U.S.: Clarke addressing the credibility gap

Clarke shuffles off the question into a response to White House charges against him. No, he won't take a job with Kerry.

Then, he attempts to address it directly by stating that nobody asked him about GWB's invasion of Iraq. He says that's why there's a credibility gap, for he regards the invasion of Iraq as an undermining of the war on terrorism.

This excerpt from Clarke's August 2002 interview establishes that he would have had the Bush administration pursue a plan for fighting terror that would have been no different from the Clinton administration's.

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.
...
QUESTION: In your judgment, is it possible to eliminate Al Qaeda without putting troops on the ground?

CLARKE: Uh, yeah, I think it was. I think it was. If we'd had Pakistani, Uzbek and Northern Alliance assistance.

This is precisely the swatting-terrorism approach that GWB disdained. If the intent was to eliminate terrorists, then waging war against one of the primary funders of terrorism, Saddam Hussein, was a necessary object lesson, not only to the terrorists themselves, but also to the terror-funding Saudi Arabians, supposedly friends of the U.S.

Strategically, attacking Iraq was more promising than attacking Saudi Arabia because while the Saudis would sit on the sidelines whilst the scourge of the Mid East came under fire, Saddam would not have done the same. Moreover, attacking Saudi Arabia, land of the two mosques, or whatever it's called, would have inflamed the Arab street in a way an attack on Iraq did not.

Does it count that Saddam is no longer around to fund terrorists in the "West Bank" and "Gaza"? That since the Israelis gave Sheik Yassin the happiest day of his life, terrorist groups, such as Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Hamas, in particular, have been demonstrated to be connected to Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the fount of terrorist activities? If these were connected to Saddam and also are to Al Qaeda, is it likely that Saddam and Al Qaeda were not connected to each other? Not much. The old adage, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, has yet to be disproven here.

Does it count that since Iraq has fallen thousands of terrorists have been killed; that Abu Nidal was taken in Iraq; that Libya has given up its WMDs; that the Pakistani WMD train is derailed; that the Pakis are fully engaged in fighting terror; that Syria is teetering; that Al Qaeda has no set and open base in any country; that American special forces are forging anti-terror relations in African countries whose deserted regions Al Qaeda might want to use for a base? To Democrats, it doesn't matter because it is GWB whose bold strike at a vital source of Mid East instability and global terror is bringing the terrorist house of cards down. It is more important to bring down GWB than it is to fight terror.

The significance of Saddam's defeat to the war and terror is simply this: that Al Qaeda, having been chased out of Afghanistan, could not establish a refuge in Iraq. That Al Qaeda went across the border to Pakistan was less dangerous than the prospect of the terror group moving to Iraq. For, Saddam was reputed to have WMDs and intent to strike both the Israelis and the West. Wasn't the 1993 bombing of the WTC proof of that?

3,000 Americans died and Clarke still thinks the Bush administration ought to focus on cyber terror? What does this nation have thousands of hackers for? Besides, combatting cyberterror is only one aspect of the war on terror, just as military action is. What Democrats, the U.N., and the Euros have failed to acknowledge is the complexity of the Bush war on terror. It's not all military action, as the men in Iraq would tell them. It's also intelligence, law enforcement (and the Euros are resisting some of this because the U.S. has capital punishment on the books.), finance, media, restoration of civil society in Afghanistan and Iraq. All of these are elements in the war. The willingness of the U.S. to use war to enable each of these is what makes the anti-terror initiatives of the Bush administration so good.

Bob Kerrey just castigated Fox for running with the Clarketranscript. Hm. Has Kerrey ever done the same to any of the Democrat media outlets, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MS-NBC? Not to my knowledge.

From what I've seen of the 9/11 Commission, the whole thing is a farce whose aim is to rewrite history so that Bush = Clinton will make John Effin Kerry seem the man to defend America against the terrorists. As usual, the Republicans on the Commission were lame. I vote Republican, but I have very little respect for the majority of Republican politicians. Too often, they aren't willing to fight for what they believe.

Juan Williams must've read today's CaribPundit. He's just put forward my argument on why Dems need to undermine Bush on this. It's about setting Kerry up as the strong man.

Remember, Kerry = Clinton.