Questions:

Why isn't there more on the weekend's Chalabi report that he was part of an Iranian plot to eliminate Saddam?

Why is the President of the United States running around on a bicycle in a race on his ranch, instead of minding business during one of our most troubled times? Uh, nevermind, I know that answer.

Has the administration FINALLY seen the light? Do the Bushies recognize that there is no way in hell that any kind of settlement is going to occur in Iraq without the United Nations? We'll perhaps see in tonight's speech.

In the meantime, Richard Clarke came to Kansas City Sunday night. I have these thoughts about his talk:

1. He is incredibly articulate, and he knows his story well. He talked more than 45 minutes without notes and never one digressed or wandered in his thinking.
2. He is not the stuff-shirt bureaucrat with an ego that I thought he might be. His talk was not about him, or how smart he was. It was entirely about how the Bush administration had led us into a war that no one other than the neocons wanted to fight.
3. He was very credible.
4. He has a lot more courage than most. He knew as soon as he spoke out that he was going to be trashed by the Bushies. "The remarkable thing is that both Paul O'Neill and I, despite the distortions and personal attacks, are now finding ourselves among the majority in our opinion about the Bush Administration and the war. We started off in the minoirity, but more and more people are coming forward to say the same things we have said - this Administration went to war without a plan and on very false assumptions."

Clarke said war with Iraq was inevitable once Bush became President. It was in the early planning long before any claims about WMD or 9/11. He said that the Bush administration decided to tie Saddam to 9/11 despite a total lack of evidence indicating a tie. He thinks the real reasons for the war was:

1. embarrassment over not finishing it off in the first Gulf War. He thinks this is Rummy's prevailing reason, as well as Chaney's.
2. A NeoCon reversed domino theory - develop a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq and the rest of the Mideast will fall to democracy.
3. The just wanted to do it. They wanted to show the world that the dominant - in fact, only - super power could do whatever it wanted to do, i.e, if we stare, you better cower.

He thinks the war is a total disaster, and was doomed from day one. The American Ideal is not just tarnished, but totally destroyed. We are universally hated by the Islamic world, including Egypt, Morocco and Indonesia, all former allies and friends. And in fact the whole world is looking askance at us. He notes that the Islamic world had been warned by Bin Laden and his ilk about the Americans who wanted another Christian crusade and who wanted nothing more than to rob them of their land and oil. The Islamic world did not listen, until we did exactly as Bin Laden predicted.

Today, Clarke says, on every Arab television station are daily photos of collateral damage - dead women and children, and American soliders prancing around looking like members of the Wehrmacht.

For the second time in 50 years, this country has sent its 18 and 19 year olds off to become cannon fodder for a political theory that is completely without merit.

May the neocons rot in hell, but since I do not believe in hell, I guess that won't be happening.