{"id":3531,"date":"2005-02-11T12:53:11","date_gmt":"2005-02-11T17:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3531.html"},"modified":"2005-02-11T12:53:11","modified_gmt":"2005-02-11T17:53:11","slug":"maybe-now-would-be-a-good-time-to-impugn-her-integrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/maybe-now-would-be-a-good-time-to-impugn-her-integrity\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe now would be a good time to impugn her integrity"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the better part of four years, there have been accounts from Clinton-era White House aides explaining how they tried to warn Bush aides about the looming al Queda threat in 2001, but those warnings went unheeded. In particular, Newsweek published a devastating critique<\/a> of the administration’s intelligence breakdowns in May 2002, noting that 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, preferring to focus on an ineffectual missile-defense shield.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Rice tried to defend herself from these reports, even going so far as to blame the Clinton administration for not helping her enough. She once famously claimed<\/a>, for example, that “no al Queda plan was turned over to the new administration.” What she meant, of course, was that the Clinton White House never told her explicitly what to do<\/i> about the terrorist network, only that as Bush’s NSA, al Queda should be her top priority — advice she neglected to heed.<\/p>\n

Indeed, in one instance, Rice targeted Richard Clarke<\/a> for criticism directly, saying he “had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to.”<\/p>\n

We learned today, however, that like so many of Rice’s previous remarks, these charges weren’t true<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

Eight months before the September 11 attacks the White House’s then counterterrorism adviser urged then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to hold a high-level meeting on the al-Qaeda network, according to a memo made public today.<\/p>\n

“We urgently need such a principals-level review on the al-Qaeda network,” … Richard Clarke wrote in the January 25, 2001 memo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Kos has a picture<\/a> of the memo)<\/p>\n

Rice, we now know, disagreed with Clarke, downplayed the threat, and later tried to make Clarke the scapegoat for her costly failures. As a result, Rice has been promoted to Secretary of State. Welcome to Bush’s America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the better part of four years, there have been accounts from Clinton-era White House aides explaining how they tried to warn Bush aides about the looming al Queda threat in 2001, but those warnings went unheeded. In particular, Newsweek published a devastating critique of the administration’s intelligence breakdowns in May 2002, noting that Clinton’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}