560 ChaPter^11
economy has suffered staggering deficits and the American people are losing
homes and jobs at frightening rates. The dream of American abundance and
growth seems to have died, on the battlefields of Iraq, on Wall Street, in the
small towns of the United States.Global War On Terror
Richard Clarke was the White House expert on terrorism, the man who pre-
sented the August 6th, 2001 PDB warning that Osama bin Laden was deter-
mined to strike at U.S. targets. He was thus “in the loop” on September 11th
as President George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and other officials tried to make sense of the attacks on
U.S. soil. Clarke and other experts were already certain that al Qaeda had
planned and pulled off the hijackings and attacks, as the August 6th PDB had
already predicted, but Rumsfeld, as Clarke related, “was saying we needed to
bomb Iraq” even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.FIGuRE 11-1 The aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the World
Trade Center in New York City