I want people to know that the gutless and self-pitying Nathan Newman, friend of Ramsey Clark, has been deleting posts that refer to the obits of the 4 men murdered in Iraq (you know: the men that the definitionally challenged Mr Newman calls "mercenaries"). I think that the sensitive Mr Newman gets more exercised about people who take down "Vote Union" fliers in the break room at Wal-Mart than he does about the gruesome murder of 4 innocent individuals.

I went to read Mr. Rosen's article expecting something of substance. Instead, I found a fluffy testimonial with a bit of Bill Clinton tossed in for seasoning. Mr. Hobbs, you are easy to please.

He appears to be saying that both administrations were equally in the dark about potential threats, that one was no worse than the other.

What troubles me persistently is the idea that our intelligence services failed so miserably, having such immense resources and so many years of experience in the world arena as they do. Is it conceivable that our country's abilities in this area are, after all, not very good after all?

If that is the case, then we are in a hell of a lot of trouble. For me, I come down on the side of the agencies. Do we fully realize just how bad their information gathering and analysis had to be in order to support the rush to war? In hindsight, we now know there was little or nothing there for them to advise on.

Common sense, then, should tell us that he knew as little then as he does now, so all he had to press forward with was his administration's fixation on invasion with less, not more proof of need.

Note that within hours of the attack on Baghdad, reliable sources appeared on the ground to direct cruise missile attacks on locations where Saddam was reported to be having dinner.

He had the same intelligence we'd been using, and it has been established that Saddam was certainly in the process of rebuilding his WMD program. He was pouring money into it; trying to buy missiles from North Korea, and the Brits still stand by their intelligence that he was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

And you have no real grounds to criticize the intelligence services, seeing as how you couldn't see what intelligence they had to work with, and seeing as how they had their hands tied through the Clinton years by the law enforcement method that made them turn over all information to grand juries and kept them from sharing anything with the FBI, and regulations preventing them from working with the seedier types they'd used to gather information in previous years.

The article gives every indication of having been written for theraputic reasons. The author screams that Bush is an honest man, and to prove it, he calls everyone else a liar.

Sad.

Perhaps if he had tried to understand why people are concerned about Bush's honesty, he could have taken every trouble one by one, and offered his perspective on the issues.

He might have even converted a few people.

Instead he whines long and loud about the timing of a book that's been held up for months, and wonders why Clarke would be angrier about the actions of a sitting president than one whom left years ago.

I guess he didn't think he needed to do much more than just use the magic word "Clinton"...