Op-Ed News: Why are we in Iraq? Stupidity? Bad Judgement, Lies? Deceptions?

Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief to President Bush, has released new information on how the Bush White House failed to heed the warnings of national security officials, were slow to act on these warnings, were quick to blame Iraq and were unable to make the long sought after connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Independent: Rumsfeld 'wanted to bomb Iraq' after 9/11


Did you know?

Could the devastation of September 11 been diminished in any degree had the government’s information been made public in the summer of 2001?

On July 5th, the government’s top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke stated to a group gathered at the White House, “Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon.”

The group included the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the INS. Clarke directed every counter-terrorist office to cancel vacations, defer non-vital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid response teams on much shorter alert.

“Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something.”

--Richard Clarke [Sunday Herald]

Newsday: 100,000 at NYC rally as protests gather nationwide


AP photo-NYC 3-20-04

In the early afternoon, [Mayor] Bloomberg estimated the crowd at about 30,000. But organizers said later that number had grown to more than 100,000 people, stretching for more than a dozen blocks through Manhattan.

One year on, and still the hard core march the world over. [Independent UK]


See a wonderful summary of the day's events in New York at Hanging Out With the Duchess