Bush counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke says Bush lied - "these weren't close calls, they made things up"

Former Bush counter-terrorism director, Richard Clark on MSNBC comments on the new Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Iraq pre-war intelligence. Watch it:

"Statements by the president were not substantiated by intelligence ... statements by the president were contradicted by available intelligence. In other words, they made things up. They made them up and gave them to Colin Powell and others, who believed them. I think Colin Powell did not know that he was lying, but he was. He was given intelligence that people in the intelligence community at the time, knew were not true. This is not a case of 20/20 hindsight. This is a case of what was available then. The NIE on Iraq WMD was read by seven Senators before they voted to go to war. And one of them was chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham who read it and went to the floor of the Senate and said, 'I've read it, I'm chairman of the Intelligence Committee, it's not persuasive, there's not a good case here for this war.' So, people had the opportunity at the time if they were reading the intelligence that was available to them. To say that this is something we only could have known years later, is just not true."

On McCain:

"He [McCain] is now justifying the intelligence claims of the president. Now we have the evidence, we have the proof, that four years too late that that those statements were flat out wrong, and these weren't close calls, they made things up"

Stories:

CNN, UPI , NYT, IHT, AFP