An unconvincing book
Rich Lowry:
"It seems one of the least plausible criticisms of a president who's often portrayed as one of the world's greatest warmongers since Caesar Augustus -- that George Bush has been too weak on the War on Terror. But with the release of former Clinton and Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke's new book, 'Against All Enemies,' Bush critics have, to use a favorite Clarke phrase, 'gone to battle stations' to try to make the charge stick.
"Clarke's book reads like a typical just-out-of-government memoir, a genre usually premised on the idea that if only the author's advice had been heeded, the world would be better off. Clarke adds a dash of tendentious partisanship in insisting that President Clinton was an anti-terror stalwart even though he rejected Clarke's most important ideas, and that Bush was too soft even though he took Clarke's ideas a step further.
...
"After 9/11, Clarke complains about a Bush obsession with Iraq. Clarke says that the president said to him, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' The conspiracy-theorizing about Iraq has thus dwindled down to this: Bush wanted to know whether Iraq was involved in Sept. 11 or not. The alleged obsession with Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 lasted all of six days, as Bush approved targeting Afghanistan on Sept. 17.
"The invasion of Iraq two years later angers Clark most now. On '60 Minutes,' he blamed the Madrid train attacks on the U.S. invasion. Has it slipped his mind that al-Qaida attacked U.S. targets throughout the 1990s and carried out Sept. 11 well before the United States toppled Saddam Hussein? These attacks occurred even though Clinton spent eight years trying to force a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
...
"When they don't argue that Bush is too soft on the War on Terror, the critics argue that he is too tough. In other words, they'll grasp at anything, very much including this weak and unconvincing book."
Rich Lowry:
"It seems one of the least plausible criticisms of a president who's often portrayed as one of the world's greatest warmongers since Caesar Augustus -- that George Bush has been too weak on the War on Terror. But with the release of former Clinton and Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke's new book, 'Against All Enemies,' Bush critics have, to use a favorite Clarke phrase, 'gone to battle stations' to try to make the charge stick.
"Clarke's book reads like a typical just-out-of-government memoir, a genre usually premised on the idea that if only the author's advice had been heeded, the world would be better off. Clarke adds a dash of tendentious partisanship in insisting that President Clinton was an anti-terror stalwart even though he rejected Clarke's most important ideas, and that Bush was too soft even though he took Clarke's ideas a step further.
...
"After 9/11, Clarke complains about a Bush obsession with Iraq. Clarke says that the president said to him, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' The conspiracy-theorizing about Iraq has thus dwindled down to this: Bush wanted to know whether Iraq was involved in Sept. 11 or not. The alleged obsession with Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 lasted all of six days, as Bush approved targeting Afghanistan on Sept. 17.
"The invasion of Iraq two years later angers Clark most now. On '60 Minutes,' he blamed the Madrid train attacks on the U.S. invasion. Has it slipped his mind that al-Qaida attacked U.S. targets throughout the 1990s and carried out Sept. 11 well before the United States toppled Saddam Hussein? These attacks occurred even though Clinton spent eight years trying to force a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
...
"When they don't argue that Bush is too soft on the War on Terror, the critics argue that he is too tough. In other words, they'll grasp at anything, very much including this weak and unconvincing book."
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