Gen. Wesley Clark has an exaggerated sense of his own importance. Now, he's saying that the White House pressured CNN to fire him. As if the WH would be that stupid. Of course, he doesn't know this for a fact. He just makes the allegation, but says that all he knows are that he heard rumors. It's pretty indicative of his lack of dedication to the truth that he's willing to accuse the WH of interfering with press freedom on the basis of an unnamed rumor-mongerer.

Of course, this isn't the first time that Clark has made an allegation on the basis of an ill-defined and vague rumor as The Weekly Standard has shown. Right after September 11, Clark alleged taht someone in the WH called him and pressed him to blame 9/11 on Iraq. Months later, this allegation was down to someone in Canada unconnected with the administration.

"I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. Subsequently, I learned that there was much discussion inside the administration in the days immediately after Sept. 11 trying to use 9/11 to go after Saddam Hussein.

"In other words, there were many people, inside and outside the government, who tried to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11."

In other words, and let's have a show of hands here: How many of you believe Gen. Clark really got that call?

If you read version three carefully, you will see that Clark has now exonerated the White House of his most serious accusation. Much as he wants to put a sinister spin on the matter, all Clark is saying is that the White House was more sensitive to the Iraqi threat after 9/11.

That leaves the question of the call. It's true that journalists protect sources all the time. But there are also times when a source deserves to be burned, and this is one of them. We're not talking about a normal journalist-source relationship here. We're talking about someone who urged the former supreme allied commander of NATO to go on national TV on 9/11 and assert a provocative untruth.

What conceivable reason can Clark have for protecting this joker? This is not someone he called for information. This is someone who called him--who wanted to use Clark--to plant a phony story. And why is this grossly irresponsible "fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank" privy to "inside intelligence information"? You would think Clark has a positive duty to expose the man. But that assumes he exists.

And this is the military genius that some think will be the savior of the Democratic party? Well, perhaps, since no one in the general media will bring this out.