The Loop is the Problem
The lead summary from this evening's uber-insider Nelson Report ...
Clarke Terrorism Charges...White House must head-off before it gets "outside the Beltway"
Summary: the 9/11 Commission has always been a high risk potential for the Bush Administration, hence the very careful limits put on official cooperation. Hearings this week, "bombshell" book by former WH staffer Richard Clarke, have high risk potential to change attitudes "outside The Beltway". Polls consistently show the public still puts "trust" in double digits for Bush over Kerry on terrorism war. So White House reacts quickly, and very very firmly, to anything resembling a credible criticism of Bush...see the deconstruction of ex-Treas. Sec. O'Neill, UN inspector Blix, and now Clarke. The White House's top terrorism expert going back to the Reagan Administration provides anecdotal and eye-witness testimony apparently corroborating many other sources that Iraq was THE fixation, at the expense of all else. VP Cheney's rebuttal that Clark "out of the loop" is confusing, if Clarke was given the terrorism oversight job by NSC chief Rice. This one will bear watching...the polls will tell the tale.
More soon. And later, the gaggles start flowing ... [Talking Points Memo]
It seems to me that Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop" speaks to the very problem being uncovered here, that the Bush administration had its own loop, its own agenda. Clarke should have been in the loop, but was excluded in favor of Wolfowitz's zeal to take down Hussein. And Bush, being lazy or slow, relies far more on his advisors than a president should.
11:26:18 AM 
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