Former anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke says the Bush team was dead wrong in trying to link Saddam Hussein to terrorists.
He holds particular contempt for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who suggested at one meeting that there might be a link between Iraq and the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
Clarke says he immediately scolded Wolfowitz:
"We've investigated that five ways to Friday, and nobody [in the government] believes that."
Clarke fails to note in his book that one of the WTC bombers fled to Iraq and was harbored by Saddam Hussein for years. But Clarke does give a fair amount of attention to a far more questionable theory -- that Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols learned how to blow up buildings from Al Qaeda operatives during a trip he took with his Filipino wife to the Philippines.
"Could the Al Qaeda explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for the U.S. government? We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned."
So not one mention of Saddam's actual harboring of a WTC bomber, but detailed explanation of a theorized meeting between Terry Nichols and Al Qeada terrorists? Such is the stuff of Richard Clarke’s best-selling book, now in its 10th printing, with 750,000 copies in print.
And that's the Asman Observer.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox