Doug,

To pick up from the other thread,

…the memo IS addressed to Condi, and deals almost exclusively with “Al-Qida” and also it loudly declares some operational types of decisions that would need to be made, without support. Perhaps the support was in the two tabs, perhaps the support would come out of the proposals and papers the memo requested the principals get together to ask for.

“How could this statement be justified?

““No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration.”“

The memo did not propose a plan, but shared thoughts about a future whose future emphasis on Al Qaeda Clark rightly felt he needed to help shape. Where is the plan in the memo, the closest thing to a plan was making a decision about funding the Northern Alliance for the Spring campaign against the Taliban, and whether or not to continue to fund the folks whose information on Ben Ladin’s whereabouts were ignored, not used or had plans aborted.

In hindsight the one compelling statement from the memo is the one made in reference to the Cole, calling the response to the October 12th bombing a “complex decision”, which should be responded to “at a time, place and manner of our own choosing”, and “not be forced into knee jerk responses.”

Were I the NSC, I would have asked for details of humint, and contacts with the NA. I would have been frustrated by the lack of humint and the lack of a mission statement from which to proceed. I would have placed on the back burner anything till such contacts and statements were ready for prime time.

From what we learned after 9/11, I think I would still be waiting. Yet the need to fault someone for a decision that could only be considered criminal if the context was after the fact of 9/11. Most of the Bush team had not even been given their office keys, nor finished cleaning up the mess in those offices left from the previous tenants. And you want to call deferring to a later date consideration of items that Mr. Clarke was not even prepared to present(if the memo is to be believed) much less defend?

Why is this even an issue?