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She states that terrorism was an urgent priority then Bradley list
1. General Hugh Shelton
2. Richard Clarke
3. Paul O'niel and for the coup-de-gras
4. THE President himself.
All stating that terrorism wasn't and urgent or top priority.
LMAO!!!
(Let the games begin!)
BRADLEY: Let's move on. Clarke has alleged that the Bush administration underestimated the threat from al Qaeda, didn't act as if terrorism was an imminent and urgent problem. Was it?
RICE: Of course it was an urgent problem. I would like very much to know what more could have been done, given that it was an urgent problem. We were every day talking with George Tenet and with the CIA about disruption activities, particularly in that period between June and July. The DCI and I met practically every couple of weeks to review where we were on getting various elements done. We had a list of ideas that Dick Clarke and his team gave us: accelerate the efforts to arm the Predator. We did that -- the Predator being the spy drone that could also fire. We put additional funding into counterterrorism for the intelligence activities that we were pursuing. We increased counterterrorism assistance to the Uzbeks, one of our key allies in the war on terrorism. We worked to get more people involved in countering terrorist financing.
We were looking for a more comprehensive plan to eliminate al Qaeda, but we weren't sitting still while that plan was developing. We were continuing to pursue the policies that the Clinton administration had pursued.
BRADLEY: But even the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, has said that the Bush administration pushed terrorism -- and I'm quoting here -- "farther to the back burner."
RICE: I just don't agree. We did have a lot of -- a lot of priorities. We did have to build a new relationship with Russia and a new relationship with China. It's a good thing that we did with Russia, because, after all, our ability to function in Central Asia was very much dependent on that good relationship with Russia. Yes, we had issues -- you may remember in the early days -- with the Chinese having forced down one of our planes. Yes, there were other issues. But terrorism was considered important enough and urgent enough that the President had sessions with George Tenet 46 times on that issue; that George Tenet and the rest of us were told to develop a strategy that would not just swat flies.
I don't know, Ed, how, after coming into office, inheriting policies that had been in place for at least three of the eight years of the Clinton administration, we could have done more than to continue those policies while we developed more robust policies.
BRADLEY: After 9/11, Bob Woodward wrote a book, in which he had incredible access and interviewed the President of the United States. He quotes President Bush as saying that he didn't feel a sense of urgency about Osama bin Laden. Woodward wrote that "bin Laden was not the President's focus or that of his national security team." You're saying that the administration says fighting terrorism and al Qaeda has been a top priority since the beginning.
RICE: I'm saying that the administration took seriously the threat -- let's talk about what we did, which demonstrates...
BRADLEY: I understand, but you've listed...
RICE: -- which demonstrates that we took this as a priority.
BRADLEY: You've listed the things that you've done, but here is the perception: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time says you've pushed it to the back burner; the former Secretary of the Treasury says it was not a priority; Mr. Clarke says it was not a priority. And, at least according to Bob Woodward, who talked with the President, he is saying that for the President it wasn't urgent, he didn't have a sense of urgency about al Qaeda. That's the perception here.
RICE: Ed, I don't know what a sense of urgency, any greater than the one we had, would have caused us to do differently. We weren't going to invade Afghanistan in the first months of the Bush administration. Dick Clarke, himself, said that if the strategy that we were pursuing, that we were developing, had been completed on January 27th, it would not have stopped 9/11. What we were trying to do was to put together a strategy that might finally, over a period of time, actually eliminate al Qaeda.
Now, the Clinton administration, for a period of eight years, very intensively after the bombing attacks of 1998, worked on this problem and they were not able to eliminate al Qaeda or even to hurt al Qaeda enough that they didn't continue to launch attacks. The fact is that what we needed to do was to get a more comprehensive way to deal with this threat.
In the meantime, we continued to work under all of the authorities that were there during the Clinton administration, we continued to work under the policy that they had been pursuing, we continued to pursue al Qaeda under the old strategy. But we felt that the priority should be given to getting a new, more comprehensive way to address this threat.
