Mr Bush's record as a war leader is looking increasingly tarnished
24 March 2004
President Bush's strongest suit in his re-election campaign was supposed to be his war record. This was not the stint he served in the Texas Air National Guard while his contemporaries fought in Vietnam, but his record as the US commander in chief in the days, months and years after the terrorist strikes of 11 September, 2001, to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Mr Bush's jet-propelled arrival on the deck of the USS Lincoln to pronounce the end of the war was the image meant to define his victorious progress to re-election.
This plan is coming unstuck before our very eyes. The first breach was opened by the energetic Democratic primary campaign of Howard Dean, who dared question the wisdom and conduct of the Iraq war. He spoke to a constituency that had kept quiet until then for fear of being stigmatised as un-American. Into this more questioning climate have come a string of insider claims about the genesis and conduct of the Iraq war, each more damaging than the last to Mr Bush's prowess as war leader.
The latest, and most destructive, of these claims have been made by as well-qualified an accuser as one could find: the former White House terrorism co-ordinator, Richard Clarke. Central to his allegations is the charge that President Bush and those close to him had a fixation with Iraq from the day they took office, and did their utmost to find evidence that Baghdad had a hand in the 11 September atrocities, although none was found. In interviews, Mr Clarke said this preoccupation with Iraq led the administration to ignore the real threat from al-Qa'ida, which had already been blamed for the US embassy bombings in Africa and the attack on USS Cole.
In passing, Mr Clarke suggested that the Bush Administration, starting with the President, had been less assiduous in pursuing demonstrated terrorist threats than had President Clinton. He depicted an administration that manifested a deadly combination of misplaced ideological zeal and managerial drift.
Mr Clarke's accusations were all the more damaging because his is not an isolated voice. His observations chime with those of others who have experience of working with Mr Bush. David Frum, a former White House speech-writer wrote about the President's limited attention span. Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary, spoke of Mr Bush's semi-detached management style and his personal determination to effect "regime-change" in Iraq. The UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, and David Kay, the US expert who led the futile US search for Iraq's weapons after the war, both remarked on the administration's longing to link Iraq to 11 September.
In other words, while Mr Clarke may have mis-remembered individual details and have certain private axes to grind, his allegations ring true. The fierceness of the White House response only underlines their potential to damage the self-styled "war President". Not only have White House officials followed the Clinton campaign strategy of knocking every new allegation smartly on the head. They have taken the additional precaution of questioning Mr Clarke's motives, alluding to possible personal disappointments and slights.
But Mr Clarke is no neophyte; he has service to four presidents behind him. He will know how to defend himself and has the chance to do so today when he testifies to the commission that is investigating the attacks of 11 September. He will also know that none of the evidence given yesterday to the same panel, either by the former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, or by the present incumbent, Colin Powell, seriously discredited anything he has said.
It is too early in the presidential campaign to forecast whether Mr Bush can rescue his carefully cultivated image as war leader in an America still suffering the aftershocks of 11 September. For those of us long sceptical of Mr Bush's leadership qualities, however, everything we are now learning about his approach to war - whether the war in Iraq or the "war on terror" - only strengthens our fears.