Webdiarist Kerryn Higgs gave us the lowdown on Dick Clarke’s explosive evidence of Bush’s failure to prioritise the al Qaeda threat in Bush before September 11: the awful truth, and now Condi Rice could be in big trouble. Today Kerryn reports Clarke’s explosive evidence on what the bushies did did after the S11 catastrophe.

 

On Tuesday 30/3/04, after pressure from all ten members of the bipartisan Commission of Inquiry into the September 11th attacks, George W Bush announced that National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, will testify to the Commission � in public on oath. This will take place next Thursday.

The Republican Chairman, Tom Kean, said he wanted her testimony under the penalty of perjury since her story differs from that of Richard Clarke � former counterterror chief and author of Against all Enemies: Inside America�s War on Terror, who testified a week ago.

Even more damning than his evidence about the Bush administration�s lukewarm approach to the al Qaeda threat before the attacks, is Clarke�s narrative of how Iraq then came to dominate the Bush agenda.

Clarke is not the first to reveal the Bush administration�s obsession with regime change in Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O�Neill�s allegations appeared in Ron Suskind�s The Price of Loyalty, published in January 2004. O�Neill also alleged that the newly installed Bush team was already talking about war on Iraq in January 2001.

On 60 Minutes O�Neill said:

�From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime … Day one, these things were laid and sealed.�

ABC News turned up corroboration from an unnamed offical who had been at the same National Security Council meetings:

“The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of ground forces.”

O�Neill kept copies of memos from the first days of the administration, including �Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq� and �Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts�, which looked at how Iraq should be governed under US occupation and which countries and companies would seek a share of Iraq�s oil reserves.

O�Neill had been sacked by Bush after his dissent on the second round of tax cuts, and was portrayed as a bitter man. The Whitehouse dismissed his allegations as �laughable�.

Clarke, too, has been under sustained attack, but he has the advantage of coming after O�Neill and the many others, listed here, who had already raised similar concerns. It’s becoming less and less likely that everyone is making it up.

Options for the removal of Saddam were canvassed long before September 11th, and serious military planning came soon afterwards. All of this predated the manipulated panic about weapons of mass destruction.

As the magnitude of the attacks became clear on the morning of September 11th, the Whitehouse was evacuated. Clarke was one of relatively few officials who remained in the Situation Room to deal with the crisis. When he called the FBI�s counterterrorism chief, he was told, “We got the passenger manifests from the airlines. We recognize names, Dick. They’re al Qaeda.” Clarke said:

I was stunned, not that the attack was al Qaeda but that there were al Qaeda operatives on board aircraft using names that the FBI knew were al Qaeda. ‘How the fuck did they get on board then,’ I demanded. ‘ … CIA forgot to tell us about them.'”

But the identification of the hijackers� al Qaeda connections and predominantly Saudi nationality did not deter key people from pursuing their preconceptions about Iraq. On September 4, 2002, well before the invasion, CBS News reported that Rumsfeld wanted to pull Saddam Hussein into the frame as soon as the afternoon of September 11th. The Washington Post revealed in January 2003 that the President had signed an order on September 17th directing the Pentagon to start planning military options for an invasion of Iraq. In the hysterical prewar atmosphere, with Rice and Cheney rabbiting on about mushroom clouds unchallenged by the supposedly serious press, these clues to a pre-existing plan did not provoke much further comment in the U.S.

In his book, Clarke describes his dismay as the post-attack meetings unfolded:

“I expected … a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them … Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try and take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.

” … By the afternoon on Wednesday, Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about … ‘getting Iraq’. Secretary Powell pushed back, urging focus on al Qaeda. Relieved to have some support, I thanked Colin Powell and his deputy, Rich Armitage. ‘I thought I was missing something here,’ I vented. ‘Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbour.’

It was not only Defence Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who turned out to be focussed on Iraq. On Wednesday evening, Clarke was pulled aside by the President:

“‘Look,’ he told us, ‘I know you have a lot to do and all�but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way….’

“I was once again taken aback, incredulous … ‘But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this.’

‘I know, I know, but� see if Saddam is involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…’

‘Absolutely we will look … again … But, you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen.’

‘Look into Iraq, Saddam,’ the President said testily and left us.”

