Thursday, March 25, 2004

From Romesh Ratnesar's hatchet job on Richard Clarke in Time:

As for the President, Clarke doesn't even try to read Bush's body language; he just makes the encounters up. "I have a disturbing image of him sitting by a warm White House fireplace drawing a dozen red Xs on the faces of the former al-Qaeda corporate board.....while the new clones of al-Qaeda....are recruiting thousands whose names we will never know, whose faces will never be on President Bush's little charts, not until it is again too late."

If you haven't read the book, and you didn't see the 60 Minutes appearance, that image of Bush drawing X's on terrorists' faces sounds like wild, nasty, mean-spirited speculation -- no wonder Ratnesar's pissed!

Except that it's based on something Clarke says he actually experienced. From the book:

President Bush asked us soon after September 11 for cards or charts of the "senior AQ managers," as though dealing with them would be like a Harvard Business School exercise in a hostile takeover. He announced his intentions to measure progress in the war on terrorism by crossing through the pictures of those caught or killed. I have a disturbing image of [Bush] sitting by a warm White House fireplace drawing a dozen red Xs on the faces of the former AQ corporate board....

From 60 Minutes:

He asked us after 9/11 to give him cards with pictures of the major al Qaeda leaders and tell us when they were arrested or killed so he could draw X's through their pictures, and you know, I write in the book, I have this image of George Bush sitting by a warm fireplace in the White House drawing X's through al Qaeda leaders and thinking that he's got most of them...

Nice sleazy edit, Romesh.

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