Nothing America could have done would have provided al-Qaida and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country... One shudders to think what additional errors (Bush) will make in the next four years to strengthen the al-Qaida follow-ons: attacking Syria or Iran, undermining the Saudi regime without a plan for a successor state?-- Richard Clarke, the White House former counterterrorism coordinator (serving Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II-- so he knows and has been around)