NY Times' Paul Krugman Defends Richard Clarke

New York City's paper of record has a long way to go before its coverage of the anti-war movement, the Bush Administration and the war could be considered well-balanced, but a few Times reporters, like Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman have begun to take a bold anti-administration stand.

Writing today about Richard Clarke, George Bush's former counterterrorism czar and the author of the just-published "Against All Enemies," Krugman says:

"On "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Mr. Clarke said the previously unsayable: that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed "war president," had "done a terrible job on the war against terrorism." After a few hours of shocked silence, the character assassination began. He "may have had a grudge to bear since he probably wanted a more prominent position," declared Dick Cheney, who also says that Mr. Clarke was "out of the loop." (What loop? Before 9/11, Mr. Clarke was the administration's top official on counterterrorism.) It's "more about politics and a book promotion than about policy," Scott McClellan said.

"Ö. the administration would like you to think that Mr. Clarke had base motives in writing his book. But given the hawks' dominance of the best-seller lists until last fall, it's unlikely that he wrote it for the money. Given the assumption by most political pundits, until very recently, that Mr. Bush was guaranteed re-election, it's unlikely that he wrote it in the hopes of getting a political job. And given the Bush administration's penchant for punishing its critics, he must have known that he was taking a huge personal risk.

So why did he write it? How about this: Maybe he just wanted the public to know the truth."

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