• Clarke wrote that Ressam bolted and left his car on the ferry. In fact, Ressam drove off the ferry and ran when he was stopped for inspection.

• Clarke reported Dean ran after Ressam. Actually, two other agents gave chase.

• More significantly, Clarke wrote that agents had found "explosives and a map of the Los Angeles International Airport" in the car, implying the threat to the airport was known almost immediately. There was no map in the car. A map of Greater Los Angeles was found days later in Ressam's apartment in Montreal. Nobody had a clue for nearly 11 months that Los Angeles was a target. Circles scrawled on the map around three L.A.-area airports weren't found until October 2000, after the document had been turned over to the FBI. It wasn't until Ressam began cooperating in May 2001 that his actual target was known for sure. In fact, in the weeks after Ressam's capture, officials in Seattle were so unsure about his actual target that then-Mayor Paul Schell canceled the city's popular New Year's Eve celebration at Seattle Center, thinking the Space Needle could be a target.

• Clarke reported Canadians had somehow "missed" the existence of Ressam's cell of radical Algerian Muslims in Montreal and that, after Ressam's arrest, the Canadian government cooperated. According to testimony at Ressam's trial and interviews with Canadian intelligence officials, Ressam and the cell in Montreal had been under surveillance for at least two years before Ressam's arrest. But the Canadian Security Intelligence Service never told anyone.

Cuz, everyone knows, there ain't no terrorists in Canada.

U.S. prosecutors have complained bitterly about Canada's foot-dragging as the Ressam case proceeded. Canadian prosecutors blocked U.S. access to at least one crucial witness — an Algerian who gave Ressam a gun and talked about blowing up Jews in Montreal. Indeed, the U.S. came within hours of dropping charges against Ressam on the eve of his March 2001 trial because the Canadian government attempted to withdraw the witnesses. King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez, who, in 2001, was one of three federal prosecutors who tried Ressam in Los Angeles, agreed some of Clarke's assertions "are not consistent with the evidence at trial."

There's a word for that, let me think...

(2004-04-11) -- A presidential briefing, dated August 6, 2001, and released by the White House yesterday, shows that in 1998 George W. Bush did nothing to respond to the threat of terror attacks from Usama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.

In fact, when correlated with last week’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, it seems clear that the Bush administration had virtually no plan to act on top-secret intelligence gathered during the Clinton administration until after George W. Bush took office in 2001.

"The August 6 PDB (President’s Daily Brief) clearly shows that the White House knew of potential al Qaeda threats within the United States in 1998," said an unnamed source from an unnamed, non-partisan Washington think tank, "and yet Texas Governor George W. Bush didn’t do anything about these threats until after he became president."

A former senior official in the Clinton administration, who requested anonymity, said that former President Bill Clinton was "aghast at the lethargic response of Governor Bush to the clear and present danger al Qaeda posed to our homeland in the 1990s."

1. Do you think your country did the right thing sending you into Iraq?

Probably there's a range of opinion on this, but my guess is that the majority would say "yes."

2. Are you doing what America set out to do to make Iraq a democracy, or have we failed so badly that we should pack up and get out before more of you are killed?

We can't pack up and get out. If we do, Iraq becomes a stew, with corpse counts higher than anything we've seen to date, and eventually breaks down into at least three separate countries that don't like each other. There's no liberal democracy introduced into the Arab world, and there's no progress made in the war on terror. Further, we'll have demonstrated that we can be counted on to cut and run — like you want to do, Andy — and can therefore be dismissed as an influence in the international arena.

3. Do the orders you get handed down from one headquarters to another, all far removed from the fighting, seem sensible, or do you think our highest command is out of touch with the reality of your situation?

There's always a disconnect between orders "from on high" and orders as interpreted in the field. That's a problem that was a lot more pronounced back in your day, though, Andy. Even by my day, it had improved, and today's internet-ready forces make the front end-back end coordination much more coherent. So I think that horse is dead. Now, does the guy in the saddle in the turret see the strategic picture? Probably not. Does the military continue to hurry up and wait? Absolutely. The mechanics of moving large numbers of men and machines, keeping them supplied, and attending to their physical needs is all pretty complicated and it can't be accomplished gracefully. On the other hand, the military handles it a lot better than your friendly neighborhood local government in most cases. If you don't believe that, go get in line to get medical assistance for an aged parent... Oh. Sorry. I forgot. You are an aged parent.

4. If you could have a medal or a trip home, which would you take?

Probably the trip home. If I could have a medal or get laid, I'd rather get laid. If I could have a medal or a cup of coffee, I'd take the cup of coffee. But if I could have all three and a medal, too, I'd take the medal. How about you?

5. Are you encouraged by all the talk back home about how brave you are and how everyone supports you?

If I was still in the military, I'd probably be ignoring most of that and concentrating on what I was doing. I think that's what most people in uniform actually do.