinian suicide bombers. Now, at this point, what do you think happened? From everything the media reports about the evil Israelis and their incursions into the "occupied territories," it leaves the impression that the Israeli Army would have just shot the boy, right on site. Of course, that is not what happened.

After the boy told soldiers he did not want to blow up, the Israelis then sent a robot with a pair of scissors toward the 14-year-old terrorist, allowing him to cut the bomb-laden vest off, and drop it to the ground. He was then ordered to strip to his underwear, and was detained by soldiers who detonated the bomb in a controlled explosion.

Wearing a jacked provided by the Israelis, the kid was escorted back to the other side of the checkpoint. A military spokesman said "He's a frightened little boy. Our interest right now is to find out who sent him." Can you imagine what would happen in this country if Al-Qaeda was sending teenage suicide bombers to our cities? Wouldn't we retaliate? Of course we would.

So why can't Israel?

READING ASSIGNMENTS

Peggy Noonan. Read it.

Dick Morris. Read this too.

Ann Coulter writes that the chair-warmer was on the hot seat yesterday, as Richard Clarke testified. She wonders why someone nobody has ever heard of is getting so much media coverage?

Former Navy Secretary and 9/11 commission member John Lehman unloaded on Richard Clarke yesterday with both barrels. Check it out here.

Here's Richard Clarke profusely praising President Bush for pursuing issues that President Clinton had left on the table since 1998.

According to the U.S. Military, Al-Qaeda is now leading the insurgency in Iraq. I thought Al-Qaeda had no link to Saddam Hussein and Iraq? Right.

The U.N. is stalling the Iraqi government probe of a secret oil account used in their "Food for Saddam's Palaces" program. You won't be surprised to learn it involved a French bank.

John Kerry showed up for Mass on Sunday in a ski suit. Nothing like using the Church as a photo opportunity to reinforce your faith. Such class displayed by the Democratic nominee.

Dick Morris says the 2004 election is a blowout in the making, with President Bush poised to win in a landslide.

William F. Buckley says Richard Clarke wants to have it all ways. He could trump Kerry's record for the most flip-flops in a two-year period.

David Hill says that Jean Kerry not only looks French, but is starting to actually sound French here lately.

Larry Elder criticizes former "counterterrorism czar" Richard Clarke as a born-again critic of the Bush administration and analyzes his shifting stances.

Robert Novak, writing from Haiti, reports on that country's progress after Haitian dictator Jean Bertrand-Aristide was ousted.

Ben Shapiro writes that after the 2000 election, Clinton stole the White House silverware, but left the appointees. President Bush should have cleaned house.

It's so nice to know that the wonderful men and women of the Georgia House of Representatives are looking out for us. They couldn't bring themselves to pass a law saying that a sixteen-year-old will be treated as an adult under the law if they commit a crime while driving an automobile, but they damn sure can ban genital piercings... but only for women. Good going guys!

There's a new website that is supposed to launch today: johnkerryflipflops.com. Give it a try!

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