Clarke did what he was told, reviewed the agencies� intelligence, and again found no link. When he sent the memo a few days later, it was returned for further work (‘Wrong answer’ was the message, said Clarke.) He doubts the President ever actually saw it � or the subsequent version.

According to Rice, Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that �Iraq is to the side�.

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz went back to Washington and held a meeting of the Defence Policy Board, then chaired by Richard Perle. Their discussions centered on how Washington could use 9/11 to strike at Iraq. Colin Powell�s State Department was not invited to participate.

Tony Blair met with Bush a few days later. According to Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to Washington, the US president was under intense pressure from his own military to attack Saddam Hussein, but Blair successfully argued for al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to be confronted first. The key word here seems to be �first”.

While that campaign went forward, Clarke said that:

“[t]he White House carefully manipulated public opinion, never quite lied, but gave the very strong impression that Iraq did it … They did know better. We told them. The C.I.A. told them. The F.B.I. told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were avenging Sept. 11, when Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. I think for a commander in chief and a vice president to allow that to happen is unconscionable.”

The manipulation succeeded brilliantly. By January 2003, 51% of Americans thought that at least one of the hijackers was Iraqi, and only 17% knew the truth � that none of them were. Over 65% believed that Saddam and al Qaeda were in cahoots.

During his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Clarke came under significant pressure from Republican members (one of whom is rumoured to have been called by Bush�s top legal advisor earlier that morning) to explain what they characterised as discrepancies between his book and his previous closed testimony.

Clarke denied inconsistency, saying the Commission had never asked him about the invasion of Iraq:

” … the reason I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is because by invading Iraq … the president … has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.”

I watched these words broadcast live. There was an almost horrified and very extended silence.

And here lies the tragedy of it. Clarke is no dove and not opposed to invasion or war on principle. But he is convinced that Iraq was a catastrophic mistake, for which we will all pay dearly.

He has made his case in the book and in many interviews over the past ten days, which he articulates as three principal issues.

First: the damage to goodwill in the Muslim world towards the West. After the attacks, there was a sympathy that could have been built upon. The support of ordinary people outside the US has dissipated (polls in Muslim countries allied to the U.S. indicate widespread support for bin Laden these days, and suspicion that the US is trying to dominate the world and control Middle East oil). Al Qaeda recruitment has expanded:

�Osama bin Laden had been saying for years, ‘America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it � an oil rich Arab country’. He’d been saying this. This was part of his propaganda. So what do we do after 9/11? We invade … and occupy an oil rich Arab country which was doing nothing to threaten us.�

Clarke also quotes Egyptian President Mubarak’s words: “Before you invade Iraq, there�s one bin Laden. After you invade Iraq, there�ll be 100.” This is a view shared across the Arab, and wider Muslim, world.

Second: the immense cost in dollars (billions and growing) that could have been spent to improve U.S. security.

Third: the incomplete job in Afghanistan:

�You know, we had an opportunity, we had a window of opportunity after 9/11 to really root out terrorism. Instead, we took this excursion, going into Iraq, which had the exact opposite effect. It strengthened terrorism.�

Bush sent only 11,000 soldiers to Afghanistan, fewer than the police who patrol Manhattan, according to Clarke. And after six months, he pulled out the fighting force best equipped for service in that part of the world � and sent it to Iraq. This unit includes men who speak Arabic, Pastun and Dari. They had begun to develop a network of local sources and alliances, and believed that they were closing in on bin Laden. Without warning, they were sent off to track down Saddam. Specially-equipped spy planes went too.

As the insurgency in Iraq yields unbearable savagery, as Paul Wolfowitz is mentioned as one of the candidates to repace Paul Bremer as U.S. boss of the �new Iraq� and as Ahmed Chalabi is rumoured as set to become Iraqi PM at the forthcoming handover � all, surely, a recipe for escalating disaster � who would not share Dick Clarke�s chilling conclusion that George W Bush�s administration got the whole thing wrong?

A government lost in the past, in a Cold War world of missile defence and terrorists spawning from �rogue states�, missed the real world � and missed what chance there was to isolate the al Qaeda threat. Our government, to its everlasting shame, followed them.