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Richard asks why we had success during the Cold War. And why we have had failure after failure in the past ten years.

First and foremost. We took our enemy in the cold war seriously. We saw it for what it was – Us or Them. We had brilliant people like Richard Bissell, Allen Dulles, William Colby who believed that our society had to survive, even if it meant running a coup in Iran, to prevent the Soviets from gaining a foothold in the middle east. Today we have airheads like Clark and Valerie Plame watching our backs. Leaders like Bill Clinton who are more worried about world opinion than the safety and security of the American people.

Michael Schuer (CIA officer in charge of capturing bin Laden) recounts that on one occasion they not only knew where bin Laden was, they knew what building he was in, what room he was in, and what chair he was sitting in. Clinton didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger. You know darn well that FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, Ford, Regan, or either of the Bush’s would have given the go ahead. A trillion dollar defense is useless, if you have a President who is too weak kneed to use it. I think a whole lot of people around the world (even those who denounce our Cowboy diplomacy) are secretly praying President Bush will take out Iran’s nukes before he leaves office. Because McCain is going to lose and the other two don’t have the guts.

(14) soemthing to add to the discussion - Yes, if he was honest about it, we could learn from his failure. But all we get is finger pointing and blame "the system" alibis. If you want an honest examination of why and how we were attacked read some of Michael Schueur's books.

when did we previously go 8 years?

72-80? - numerous kidnappings, attacks on embassies and diplomats, Iranian Hostage Crisis

80-88? Bombing of Marine base in Lebanon, embassy and night-club bombing, hostages, assasination of diplomats

88-96? - 1st Trade Center attack, embassy attacks,

96-2000 - Embassy bombing, USS Cole attacks, Saddam firing at our planes patroling the no-fly zone.

Seems to me giving Bush credit for there not being more attacks is pushing it. Could be luck. Could be coincidence. We went 8 years before, maybe we're due in '09.

Raymond
so i guess he has nothing to add to the discussion then

Refresh my memory Hjs - How many attacks occured under Richard Clarke when he was Cheif Counter-Terrorism Advisor? If he had done his job there would never have been a 9-11.

Bush has made his mistakes, but it's been nearly 7 years and we have not been attacked. So if that is incompetent I will take it. vs. Monday Morning Quaterback Clarke who couldn't keep us safe when he was in office, but he's the big expert since he retired.

He should take his phoney apology that he gave in front of the 9-11 commission and shove it up his ***.

what's with the abrupt cut off? very suspicious!

Raymond,
don't discount bush's incompetence.

Taher,
iraqis might not have minded so much if we had kept the streets safe, which we did not or if we had left quickly, we did not.

Haven't we heard enough from this two-bit phoney. If Richard A Clarke had done his job their wouldn't have been a second WTC attack on 9-11. Now he is the big expert on security. The heads of all our security agencies should have been rounded up and thrown in jail for their derilliction of duty and incompetence. Instead they are making millions from publishers and doing the talk show circuit.

Sorry, the blackout was '03, not '04. The title is "Power Outage Traced to Dim Bulb in the White House."
http:www.commondreams.org/views03/0815-07.htm

Here is Dennis Kucinich's telling of his encounter with these guys.

http://lessig.org/blog/2003/08/lights_out_on_
deregulation.html

Richard Clark must in out of space or he is simply delusional. An adequate large enough force argument is totally ludicrous. No people like to be occupied. You can not have a large enough force to keep down a population by an occupier who’s aim to colonize and to rape resources.

The force argument comes from those who have no understanding of nor know contemporary Iraqi history. I recommended Mr. Clark read “ Defeat” by Jonathan steele.

does anyone think the CIA just killed clarke?

Leonard, I love the fact that you and Brian continue to have these high quality guests on to tell us how the US government hoodwinked the majority of Americans into support the war in Iraq. However, when will action be taken to prosecute members of the Bush Administration for their actions?

Clarke always trying to shock unitedstaters awake but no one hears him.

Cindy B,
Are you talking about the blackout of '04? Look up "Blackout Traced to Dim Bulb in the White House." It gives you a good timeline.

Can you ask him about the "black out" we had a couple years ago?

This seems to have been buried by everyone but it happened and it seemed like a HUGE breach of national security.

I heard a stunning statistic recently that something like 90% of the money the US spends on intelligence goes to private contractors. (I believe this was 90% of $40 Billion.) Could this be true? And is it not improper, is not this a core government function?