I hope everyone who was criticizing the former congressman earlier is eating their words right about now. After Fred Fielding did a particularly bad job of trying to undercut Clarke based on the work of the congressional joint inquiry into intelligence, Roemer cut in and said that as the only member of the 9/11 commission who was also on THAT panel, he can say that a lot of the confusion and differring info is because Condi Rice refused to testify before that panel as well as this one, and that Hadley went in her stead and basically BSed them.
As someone who used to work for the guy commented earlier, Roemer (and the other Dems for that matter) isn't "being soft," but simply being tough all around and independent-minded-- in other words, exactly what an INDEPENDENT COMMISSION is supposed to do! In the overall picture, this scenario (with partisan digs like the one I just talked about above gotten in whenever relevant) is a lot better for our side than if they were trying to simply be an echo chamber for Clarke. In contrast, witness the GOP members pretty much trying to trip him up with a nicer-phrased version of White House talking points-- you could tell thaT Lehman and Fielding were squirming at having to try and undercut their old pal, and failing badly (the way in which each of their questioning periods ended was pretty damn abrupt, it really made Clarke look good and authoratative).