The combination of Richard Clarke's new book Against All Enemies, combined with his public testimony to the 9/11 commission, has sent the Bush administration into a confused frenzy trying to discredit Clarke and deny his accusations without, of course, addressing their substance. But who can doubt that much of what he says is true?
Clarke's testimony may well be the crucial tipping point for Bush and his incompetent masters. Despite the barrage of baloney from Faux News and other mainstream sources, Americans are beginning to recognize the fraud and incompetence at the core of this government.
- Most of his revelations are not at all new, but are only just receiving attention in the mainstream media. For example, Woodward's book Bush at War and Suskind's book The Price of Loyalty said much the same thing about Bush's inattention to terrorism.
- The White House response has been to smear Clarke's reputation and motives, and has itself been totally inconsistent. For example, the White House denied, then later admitted, that Bush did indeed press Clarke to find a link between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein, of which there was none. Senate Majority Misleader Bill Frist claimed loudly that Clarke's statements contradicted his earlier testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but later recanted and backed away from is perjury claims when Clarke challenged the Administration to make everything public.
- National Security Adliar Condoleezza Rice continues to refuse to appear in public and to testfy even privately under oath to the 9/11 commission, no doubt because she has plenty to hide. Late last week she admitted to the 9/11 commission privately that she had "misspoke" in 2001 (and many times subsequently) that no one could have anticipated that a terrorist cell would hijack planes and use them as weapons, when, in fact, she had been told repeatedly that this was the case.
- Clarke's claims have been corroborated by others present at various White House meetings. The Bush Administration's attitude has been to deny every single claim until confronted with sufficient evidence of its truth, then to recant when forced. So far all of Clarke's accusations have stood up to intense criticism and scrutiny, much to the chagrin of the liars in the Bush administration.
The Center for American Progress has obtained internal documents from the Bush administration showing Attorney General John Ashcroft's complete and total disregard for terrorism in his management of the Justice Department in 2001. Yet this article has hardly been reported in the mainstream press. In short Janet Reno's recommendations on funding for anti-terrorism activity were completely disregarded by Ashcroft who, along with the rest of the Bush administration, regarded everything from the Clinton administration as being axiomatically wrong. Trouble is, the Clinton people wereright about terrorism, as the documents shown here (among many other sources) make clear.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Powell's "eyewitness reports" of mobile weapons laboratories in Iraq came from a single source, a close associate of Ahmad Chalabi who, like Chalabi, was a convicted felon and known fabricator. David Kay's comment "If Powell had said to the Security Council: 'It's one source, we never actually talked to him, and we don't know his name,' as he's describing this, I think people would have laughed us out of court. " about sums it up.
The Bush administration's fraudulent misrepresentation of their Medicare Bill has already been discussed before on Left Out. The Bush administration's idea of fiscal responsibility is to lie about the cost of the program in order to get the bill through Congress, and to ensure that it contains provisions to prevent the U.S. government from negotiating the prices of prescription drugs that it will buy in bulk as part of the program. Knight-Ridder reported that Medicare's chief cost analyst, Richard Foster, was threatened with the loss of his job if he disclosed the facts about the true cost of this bill, which was underreported by at least 139 billion dollars.We mentioned Worse than Watergate, a new book by John W. Dean, during our program, so I've included this link to it.