The Amber War One of the many trenchant statements that Richard Clarke made about the Bush II Admistration was that when it came to terrorism and foreign policy it was like the Administration's members [most of whom, like all Administrations, consisted of retreads] were "FROZEN IN AMBER". As anyone who has seen Clarke interviewed, it is apparent that what he is saying is that the George W. Bush Administration was still wanting to finish the Iraq War and was still obsessed with Iraq. It's been stated here many times already, that the Clarke bashing is way over the top -- and in fact, it is my belief that it is seriously going to bite the Bush team in the ass sooner and then again later. And further support for the Clarke accusations of an undue focus on Iraq is this statement from David Kay -- once the "great white hope" of the Administration when they thought they might luck out and find weapons of mass destruction -- and then crushingly disappointed them by refusing to lie. Reuters reports today: The former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq warned on Monday that the United States is in "grave danger" of destroying its credibility at home and abroad if it does not own up to its mistakes in Iraq. "The cost of our mistakes ... with regard to the explanation of why we went to war in Iraq are far greater than Iraq itself," David Kay said in a speech at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "We are in grave danger of having destroyed our credibility internationally and domestically with regard to warning about future events," he said. "The answer is to admit you were wrong, and what I find most disturbing around Washington ... is the belief ... you can never admit you're wrong." The comments by Kay came as the White House sought to fend off accusations from its former anti-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who said President Bush ignored the al Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and focused on Iraq rather than the Islamic militant group afterward. The White House last year cited Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the main reason for going to war. Kay resigned his post in January, saying he believed no such arms existed and that the failure to find any such weapons raised serious questions about the quality of prewar intelligence. Kay, who was part of United Nations weapons probes in Iraq in the early 1990s, said U.S. intelligence there was poor in the decade before the war, relying entirely on international inspectors themselves, Iraqi defectors or intelligence from allies like France and Britain. He cautioned the intelligence community against jumping to premature conclusions, as it did in Iraq. "One of the most dangerous things abroad in the world of intelligence today actually came out of 9/11 ... the insistence of 'Why didn't you connect the dots?' The dots were all there," he said. "When we finally do the sums on Iraq, what will turn out is that we simply didn't know what was going on, but we connected the dots -- the dots from 1991 behavior were connected with 2000 behavior and 2003 behavior, and it became an explanation and a picture of Iraq that simply didn't exist," Kay said.(emphasis added) FROZEN IN AMBER. There were a lot of us traitorous liberals afraid of this last year. But it says something quite important about who the real patriot is, that the Bush Administration refuses to come to grips with what even Dr. Kay sees as the obvious. This fixation on Iraq by the Bush Administration has not served the United States, nor history well. I'm much younger than Bush -- I will reap the Whirlwind of this error -- an error mind you which we must somehow make the best of now. So keep this in mind when the Administration attacks Clarke, as they attacked O'Neil, Dulillio, and Foster. They are, as Dulillio said "Mayberry Machiavellis". Oh, and remember what candidate Bush always said before -- now that his modus operandi is to send out these attack hounds on his personal order all of whom continue to NOT address the substance of Clarke's charges, HE IS A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER!