Surprised- not. Instapundit and Belgravia Dispatch have drawn my attention to a bit of predictable Richard Clarke contradiction. Consistency in public life is not conspicuously evident, but when someone is reported thus:


Clarke emphasized that the C.I.A. director, George Tenet, President Bush, and, before him, President Clinton were all deeply committed to stopping bin Laden; nonetheless, Clarke said, their best efforts had been doomed by bureaucratic clashes, caution, and incessant problems with Pakistan." - New Yorker Aug 4 2003


You don't then expect them to say this just eight months later:


"Frankly," he said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."


Surely in the second Clarke statement the latter comments are driven by the former; 'I find it outrageous' leads to 'he ignored terrorism'. Emotionally rather than intellectually driven, it seems to me.


Meanwhile, reading CNN's account of proceedings at the 9/11 commission, we are treated to a sequence that shows why it's less than 'outrageous' that Bush should see his anti-terrorism record as a campaign plus. All the attacks made by Al Quaeda on US targets occurred during the Clinton years, except for 9/11. In other words, the Bush administration had not one serious 'crunch time' about retaliation, or reassessment of defence priorities, until 9/11. Clinton, with Clarke as a leading figure, had 'the World Trade Center in 1993; the bombing of Khobar Towers, a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia, in 1996; the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.' Five strikes not enough to be considered 'out' in the credibility game?