Chair-Warmer
On The Hot Seat
March
24, 2004
ARE YOU
sitting down? Another ex-government official who was fired or demoted
by Bush has written a book that ... is critical of Bush! Eureka!
The latest offering is Richard Clarke's new CBS-Viacom book, "Against
All Enemies," which gets only a 35 on "rate
a record" because the words don't make sense and you can't
dance to it.
As long as
we're investigating everything, how about investigating why some
loser no one has ever heard of is getting so much press coverage
for yet another "tell-all" book attacking the Bush administration?
When an FBI
agent with close, regular contact with President Clinton wrote his
book, he was virtually blacklisted from the mainstream media. Upon
the release of Gary Aldrich's book "Unlimited
Access" in 1996, White House adviser George Stephanopoulos
immediately called TV producers demanding that they give Aldrich
no airtime. In terms of TV exposure, Aldrich's book might well have
been titled "No Access Whatsoever."
"Larry
King Live" and NBC's "Dateline" abruptly canceled
their scheduled interviews with Aldrich. Aldrich was mentioned on
fewer than a dozen TV shows during the entire year of his book's
release -- many with headlines like this one on CNN: "Even
Conservatives Back Away From Aldrich's Book." That's almost
as much TV as Lewinsky mouthpiece William Ginsburg did before breakfast
on an average day. (Let's take a moment here to imagine the indignity
of being known as "Monica Lewinsky's mouthpiece.")
But a "tell-all"
book that attacks the Bush administration gets the author interviewed
on CBS' "60 Minutes" (two segments), CNN's "American
Morning" and ABC's "Good Morning America" -
with an "analysis" by George Stephanopoulos, no less.
In the first few days of its release, Clarke's book was hyped on
more than 200 TV shows.
In contrast
to Aldrich's book, which was vindicated with a whoop just a few
years later when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, many of Clarke's
allegations were disproved within days of the book's release. Clarke
claims, for example, that in early 2001, when he told President
Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about al-Qaida,
her "facial expression gave me the impression that she had
never heard the term before." (If only she used botox like
Sen. Kerry!)
Sean Hannity
has been playing a radio interview that Dr. Rice gave to David Newman
on WJR in Detroit back in October 2000, in which she discusses al-Qaida
in great detail. This was months before chair-warmer Clarke claims
her "facial expression" indicated she had never heard
of the terrorist organization.
But in deference
to our liberal friends, let's leave aside the facts for now. A few
months before Clarke was interpreting Dr. Rice's "facial expression,"
al-Qaida had bombed the USS Cole. Two years before that, al-Qaida
bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In fact, al-Qaida or
their allies had been responsible for a half dozen attacks on U.S.
interests since Clinton had become president. (Paper-pusher Clarke
was doing one heck of a job, wasn't he?) In the year 2000 alone,
Lexis-Nexis lists 280 items mentioning al-Qaida.
By the end
of 2000, anyone who read the paper had heard of al-Qaida. It is
literally insane to imagine that Condoleezza Rice had not. For Pete's
sake, even The New York Times knew about al-Qaida.
Rice had been
a political science professor at Stanford University, a member of
the Center for International Security and Arms Control, and a senior
fellow of the Institute for International Studies. She had written
three books and numerous articles on foreign policy. She worked
for the first Bush administration in a variety of national security
positions.
All this was
while Clarke was presiding over six unanswered al-Qaida attacks
on American interests and fretting about the looming Y2K emergency.
But chair-warmer Clarke claims that on the basis of Rice's "facial
expression" he could tell she was not familiar with the term
"al-Qaida."
Isn't that
just like a liberal? The chair-warmer describes Bush as a cowboy
and Rumsfeld as his gunslinger -- but the black chick is a dummy.
Maybe even as dumb as Clarence Thomas! Perhaps someday liberals
could map out the relative intelligence of various black government
officials for us.
Did Clarke
have the vaguest notion of Rice's background and education? Or did
he think Dr. Rice was cleaning the Old Executive Office Building
at night before the president chose her -- not him -- to be national
security adviser? If a Republican ever claimed the "facial
expression" on Maxine Waters -- a woman whose face is no stranger
to confusion or befuddlement -- left the "impression"
that she didn't understand quantum physics, he'd be in prison for
committing a hate crime.
As we know
from Dr. Rice's radio interview describing the threat of al-Qaida
back in October 2000, she certainly didn't need to be told about
al-Qaida by a government time-server. No doubt Dr. Rice was staring
at Clarke in astonishment as he imparted this great insight: Keep
an eye on al-Qaida! We've done nothing, but you should do something
about it. Tag -- you're it. That look of perplexity Clarke saw
was Condi thinking to herself: "Hmmm, did I demote this guy
far enough?"
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