There is really only one thing that made most of the news this week, folks. Yeah, you know what it is. Richard Clarke lets loose a roundhouse swing that sends the Bushies reeling.

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The Big News

Most everything this week was eclipsed by the enormous story of former Bush counter-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke, testifiying before the 9/11 commission on Wednesday. Readers of the BHC will likely be familiar with this previously anonymous bureaucrat's charges that the Bush White House refused to heed his urgent warnings about Al-Qaeda in the first months of the administration and then, after 9/11, refracted the War on Terror toward an invasion of Iraq, which, as we well know now, had nothing to do with Osama. Naturally, such claims have not sat well with the Bushies since, really, the only thing they've ever claimed they can do is well is war, war, war to keep American safe. And, no doubt, they do do that. But they don't really do it very well.

Richard Clarke opened his testimony by doing something no other Bush official has seen necessary: apologise for his and the government's failure. Indeed, so heartfelt was the day for 9/11 victims' families, some of them embraced the man at the end of his sworn deposition. Republicans were aghast at this dreadful display of grandstanding. Of course, this is perfectly in tune with Republican thinking: an apology to American families who suffered loss under Bush's charge must be a self-serving and disingenuous stunt. In the GOP zeitgeist, what else could it be?

During the commission questioning, James Thompson trumpeted that a background press briefing Clarke gave in August 2002 and his new book are at odds with each other. Clarke swept this aside by noting that as a president's special assistant, he was asked to minimize the political damage of a Time cover story on Bush's failure to take certain measures before 9/11: "I was asked to highlight the positive aspects of what the administration had done and to play down the negative aspects. When one is a special assistant to the president, one is asked to do that sort of thing. I've done it for several presidents." Thompson, knowing full well the truth of this statement, said not another word. Oh yeah...forgot about that politics...stuff.

Some of the ludicrous animadversions directed at Clarke are so spuriously lame, it only serves to make the accusers look silly. Dick Cheney pronounced Clarke as being "out of the loop," while Condi Rice took exception to Cheney's assertion. "I would not use the word `out of the loop,' " said Rice who responsed to a question about the propriety of having the White House's chief of counter-terrorism "out of the loop" regarding terrorism. This from the folks who claim Richard Clarke should get his story straight. Meanwhile, just as Clarke had forseen, other GOP "attack dogs" were pointing out that Mr. Clarke is friends with Rand Beers, who is now working for the Kerry campaign. Clearly, Clarke must be a DNC mole. One wonders about the short and long term memory faculties these people are exhibiting by apparently forgetting that Rand Beers took over Clarke's job in the White House after Clarke asked to be reassigned. Beers has also been involved with several administrations over the last 25 years. He also resigned after 7 months with Bush in charge. Hmmm, interesting pattern. And, as Josh Marshall amusingly points out

the pattern suggests two possible theories.

The first is that President Bush has the odd misfortune of repeatedly hiring Democratic party stooges for key counter-terrorism assignments who stab him in the back as soon as they leave his employ.

The second is that anyone the president hires in a key counter-terrorism role who is not either a hidebound ideologue or a Bush loyalist gets so disgusted with the mismanagement and/or dishonesty that they eventually quit and then devote themselves to driving the president from office.

Which sounds more likely?


Even more hilariously and, as though we need more evidence that Robert Novak is a moronic, racist, GOP zombie, CNN's Crossfire exhibited Novak essentially asking Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D, Ill) whether Clarke is a racist:

NOVAK: Congressman, do you believe, you're a sophisticated guy, do you believe watching these hearings that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?

EMANUEL: Say that again?

NOVAK: Do you believe that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?

EMANUEL: No, no. Bob, give me a break. No. No.

Emanuel can't quite believe just what he's hearing and with obvious good reason. Ahhh, Robert Novak: journalistic breath of fresh air.

Readers will no doubt have noticed by the tack of these so-called "criticisms," none of them have anything whatever to do with the substance of the Clarke's claims. As though saying, yeah, we know he's right, you know he's right but we need to smear the guy and cover our asses. Because that is exactly what is going on. He's right, we know he's right and they do too. And just to emphasize the legitimacy of Clarke's assertions, this little nugget appeared Monday, the day Clark's book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror,, was released:

WASHINGTON - In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows.

In fact, the Center for American Progress has an amazing summary of Bush's actual and abysmal record in the War on Terror and emphasizes how outlandish is the claim that anyone other than themselves will be soft on terrorists.

As the week progressed and the administration's smear campaign was clearly smearing only themselves, Condoleezza Rice, still refusing to appear before the 9/11 commission, appeared on 60 Minutes and any number of other talk shows which, it would seem, do not require her to speak under oath. This "strategy" is seriously backfiring on the White House as her refusal to testify has morphed in to the story and now even Republicans are decrying this as "a huge mistake."

While Rice was busy keeping people from looking up her skirt, known unknown, Donald Rumsfeld, appeared on ABC's This Week to counter Clarke's allegations that going to war in Iraq has been a detriment to the war on terrorism. Clarke points to the fact that CIA and Army Special Forces units, with key personnel who spoke Arabic, were moved from Afghanistan in early 2002 and sent to help prepare the invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld sheepishly says, "I don't think that is accurate." Is that it, Rummy? You don't think that's accurate? This is the White House's notion of "countering" allegations? This limp, inadequate statement promptly recalls Rumsfeld's other declamatory gaffes. One of the BHC's favourites has always been, "We know where they [weapons of mass destruction] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." East and west and south and north...somewhat. We always were amused at the unconventional ordering of the points of the compass, as though Rummy is thinking, hmm, if I just mix up things here, maybe it won't look like I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

Off in another fetid corner, Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, demanded that Clarke's 2002 testimony be declassified so he can hunt for possible inconsistancies in the stories. Frist is clearly on a fishing expedition as Bob Graham, co-chair of the House Intelligence Committee inquiry into 9/11, has said, "there is nothing inconsistent or contradictory in that testimony and what Mr. Clarke has said this week." And Frist has no idea. He was not on the House committee. In any event, Clarke has responded to this basically by saying, sure declassify everything. One can almost smell the fear in the White House, emmanating from a large, hard turd Bush will have dropped in his drawers, at that suggestion.

The White House has looked scared, defensive and abysmally incompetent under Clarke's well focused, factual account of their misdirection and mismanagement. This is a new look for the Bushies and one they clearly were not prepared to adjust to from their usual position of pugnacity, aggression and abysmal incompetence. Their so-called "defense" has been nothing but a personal smear campaign and has only served to make them look puny and puerile. The BHC congratulates Richard Clarke on his courage for doing what need be done. And even Bush should now feel the lid slowly being nailed shut on his preposterous presidency.


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A Final Nugget

As though to underline White House mismanagement of the military, Al-Qaeda, Iraq, and every other bloody thing they lay their hands on, The Pentagon has admitted that they have shipped troops to Iraq who were not fit for combat. Ailments such as asthma, diabetes, recent surgery and hearing loss, were ignored in a desperate rush to get troops over there. Not surprisingly, it was the European Regional Medical Command, yeah, those Euro-freaks with health care systems, criticized the medical screenings of the American soldiers who were now having to be sent home, saying that it was a risk to them and an added cost to the military. Come on, you Euro-whiners, apparatchiks in the Pentagon don't care about that. Life and death risk and cost. Look what we are doing in Iraq! Cleary we don't care about those things.


Read it....

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How's that Sae?