Richard Perle, the American Enterprise Institute fellow who helped build the case for the Iraq War prior to the US invasion in 2003, appeared on CNN's 'Late Edition' with Wolf Blizter last night and continued to cling to the existence of links between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaida terrorists. While admitting Hussein's government had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, Perle continued to point to a "direct connection" between the two.
"There is evidence of a connect between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein's intelligence," he insisted.
Perle also dismissed concerns that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the war as evidence that the war was unjustified. Instead, he described the decision to invade as reasonable because it was a "management of risk."
"It's a little bit like saying it was wrong to buy insurance last year because your house didn't burn down or you didn't have an automobile accident. You buy insurance to hedge against disastrous things happening," he claimed.
The following video clip contains an excerpt of the exchange.