Here's a worthwhile piece from that notorious turncoat Christopher Hitchens on the Iraqi links to al-Qaeda that Richard Clarke used to believe in before he had a book to sell.
But, in passing, he makes a remark that I don't think gets made often enough. We forget ---well, some of us do--- that one of the greatest shifts that occurred in American foreign policy in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 was our relationship with Pakistan. As Hitchens says:
An unnoticed benefit of regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq is the extent to which both the Pakistani and Saudi oligarchies have been "turned" and their wings clipped.
It is true that our strange relationship to Saudi Arabia remains, by turns, inexplicable and unjustifiable, or obvious and pragmatic, but it is the dynamic we are in now with Pakistan that would have been nearly preposterous to consider before we were attacked. No contradiction with Saudi Arabia would surprise me, but it's a whole different level of weird being assisted as we are by Musharraf, who I say is a very brave man.
Events may again change that situation against us but, for now, the decisiveness of this President and the boldness of his vision in foreign policy has reshaped this world for the better.