A White House official today highlighted these old comments by Richard Clarke. On NPR back in March 2003 he said of Iraq, “After all, they’ve had weapons of mass destruction now for about 20 years.” Back in 2000, before 9/11, he said, “We should have a very low barrier in terms of acting when there is a threat of weapons of mass destruction being used against American citizens. We should not have a barrier of evidence that can be used in a court of law.” This is certainly the standard the Clinton administration acted on, at least some of the time. It took out a pharmaceutical plant in 1998 in the Sudan based on the probably mistaken belief that it was manufacturing chemical weapons. Clinton officials defend that attack to this day, which makes it kind of rich that they so harshly criticize Bush for acting on much firmer evidence in Iraq