Case Decidedly Not Closed

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/995706.asp?0cl=c1&cp1=1

The Defense Dept. memo allegedly proving a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam does nothing of the sort

Nov. 19 — A leaked Defense Department memo claiming new evidence of an “operational relationship” between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein’s former regime is mostly based on unverified claims that were first advanced by some top Bush administration officials more than a year ago—and were largely discounted at the time by the U.S. intelligence community, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.

CASE CLOSED blared the headline in a Weekly Standard cover story last Saturday that purported to have unearthed the U.S. government’s “secret evidence of cooperation” between Saddam and bin Laden. Fred Barnes, the magazine’s executive editor, touted the magazine’s scoop the next day in a roundtable chat on “Fox News Sunday.” (Both the Standard and Fox News Channel are owned by the conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch.) “These are hard facts, and I’d like to see you refute any one of them,” he told a skeptical Juan Williams of National Public Radio.

In fact, the tangled tale of the memo suggests that the case of whether there has been Iraqi-Al Qaeda complicity is far from closed. The Oct. 27, 2003, memo, prepared by Deputy Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s office, was written in response to detailed questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee about the basis for intelligence pushed by Feith and other senior Pentagon officials during the run-up to the Iraq war.

With a few, inconclusive exceptions, the memo doesn’t actually contain much “new” intelligence at all. Instead, it mostly recycles shards of old, raw data that were first assembled last year by a tiny team of floating Pentagon analysts (led by a Pennsylvania State University professor and U.S. Navy analyst Christopher Carney) whom Feith asked to find evidence of an Iraqi-Al Qaeda “connection” in order to better justify a U.S. invasion.

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[Ripley]

1. Then Fox and anyone else touting it should announce a correction.

Because that is the latest talking point all dittoo-heads are screeching.

[mac56]

2. As another poster put it: "Shout the lie - whisper the correction".

nm

[lefty_mcduff]

3. No news allowed on Faux. Jackson, Peterson, Bryant.

That's your lot. Now move along.

[gratuitous]

4. Don't hold your breath

William Safliar's column yesterday relied heavily on the Feith memo to demand an apology from the responsible voices in the intelligence community who denied any links between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Of course, the Feith memo "proves" nothing of the sort, but it didn't stop Safliar from clowning around as if it did.

The Times should quit running the columns Safliar submits written in red crayon; the man is looney tunes!

[0007]

5. FOX is out to give entertainment to the 'willy nilly' - Not news....

If truth was in mind at Fox News, Fox News could not survive. So Fox News does the bidding of the White House.

[deutsey]

6. A conservative at work today

taunted me with the "news" that al Quaeda and Iraq were in cahoots over 9/11. Fortunately, I was able to call up the DoD page that declares this report "inaccurate" and show it to him.

Oh, that felt good! But how many people are out there who will never know about the DoD's debunking of this propaganda?

[grasswire]

7. here's the best debunking I've seen

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2003/11/conspiracy_theo.html


To accept that Feith's memo "closes the case" one must accept that:

1. The Bush administration had evidence supporting the strongest case for the invasion of Iraq, but chose not to share this evidence with the American public or the U.N. Security Council, choosing instead to base its case for war on more tenuous claims, including some that were demonstrably false (Niger, "45 minutes," "mushroom cloud," aluminum tubes, etc.).

2. Although they knew this claim to be true, and could prove it, the administration meticulously avoided ever stating it, relying instead on a baroque rhetoric of inference and implication.

3. President Bush himself and his many defenders have indignantly denied the suggestion that they have even hinted at making this claim -- never insisting that it was demonstrably true.

Consider the recent thin-skinnedness displayed in the recent brouhaha over whethr or not anyone in the administration ever explicitly claimed that Iraq presented an "imminent" threat to America's national security.

The indignation was palpable. No one ever suggested such a thing, the administration's defenders scowled.

Well, why not? If Saddam and Osama are linked conclusively -- "case closed" -- then doesn't that suggest that Iraq did in fact present an imminent threat? Such a link might actually entail even more than that -- it would possibly mean that Iraq was an aggressor, already complicit in lethal attacks on American soil. Why deny that you ever said the words "imminent threat" if you already possess conclusive evidence of an established, existent threat?

And why -- to consider another whole rhetorical realm that is unnecessary if the Standard's claims are true -- would you talk of a "pre-emptive" war when you possess evidence that it was actually in a sense a defensive and retaliatory action?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

11. Btw, Chimp repeated the "45 minute, imminent threat" bs in a

rose garden speech before the war. I'm sure someone here has a link to it. Lying liars.

[trapper914]

8. Felt good here too...

...but my conservative co-worker just said, "So," crumpled up the Pentagon release and tossed it. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

[LearnedHand]

12. Link to DoD's website?

n/t

[Snellius]

9. Didn't the Big Stinky Cheese say "No More Leaks, Never"?

Wait. Let me get this straight. Does this mean someone on the Senate Intelligence Committee is leaking classified secrets? The Senate INTELLIGENCE Committee? Weren't these the same guys who were going through the wastebaskets of Democratic members looking for "outrageous" partisan memos?

[underpants]

10. All leaks are the same but some leaks are MORE the same than others

Something lke that. Yes and an on-line petition was going around demanding Rockefeller's resignation because he MIGHT sort of use the Intelligence Committee for "political purposes" which the Feith (How do you pronounce his name) was certainly NOT doing.

Uh-huh.