We ... have some unfinished business at the moment that should take precedence over invading Iraq. Namely, we first need to deal with the threat of terrorism. ... [T]he fact is that al-Qa'eda is attacking us right now and has demonstrated a capability that Saddam never has -- the ability to reach into the U.S. homeland and kill three thousand American civilians. We don't necessarily have to finish the war against al-Qa'eda before taking up arms against Saddam -- that is likely to be a very long fight because of the amorphous nature of bin Laden's terrorist network. However, we certainly need to be at a point where we do not have monthly government warnings of possible terrorist attacks. In the immediate wake of 9/11, we rightly devoted all of the United States' diplomatic, intelligence, and military attention to eradicating the threat from al-Qa'eda, and as long as that remains the case we should not indulge in a distraction and great as toppling Saddam. We cannot afford to alienate our allies over our policy toward Iraq and convince them to drag their feet in helping us against al-Qa'eda in return.

[...]

The best way to think about sorting out the priorities between Iraq and al-Qa'eda is to imagine that the United States invades Iraq and that while we are doing so, al-Qaeda conducts another terrorist attack that results in the death of several hundred Americans. In this hypothetical scenario, the president should be able to honestly tell the relatives of the victims killed in such a new terrorist attack that there was nothing else the U.S. government could have done to prevent the attack and there was nothing about the operations in Iraq that distracted or diminished the nation's vigilence against al-Qa'eda. Only when the administration can meet this standard should we embark upon so large an additional endeavor as invading Iraq. [Emphasis added. -- Ed]

Richard Clarke? Rand Beers? Howard Dean?

No, Kenneth M. Pollack, in his book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.

Pollack is anethema to many people on the left (but some of them never bothered to read his book -- one guy, after being lambasted by me for criticising Pollack without actually knowing the totality of his argument, announced one night on one blog's comments -- Eschaton -- that he was finally going the read the book. The next morning he announced on another blog -- Daily Kos -- that he had just finished the [427 page] book, and, strangely enough, his views about Pollack hadn't changed one iota!), but they do so mostly for the wrong reasons.

Pollack should be criticised not for making the best case he could for invading Iraq based on the evidence as he knew it, but for not adhering to the very specific and detailed program that he himself laid out in the book, things that the U.S. needed to do and conditions that had to be fulfilled before any thought could be given to taking out Saddam. But in the face of Bush's clear intention to invade now, Pollack abandoned his strictures and threw in his support.

One can almost understand why, if one believes (as I do) that Pollack genuinely believed that Saddam was a security and humanitarian disaster that was only going to get worse and needed to be resolved. If Bush pumped up for an invasion, and then backed down, there would be no practical possibility of another ramp-up occuring anytime in the near future. Facing this probablity, Pollack apparently decided that a bad invasion was better than no invasion.

But, of course, he has been proved wrong.

I haven't yet read Richard Clarke's book, but I when I do, I'll be interested to find out how different his views are from Pollack's. I have a strange feeling that they're probably not so far apart as one might think.