March 23, 2004 - Richard Clarke was not in the loop. We have that on good authority. Richard Cheney told Rush Limbaugh that yesterday. There is no faster way to spread the word to the faithful than to get on the phone and whisper the answer in Rush’s ear - the one with the implanted connection to the microphone; the one that implants the party line into those millions for whom “dittoes” replace rational thought and critical analysis. For the rest of us it is a tough pill to swallow.

Strange that the Bush Administration, believing in the proposition that the White House was the next target on September 11th, evacuated and while Dugout Dick proceeded to his undisclosed secure location and Chicken George kept reading to the class, left Richard Clarke behind in the Situation Room directing the US response to the attacks. What an awesome responsibility to drop on a disgruntled employee who, according to the Administration’s talking heads, resented being demoted from cabinet rank and was “not in the loop”.

The Administration’s Anti-Terrorism Czar was not in the loop. Strange that the President, upon returning to the White House after his emergency tour of US Airbases would seek out that one person who was not in the loop and direct him to find a scrap of intelligence that would link Saddam to the attacks – any scrap at all that had been missed by the CIA or FBI or NSA or military intelligence services. Of course we have no evidence that the President ever spoke to Richard Clarke. It is the Conversation That Never Was. No evidence that is except the word of CBS and of the Washington Post that each had two independent sources that confirmed the conversation. Besides, CBS is owned by the same media conglomerate that owns the publisher who put out Clarke’s book on the eve of 911 Commission’s public hearings – so there you are folks. Put that in your ditto and smoke it.

Then there is that other disgruntled former employee, Paul O’Neill, whose description of a disengaged President obsessed from the first day with Saddam and Iraq squares with the picture that Clarke is painting. What price loyalty?

How many times must the American people hear the same account from the people who were there before they assimilate the information and begin to ask questions? The commission opens its public hearings today. Colin Powell is the first witness followed by Madeline Albright. Defense Secretaries Rumsfeld and Cohen will round out the day’s schedule. We will see what kind of picture they paint of the days before we woke up to Al Qaeda. It will be fascinating to hear what lyrics the Rove team has written for the show.

Megaditties, folks!