..I was going to find his fiction since there he can say the truth
without the NSA and CIA editing his stuff. In the process I found a
lot of stuff I missed...I am sure you will want to read if you care
about your country.....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/29/AR2006122901238....
While You Were at War . . .

By Richard A. Clarke
Sunday, December 31, 2006; Page B01

In every administration, there are usually only about a dozen barons
who can really initiate and manage meaningful changes in national
security policy. For most of 2006, some of these critical slots in the
Bush administration have been vacant, such as the deputy secretary of
state (empty since Robert B. Zoellick left for investment bank Goldman
Sachs) and the deputy director of national intelligence (with Gen.
Michael V. Hayden now CIA director). And with the nation involved in a
messy war spiraling toward a bad conclusion, the key deputies and
Cabinet members and advisers are all focusing on one issue, at the
expense of all others: Iraq.

National Security Council veteran Rand Beers has called this the
"7-year-old's soccer syndrome" -- just like little kids playing
soccer, everyone forgets their particular positions and
responsibilities and runs like a herd after the ball.

In the end, there are only 12 seats at the conference table in the
White House Situation Room, and the key players' schedules mean that
they can seldom meet there together in person or on secure video
conference for more than about 10 hours each week. When issues don't
receive first-tier consideration, they can slip by for months. I
learned this firsthand: In the early days of the Bush administration,
I called for an urgent meeting to discuss the threat al-Qaeda posed to
the United States. The Cabinet-level meeting eventually took place --
but not until Sept. 4, 2001.

Without the distraction of the Iraq war, the administration would have
spent this past year -- indeed, every year since Sept. 11, 2001 --
focused on al-Qaeda. But beyond al-Qaeda and the broader struggle for
peaceful coexistence with (and within) Islam, seven key "fires in the
in-box" national security issues remain unattended, deteriorating and
threatening, all while Washington's grown-up 7-year-olds play herd
ball with Iraq.

Global warming: When the possibility of invading Iraq surfaced in
2001, senior Bush administration officials hadn't thought much about
global warming, except to wonder whether it was caused by human
activity or by sunspots. Today, the world's scientists and many
national leaders worry that the world has passed the point of no
return on global warming. If it has, then human damage to the
ecosphere will cause more major cities to flood and make the planet
significantly less conducive to human habitation -- all over the
lifetime of a child now in kindergarten. British Prime Minister Tony
Blair keeps trying to convince President Bush of the magnitude of the
problem, but in every session between the two leaders Iraq squeezes
out the time to discuss the pending planetary disaster.

Russian revanchism: When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bush
leave office in rapid succession in 2008 and 2009, it seems likely
that Russia will be less of a democracy and less inclined to cooperate
with Washington than it was six years ago, when Bush stared into the
eyes and looked into the heart of the Russian leader. Given her
extensive background in Soviet studies, Condoleezza Rice would have
been a natural to work on key U.S.-Russian issues, first as national
security adviser and now as secretary of state. But the focus on Iraq
has precluded such efforts, even as the troubling issues multiply:
Russian governors are no longer elected, but appointed; dissidents die
mysteriously and probably at the hands of the new KGB; opposition
media are suppressed; and corporate leaders are jailed or hounded out
of the country.

Meanwhile, Moscow plays petro-politics by dramatically raising the
cost of energy to former Soviet republics that do not toe the
Kremlin's line, and by threatening to turn off the pipeline to
European nations that don't cooperate. If Bush hoped that turning a
blind eye to all this would help win Russian cooperation in Iraq and
Iran, the strategy failed.

Latin America's leftist lurch: In the years before the Iraq war, U.S.
presidents were welcomed at summits throughout Latin America and the
Caribbean. Indeed, the attacks of Sept. 11 found then-Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell in South America, visiting one area of the world
where U.S. policies had worked. Friendly, democratic governments were
in power in every nation in the hemisphere except Cuba. Formerly
debt-ridden economies were implementing pro-market reforms, and the
United States was welcomed as a partner. Washington seemed confident
that if and when Fidel Castro died (there was always some doubt), even
Cuba might join the democracy/free market club.

