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Thursday, June 17, 2004

Lots and lots of spin all over, particularly in turning the 9/11 Commission story into more than it is. It isn't the Bush Administration that has been intentionally conflating Saddam and 9/11, it's the media, as exemplified by this latest round of argument via headline in which the media pretends a 'gotcha' that doesn't really exist - outside the spin the media has already created. (In fact, as I type this I am listening to George Bush stick to his guns and continue the consistent line that they had never said there were conclusive ties between Saddam and 9/11, but that they stand by the fact that there were contacts between Saddam and al Qaeda - not contradicted by this latest report.)

A couple of notes by way of reminder. The invasion of only one country had as its direct, proximate cause the 9/11 attacks: Afghanistan. Iraq was invaded for a number of other provided reasons, some emphasized more than others for political reasons. Among them: Repeated unwillingness to comply with UN resolutions, violation of the cease-fire agreement that ended the first Gulf War, Saddam's contact with terrorists - known and potential - Saddam's quest for and production of illicit weapons, the potential of a Saddamless Iraq to reshape the region, humanitarian reasons, and more...most of which existed before, but were measured under a different calculus in a post-9/11 world.

All of which as preamble to one of today's links, this bit of counter-spin in NRO by Andrew C. McCarthy, "a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others."

Andrew C. McCarthy: Iraq & al Qaeda - The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers.

The 9/11 Commission's staff has come down decidedly on the side of the naysayers about operational ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. This development is already being met with unbridled joy by opponents of the Iraq war, who have been carping for days about recent statements by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that reaffirmed the deposed Iraqi regime's promotion of terror.

The celebration is premature. The commission's cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq confederated is puzzling. Given that the panel had three hours for Richard Clarke, one might have hoped for more than three minutes on Iraq. More to the point, though, the staff statements released Wednesday — which seemed to be contradicted by testimony at the public hearing within minutes of their publication — raise more questions than they answer, about both matters the staff chose to address and some it strangely opted to omit.

The staff's sweeping conclusion is found in its Statement No. 15 ("Overview of the Enemy"), which states:

Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States[Emphasis mine. - Sol].

Just taken on its own terms, this paragraph is both internally inconsistent and ambiguously worded. First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no "ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." If the first proposition is so, then the "[t]wo senior Bin Laden associates" who are the sources of the second are either lying or misinformed...


3 Comments

Isn't it amazing how some people can close their eyes and make all those pesky facts go away?

The media frenzy on this is amazing, but also depressing. Those of us who read blogs know the difference, but the majority of Americans will only get the impression that Bush lied.

Sad.

You said it brutha.

Andrew McCarthy is becoming a must read every article he publishes.

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