THE FOLKS AT CROOKS AND LIARS and at Think Progress have caught Condi Rice telling the truth about why the U.S. invaded Iraq. Tim Russert was either too dumb or too subservient to notice; but that's why we have the blogosphere.

...the fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al-Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al-Qaeda and perhaps after the Taliban and then our work would be done and we would try to defend ourselves.

Or we could take a bolder approach, which was to say that we had to go after the root causes of the kind of terrorism that was produced there, and that meant a different kind of Middle East.

In other words, WMDs had nothing to do with it. Smoking guns in the form of mushroom clouds had nothing to do with it. Connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda had nothing to do with it. But the vision of a world dominated and controlled by the United States had a whole lot to do with it.

Crooks and Liars:

This is a war of choice in keeping with PNAC's view of the middle east. They wanted to change the face of the middle east and 9/11 was their excuse. Thanks for clearing that up for us Condi.