Here is a portion of the transcipt from the 9-11 commission from yesterday concerning Deputy Wofowitz, and hia somewhat evasive answer to related questions posed by Commission member Timothy J. Roemer.

ROEMER: So the cost-benefit ratio of a million dollar cruise missile to taking out some people that can come kill others was one we just didn't consider, I don't think, in the right kind of cost-benefit analysis in the long run.

One final question: Again, Secretary Wolfowitz, this is again to be fair, and I want to shoot straight with you on this. We have Mr. Clarke coming up tomorrow. And he has a reference in his book to an April 30th deputies meeting, where he claims -- and we want to know if this is accurate or not, so that we can ask him the direct questions tomorrow -- he claims that in this meeting, when they were talking about a plan to go forward to go after bin Laden and Al Qaida, that you brought up the subject of Iraq and that you put too much attention on Iraq as a sponsor, as a state sponsor of terrorism and not enough emphasis on Al Qaida as a transnational sponsor of terrorism.

I have just two comments or two questions on that. One would be: Is that fairly accurate? Is his portrayal of that deputies meeting accurate at all or accurate to some degree?

And secondly, in an interagency meeting, where dialogue and discussion of these things should take place, that's what the interagency process is about, isn't that where these discussions should take place, that opinions should be bounced back and forth and debate should be heated at times about the different threats to the world?

Simple enough. Wolfowitz's answer:

WOLFOWITZ: In case I wasn't clear,[and he certainly wasn't. ed.] I was not dismissive of Al Qaida as a threat. The whole meeting was about Al Qaida. I also believed that state support for terrorism was a problem. But I have never been dismissive of Al Qaida, and I think precisely because I think terrorism is such a serious problem, as I testified as early as my confirmation hearing.

This is the extent of his answer about Iraq. He mentions Iraq not once, in a question directly about Iraq. I have no idea why Mr. Roemer didn't reframe the question to cause Mr. Wolfowitz to answer in a yes or no manner. I certainly would have.

Wolfowitz deftly dodges answering the Iraq question directly.