Bush's Blind-Spot on Terror

Dick Clarke, former White House cybersecurity and anti-terrorism czar under both Presidents Clinton and Bush, says in a new book that "Dubya" was obsessed by Saddam Hussein and wanted to respond to 9/11 by going after the Iraqi dictator. Former Terrorism Official Criticizes White House on 9/11 [newyorktimes.com]. This has unleashed a furious counter-attack by the Bushies, led by Condi Rice's fawming op-ed in today's Washington Post, in which -- as a lead-in to some vicious personal attacks on Clarke during the network morning shows -- she pretends that the Bush Administration "quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network. The president wanted more than occasional, retaliatory cruise missile strikes. He told me he was 'tired of swatting flies.'"

This revisionist history from the White House is amazing. We now have two insiders who revealed (consistent with what we know) that Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz always pressed for action against Saddam, arguing -- contrary to the evidence -- that Iraq was a "state sponsor" of al Quaeda, and that the President from the start wanted to take up where his father had failed. How else to explain why a war started ostensibly to "disarm" Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, has found none.

Yes, toppling Saddam was a good thing, because he was a bad man. But it was not and is not a substitute for going after terrorists. Had the Bush Administration devoted as much attention and planning to the 2001 Tora Bora bombing campaign in Afganistan, we might have gotten Osama bin Laden and made a real contribution to the War on Terrorism. Whatever else the Iraq occupation represents, we now know it is NOT helping to reduce the risk of terrorism, and if anything works the other way.

 Posted by glenn