Former anti-terror czar: 'Someone should have to pay' for Bush administration lies

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Friday June 6, 2008

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the long-delayed final phase of its report on prewar intelligence, highlighting the Bush administration's misuse of that intelligence to lead us into war in Iraq. Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism advisor to both the Clinton and Bush administrations, appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann to discuss the implications of the report. ( click here to view the report in PDF format )

Clarke stated unequivocally that figures in the administration lied then and that Senator John McCain is not telling the truth now when he defends them. "Someone should have to pay in some way," Clarke emphasized. "I just don't think we can let these people back into polite society."

"The report does not use the word 'lie,' Olbermann began. "Are there lies?"

"There certainly are," Clarke replied. "This is a big report, but what it says is 'statements by the president were not substantiated by intelligence ... statements by the president were contradicted by available intelligence. In other words, they made things up ... that people in the intelligence community at the time knew were not true. ... To say that this is only something we could have known years later is just not true."

"What are we to make now of Senator McCain's ... remarkable claim that every intel assessment of the time was screaming 'WMD'?" asked Olbermann.

"Senator McCain's statements are contradicted by the facts, too," Clarke replied firmly. "He's also now justifying the intelligence statements of the president. ... We have the proof, four years too late, that those statements were flat out wrong." Read On