Friday, April 02, 2004

Since no mainstream journalists responded to Condi Rice’s silly assertion that President Bush’s fixation on Iraq immediately after 9/11 was only natural and that he was only asking for thorough investigation of possible culprits, Richard Clarke obliges me on Al Franken’s show today (I’ll look for transcripts). Clarke responded to this issue exactly as I have wondered here (obviously I’m now paraphrasing him): The president didn’t ask about Iran or Hamas. It was clear what his message was.

Is this the definition of tail-spin?

[Update: Peter Bergen gets it ]

Both Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War" and Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" show that shortly after 9/11 there was considerable focus by the Bush cabinet on Iraq's possibly being the perpetrator of the attacks. Why was Iraq considered a suspect when there was no evidence that it was involved in any act of anti-American terrorism for a decade — other than a failed attempt to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush in 1993 — while there was overwhelming evidence that it was the Al Qaeda network that attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, tried to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in 1999, blew up American embassies in Africa in 1998 and attacked the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000? After all, the cabinet did not discuss the possibility that the attacks were the work of Iran, Libya or Syria, all countries that have a history of terrorism directed at Americans.

# posted 3:24 PM