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Simple to attack Clarke.

Focus on his comment that Condi Rice appeared never to have heard of Al Qaeda. Condi should come out saying the statement is absurd and insulting.

The statement is ridiculous, most Americans, let alone security officials, had heard of AQ. Remember the Cole?

Clarke's a nut, and his statements only make sense in a Kerry environment where he's trying to detach Iraq from 12 years of experience there, with the sanctions, bombings, no fly zones, etc. all for political purposes. Call them on it.

Clarke's as much a nut as the Treasury official. Overthrowing Saddam was express government, Kerry-approved law since the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.

I agree Clarke's a nut, and you are right, they are trying to forget about the 12 year campaign against Iraq that was fast unraveling.

Clinton had ignored the fact that his Iraq policy was doomed; Iraq had bought several votes on the Security Council by means of oil contracts that were only valid if sanctions ended with Saddam still in place. The writing on the wall was clear to anyone paying attention. The only thing slowing up the process of doing away with sanctions was, ironically, the fact that so many people were making so much money thanks to the UN sanctions program, they would have to be weaned off and bought out. Otherwise, the sanctions were obviously a dead letter.

Thats the way it was when Bush entered office, and he faced the situation that Saddam was going to emerge from his box with French, German, Russian, and Chinese backing, stronger than ever. Our only choice was to watch it happen, or act quickly to remove him. Bush started working from day one on the latter. The French, Germans, Russians, and Chinese fought him all the way, for very obvious reasons.

It is astonishing that a security expert like Clarke would have missed all of this. But fortunately Rice is a little quicker on the uptake.

We should also call Clarke and his clones on their continued flat assertions that there is no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda... I was going back through some of the material that has come out over the past couple of years and it is really startling to realize how much is out there in open sources. It is hard to imagine how folks like Clarke and the alphabets can continue to repeat the same claims with a straight face.