(For someone who prizes "loyalty" above all else, he sure has a weird way of picking his friends.)

I hope everyone had the pleasure of watching the courageous and soon-to-be-shat-on Richard Clarke on 60 Minutes last night. I'm not going to discuss what he said, since what he said speaks for itself. (His report corroborates a picture of the president that has already been revealed by other Bush ex-pats: of a dangerous solipsist, impatient, ignorant and cranky, whose closest advisers are afraid to tell him the truth for fear of causing a little tantrum.)

But the performance of Bush family lackey Stephen Hadley should be noted. Has anyone ever heard less credible statements emanate from the puckered-asshole mouth of such a laughable WASP robot? I particularly pissed myself over these claims:

Hadley staunchly defended the president to Stahl: "The president heard those warnings. The president met daily with ... George Tenet and his staff. They kept him fully informed and at one point the president became somewhat impatient with us and said, 'I'm tired of swatting flies. Where's my new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda?'"

Those were the president's very words, viewers: "Where's my new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda?" (Never mind what the strategy was, and from "where" it was obtained after all present had absorbed this grave command.)

Hadley says that, contrary to Clarke's assertion, Mr. Bush didn't ignore the ominous intelligence chatter in the summer of 2001.

"All the chatter was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. But interestingly enough, the president got concerned about whether there was the possibility of an attack on the homeland.

Interestingly enough, indeed!

He asked the intelligence community: 'Look hard. See if we're missing something about a threat to the homeland.'

Bush can read that intelligence community like a book, cain't he? He just had, oh, a hunch that they weren't seeing the whole picture just then.

"And at that point various alerts went out from the Federal Aviation Administration to the FBI saying the intelligence suggests a threat overseas. We don't want to be caught unprepared. We don't want to rule out the possibility of a threat to the homeland. And therefore preparatory steps need to be made. So the president put us on battle stations."

Well, Clarke has specifically said the president never went to battle stations. But...

Hadley asserts Clarke is "just wrong" in saying the administration didn't go to battle stations.

Well: Clarke said they didn't go. Hadley says Clarke is "just wrong." So there you have it, folks! The matter must remain unsettled!

This, I thought, was the kicker:

As for the alleged pressure from Mr. Bush to find an Iraq-9/11 link, Hadley says, "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred."

When told by Stahl that 60 Minutes has two sources who tell us independently of Clarke that the encounter happened, including "an actual witness," Hadley responded, "Look, I stand on what I said."

Of course, what he (Hadley) just said was not true. But, then again, he "stands on it." I guess it's up to the viewers who to believe!

Hadley maintained, "Iraq, as the president has said, is at the center of the war on terror. We have narrowed the ground available to al Qaeda and to the terrorists. Their sanctuary in Afghanistan is gone; their sanctuary in Iraq is gone. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now allies on the war on terror. So Iraq has contributed in that way in narrowing the sanctuaries available to terrorists."

This represents, I think, a brilliant strategy: narrow the ground. Limit the places al Qaeda can find sanctuary. Of course, al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq--but that doesn't matter, since the Iraq sanctuary is now gone. (Except for the fact that terrorists have come there since the elimination of the sanctuary.)

But wait--I believe that al Qaeda actually was in Deerfield Beach and Del Ray Beach--two Florida towns a couple miles south and north (respectively) of where I'm blogging from this week. If we were to blow up Florida, wouldn't that eliminate one hell of a big-ass terrorist sanctuary? Wouldn't it narrow the ground considerably if we took out California for good measure? But why stop there with this anti-terrorist ground-narrowing? Arizona? Virginia? Can anyone say "New Jersey"?