The unbearable lightness of Richard Perle

A Republican congressman has the unmitigated gall to imply that the softly plump hands of Richard Perle may have Americans' blood on them (no mention of Iraqi blood, but...whatever).

Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. is a conservative Republican from North Carolina who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. So it jarred all the more yesterday when Jones turned his fury on Richard N. Perle, the Pentagon adviser who provided the Bush administration with brainpower for the Iraq war.

Jones, who said he has signed more than 900 condolence letters to kin of fallen soldiers, pronounced himself "incensed" with Perle. "It is just amazing to me how we as a Congress were told we had to remove this man . . . but the reason we were given was not accurate," Jones told Perle at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Jones said the administration should "apologize for the misinformation that was given. To me there should be somebody who is large enough to say 'We've made a mistake.' I've not heard that yet."

But wait, I thought the latest report said that, um, well, it wasn't authorized to delve into whether anyone in the administration should "aplogize for the misinformation that was given."

Nevermind.

As chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, Perle had gone before the same committee in 2002 and smugly portrayed retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who urged caution in Iraq, as "hopelessly confused" and spouting "fuzzy stuff" and "dumb cliches."

Thirty months and one war later, Perle and Clark returned to the committee yesterday. But this time lawmakers on both sides hectored Perle, while Clark didn't bother to suppress an "I told you so."

Hah! But Senor Perle is not to be so easily wrestled to the ground of reality. It wasn't his fault that we were operating under the now discredited information that Saddam Hussein could fire death lasers from his bloodshot eyes. No. It was Saddam's own...I'll let Dick explain.

Perle wasn't about to provide the apology Jones sought. He disavowed any responsibility for his confident prewar assertions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, heaping the blame instead on "appalling incompetence" at the CIA. "There is reason to believe that we were sucked into an ill-conceived initial attack aimed at Saddam himself by double agents planted by the regime. And as we now know the estimate of Saddam's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was substantially wrong." [yep, emphasis added]

Astonishing news! It was Hussein's own spies who led us to invade his country and overthrow his regime. Damn you, Saddam!

And never let it be said that Richard Perle doesn't take seriously congressional oversight.

Sometimes life imitates art. Yesterday, it imitated an episode of "Crossfire." For more than three hours, Clark and Perle reprised their confrontation before the committee in September 2002. The two men entered in twin gray suits and red ties, and took adjacent chairs at the witness table. Clark scribbled in pencil, Perle with a fountain pen. Only Perle's reading material -- he put on the witness table a copy of "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly" -- suggested he was not expecting what was to come.

I want to work for The Daily Show. It can't be very hard to come up with bits for the show when loons like Richard Perle are senior Pentagon advisors.