The bewildering quality of Richard Clark
All Liberal Friends may want to skip this one.


Ok, you've been warned.

I glanced at Richard Clark's book today, and read a brief passage of it, where he characterizes the four men he worked for. If I were to believe his book as anything other than political maneuvering on his part (which I don't), here's what I might summize.

Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and II: Men who underestimated and misused their power and misunderstood terrorism.
Bill Clinton: A master politician who was great and understood everything.

Now, I am continually bemused by those media types who credit Clinton with his work in the "Prosecution on Terror" regime, and at the same time complain about Bush intelligence failures. Remember our "kind of war" in Bosnia in 1999? Remember how we, by mistake, bombed the Chinese Embassy there? Was our aim bad? Or were we suffering from bad intelligence?

I just think we have entered a period where people hear what they want and ignore the rest. I accept that the President in all likelihood made a misjudgment on Iraq, (As in believing the Iraqis had so many WMD there was no way they could sneak them off to Syria) but to those who say we could have stopped 9-11, well, the only way I think we could have is by bombing the heck out of the Taliban and destroying them in the months before September.
And, had we done that, as in, launched an unprovoked war against Afghanistan, would Bush be applauded? I doubt it.
Everyone has made mistakes, it seems, but the Republicans didn't make them all, and neither did the Democrats. If we are to move forward with figuring out 9-11, we must agree that the best thing is to accept blame, but more importantly, figure out the best way to ensure the tragedy of 9-11 does not re-occur.

OK, vent over.