The rank odor of fear hangs over the right wing blog space about Clarke. TLB #1 Blogger - and right wing giant, Instapundit, just plain lies when he links to Oxblog's assertion that the Washington Post is flip flopping

This isn't spin, this isn't a stretcher, it is an outright deceptive post. Oxblog claims that the Washington Post is "flip flopping like John Kerry", when it claims in two articles disagree. The two articles: the first by Eggen and Pincus and the second by by Milbank and Eggen, with Pincus listed as a contributor hammer home the same points. The first is that Clinton didn't do enough to fight terrorism according to Clarke, but held it as a high priority. The second is that Bush followed the same policy, but with far less vigor.

Clarke's 1998 and 2000 proposals were not formally adopted by the Clinton administration, but most of the ideas, except his call for continuous bombings of al Qaeda and Taliban targets, served informally to guide policy. Clarke submitted both proposals, along with a request for short-term actions, to the Bush team on Jan. 25, 2001. The suggestions formed the basis for the Bush strategy that was adopted nearly eight months later.

The commission has concluded, in brief, that the difference between Clinton and Bush is that Bush waited 8 months to approve formally what Clinton had been doing informally. This means the policy is largely the same according to the commission. What is misleading is the headline on the second article - it is missing the qualifying word "policy". Had Oxblog, and Instapundit, said "The Washington Post Headline doesn't agree with their story", they would have been on solid ground.

Moreover, with facts still not in, questioning Clarke's testimony, the Washington Post's analysis or the conclusions of the Commission would certainly have been fair game. Clarke's testimony - as explosive as it is - is not, by any means, a complete picture. Nor is the Washington Post's analysis the last word on that testimony. It is easily conceivable that information rebutting Clarke's claims could come to light.

But this isn't what Oxblog or Instapundit wanted to say. All the more reason to note how Instapundit has repeatedly dodged away from the testimony - or tried to raise non-points about headline writing in a manner which can only be called dishonest. Rather than taking on either article, Oxblog and Instapundit are, instead, content to deliver an ad hominem against Kerry, and run for cover.

Within the two articles there is certainly room for a Republican supporter of Bush to argue his case that Bush's policy on Al Qaeda was a continuity with Clinton's and that therefore any questions about preventing 911 are moot. There is also certainly enough ammunition to argue that Clarke's policies were not practical in key details and were given due study. But Oxblog and Instapundit choose not to make that case, nor do they face the rather hard assertion by both articles that while policy may have been continuous - with Clarke as key advisor to both - the implementation slipped:

From Eggen and Pincus:

Clarke told the commission in testimony yesterday afternoon that whereas the Clinton administration treated terrorism as its highest priority, the Bush administration did not consider it to be an urgent issue before the attacks.

and

Milbank and Eggen:

The findings also put into perspective the criticism of President Bush's approach to terrorism by Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief: For all his harsh complaints about Bush administration's lack of urgency in regard to terrorism, he had no serious quarrel with the actual policy Bush was pursuing before the 2001 attacks.

It is often that the devil is in the details. Not what must be done, but how to do it. Everyone agrees that terrorism must be stopped, but how? No serious person believes that Bush wanted 911 to take place as it did, but was he doing enough to stop it? That is the issue here - was Bush pursuing the policy in place strongly enough, and is his Executive Branch being accurate when it asserts its policy was better. The analysis argues that Clarke's testimony says "No" to the first, and that the 911 Commission has given a preliminary "No" to the second.

And both Oxblog and Instapundit dodge the hard assertion in Milbank and Eggens:

Bush officials have claimed that their al Qaeda strategy took eight months to develop because it was significantly more aggressive and sweeping than the tactics employed by the previous administration. "Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice wrote in an op-ed article published in The Post earlier this week.

This is a hard assertion, it is open to dispute and question - should there be facts, interpolation of facts - or lacunae in evidence - which would allow it. Vigorous public debate requires taking the bull by the horns. For example

Bush officials say that Clarke's 1998 plan and particularly his 2000 proposal were not actual Clinton policies and included many wish-list items that the Bush administration was turning into actual policy. They say the strategy assembled by the Bush administration moved more quickly to arm the Predator and included plans to thwart terrorist financing and to counter al Qaeda propaganda with public diplomacy.

If true, this would be a partial defense, but was it? Did the timeline allow for this? Can Clarke refute this in his testimony? Can Rice corroborate it under oath?

All important questions, certainly more important for 80,000 readers to be getting than meme insertion that the Washington Post, and Milbank, Eggens and Pincus - are being unreliable or inconsistent.

Now of course, I could be too clever by half and say that since John Kerry doesn't flip flop, that therefore Oxblog means that both accounts are consistent. But, it seems evident that we know that Oxlblog always says what is intended about John Kerry, and it is usually something nasty.

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