What's with the Feith Memo?

[durutti]

Is it a fraud? Is it being overstated? I'm confused.

[AntiCoup2K4]

1. Feith is PNAC. Does that answer your question?

In other words, yes it's a fucking lie.

[grasswire]

2. Joe Conason wrote about it Monday

And you can read his analysis by going to http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/11/17/leaks/index.html

You'll have to get the free day pass if you are not a salon member, but all that takes is watching a very short commercial about a PBS musical production.

Here's part of it:

Most of the rest of the story -- and apparently the most damning items in the Feith memo -- is old material. The Standard story offers up its chestnuts in a breathless tone that sometimes verges on the comical. To explain why more evidence of the al-Qaida connection has yet to surface, Hayes notes that "both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.)" Obviously, those villains assumed that nobody would have a penknife handy to scrape away the White-out.

Still, the nation's intelligence agencies were clearly alarmed by the leaking of the Feith memo, which names various important sources. On Saturday, with a screaming New York Post front-page headline on the newsstands, the Pentagon issued this statement:

"News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate ...

"The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the , or, in one case, the . The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the Intelligence Community. The selection of the documents was made by to respond to the Committee's question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida, and it drew no conclusions.

"Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal."

Deplorable indeed, but don't expect anyone to be held accountable for this breach or others to come. The neoconservatives, once billed as mature, responsible foreign-policy "grown-ups," have turned out to be as discreet as a clique of teenage girls. Their political tactics may be almost as perilous and unwise as their policies.
<1 p.m. PST, Nov. 17, 2003>