Duck, Weave, Spin -- It's Election Time
Clarke, Kerry, and the GOP duke it out like true gentlemen.

With the release of Richard Clarke's new book "Against All Enemies," a political bomb has been dropped, and the casualties are mounting. Clarke's scathing attack on the Bush administration regarding pre- and post-9/11 agendas and actions has naturally sent both conservative and liberal pundits into a spinning fury.
Innumerable liberal editorial pieces were quick to deify Clarke, presenting him as an omniscient and infallible terror guru. This, of course, is not the case. Clarke, a Republican that served under 3 GOP administrations and 1 Democratic administration, led a respectable, if not amazing, career until he was demoted to working with cyber-terrorism under President Bush.
From this position, Clarke alleges that he repeatedly approached senior administration officials regarding al Qaida, but was turned away or ignored. Clark also alleges that Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and Rice all set their sights on Iraq, ignoring the al Qaida threat. Clarke recalls a brief conversation with President Bush in which Bush asks Clarke to re-examine and re-read records, desperately looking for nonexistent connections with Iraq.
Conservative columnists and the Bush administration were quick to launch a slew of distracting ad hominem attacks in Clarke's direction, painting him as a bitter failure, a pawn of Kerry, and more plainly, a liar.
In addition to these delicious attacking spins, Republican supporters and White House spokesman McClellan danced around the issue, claiming ineptitude on the part of the Clinton administration. Further inspection of the issue clearly shows that whether or not the Clinton administration did enough to curb terrorism, it was made clear to Bush early on that al Qaida was a serious threat. If these mouth-breathing pillars of bias would apply their own logic -- that al Qaida was such an obvious threat during the Clinton administration -- to Bush's early presidency, they would see that Bush's continued failure to eliminate al Qaida is even more ridiculous than that of Clinton. In any case, the mistakes of one inept (and impeached) president do not excuse the mistakes of future executive imbiciles.
All else aside, the question of whether or not to believe Mr. Clarke comes down to a question of credibility. Sadly, this is the one thing president Bush (proud sponsor of the developing Medicare scandal and the Iraqi WMD rationale) lacks most. Also adding weight to Clarke's allegations is the example of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was thoroughly smeared and denounced by Bush's aides when he came out in January with similar complaints against the administration. It seems more than a little suspicious that every former administration official who disagrees with the President just happens to be a failure, a liar, and an idiot (at least according to Bush & Company).
In the end, Clarke's book comes amid a growing blaze of Medicare scandal, WMD misleading, and foreign mistrust (see Spain and Poland) that is threatening to become a firestorm. Add to this the backing of Kerry by GOP lawmakers (see link below), and president Bush seems to be looking at an uphill battle this campaign season.

Links (If you haven't already learned to take my word for it)
Liberal Perspectives (and exaggerations)
The GOP Smear Machine
Will we be hearing more from Clarke?
Election-year blame games, and other such nonsense
Conservative "Turncoats" Pat Kerry on the Back
De-spinning all things political