Molly Ivins: A sad tale of arrogance and ignorance [View All]

[Dudley_DUright]

I'd like to thank Richard Clarke for doing the most obvious, decent and necessary thing this country needed from its government after 9-11, and that is to apologize to the families of those who died in those attacks and to admit: "We failed you. ... I failed you." Thanks to former Sen. Bob Kerrey for underlining it.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda is not necessarily a useful exercise, but the 9-11 commission was given that responsibility -- after the Bush administration made every effort to stop it -- and appears to be doing its best. That some members seem more interested in protecting the Bush administration than in finding out what actually happened is perhaps just the nature of politics, but still disappointing.

Clarke's bottom line, so succinctly stated in response to former Navy Secretary John Lehman, is that the reason he is so critical of President George W. Bush is because he believes the war on Iraq has greatly undermined the war against terrorism. He believes this administration has done "a terrible job" of fighting terrorism. He's certainly critical of the Clinton administration as well, but he seems to find the difference is that the Clinton people took it seriously, while the Bushies came in with an Iraq agenda and didn't want to hear about anything else.

He paints a sad tale of both arrogance and ignorance: repeated warnings by both Clarke and George Tenet apparently made no impression on an administration obsessed with Saddam Hussein.

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http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16659