Reply #3: Here's a Great Editorial on Clarke, including his background [View All]

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
full text: http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4679296.html

"A few facts about Clarke: He's a Republican. He served 30 years in government; for 10 years, under three Republican presidents and one Democrat, he served in the White House as one of the nation's most senior national security advisers. Clarke is not a dove. He believes in an assertive foreign policy and a vigorous projection of U.S. military power, which should make him a natural ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Indeed, while serving as an assistant secretary of state in the early 1990s, he worked with Cheney and Wolfowitz to assemble the coalition that pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. He argued, with Wolfowitz, that the war ought to be prolonged until the Iraqi Republican Guard was destroyed. Finally, what Clarke has to say about the current Bush administration's obsession from the start with Iraq is corroborated by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in his memoir, "The Price of Loyalty."

...Rice's credibility already has been substantially damaged by her misstatements and deceptions concerning the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq...

In a memo from 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno identified counterterrorism as her department's top priority. Both before and immediately after Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft and the White House downplayed the significance of terrorism. Prior to Sept. 11, the issue disappeared entirely from the list of Department of Justice priorities. Moreover, on Sept. 10, 2001, Ashcroft proposed cutting $65 million for counterterrorism grants to state and local governments because applications for the funds were lagging.

Immediately after Sept. 11, the FBI requested an emergency appropriation of $1.5 billion for counterterrorism. The White House allowed only $531 million, a third of what the FBI said it needed."