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| Home Front: Politix |
| Wolfowitz vs. Clarke |
| 2004-03-24 |
| Very EFL but here are the good bits... WOLFOWITZ: By September, we said the goal is to eliminate Afghanistan as a sanctuary for Al Qaida, much more ambitious thing. With respect to Mr. Clark and let me say, I haven’t read the book yet. I was called by a reporter on the weekend with a quote from the book attributed to me. I tried to get the book. It wasn’t available in book stores. It was only available to selected reporters. And I got it yesterday, but I did not have time to read it in the last 24 hours. I’ll get to it at some point. But with respect to the quote that the reporter presented as having been put in my mouth, which was an objection to Mr. Clark suggesting that ignoring the rhetoric of Al Qaida would be like ignoring Hitler’s rhetoric in "Mein Kampf," I can’t recall ever saying anything remotely like that. I don’t believe I could have. In fact, I frequently have said something more nearly the opposite of what Clark attributes to me. I’ve often used that precise analogy of Hitler and "Mein Kampf" as a reason why we should take threatening rhetoric seriously, particularly in the case of terrorism and Saddam Hussein. So I am generally critical of the tendency to dismiss threats as simply rhetoric. And I know that the quote Clark attributed to me does not represent my views then or now. And that meeting was a long meeting about seven different subjects, all of them basically related to Al Qaida and Afghanistan. By the way, I know of at least one other instance of Mr. Clark’s creative memory. Shortly after September 11th, as part of his assertion that he had vigorously pursued the possibility of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he wrote in a memo that, and I am quoting here, "When the bombing happened, he focused on Iraq as the possible culprit because of Iraqi involvement in the attempted assassination of President Bush in Kuwait the same month," unquote. WOLFOWITZ: In fact, the attempted assassination of President Bush happened two months later. It just seems to be another instance where Mr. Clarke’s memory is playing tricks... |
| Posted by:CrazyFool |