You Can't Make Shit Like This Up
Richard Perle, former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and LFOAC (lifeline friend of Ahmad Chalabi), went in front of the House Armed Services Committee along with his own personal Crossfire partner General Wesley Clark to provide testimony on how the war in Iraq is going. They went in front of this same committee 30 months previously, with Clark urging caution about an imminent war and Perle belittling him as "hopelessly confused." Perle must live in some NeoCon frat house cum Bat Cave where the reality of world events doesn't sink in one iota, as he was not prepared for what was about to happen

Only Perle's reading material -- he put on the witness table a copy of "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly" -- suggested he was not expecting what was to come.

That's right. Anthony Bourdain's book on the hellish nightly skirmish to produce high-faluttin' French cuisine.

According to the Washington Post article where that quote came from, Clark was lobbed softballs while Perle had darts flying at him, including from a congressman who had voted for the war resolution:

Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. is a conservative Republican from North Carolina who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. So it jarred all the more yesterday when Jones turned his fury on Richard N. Perle, the Pentagon adviser who provided the Bush administration with brainpower for the Iraq war. Jones, who said he has signed more than 900 condolence letters to kin of fallen soldiers, pronounced himself "incensed" with Perle. "It is just amazing to me how we as a Congress were told we had to remove this man . . . but the reason we were given was not accurate," Jones told Perle at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Jones said the administration should "apologize for the misinformation that was given. To me there should be somebody who is large enough to say 'We've made a mistake.' I've not heard that yet."

But far from admitting any mistakes that he or anyone in the Bush administration made, Perle simply took the easy route of scapegoating. But not just any scapegoating--Tom Clancyesque conspiracy theory scapegoating:

Perle wasn't about to provide the apology Jones sought. He disavowed any responsibility for his confident prewar assertions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, heaping the blame instead on "appalling incompetence" at the CIA. "There is reason to believe that we were sucked into an ill-conceived initial attack aimed at Saddam himself by double agents planted by the regime. And as we now know the estimate of Saddam's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was substantially wrong." Jones, nearly in tears as he held up Perle's testimony, glared at the witness. "I went to a Marine's funeral who left a wife and three children, twins he never saw, and I'll tell you, I apologize, Mr. Chairman, but I am just incensed with this statement."

That's, my friends, is hubris, plain and simple.