[Editor’s note: I wrote this post last evening — after reading excerpts of the “60 Minutes” Dick Clarke interview and before my site collapsed for 14 hours. May as well post it now. If you’ve heard it all before, ignore it. I won’t be offended.]

Question: Remember when the US invaded Iraq in October 2001 — in direct response to 911?

Me neither.

Howsabout this, then: Remember when President Bush told a nationally televised audience that Saddam Hussein was behind the Trade Center attacks?

Me neither.

Instead, the US responded to 911 by going after Al-Qaeda and their Taliban enablers in Afghanistan, while simultaneously working with foreign intelligence services to disrupt terrorist networks and cut off cash flow to terrorists around the globe.

I remember this because Ted R@ll was pitching fits about it, and I was busy mocking him with great glee.

So, then. Question: Where’s the story here, exactly?

And what to make of this…? Or this?

Sound and fury, etc., etc.

[Related: Jonah Goldberg on Richard Clarke, from NRO’s “The Corner:

Clarke’s critique of post 9/11 Bush is quite vague beyond Clarke’s opposition to the Iraq war. Again, this can be a serious argument, but it’s nothing new and beyond his stature, he offers nothing new to it. The substance of his major critiques beyond that were that Bush and Rumsfeld were too eager to hit Iraq, not Afghanistan. Maybe so, but Bush quite quickly ended up following precisely the course Clarke had reccomended, i.e. hitting Afghanistan. Clarke tries to make it sound like Bush was willing to falsely blame Iraq for 9/11, but this charge is flimsy in Clarke’s own telling (Clarke got that sense, but never heard those words) and the more charitable interpretations are the more plausible — i.e. Bush & Co. thought it was Iraq but were persuaded by the facts that Afghanistan had to be the first target. A-ha, says Clarke, but the Bushies were willing and eager to have Iraq be the second target. True enough. But here again we are back in to a fairly conventional anti-war argument. That Clarke made it from the inside of the White House at least demonstrates that those who claimed the White House suffered from group-think were wrong.

See also Condi Rice in today’s WaPo (registration required).]