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Steyn: Richard Clarkeâs New Career as a Fiction Writer
Severely snipped for brevity via:LGF In October 2000, Clarke and Special Forces Colonel Mike Sheehan leave the White House after a meeting to discuss al-Qaâedaâs attack on the USS Cole: "âWhatâs it gonna take, Dick?â Sheehan demanded. âWho the s*** do they think attacked the Cole, f****** Martians? The Pentagon brass wonât let Delta go get bin Laden. Does al-Qaâeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?â" Apparently so. The attack, on the Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, was deemed by Clintonâs Defence Secretary Bill Cohen as "not sufficiently provocative" to warrant a response. Youâll have to do better than that, Osama! So he did. And now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be "pre-emptive" about Iraq insist he should have been about September 11. As for Clarkeâs beef with Bush, thatâs simple. For eight years, he had pottered away on the terrorism brief undisturbed. The new President took it away from him and adopted the strategy outlined by Condoleezza Rice in that Detroit radio interview, months before the self-regarding Mr Clarke claims he brought her up to speed on who bin Laden was: "We really need a stronger policy of holding the states accountable that support him," Dr Rice told WJR. "Terrorists who are just operating out there without basis and without state support are a lot less dangerous than ones that find safe haven, as bin Laden does sometimes in places like Afghanistan or Sudan." Just so. In the 1990s when al-Qaâeda blew up American targets abroad, the FBI would fly in and work it as a "crime scene" - like a liquor-store hold-up in Cleveland. It doesnât address the problem. Sure, there are millions of disaffected young Muslim men, but, if they get the urge to blow up infidels, they need training and organisation. Somehow all those British Taliban knew that if you wanted a quick course in jihad studies Afghanistan was the place to go. Bush got it right: go to where the terrorists are, overthrow their sponsoring regimes, destroy their camps, kill their leaders. Instead, all the Islamists who went to Afghanistan in the 1990s graduated from Camp Osama and were dispersed throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, where they lurk to this day. Thatâs the Clarke-Clinton legacy. And, if it were mine, I wouldnât be going around boasting about it. Posted by: badanov 2004-03-28 |
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