Linkmeister

What do you know?

Was this just another example of the current Administration's disdain for the policies of the previous one, or an interagency dispute over who could/should do what, or both? It would appear that the Bushies had a few chances to get OBL prior to September 11, but couldn't or wouldn't pull the trigger.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When President Bush took office in January 2001, the White House was told that Predator drones had recently spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader. But the administration failed to get drones back into the Afghan skies until after the Sept. 11 attacks later that year, current and former U.S. officials say.

[snip]

Nearly a dozen current and former senior U.S. officials described to AP the extensive discussions in 2000 and 2001 inside the Clinton and Bush administrations about using an armed Predator to kill bin Laden. Most spoke only on condition of anonymity, citing the classified nature of the information. Two former national security aides also cite some of the discussion inside the Bush White House in a recent book they published on terrorism.

The officials said that within days of President Bush taking office in January 2001, his top terrorism expert on the National Security Council, Richard Clarke, urged National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to resume the drone flights to track down bin Laden, citing the successes of late 2000.

The drones were one component of a broader plan that Clarke, a career government employee, had devised in the final days of the Clinton administration to go after al-Qaida after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Clinton officials decided just before Christmas 2000 to forward the plan to the incoming Bush administration rather than implement it during Clinton's final days, the officials said. (Emphasis added)

Newsweek reported a while back (as did NPR) that Clarke, who was not just "a career government employee" but in fact chair of the Counterterrorism Security Group at NSC, briefed Rice and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card on July 5, 2001, telling them "something spectacular is going to happen." Yet nothing was done.

Now, all of us have taken over a job from somebody in our own work lives; whether you thought your predecessor was an idiot or not, haven't you at least examined what it was that individual was focusing on and tried to determine the importance of that issue? Why then were Clarke's warnings and recommendations ignored? Was the ABC (Anything but Clinton) doctrine firmly in place, making all opinions of those connected to his Administration suspect? I know what I think.