Transcript_60 Minutes_StahlClarke_04Mar21: "CLARKE: Well Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq and we all said, 'No no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.' Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.' I said, 'Well there are lots of good targets in lots of places but Iraq had nothing to with it.'

STAHL: You wrote you thought he was joking.

CLARKE: Initially I thought when he said there aren't enough targets in Afghanistan, I thought he was joking.

STAHL: Now what was your reaction to all this Iraq talk? What did you tell everybody?

CLARKE: What I said was, you know, invading Iraq or bombing Iraq after we're attacked by somebody else, it's akin to, what if Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor instead of going to war with Japan said, 'Let's invade Mexico.' It's very analagous.

STAHL: But didn't they think there was a connection?

CLARKE: I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying, We've looked at this issue for years, for years we've looked for a connection and there's just no connection."