Foot-shooting watch.

Buried at the end of the New York Times story discussed below (This is not an exit.):

The Bush Administration (again) hurts itself with (another) selective disclosure of a confidential document in an attempt to rebut Clarke. The Administration has released the "National Security Presidential Directive," which was on the President's desk for signing on September 11, 2001. The Directive envisioned a diplomatic mission to the Taliban, and asked the Pentagon to plan for possible covert action and military strikes as last resorts.

So: the evidence is that the Bush Administration delayed nine months in proposing a plan that, from all appearances, was functionally identical to Clinton Administration plans. This rebuts Clarke's testimony (re: "foot-dragging") how?

Thank God there's some good economic news -- and that Kerry is so freaking weak as a candidate.

Comments

[a_rilke_fan]

"Thank God [...] that Kerry is so freaking weak as a candidate."

Have you declared for the Dark Side?

[CJ]

No a_rilke_fan,

Some of us are just honest in our assessment.

[von]

Have you declared for the Dark Side?

I'm leaning against Bush. Assuming I do climb into bed with Kerry, however, I'm not going to stop kicking him under the sheets.

[rilkefan]

It sometimes seems to me that the qualities needed to be a good candidate are antithetical to those needed to be a good president.

Incidentally, I think John Edwards and Bill Weld (both it seems to me exceptional politicians) might dispute your assessment of Kerry's campaigning skills.

[sidereal]

"Assuming I do climb into bed with Kerry, however, I'm not going to stop kicking him under the sheets."

It's one of those years where I'll be voting for a line of succession (Cheney? ye gods), a judiciary, and a cabinet.

[Skip]

a judiciary

Yup. We're lucky Bush hasn't had to nominate anyone to the Supreme Court yet.

[Thorley Winston]

Von wrote:

So: the evidence is that the Bush Administration delayed nine months in proposing a plan that, from all appearances, was functionally identical to Clinton Administration plans. This rebuts Clarke's testimony (re: "foot-dragging") how?

Actually Clarke did a pretty good job of rebutting it himself.

RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.

Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.

And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, in late January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent.

And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.

So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.

The sixth point, the newly-appointed deputies — and you had to remember, the deputies didn't get into office until late March, early April. The deputies then tasked the development of the implementation details, uh, of these new decisions that they were endorsing, and sending out to the principals.

Over the course of the summer — last point — they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance.

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.

In summary, the Bush Administration took office in 2001 and began to develop plans to change our policy from rolling back to the rapid elimination of Al-Qaeda. The plan took time to develop because there is about a six month initiation period anytime a new administration takes office as evidenced by the fact that it took until March and April to even get the deputies in place.

Clarke notes there were several key differences between the two plans namely in that there were unresolved issues -changing our policies with Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and the Northern Alliance - that the Bush Administration were working on that had been tabled for nearly two years by the Clinton administration. The similarity between the two plans was that Bush added to the CIA’s covert action resources (something favored by the Clinton administration) until he had a workable plan to try to eliminate Al-Qaeda.

There was also another key difference between the two plans:

QUESTION: Had the Clinton administration in any of its work on this issue, in any of the findings or anything else, prepared for a call for the use of ground forces, special operations forces in any way? What did the Bush administration do with that if they had?

CLARKE: There was never a plan in the Clinton administration to use ground forces. The military was asked at a couple of points in the Clinton administration to think about it. Um, and they always came back and said it was not a good idea. There was never a plan to do that.

We all know from Operation: Enduring Freedom, that the plan implemented by the Bush administration included the use of ground troops including special forces. So much for being “functionally identical.”

[Mark]

What's your response to Clarke's claim that the plan that was approved at the Principal's meeting on 9/4/01 was similar if not identical to the plan that he gave to Condoleeza Rice on 1/25/01?

[Thorley Winston]

Mark wrote:

What's your response to Clarke's claim that the plan that was approved at the Principal's meeting on 9/4/01 was similar if not identical to the plan that he gave to Condoleeza Rice on 1/25/01?

Unlikely given that in his aforementioned comments he stated that we had unresolved issues with our policies towards Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and the Northern Alliance in January 2001 all of which became part of our plan in Afghanistan. If you have any evidence to support the contrary, let’s see it.

[Mark]

What Clarke actually said in the 02 briefing that you quote above is that the _existing_ Clinton strategy at the end of 00 had unresolved issues with Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc, and that the new plan changed all that. This is not inconsistent with saying that Clarke and co. had developed a plan at the end of the Clinton Administration that had not been put in place before December 00, which Clarke then put on Condoleeza Rice's desk on 1/25. Note also that Clarke's claims about the strategy that he put together (3-5 year rollback, etc) is quite similar to the action directive that the Bush Administration declassified this week.

[Mark]

See the second page of the following article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/politics/02PANE.html?pagewanted=2