1. General Hugh Shelton
2. Richard Clarke
3. Paul O'niel and for the coup-de-gras
4. THE President himself.
All stating that terrorism wasn't and urgent or top priority.
LMAO!!!
(Let the games begin!)
BRADLEY: Let's move on. Clarke has alleged that the Bush administration underestimated the threat from al Qaeda, didn't act as if terrorism was an imminent and urgent problem. Was it?
RICE: Of course it was an urgent problem. I would like very much to know what more could have been done, given that it was an urgent problem. We were every day talking with George Tenet and with the CIA about disruption activities, particularly in that period between June and July. The DCI and I met practically every couple of weeks to review where we were on getting various elements done. We had a list of ideas that Dick Clarke and his team gave us: accelerate the efforts to arm the Predator. We did that -- the Predator being the spy drone that could also fire. We put additional funding into counterterrorism for the intelligence activities that we were pursuing. We increased counterterrorism assistance to the Uzbeks, one of our key allies in the war on terrorism. We worked to get more people involved in countering terrorist financing.
We were looking for a more comprehensive plan to eliminate al Qaeda, but we weren't sitting still while that plan was developing. We were continuing to pursue the policies that the Clinton administration had pursued.
BRADLEY: But even the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, has said that the Bush administration pushed terrorism -- and I'm quoting here -- "farther to the back burner."
RICE: I just don't agree. We did have a lot of -- a lot of priorities. We did have to build a new relationship with Russia and a new relationship with China. It's a good thing that we did with Russia, because, after all, our ability to function in Central Asia was very much dependent on that good relationship with Russia. Yes, we had issues -- you may remember in the early days -- with the Chinese having forced down one of our planes. Yes, there were other issues. But terrorism was considered important enough and urgent enough that the President had sessions with George Tenet 46 times on that issue; that George Tenet and the rest of us were told to develop a strategy that would not just swat flies.
I don't know, Ed, how, after coming into office, inheriting policies that had been in place for at least three of the eight years of the Clinton administration, we could have done more than to continue those policies while we developed more robust policies.
BRADLEY: After 9/11, Bob Woodward wrote a book, in which he had incredible access and interviewed the President of the United States. He quotes President Bush as saying that he didn't feel a sense of urgency about Osama bin Laden. Woodward wrote that "bin Laden was not the President's focus or that of his national security team." You're saying that the administration says fighting terrorism and al Qaeda has been a top priority since the beginning.
RICE: I'm saying that the administration took seriously the threat -- let's talk about what we did, which demonstrates...
BRADLEY: I understand, but you've listed...
RICE: -- which demonstrates that we took this as a priority.
BRADLEY: You've listed the things that you've done, but here is the perception: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time says you've pushed it to the back burner; the former Secretary of the Treasury says it was not a priority; Mr. Clarke says it was not a priority. And, at least according to Bob Woodward, who talked with the President, he is saying that for the President it wasn't urgent, he didn't have a sense of urgency about al Qaeda. That's the perception here.
RICE: Ed, I don't know what a sense of urgency, any greater than the one we had, would have caused us to do differently. We weren't going to invade Afghanistan in the first months of the Bush administration. Dick Clarke, himself, said that if the strategy that we were pursuing, that we were developing, had been completed on January 27th, it would not have stopped 9/11. What we were trying to do was to put together a strategy that might finally, over a period of time, actually eliminate al Qaeda.
Now, the Clinton administration, for a period of eight years, very intensively after the bombing attacks of 1998, worked on this problem and they were not able to eliminate al Qaeda or even to hurt al Qaeda enough that they didn't continue to launch attacks. The fact is that what we needed to do was to get a more comprehensive way to deal with this threat.
In the meantime, we continued to work under all of the authorities that were there during the Clinton administration, we continued to work under the policy that they had been pursuing, we continued to pursue al Qaeda under the old strategy. But we felt that the priority should be given to getting a new, more comprehensive way to address this threat.
