Dick Clarke's Rockin' New Year's Eve

So, let me get this straight. Team Bush and its puppets in Congress claim Richard Clarke is lying now because he didn't criticize the Bush administration's handling of 9/11 while he was still working in the White House [cf]. Why didn't he speak up in the months following 9/11, they charge.

Are these people nuts? They really think that Clarke would have spoken out THEN against the people signing his paychecks? After 9/11, he was working for the White House and the President. It was his job to toe the party line in public, regardless of what he may have said or done behind closed doors. This Republican argument, like nearly every other Republican argument, is plenty of hot air but no substance.

Clarke's response, as written up on Alternet.org, was this:

Asked by Fielding whether he lied during the briefing, Clarke seemed bemused. "I tried," he said, "to highlight the positive and downplay the negative." Asked whether that undermined his integrity, Clarke said: "I don't think of it as a question of integrity. I think it's a question of politics." As the spokesman for the White House, he said, he represented the administration's point of view, and ably so -- without lying.

Let the attacks on Richard Clarke continue! Let Condi Rice and the rest of Bush's jackanapes go hog wild on Fox News [cf]. I believe Richard Clarke will stand up to the ridicule and criticism with dignity, and that his attackers will be the ones defeated by the fray.