I can’t remember exactly where I read it, but I recall reading a Wesley Clark comment about a month ago in which he criticized Bush for the national security breakdown of 9/11. It’s a criticism that none of the other presidential candidates have been willing to make publicly.
At the time, I thought it may have been an off-hand remark that most of the mainstream media missed. It turns out Clark meant it and has been willing to repeat it. Good for him.
Many rank and file Dems believe that the Bush White House, bolstered by post-attack popularity, benefited unfairly from a question-free environment after 9/11. There were some reports, however, that raised uncertainties about what the administration knew before the terrorists struck.
In the most thorough of the articles on the subject, Newsweek ran a devastating critique of the administration’s intelligence breakdowns in May 2002.
We learned, for example, that the FBI had discovered many suspected terrorists were taking flight lessons and that agents prepared a “lengthy memo raising the possibility that bin Laden might be using U.S. flight schools to infiltrate the country’s civil-aviation system.” The same article documented how John Ashcroft’s Justice Department had begun de-emphasizing counter-terrorism as a federal priority and Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department cancelled a Predator drone that had been tracking bin Laden in Afghanistan. Just as troubling, Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, briefed Condoleezza Rice on the threat posed by al Qaeda, but she didn’t take the warnings seriously.
Despite the White House’s claims that Bush had no idea these attacks were coming, the same Newsweek report noted that Bush received a briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, a month and five days before the attacks, that raised warnings about terrorist airline hijackings and bin Laden’s methods of operation.
It’s easy, of course, to criticize in hindsight, and I’m certainly not saying that the White House is responsible for 9/11. I am saying that there’s plenty of criticism to go around for those terrorist attacks — that deservedly should be spread around every presidential administration since Reagan — and that some of that criticism can and should be directed at this president.
Yet, because of the inflammatory nature of this controversy, Democratic Party leaders have been hesitant to talk about this at all, probably out of fear for being labeled unpatriotic. With this in mind, it was surprising, and heartening, to hear Gen. Clark denounce the Bush administration’s mistakes in this area.
At a forum last week sponsored by the Center for American Progress, Clark offered a harsh critique of the White House’s failures in Iraq, but just as importantly, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO went where few candidates have had the courage to go.
“And then there is 9/11,” Clark said after discussing Iraq. “There is no way this administration can walk away from its responsibilities. This wasn’t something that can be blamed on lower level intelligence officers.
“Our great Democratic President Harry Truman said, the ‘buck stops here,'” Clark added. “And when it comes to our nation’s foreign policy, the buck sits on George W. Bush’s desk. And we must say it again and again until the American people understand it. National security, next to upholding the Constitution, is the most important duty of any President.”
I’m glad someone has the guts to say this. Clark’s comments may have been controversial and unexpected, but they’re also the same thoughts that have been on the minds of many voters who have wondered why no one has been willing to speak out.
As The American Prospect’s Michael Tomasky noted last week, when reports first surfaced about the Bush administration’s mistakes in advance of 9/11, “neither the major media nor the Democrats nor, arguably, the average American citizen was quite ready to hear the most candid unpleasantries about whether this administration had acted seriously on any pre-9-11 warnings it may have received. But that was then.”
These are legitimate questions that deserve to be raised. It’s encouraging to see Wesley Clark lead the way.