Condi Rice, etc respond to Clarke’s criticisms

There’s an op/ed piece in today’s Washington Post written by Condi Rice that, in effect, responds to the criticisms that Richard Clark made last night on 60 Minutes. Granted, it’s written by someone who has to defend her (and others) actions during their tenures in the Bush WH, but it’s a pretty effective piece. Condi also made the rounds this morning on the morning shows and Fox probably gave her the most significant amount of time, even running over their “top of the hour” news breaks to keep her on as she was talking. She did a great job (without insulting or belittling Clarke) discussing what was done before 9-11 towards the Al Qaeda threat, and what’s been done since then.

Mansoor Ijaz was on Fox about half an hour later and he had some blistering comments about some of Clarke’s statements, saying that some of what he said bordered on “outright fabrication” and that the American people “deserved a response” to some of his statments which, in his words, had very little basis – if any – in fact. I think this guy’s credibility is going to be a problem for the Kerry campaign, which is going to use him in their own way to try to paint the administration as not being focused from the start on handling the threats posed by Al Qaeda. If I have the time later this week, I’m going to see if I can find a transcript of Clarke’s comments and do a little ‘response’ of my own to them. I have done some extensive reading on the threat posed by Al Qaeda to this country, starting back to the early 1990’s – in terms of how the threat from them was handled and in many cases was outright ignored by Clinton administration officials. There are some things Clarke said which don’t quite ‘jive’ if you catch my meaning.