Who Can Really Say?

The first, a link via the newly redesigned Instapundit, to a Seattle Times article illuminating errors in Richard Clarke's recent book. Clarke wrote that the capture of millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam was the result of an alert to be wary of possible terrorist activity put out at the end of 1999. The problem is, it wasn't.

The second is a link from Eugene Volokh to Jeff Jacoby's Op-Ed in today's Boston Globe. He hits Clarke's overall theme where it hurts:

Prior to 9/11, no president from Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush properly understood the swelling danger of Islamist terrorism. None recognized that we were under attack by a ruthless enemy bent on global conquest and the destruction of Western liberty. Neither did leaders in Congress, nor elite opinion makers in the media.

Far more significant is what has happened since 9/11: The Bush administration went to war. It destroyed Al Qaeda's base in Afghanistan, toppled Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, turned Pakistan into a terror-war ally, and intimidated Libya into ending its hunt for nuclear weapons. Crucially, it has demolished the perception of America as -- in bin Laden's words -- a "weak horse" that bolts at the first gunshot. And it did it all in the face of withering political fire at home and abroad.

How you regard that performance -- as invaluable wartime leadership by the president or as a fraud "made up in Texas" -- is likely to decide how you vote this November. For what matters now isn't who was wrong before 9/11. It is who has been right since.