One side wants to find out; the other doesn't. This whole story turns on that simple fact. Why else try to destroy Clark unless what he has to say is profoundly damaging? Liars are usually easily discredited; it's the truth-tellers who need to be destroyed.

Few politicians want to admit the split, but it's getting almost impossible to ignore. Former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, a Republican who has served four administrations -- three of them Republican -- slammed Bush this week for a weak response to the threat of terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks. Now he's being savaged by fellow Republicans who have, in essence, accused him of working to aid the Democrats. McCain, the Arizona senator, along with Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, have made headlines by openly defending Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a fellow Vietnam vet, against Bush campaign charges that Kerry is weak on national defense. The White House is incensed.

McCain and Hagel insist they still support Bush for reelection. The same holds for the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group of GOP moderates that includes Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, Gov. George Pataki of New York, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California; all of them claim to avidly support the president's reelection.

But there's little doubt that behind the scenes, some moderate Republicans are rooting for the other side. If Bush wins, one aide to a moderate Republican says privately, "that would be the worst possible situation."

That's because some Republicans say that a Bush loss may be their last chance to take their party back. "If Bush were defeated by Kerry, it would certainly call into question the Republican leadership, people like Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert," says Fasciani. "That axis of the party may lose its weight and its power. The Powell and Giuliani wing of the party would certainly gain some prominence and may, during the next four years of a Kerry administration, perhaps even gain control of the party and increase the tent." Such hopes have even led some Republicans to found a grass-roots group called Republicans for Kerry.

Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."

But consider that car crashes claim some 43,000 people every year -- a death toll equal to a September 11th once every three and a half weeks. And many, many thousands of these deaths could be prevented.

So where's the major national discussion? The political leadership? Newspaper pages, television airwaves and prime retail space in book stores are all choked with talk of something that, statistically speaking, is unlikely to impact most of us: terrorism. Meanwhile, vehicle fatalities -- the most common cause of death for those aged 2 to 33, and a clear and present danger that every year claims the equivalent in American lives of an entire Vietnam War -- are too quaint and numbingly familiar for comment.

In an effort to change that, a coalition of consumer groups has put together a list of its top 10 long-proven auto safety protections that ought to be mandatory. The list comes as Congress again takes up routine transportation legislation -- so now is your opportunity to speak to your representatives on a far graver danger to you and yours than any "ism."

The buck finds a rest stop
"Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard. But that doesn't matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."

I haven't yet even seen the video, and I'm way behind in my reading so I don't really know what people are saying out there about Richard Clarke's extraordinary testimony yesterday before the 9/11 Commission. But just reading those words in newspaper reports made me think that the words of the former head of counterterrorism will go down as one of those defining moments in American public life, like the Army-McCarthy hearings'"Have you no decency, sir, at long last" or the Watergate hearings'"What did the president know and when did he know it?"

Because Clarke's words exposed a deep emotional vacuum in the Bush administration's handling of 9/11. Bush and his team won widespread acclaim for their bullhorn-toting, Bible-waving, smart-bomb-dropping reaction to the terror attacks. And each of those responses had its place, accomplished something in the long process of coming to terms with the death and destruction of that day. But the Bush approach, with its macho swagger punctuated by interludes of lower-lip-biting moments of silence for our collective loss, has never fully satisfied the national psyche.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't recall a single instance when a leading Bush official -- someone on the order of a cabinet secretary or above -- looked the American people in the eye and either apologized or admitted error. They don't know how to do it. Admitting mistakes is not in their playbook. Apologies are for wimps and Democrats.

Now Clarke, neither wimp nor Democrat, has done both these things, in simple, direct words -- words that, I think, the 9/11 family members and their wider network of friends, relations and sympathizers, a circle that ripples out to include just about all of us, have wanted and needed to hear from someone in a position of responsibility for so long. By uttering these words, Clarke indirectly but boldly underscored their absence from our government's vocabulary in the entire two-and-a-half-year span of days since 9/11. His action placed Bush's failure in stark relief.

Further, it reminded us that despite the incomparable magnitude of the 9/11 attacks, not a single Bush administration official has resigned, or been asked to resign, to take responsibility for what happened. It was fear of just such a moment, I think, that led Bush to oppose the formation of a 9/11 commission in the first place. And it is the resonance of the moment with so many other Bush failures that gives it its power.

This is an administration that (as Josh Marshall has eloquently argued) does not know how to say "This was our fault." I'm not saying we can or should blame 9/11 on Bush. But the Bush administration's habit of finger-pointing -- whether talking about the stagnant economy (not the fault of our insane tax policies!), the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (not the fault of our blindered policy-making!) or any other issue of national significance over the past four years -- has escalated from a bad habit into a scandal. The stonewalling of responsibility has made it impossible for the nation to figure out what went wrong and make the changes we need to insure it never happens again.

Someone in the executive branch had to stoop down, pick up the famous Harry Truman motto that Bush never seems to have heard, and take its words to heart.

That it took a resigned official to do so, and that his doing so evoked an extraordinary barrage of personal assault from the vice president and other Bush officials, is one last stinging reminder that, in the Bush administration, no one's desk bears a The Buck Stops Here plaque.

Yesterday, Richard Clarke finally stopped the buck. [Scott Rosenberg@Salon]