Fleischer's Verbal Faux Pas

Crooks and Liars (perhaps the most appropriate nutroot blog name on the interweb) and friends are making a minor issue out of Ari Fleischer's recent interview with Chris Matthews last week, famous for this, but where he also said this:

FLEISCHER: ... and I believe this still today. And of course, you and I disagree with it. But after September 11, having been hit once, how could we take a chance that Saddam might not strike again? And that‘s the threat that has been removed, and I think we‘re all safer with that threat being removed.

Again, eh? Was this a verbal 'slip up' similar to Katie Couric's on 9/11? Frank Gaffney was asked to appear on the show the following day to explain the comment and proceeded to suggest Saddam or AQ might have been involved in the Oklahoma City bombing and the liberal slurs began to fly. Those wascally neocons!

But is it so outrageous and conspiratorial to believe that Islamists at war with America in the 90s could have found a friend in an enemy of their enemy, Terry Nichols? It was none other than Richard "Boogie to Baghdad" Clarke, hero of the left during the 9/11 Commission hearings, who said:

Like Oswald, McVeigh and his partner, Terry Nichols, almost assuredly had foreign encouragement. In Against All Enemies, the much-celebrated Richard Clarke had this to say about the simultaneous visits of Nichols and Islamic terrorist Ramzi Yousef to the same city in the same country at the same time.

“We do know that Nichols’ bombs did not work before his Philippine stay,” writes Clarke, “and were deadly when he returned.”

And Clarke is no neocon. It's also a fact that Terry Nichols made out a will before his last trip to the Philippines for some reason, concerned that he might not return. Scared of flying, perhaps, or scared of something (or somebody) else? It's not like he wasn't plotting to blow up a Federal building at the time and didn't need bomb-making help.

It continues to be curiously amusing to watch the kneejerk reaction this kind of suggestion produces on the left, as if the mere thought of Saddam Hussein being linked to anything except a Dorito habit is akin to heresy and a cracking of the anointed conventional wisdom continuum that says George W. Bushitler invaded Iraq only to get revenge for daddy (as if the assassination attempt of 41 alone was somehow NOT a hostile act).

If perchance anything ever becomes established as to the exact role Saddam played in international terrorism aimed at America it might help to explain a lot of the actions Bush took and things he said (or didn't).

Who knows, it might also help explain why terrorism is now considered by some as simply one of many "man-caused" tragedies that could befall us, like a blown failed levee or fallen bridge and so forth. But probably not.

FOR THE ROAD..

Amidst all the recent outrage, about damn near everything, the Obama administration has quietly appointed former CIA Director John Deutch to a board reviewing spy satellites, which brings back some misty memories (notice the 2000 reference to Saddam btw, right there in Salon).

Whatever happened to the WMD expert at Homeland Security who brought the white powder and dead fish to work? The story seems to have disappeared.