Larry Johnson: Doug Feith, Reinventing History

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/feb/11/doug_feith_reinventing_history

Dougie Feith appeared on Faux News Sunday with Chris Wallace today and emphatically denied that he or anyone in his office ever said there was an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. How sad. Mr. Feith apparently has early on-set Alzheimer's disease. He's forgotten that someone in his shop at DOD leaked his October 2003 memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee to one Mr. Stephen Hayes, an enterprising journalist, who in turn published the breathless findings in the Weekly Standard.

So what? The Weekly Standard is not an official government publication. Why should we take it seriously? Well, let's ask Vice President Dick Cheney. Here's what the Weekly Standard Editor, a guy named Bill Kristol, wrote three years ago:

Editor's Note, 1/27/04: In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank reported that "Vice President Cheney . . . in an interview this month with the Rocky Mountain News, recommended as the 'best source of information' an article in The Weekly Standard magazine detailing a relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda based on leaked classified information."
If it is good enough for Dick should it not be good enough for you? Hayes account of the Feith memo pulls no punches and provides no room for ambiguity--Saddam and Bin Laden were in bed together since the early 1990s. According to Hayes:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_02/010722.php

WORDS MATTER....Chris Wallace talks to Doug Feith this morning about the intelligence his office produced while he was at the Pentagon. Here's Feith:

Nobody in my office ever said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It's just not correct. I mean, words matter.

Yes, words do matter:

Osama bin laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda -- perhaps even for Mohamed Atta -- according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.

Anybody want to guess whose office this "top secret memorandum" came from? Anybody? No fair clicking the link first!

[Swamp Rat]

1. no need to click