Richard Clarke Weighs In On the 9/11 Commission Report.

NYTimes OpEd: Among the stunning statements:

• What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.
  
• But at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by those who joined young and worked their way up. This has created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity and often mediocrity.
  
• We must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence.
  
• The commission properly identified the threat not as terrorism (which is a tactic, not an enemy), but as Islamic jihadism, which must be defeated in a battle of ideas as well as in armed conflict.
  
• The commission failed to admit the obvious: we are less capable of defeating the jihadists because of the Iraq war.