Clarke part XLIII
The Economist

The April 3-9 Economist is strongly critical of Bush and generally supportive of Clarke.

The Economist has one of their average quality for them (absolutely outstanding) articles on Bush's lack of credibility.
The Clarke case is just one example. In the article hammering Bush they do include four criticisms of Clarke.
I think each criticism is wholly without merit.

"It has to be conceded that the administration's attacks are not made up from scratch.
1) Mr Clarke had previously lauded the Bush administrations anti-terror policies in off-the-record briefings, something he now dismisses as "a question of politics".
2) His accounts of the episode in which Mr Bush urged him, the day after the al Qaeda attacks, to look into possible Iraqi connections vary a little: sometimes he describes Mr Bush's manner as intimidating, sometimes not.
3) The White House has claimed that, just before the invasion of Iraq, Mr Clarke met Ms Rice but did not raise his worries that such an action would harm the war on terror. ....
4) he implied that Ms Rice had never heard of al-Qaeda before he briefed her in her early days in office, wearas in fact she had given speeches about the threat of al Qaeda long before."

(my numbers)

Let's go down the list

1) The economist is referring to *one* briefing in August 2002 as "briefingS". The main assertion in the briefing was that the Clinton administration had not, as claimed by Time magazine, presented the Bush administration with a plan to destroy al Qaeda. In his book, testimoney and interviews, Clarke has not changed his line on this point at all. His claim that Time was wrong is confirmed by Sandy Berger. Other points in the briefing refer to post 9/11 funding increases. The briefing is entirely consistent with his book, testimony and interviews, although the emphasis is obviously different. At the time of the backgrounder he was a White House employee and, like all White House employees, spinning.

I can't resist a bit of nit Picklering -- the Economist neglected to mention how often background briefings are taken off background (has it happened before?) and that Fox News broke a basic rule of journalism.


2) The account (in the book page 32) in which Clarke does "not" descriobe Bush's manner as intimidating concludes as follows"' Look into Iraq, Saddam,' the President said testily and left us"
Come on Mr Economist, this is the President. He doesn't have to pull a knife to intimidate people. "The President is not happy" means about the same thing as "your career is over". It is perfectly reasonable to describe the President speaking testily and leaving abruptly as intimidating.

Some nit picking. It seems to me that if The Economist says that Clarke's accounts "vary a little" they really should quote the varying accounts so the reader can judge. In my view, if they don't have space to quote Clarke's accounts, they don't have space to say his accounts vary.

3) "The White House has claimed ..." that Bush was not in the situation room ever on September 12 2001 and many other things which they now admit are false. I don't see how a claim unsupported by any documents or witnesses can force anything to be "conceded" in an thoroughly documented article about how much the Bush administration lies.

4) The assertion
"he implied that Ms Rice had never heard of al-Qaeda before he briefed her in her early days in office"
should have been a quote from the book
"he writes 'as I briefed Rice on al Qaeda, her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before'"

I am sure that space restrictions are very tight at the economist, but their paraphrase is 101 characters long (including spaces) and the quotation would have been 128 characters long (including the quotation marks and "he writes").
They saved 27 characters by deleting, among other things, the fact that Clarke was describing his impression not something he claimed was a demonstrable fact.

More importantly, to save space, the Economist deleted the words "the term". This is fundamental. Clarke does not claim (or admit) that he had the impression that Condoleezza Rice had not heard of al Qaeda. He claims he had the impression that she had never heard "al Qaeda". Since he went on to explain the term using the name "Osama bin laden" he clearly assumed she was familiar with that name. Rices "speaches about the threat of al Qaeda" include the name Osama bin Laden but not the term "al Qaeda". It is amazing that The Economists ultra literate correspondent is capable of confusing familiarity with an Arabic term and knowledge of the existence of the organization named by that term. It is unacceptable misconduct for The Economist to save space by deleting the words "the term" when paraphrasing.

Now Clarke may have been mistaken, impressions based on facial expressions are unrealiable. Rice may have let him explain "al Qaeda" to her from politeness. However, the claim that it can be demonstrated that she was familiar with the term is nonsense. It is impossible to know if she heard it, read it or said it in private, but it is possible to check if she had ever spoken the term in public or written it. The fact that intensive effort to prove that Clarke's impression was incorrect has turned up Rice's use of the name "Osama bin Laden" but not of the term "al Qaeda" before her briefing, should have been noted.

To recap -- Clarke wrote that he had an impression about Rice's familiarity with *the term* "al Qaeda". The fact that she had talked about the organisation indirectly, using the namae "Osama bin Laden" to identify it, does not prove she was familiar with *the term*"al Qaeda". By now, all semi informed people know what al Qaeda is, but January 2001 was, in this respect, an eon ago.

I would expect Matthew Yglesias to go nuts over this since the difference between Plato who had two legs and no vowels and "Plato" which has two vowels and no legs is one of his things.

I think The Economist feels the need to include some "balance". The problem is that they balance their devastating criticism of Bush with a bit of nonsensical and/or dishonest criticism of Clarke.