The Hindu : Ex-aide faults Bush on war against terrorism

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 23, 2004

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International

Ex-aide faults Bush on war against terrorism

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, MARCH 22. A heated discussion is going on in the U.S. on what the Bush administration knew prior to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001; and this media blitz comes just a few days prior to the National Commission looking into 9/11 is scheduled to hold its high profile public hearings.

A one-time top anti-terrorism official, known during the Clinton administration days as the `czar' on counter-terrorism, Richard Clarke, has set the ball rolling by maintaining that the President, George W Bush, "may be" could have done something to stop 9/11 — an idea that has brought about a spirited response from the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and her Deputy, Stephen Hadley.

"Frankly, I find it outrageous that the President is running for re-election on the grounds that he has done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We will never know," Mr. Clarke said on CBS' Sixty Minutes. "I think he has done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."

Mr. Clarke shaped the policy on terrorism from the days of the President, Ronald Reagan, and the elder George H.W. Bush. Mr. Clinton retained his services and so did the current President. But his position lost its Cabinet level standing in the new Republican administration.

What has clearly put some in this administration on the defence is Mr. Clarke's charge that soon after 9/11 took place, the discussion in the Bush White House focussed not on the Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but on Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Mr.Clarke said. "And we all said...no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan," he said adding that Mr. Rumsfeld wanted to go after Iraq "because there were no good targets in Afghanistan".

Mr. Clarke's apparent response was that there were a lot of good targets in "lots of places", but that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. "I think they wanted to believe there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we have looked at the issue for years. For years we have looked and there is just no connection," Mr. Clarke said maintaining that he and the CIA Director, George Tenet, passed this message to the Secretaries of State and Defence and the

Attorney-General.

More damaging to the administration is Mr. Clarke's suggestion that Mr. Bush himself getting involved in the Iraq connection but not openly insisting on a report finding the Baghdad angle.

"Now he never said `Make it Up'. But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this," Mr. Clarke said. The report was finally prepared but it is not sure if Mr. Bush saw it. It was, in the words of Mr. Clarke, bounced or sent back with the message "Wrong answer...Do it again."

In an Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post, Ms. Rice insisted that prior to 9/11 security threats were "closely monitored" and despite suggestions to the contrary "we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles..."

And on Iraq, she says: "Once advised that there was no evidence that Iraq was responsible for September11, the President told his National Security Council on September 17 that Iraq was not on the agenda and that the initial U.S. response to September 11 would be to target the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan."

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