The Emperor has no uniform...
While the "US mainstream news media" twists and turns
stilting and filtering, as it stumbles through
revelations that you read six months ago or one year
ago or even two years ago in the world press or on
Information Rebellion sites or through the LNS, we
must stay focused on the whole truth, we must provide
the CONTEXT and CONTINUITY that the "US Mainstream
News Media" and its propapunditgandists refuse to
provide...
Daniel Benjamin, LA Times: The most damaging remarks came from Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001. Shelton told us that in the Bush administration terrorism had moved "farther to the back burner." He also recounted how the Joint Chiefs of Staff, frustrated at the lack of progress in dealing with Al Qaeda, had begun a disinformation program in the last year of the Clinton administration to create dissent within the Taliban. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz shut it down. Counterterrorism, the new leadership felt, was not a military mission.
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March 30, 2004
COMMENTARY
Voices in the Wilderness Are Turning Into a Chorus
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-benjamin30mar30,1,5099504.story
By Daniel Benjamin, co-author of "The Age of Sacred
Terror" (Random House, 2002), was on the National
Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999.
In its effort to discredit Richard Clarke, the White
House and its allies claim that what the former
counterterrorism chief has said in his book and before
the 9/11 commission is inconsistent with his past
remarks. National security advisor Condoleezza Rice
has said his book is "180 degrees from everything else
that he said."
Perhaps. I haven't seen everything Clarke said or
wrote when he was in the administration. But I do know
that the judgments Clarke has offered in "Against All
Enemies" and his public testimony comport precisely
with what he told me in early 2002.
As director for counterterrorism on the National
Security Council staff, I worked for Clarke in 1998 to
1999, and I stayed in touch with him after I left. In
meetings in his Old Executive Office Building suite,
at his home and over meals, he described for me his
deep disappointment at the failure to stop the 9/11
attackers and his conviction that the Bush
administration had not viewed the threat of jihadist
terror with sufficient urgency. No amount of
bureaucratic badgering, he felt, could get them to
recognize Al Qaeda as the preeminent threat facing the
U.S.
In reporting for our book, "The Age of Sacred Terror,"
Steven Simon and I found that Clarke was not alone.
Several top U.S. government officials agreed in
interviews that the new administration had been
unwilling to revise its understanding of America's
security position and too slow to recognize the danger
of Al Qaeda.
Brian Sheridan, President Clinton's outgoing assistant
secretary of Defense for special operations and low
intensity conflict, was astonished when his offers
during the transition to bring the new Pentagon
leadership up to speed on terrorism were brushed
aside. "I offered to brief anyone, any time on any
topic. Never took it up."
Even if one dismisses Sheridan's remarks as those of a
political appointee, the same cannot be done for Don
Kerrick. A three-star general, Kerrick had served at
the end of the Clinton administration as deputy
national security advisor, and he spent the final four
months of his military career in the Bush White House.
He sent a memo to the NSC's new leadership on "things
you need to pay attention to." He wrote about Al
Qaeda: "We are going to be struck again."
But he never heard back. "I don't think it was above
the waterline. They were gambling nothing would
happen," he said.
The most damaging remarks came from Gen. Henry H.
Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until
Oct. 1, 2001. Shelton told us that in the Bush
administration terrorism had moved "farther to the
back burner." He also recounted how the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, frustrated at the lack of progress in
dealing with Al Qaeda, had begun a disinformation
program in the last year of the Clinton administration
to create dissent within the Taliban. But Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz shut it down.
Counterterrorism, the new leadership felt, was not a
military mission.
Shelton added, "The squeaky wheel was Dick Clarke, but
he wasn't at the top of their priority list, so the
lights went out for a few months." Shelton summed up
Rumsfeld's attitude as being "this terrorism thing was
out there, but it didn't happen today, so maybe it
belonged lower on the list."
Is the White House going to vilify these men too?