Clarke is pushing back, like so many other insiders, against Dick Cheney's attempt to falsify history. Clarke specifically is challenging both Cheney and Condi Rice for their recent defense of their actions with what Clarke calls "the White House trauma defense."
"Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans," Condoleezza Rice said last month as she admonished a Stanford University student who questioned the Bush-era interrogation program. And in his May 21 speech on national security, Dick Cheney called the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a "defining" experience that "caused everyone to take a serious second look" at the threats to America. Critics of the administration have become more intense as memories of the attacks have faded, he argued. "Part of our responsibility, as we saw it," Cheney said, "was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America."Clarke concludes:
Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- but it was because they had not listened. And their surprise led them to adopt extreme counterterrorism techniques -- but it was because they rejected, without analysis, the tactics the Clinton administration had used. The measures they uncritically adopted, which they simply assumed were the best available, were in fact unnecessary and counterproductive. "I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities," Cheney said in his recent speech. But this defense does not stand up. The Bush administration's response actually undermined the principles and values America has always stood for in the world, values that should have survived this traumatic event. The White House thought that 9/11 changed everything. It may have changed many things, but it did not change the Constitution, which the vice president, the national security adviser and all of us who were in the White House that tragic day had pledged to protect and preserve.So, in the last week alone: (1) Carl Levin has said he read the same secret reports as Cheney and they do not prove that torture worked; (2) General David Petraeus has said he opposes the use of torture and, yes, we did violate the Geneva Conventions; (3) a former FBI interrogator, Ali Soufan, says he got the most useful information using relationship-building techniques and that, when the CIA contract interrogators took over and used torture, detainees stopped talking or else just made up stuff; he even suggests that it may have prevented them from learning the whereabouts of bin Laden; (4) Colin Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, says that the night Powell made his speech to the UN, justifying invading Iraq, he (Wilkerson) wrote a letter of resignation, and that it was "the lowest point in my professional and my personal life." He says he will forever regret that he did not submit the letter; (5) former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who formerly ran the unit in charge of capturing Osama bin Laden, said the administration's lawyers (who justified torture) should be disbarred but he does not favor criminal charges against "lonely, paranoid, frightened Dick Cheney." And he added, "I think Mr. Cheney is a despicable, reptilian person."
Well, Scheuer is described as "outspoken," but I also agree with him.
Even if we never get the official investigation, Cheney's attempt to write history his way is not going to work. Every one of these people (Clarke, Levin, Petraeus, Soufan, Wilkerson, and Scheuer) was there when it happened. They are speaking from personal knowledge and, often, out of their frustration in trying to get the neocons to listen to them.
Ralph
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