At 08:23 PM 3/27/2004 -0600 Dan Minette wrote: >5) The timing of the book is not unreasonable as far as I can tell.
It is still suspicious that John Kerry just happened to go on vacation as this whole thing came to light. No way to prove any connection, just noting that it is suspicious. >6) The fact that he gave background briefings that accentuated the positive >even though he had grave reservations should not be surprising. Even in >business, one is expected to accentuate the positive before customers. I >have been complemented by customers for being unusually trustworthy, and >I've done that. It seems like a pretty thin straw to grasp at. I think that you are the one grasping at straws. His background breifings did not simply *accentuate* the positive, while downplaying or ignoring the negative. His background briefings flatly contradict some of the charges he is making now. Here is a quote from that briefing: In addition, he said that in the spring of 2001 Bush committed to a "five-fold" increase in CIA resources dedicated to going after the al Qaeda leader. "What we ended up with was a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda," Clarke told reporters in August 2002. "So the president recognizes very early on that you don't want to roll back al Qaeda over this long period of time, you want to eliminate al Qaeda on a much more accelerated timetable..... In the August 2002 briefing he credits the Bush administration with trying to resolve the policy disputes that were not settled in the Clinton days, and credited the Bush team with moving in the spring of 2001 to open a dialogue with Pakistan designed to get Islamabad "to break away from the Taliban." http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/24/clarke.bush.binladen/ Again, this strikes me as a direct contradiction, rather than an accentuation of the positive. Also, Dan, did you read the Time magazine viewpoint piece that started this thread? Clarke's story has changed from his book to his first interview to his second interview...... when you are making an explosive charge like this, you should be able to keep your story consistent. In addition, some of his charges are flat out misleading, consider this from the Time magazine "viewpiont": Bush, as early as April 2001, had instructed Rice to draft a strategy for rolling back al-Qaeda and killing bin Laden, saying he was tired of "swatting flies", a line Clarke does include in his book. >7) He probably really believes that, while Clinton didn't do enough, he was >actually better than Bush at fighting terrorism. Has he said that? I have been away from news sources since Tuesday..... but my impression up to that point had been that Clarkes positinog was closer to "a pox on both your houses" than "Bush was even worse than Clinton." At 06:22 PM 3/26/2004 -0800 Doug Pensinger wrote: >Imploding? Are you serious? For what it is worth, a close friend of mine who is a liberal, Democrat, Bush-loathng, *pacifist*, and who watched the Commission Hearings on C-Span while I was busy with other things this past week told me yesterday that she thinks that "Clarke has imploded, and really doesn't have much credibility." This was before I returned home last night and was able to get access to news reports, some of which I cite above. So yeah, I think that he is serious..... ;-) JDG _______________________________________________________ John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
