The "Prince of Darkness" calls the kettle 'black'

In an amazing statement of hypocrisy, Richard Perle (loudest cheerleader for Iraq invasion at any cost) has pointed his twisted little finger at George Tenet and blamed him for "conclusions of the intelligence agencies".
Just last week, George Tenet averred that at no time did he advise of an imminent WMD threat from Iraq or Saddam Hussein.
People, this is absolutely an unbelievably bold accusation from Perle, who called New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh a "terrorist" for reporting about Perle's potential financial interest in seeing a war in Iraq. Hersh said of Perle, in an October, 2003 New Yorker article:

In a speech on November 14, 2001, as the Taliban were being routed in Afghanistan, Richard Perle, a Pentagon consultant with long-standing ties to Wolfowitz, Feith, and Chalabi, articulated what would become the Bush Administration’s most compelling argument for going to war with Iraq: the possibility that, with enough time, Saddam Hussein would be capable of attacking the United States with a nuclear weapon.

Possibility....enough time?? This doesn't sound "imminent" to me at all...how about you?

Then there's the article from August of 2003 in the Asia Times with this revelation about Perle:

There was some hint of a parallel policy apparatus dating back just after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It was known early on, for example, that the Pentagon leadership, without notice to the State Department, the NSC, or the CIA, convened its advisory Defense Policy Board (DPB), headed by Richard Perle, to discuss attacking Iraq within days of the attacks.
The three agencies were also kept in the dark about a mission undertaken immediately afterward by former CIA director and DPB member James Woolsey to London to gather intelligence about possible links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, as if the CIA or the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) could not be trusted.

Perle also had a chance to head off this war before it was started, but he and his secret little friend at the CIA (the agency he's dissing now) decided to blow it off. They just weren't "interested".

Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board, said in a telephone interview that he was approached last winter by Imad al Hage, a Lebanese businessman, with what was described as a offer by Saddam Hussein to hold elections and perhaps to permit the entry into Iraq of a small number of U.S. troops. Perle said he conveyed the offer to a friend at the CIA.

A friend? I wonder what Tenet knew, if anything, about this "friend" at the CIA. Black Perle's always pointing at the kettles. Yet he's a-bubbling darkly away himself.

Update: More on the Neocon philosophy of intelligence from Feb 19 Asia Times

Howard Dean to end campaign?

AP Breaking news:

Howard Dean will end his campaign for the presidential nomination and oversee a new effort to keep his issues alive and his supporters organized on behalf of Democratic causes, two party officials said Wednesday.

If he drops out of the race, I'll predict he'll endorse Senator John Edwards. Personally, I hope he stays in the race. If he drops out today and endorses Edwards, I believe it could only mean that he firmly believes in John Edwards as the candidate (of the remaining two pragmatically "electable") to carry Dean's message forward. I've been a Dean supporter all along, and while I would be disappointed to see him end the campaign, I would put my support behind a candidate he would endorse.
We'll see what happens in Burlington, Vt. today.