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Sunday, March 28, 2004

STOPPER

By all accounts, the bushies lost today's Sunday talk-show skirmishes. They do not seem able to put the stopper back in the bottle. And what is more, some admin folks are going off message on the deal as well. Scurry scurry.

And by pouring on the invective all week, they have evidently royally pissed Clarke off; he is not backing down but ramping up.

AP 032804PM

Sharpening his criticism, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke said President Clinton (news - web sites) was more aggressive than Bush in trying to confront al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s organization. "He did something, and President Bush did nothing prior to September 11," Clarke told NBC's "Meet the Press." "I think they deserve a failing grade for what they did before" Sept. 11, Clarke said of the Bush's administration. "They never got around to doing anything."Clarke said a sweeping declassification of documents would prove that the Bush administration neglected the threat of terrorism in the nine months leading up to the attacks.

He said he sought declassification of all six hours of his testimony before a congressional committee two years ago. Some Republicans have said that testimony about Sept. 11 contradicts Clarke's current criticism. Clarke said he also wanted Rice's previous interview before the independent Sept. 11 commission declassified, along with e-mails between him and Rice, and other documents, including a memo he sent on Jan. 25, 2001 offering a road map to the new Bush administration on how to confront al-Qaida, and the directive that a National Security Council adopted on Sept. 4, 2001. The material will prove that Bush was "lackadaisical" about terrorism before the attacks, Clarke said, because "they're basically the same thing. And they wasted months when we could have had some action."

Asked about Clarke's request for the declassification, Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) on CBS' "Face the Nation," said, "My bias will be to provide this information in an unclassified manner not only to the commission, but to the American people."

Colin off message here. Maybe he is going his own way a bit. It has to be heavy internal warfare now.

Then, in her much anticipated interview on 60 Minutes, Rice admitted that Bush DID ask Clarke to run the 9-11 Iraq attack theory around the post again! This is after spending most of the week denying that this happened or that Bush even saw Clarke. This coverup business gains a life of its own and never stops once it starts. God knows we had our times with Clinton. Now the Repubs get their turn to snot and shuffle and jive around looking like jerks. All on national tee vee.


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