Kaplan on Clarke
So, I caught most of Richard Clarke’s testimony before the 9/11 commission today. That guy is so credible, it’s not even funny. Everything the Republican members of the commission tried to use to pick him apart, he just demolished.
I can’t overstate the significance of this factor, too: Everyone else I saw testify before the commission over the last two days went to great lengths to insulate themselves, or their bosses, from criticism; talking about what a fabulous job they’d done, how the attacks were completely unpredictable, and so on. Clarke got up there and said to the families of the victims, I’m sorry. I failed you.
Credibility.
Anyway, here’s some more good stuff, pre-testimony, from Slate’s Fred Kaplan: Dick Clarke is telling the truth.
Update: More Kaplan on Clark: Richard Clarke KOs the Bushies. Which is pretty much how I saw it, too.
March 25th, 2004 at 5:37 am
You were obviously far more impressed with Clark than I was. He seemed to me like the pitcher for two losing teams trying to make himself look better by boosting team one over team two. Other than his criticism of Bush, what does Clark offer anybody but eight years of failure and a new book to sell?
Sure, Bush comes out of these hearings looking bad, but who, exactly, comes out looking good? Certainly not Clark, or anyone else involved in the Clinton administration. How can Clark chide someone else for dropping a ball he couldn’t carry in the first place?
Rush Limbaugh can tell his half of the truth, and you can tell yours, but the whole truth casts no one in a particularly flattering light.