<div>Counter terrorism expert Richard Clark, a registered Republican in the 2000 election, who worked with President Bush Sr. through the Clinton years, called one of the "hard liners against terrorists," recalls the immediate push on Iraq after 9/11from the W. Bush White House, asserting that Bush "failed to act prior to 9/11on the threat from Al Qaeda," and distorted the intelligence that shed doubt on a Saddam link to Al Qaeda or 9/11. We hear over and over that bad intelligence misled the Bush White House on Iraq, but if Clark is correct, the linking of Iraq to Al Qaeda and 9/11 was deliberately pursued when the best intelligence suggested otherwise. This commentary coming from a such a credible insider to the workings of the Bush White House on the terrorism/Iraq issue is chilling:
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<div><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13607-2004Mar21?language=printer" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13607-2004Mar21?language=printer
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<div>From the Washington Post article at the above web link:</div>
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<p>Although expressing points of disagreement with all four presidents, Clarke reserves by far his strongest language for George W. Bush. The president, he said, "failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from Al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks." The rapid shift of focus to Saddam Hussein, Clarke writes, "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."
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<p>Link to info on Richard Clark:</p></div>
<div><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.greatertalent.com/biography.php?id=618" target="_blank">http://www.greatertalent.com/biography.php?id=618</a></div>
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<div>Ted Moffett</div>