The Red Pill

We generally ignore the horrid Michael Moore, but this seems worth mentioning. On his Web site, the dumpy documentarian, who of late has been plumping for Wesley Clark, makes the following claim:

My wife and I were invited over to a neighbor's home 12 days ago where Clark told those gathered that certain people, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, called him immediately after the attacks on September 11th and asked him to go on TV to tell the country that Saddam Hussein was "involved" in the attacks. He asked them for proof, but they couldn't provide any. He refused their request.

We suppose it's possible that Clark actually said this in front of Moore, but it seems more likely that Moore is recycling an old lie, embellishing it with the claim that he heard Clark say it in person. As we noted in June, the Angry Left, led by former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, had been spreading this canard, based on an ambiguous comment Clark made on NBC's "Meet the Press." Clark subsequently issued a clarification, saying he had received no such call from the White House (hey, the guy claims Karl Rove won't even return his phone calls, for heaven's sake!), but the call had come from "a Middle East think tank outside the country."

Last week the Toronto Star reported the caller had stepped forward and identified himself. He is Thomas Hecht of Montreal, founder of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies in Israel. "Hecht said he called Clark either Sept. 12 or Sept. 13--not the morning of the attacks, as the former general said--but he merely passed on information he had received from Israel which drew a purported link," the Star reports. Hecht added: "I don't know why I would be confused with the White House. I don't even have white paint on my house."