From “The Mother of All Connections,” Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn in the July 18 Weekly Standard:
For many, the debate over the former Iraqi regime’s ties to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence “indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States” and ran blaring headlines like the one on the June 17, 2004, front page of the New York Times: “Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie.”
But this was woefully imprecise. It assumed, not unreasonably, that the 9/11 Commission’s conclusion was based on a firm foundation of intelligence reporting, that the intelligence community had the type of human intelligence and other reporting that would allow senior-level analysts to draw reasonable conclusions. We know now that was not the case.
John Lehman, a 9/11 commissioner, spoke to The Weekly Standard at the time the report was released. “There may well be–and probably will be–additional intelligence coming in from interrogations and from analysis of captured records and so forth which will fill out the intelligence picture. This is not phrased as–nor meant to be–the definitive word on Iraqi Intelligence activities.”
Lehman’s caution was prescient. A year later, we still cannot begin to offer a “definitive” picture of the relationships entered into by Saddam Hussein’s operatives, but much more has already been learned from documents uncovered after the Iraq war. The evidence we present below, compiled from revelations in recent months, suggests an acute case of denial on the part of those who dismiss the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship.
Read the rest.
(h/t Stephen Meyer)
One of many…
So I can pre-empt the usual liberal dem response to this latest report:
Kos Kidz:”but…but…but……ABU-GHRAIB!!GITMO TORTURE!!WHERE’S OSAMA??!!?!umm…and uh…..
ABU-GHRAIB!!
damn…CHIMPYMCSATAN IS TRYING TO STEAL YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY AMERICA!!! WAKE UP AMERICA!!!”
Turing Word: Planning; as in Saddam Hussein will no longer be PLANNING any co-ordinated attacks with Islamic terrorists against the US and its allies..
Heck, Saddam Hussein could show up in a “I
al-Qaeda” t-shirt at his trial and starting bragging about his tacit, or overt, support of these and other terrorists – and the usual suspects would shrug it off.
Major John,
Yeah, they’d just claim Karl Rove made him wear the t-shirt. You know, in exchange for leniency. And if they execute Saddam, they’ll claim Rove double-crossed him.
All evil in the world can be traced back to either Karl Rove or the Jooooooooooooooooooos!
DON’T FORGET THE PICTURE OF RUMSFELD HANGING OUT WITH SADDAM!!!
Meanwhile, a good post at Big Pharoah:
“Anyway, I’ll end this post with what I heard from a colleague of mine this morning. He told me that he watched an interview with al-sharif’s daughter where she said something remarkable. She was living with her dad when he was Egypt’s envoy in Israel and she said: we lived among the Jews for 4 years and nobody touched us, and now when my father went to an Arab Muslim country, he got killed immediately.â€Â
It’s an absolutely fantastic article. Very long, but very much worth the time. Print it out and highlight your favorite passages, kids! It’s the limit!
major john, i know i was a bit dissappointed at my husband’s reaction to this article. he was like, “so what, it’s not like it will change anyone’s mind” *sigh*
Gotta admit: in March 2003, I thought that by this time we’d be busy neutralizing Saddam’s stockpiles of sarin, ricin, and mustard gas, picking through nuke facilities, and interrogating al-Qaeda kingpins. Not parsing the tiny type in various federal government reports, like Sovietologists reading the tea leaves in Izvestia.