MR. RUSSERT:  Why do you think the Iraq war has undermined the war on terrorism?

MR. CLARKE:  Well, I think it's obvious, but there are three major reasons. Who are we fighting in the war on terrorism?  We're fighting Islamic radicals and they are drawing people from the youth of the Islamic world into hating us.  Now, after September 11, people in the Islamic world said, "Wait a minute.  Maybe we've gone too far here.  Maybe this Islamic movement, this radical movement, has to be suppressed," and we had a moment, we had a window of opportunity, where we could change the ideology in the Islamic world. Instead, we've inflamed the ideology.  We've played right into the hands of al-Qaeda and others.  We've done what Osama bin Laden said we would do.

Ninety percent of the Islamic people in Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, allied countries to the United States--90 percent in polls taken last month hate the United States.  It's very hard when that's the game where 90 percent of the Arab people hate us.  It's very hard for us to win the battle of ideas.  We can arrest them.  We can kill them.  But as Don Rumsfeld said in the memo that leaked from the Pentagon, I'm afraid that they're generating more ideological radicals against us than we are arresting them and killing them.  They're producing more faster than we are.

The president of Egypt said, "If you invade Iraq, you will create a hundred bin Ladens."  He lives in the Arab world.  He knows.  It's turned out to be true.  It is now much more difficult for us to win the battle of ideas as well as arresting and killing them, and we're going to face a second generation of al-Qaeda.  We're going to catch bin Laden.  I have no doubt about that.  In the next few months, he'll be found dead or alive.  But it's two years too late because during those two years, al-Qaeda has morphed into a hydra-headed organization, independent cells like the organization that did the attack in Madrid.

And that's the second reason.  The attack in Madrid showed the vulnerabilities of the rails in Spain.  We have all sorts of vulnerabilities in our country, chemical plants, railroads.  We've done a very good job on passenger aircraft now, but there are all these other vulnerabilities that require enormous amount of money to reduce those vulnerabilities, and we're not doing that.

MR. RUSSERT:  And three?

MR. CLARKE:  And three is that we actually diverted military resources and intelligence resources from Afghanistan and from the hunt for bin Laden to the war in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT:  But Saddam is gone and that's a good thing?

MR. CLARKE:  Saddam is gone is a good thing.  If Fidel were gone, it would be a good thing.  If Kim Il Sung were gone, it would be a good thing.  And let's just make clear, our military performed admirably and they are heroes, but what price are we paying for this war on Iraq?

Is Richard Clarke right? Has the war in Iraq undermined the war on terrorism?