Today, Castro has been replaced, but not just by another Cuban
dictator. The leader of the hemisphere's new anti-Yankee alliance is
Hugo Chávez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela.
Chávez's anti-U.S. campaign is supported by Cuban intelligence and
Venezuelan oil money. By 2006, Venezuela and Cuba were not alone in
their opposition to Washington; kindred spirits have been elected in
Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Having begun his administration
pledging new cooperation with Mexico, Bush backtracked after Sept. 11,
focusing instead on tightening immigration and border controls.

Africa at war: The genocide spilling from the Darfur region of Sudan
into neighboring Chad has captured attention in the United States
mainly because of (belated) media coverage and an aggressive advocacy
campaign by concerned groups, but the prospects of Washington dealing
with the problem seem slim. Darfur, however, is only one of a pox of
conflicts that, together with HIV/AIDS, are depopulating parts of
Africa and robbing it of potential wealth from mineral, oil and gas
deposits. Wars have also raged in Chad, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone
and Somalia. Were it not for the Iraq war, Washington may have acted
to stop what the Bush administration admits is genocide in Darfur, or
taken steps to prevent the chaos sweeping Somalia after a group
affiliated with al-Qaeda took over the country and left Ethiopia no
choice but to invade in hopes of preventing a more disastrous war.
Unfortunately, even designating a small presence of U.S. Special
Forces to lead a U.N.-approved peacekeeping force in Darfur appears
beyond the capability of the badly stretched American military.

Arms control freeze: Once atop several administrations' national
security agendas, international arms control has received little White
House attention since the Bush administration decided early on to walk
away from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. National security adviser
Stephen J. Hadley has extensive government experience working on arms
control and he began to focus on this turf in early 2001, when he was
number two at the National Security Council. But after 9/11, Hadley
has had little opportunity to advance international efforts to control
biological weapons, nuclear testing and proliferation, or the threat
of nuclear or radioactive terrorist weapons. For a long time, the
White House outsourced dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons to the
Europeans, just as the onus of stopping North Korea's nuclear
development was placed on Asian nations. The sustained senior-level
attention that is needed to stop two nuclear weapons programs at the
same time has simply not been available -- because of Iraq.

Transnational crime: In a nationally televised address in 1989,
President George H.W. Bush held aloft a bag of cocaine that had been
sold near the White House and declared a "War on Drugs." That
initiative was later enlarged to target the international criminal
cartels engaged in human trafficking, gun and contraband smuggling,
money laundering and cyber fraud. The momentum from these efforts
produced international treaties to combat hidden global crime
conglomerates, but the White House leadership necessary to coordinate
dozens of U.S. agencies and mobilize other nations has dissipated.
Moreover, the world's international crime cartels received a major
shot in the arm with the occupation of Afghanistan by NATO forces.
From relatively low levels of heroin production in 2001, Afghanistan's
economy is now dependent upon the widespread cultivation of heroin
that is flooding black markets in Europe and Asia. With most of the
U.S. Army either in Iraq, heading to Iraq or returning from Iraq,
insufficient U.S. forces were available to prevent the once-liberated
Afghanistan from morphing into a narco-state.

The Pakistani-Afghan border: Afghanistan increasingly receives the
attention of senior U.S. policymakers, not because of the narcotics
problem, but mainly because the once-defeated Taliban again threaten
Afghan and coalition forces. However, if there is a solution, it lies
on the other side of the Khyber Pass where a sanctuary has emerged, a
Taliban-like state within a state in western Pakistan. Dealing with
that problem is more than Washington has been willing or able to
handle, for it involves the complex issue of who governs nuclear-armed
Pakistan and how.

Thus far, Washington has accepted Gen. Pervez Musharraf's half-hearted
measures for dealing with the nuclear proliferation network of A.Q.
Khan, addressing the terrorist involvement of Pakistani intelligence
and controlling the Taliban/al-Qaeda bases in Waziristan. Getting
Pakistan to do more would require a major sustained effort by senior
U.S. officials, including addressing the longstanding tensions with
India. Because of Iraq, Washington's national security gurus do not
have the hours in their days to manage that -- nor the troops needed
to secure Afghanistan.

As the president contemplates sending even more U.S. forces into the
Iraqi sinkhole, he should consider not only the thousands of
fatalities, the tens of thousands of casualties and the hundreds of
billions of dollars already lost. He must also weigh the opportunity
cost of taking his national security barons off all the other critical
problems they should be addressing