Now & Then

Richard Clarke then:

And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, mid-January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we’ve now made public to some extent.

And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.

So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.

Richard Clarke now:

Richard Clarke said on “60 Minutes” last night that (a) Bush ignored al Qaeda from January to early September 2001, despite being warned a major attack on the U.S. was imminent.

Will the real Richard Clarke please stand up?

UPDATE: Went over to the Instaman, only to find he’d posted damn near the exact same thing two hours ago. Some days, you just can’t win. Then again, everybody is going to be on this story today.