I find this story as reported in today’s Toronto Star interesting:
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Clark told CBS’
Lesley Stahl, “The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other
people, shut the door, and said, `I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’“Now he never said, `Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in
absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that
said Iraq did this.“I said, `Mr. President. … We have been looking at this. … There’s no
connection.’“He came back at me and said, `Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a
connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back
with that answer.“We wrote a report.” Clarke continued, “We got together all the FBI experts,
all the CIA experts. … And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced
by the national security adviser or deputy. (It was) sent back saying, `Wrong
answer. Do it again.’
If you are going to lie, I would think it
is not a good idea to fill the lie up with a whole bunch of other people whose
jobs depend on not supporting your lie. It is so utterly contrary to the authorized,
evangelized version of the workings of the White House yet so in line with
what another
high official in the government has recently written…and another resonably
placed observer as well.
Keeping in mind that neither I nor any of you reading this have any knowledge
about what happened and form our opinions out of belief, advertised material and
how much sleep we got last night, isn’t it kind of weird to think that morons
might actually be in charge of what used to be called the phone to Moscow, the
suitcase with the codes.
