9/11 panel plays at terror games . . .

Boston Herald ^ | 6/18/04 | Boston Herald editorial staff

[kattracks]

The 9/11 Commission is once again engaged in partisan word games that have little to do with their supposed mission and everything to do with bringing down the Bush administration.
     It's a tried and true technique: Set up the proverbial straw man, then knock him down.
     So when the commission finds, ``We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States,'' it is logical to ask, who said it did?
     Never, in all the months leading up to the war in Iraq, did President Bush [related, bio] or Secretary of State Colin Powell or anyone in the administration make that allegation. In fact, last September Bush said quite explicitly, ``No, we've had no evidence Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11.''
     On the other hand, Bush has also been clear before the war and now that as he said on Feb. 8, 2003, ``Saddam Hussein has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist networks.''
     And from this John Kerry [related, bio] concludes Bush ``misled'' the American people?
     Its straw-man technique aside, the commission report at times appears hopelessly naive in its attempt to exonerate Saddam and find him innocent of further links to Osama bin Laden or his al-Qaeda network.
     ``Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq,'' the report stated.
     Well, a denial from senior members of the world's worst terrorist network - wouldn't everyone take that to the bank?
     The commission also noted that it was ``a matter of debate'' whether Ramzi Yousef - mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and a Manila-based plot to blow up U.S. commercial airliners in 1995 - was a member of al-Qaeda at the time or became a member later. Do they suppose bin Laden gave out membership cards like the YMCA or the Elks?
     In a column in yesterday's New York Post, Richard Miniter, author of a book on bin Laden and his terrorist network, lists more than a dozen ties between al-Qaeda operatives and Saddam, many of them documented in papers found in Baghdad and Tikrit since the war. That Saddam gave a home, a salary and a safe haven to one of the perpetrators of that 1993 World Trade Center bombing is not debatable; it's fact.
     So, too, were the safe haven and medical treatment provided in Baghdad in May 2002 for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who ran an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and was implicated in the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley and, more recently, the beheading of American Nicholas Berg.
     But the broader point that the commission seems intent on ignoring is, as Bush said yesterday, ``The world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power.''
     That is a fact beyond dispute and beyond word games.

[walford]

But the broader point that the commission seems intent on ignoring is, as Bush said yesterday, ``The world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power.''

If good news for America in particular and freedom in general is bad news for your side, just what is your side?

[thegreatbeast]

They won't give us that point though. In their minds we are creating thousands of disaffected middle sons of billionaires who are made mad by the very existence of the West.