Ok, I know that the fad with Richard Clarke came and went a few weeks ago, but I’m reading his book now. This part (pg. 83-84) is genius. Clarke is writing about the retaliation against Saddam Hussein for the 1993 foiled assassination attempt on former President Bush in Kuwait. Clinton ordered retaliatory missile strikes on Baghdad.
Gore urged the President [Clinton] to tell us something that the two highest leaders in the land clearly found funny. “Okay, okay,” Clinton agreed. “I needed relative certainty that the missiles had hit and none of you guys could give me that É so I called CNN É they didn’t have anybody in Baghdad tonight, but their cameraman in their Jordan bureau had a cousin or some relative who lived near the intelligence headquarters, so they called him.” Most of the room looked horrified. “The cousin said, yeah, the whole place blew up. He was certain É so I figured we had relative certainty.”
