Al Qaeda absent from final Clinton report
Ok tell the truth... Did that last line surprise you?The final policy paper on national security that President Clinton submitted to Congress — 45,000 words long — makes no mention of al Qaeda and refers to Osama bin Laden by name just four times.
The scarce references to bin Laden and his terror network undercut claims by former White House terrorism analyst Richard A. Clarke that the Clinton administration considered al Qaeda an "urgent" threat, while President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "ignored" it.
[Richard Clark a liar... Who woulda thunk it? -ed]
The Clinton document, titled "A National Security Strategy for a Global Age," is dated December 2000 and is the final official assessment of national security policy and strategy by the Clinton team. The document is publicly available, though no U.S. media outlets have examined it in the context of Mr. Clarke's testimony and new book.
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Comments (5)
Excellent post, wish I woul... (Below threshold)1. Posted by Rodney Dill | April 6, 2004 8:20 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Excellent post, wish I would have thought of it (before you). I'll try to do the reload before my post next time.
In this case my slant is a little different as my view is that the media missed the boat on ignoring the evidence that Al Qaeda was not a Clinton prioirity based on their own coverage over that eight year span.
1. Posted by Rodney Dill | April 6, 2004 8:20 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on April 6, 2004 08:20
2. Posted by Rodney Dill | April 6, 2004 8:24 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Great minds think alike, but then so do psychotic axe murderer minds.
2. Posted by Rodney Dill | April 6, 2004 8:24 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on April 6, 2004 08:24
3. Posted by Paul | April 6, 2004 8:45 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
That was my "last line" comment.
3. Posted by Paul | April 6, 2004 8:45 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on April 6, 2004 08:45
4. Posted by Rodney Dill | April 6, 2004 10:01 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
The only reason that this became a story is that the media jumped on the bandwagon over the Richard Clarke testimony. This was only a means for the liberal media and the DNC to bash President Bush. They (the media) only had to look back over their coverage of the eight year Clinton Administration to see that Al Qaeda was NOT a high priority.
People in general have a hard time correlating data that is not time coincident, but the media is under a social obligation to do a better job of this. The DNC's attempt to pass off this fallacious story, that Al Qaeda was a high priority for Clinton, is at least understandable, as it serves to promote their primary motivation this election year, deride Bush.
4. Posted by Rodney Dill | April 6, 2004 10:01 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on April 6, 2004 10:01
5. Posted by Charlez Ommolo | May 25, 2004 4:58 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Clinton was right to ignore Al Qaeda. Richard Clark invented Al Qaeda in 1998 looking at a map where the indication "The base" was written in arabic pronounciation.
Al Qaeda is a fiction, but fighting and advertising something that doesn't exist make it became real.
5. Posted by Charlez Ommolo | May 25, 2004 4:58 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 25, 2004 16:58