{"id":843,"date":"2004-04-07T22:21:41","date_gmt":"2004-04-08T02:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/04\/heading_toward_the_exits\/"},"modified":"2004-04-07T22:21:41","modified_gmt":"2004-04-08T02:21:41","slug":"heading_toward_the_exits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/04\/heading_toward_the_exits\/","title":{"rendered":"Heading Toward the Exits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=FD0FCCUTFBPSYCRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&#038;storyID=4778460\">Take this<\/a>, Richard Clarke:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism.<br \/>\nFormer counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1\/2 years since the attacks.<br \/>\nSome also left because they felt President Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the &#8220;war on terror,&#8221; former counterterrorism officials said.<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;m kind of hoping for regime change,&#8221; one official who quit told Reuters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve not read Richard Clarke&#8217;s book, but I&#8217;ve seen him on TV quite a bit.  Undoubtedly his own biases have shaded some of his views, particularly the subjective commentary (e.g., Rice appearing as if she&#8217;d never heard of al Qaeda before).  But almost all of the reporting since Clarke came out has substantiated his thesis on counterterrorism and the war in Iraq.  No, terrorism wasn&#8217;t a high Bush priority prior to 9\/11, and yes, Iraq has been a diversion from fighting al Qaeda.  It turns out that all the foot soldiers who came out to discredit Clarke a couple weeks ago are, uh, being discredited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/04\/heading_toward_the_exits\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Heading Toward the Exits\"><p>Take this, Richard Clarke: Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism. Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}