Posted on 06/25/2004 3:43:23 PM PDT by xsysmgr
A week ago, the New York Times reported, in a screaming page-one headline, that the 9/11 Commission had found "No Qaeda-Iraq Tie." Today, in a remarkable story that positively oozes with consciousness of guilt, the Times confesses not only that there is documentary evidence of at least one tie but that the Times has had the document in question for several weeks. That is, the Times was well aware of this information at the very time of last week's reporting, during which, on June 17, it declaimed from its editorial perch that the lack of a connection between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's terror network meant President Bush owed the nation an apology.
Today, the Times concedes that the Defense Intelligence Agency is in possession of a document showing that, in the mid-1990s, the Iraqi Intelligence Service reached out to what the newspaper euphemistically calls "Mr. bin Laden's organization" (more on that below) regarding the possibility of joint efforts against the Saudi regime, which was then hosting U.S. forces. To be clear, the document records that it was Iraq which initiated the contacts, and that bin Laden finally agreed to discuss cooperation only after having spurned previous overtures because he "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative[.]"
Why does it matter who was enticing whom? On June 17, when, despite having this document, it was trashing the whole notion of an Iraq/Qaeda connection, the Times asserted without qualification that: The 9/11 Commission had found that any collaboration proposals had come from bin Laden's side; all such proposals had been declined by Saddam; and this scenario undermined the Bush administration's rationale for deposing the Iraqi regime. (The Times on June 17: "As for Iraq, the commission's staff said its investigation showed that the government of Mr. Hussein had rebuffed or ignored requests from Qaeda leaders for help in the 1990's, a conclusion that directly contradicts a series of public statements President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made before and after last year's invasion of Iraq in justifying the war.")
Even now, the Times feebly endeavors to minimize the importance of the collaboration evidenced by the newly reported document. It says the information indicates "that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and that a request from Mr. bin Laden to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered. There is no further indication of collaboration." (Emphasis added.) Nevertheless, the reader who has the patience to wade through several paragraphs of the Times disingenuously letting itself off the hook for refusing for weeks to report on this document will learn that what the newspaper really means when it says bin Laden's suggestions "went unanswered." In actuality, "the document contains no statement of response by the Iraqi leadership under Mr. Hussein to the request for joint operations[.]" Translation: Maybe there was a response and maybe there wasn't, but this document does not tell us one way or the other.
Why is this important? Because it is the continuation of a pattern — another instance of an effective but misleading tactic repeatedly used by the Times, the intelligence community, the 9/11 Commission staff, and all the Iraq/Qaeda connection naysayers. To wit: When they can't explain something, they never say they can't explain it; they say it didn't happen — even if saying so is against the weight of considerable counterevidence.
Best example? The 9/11 Commission staff, as gleefully reported by the Times last week, has concluded that there was not a meeting between top-hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi Intelligence Officer Ahmed al-Ani in Prague five months before the 9/11 attacks. There is an eyewitness (a watcher for Czech intelligence) who says he saw them together, and there is substantial corroboration (including an entry in al-Ani's appointment calendar that he was to meet with a "Hamburg student," a pair of highly suspicious trips that Atta undoubtedly made to Prague in 2000 right before coming to the United States, and the fact that no witness has been found who can say he saw Atta in the U.S. when the Czechs say he was in Prague). Did the 9/11 Commission staff actually interview the eyewitness? No. Did the staff or the Times discuss the corroboration that supports the occurrence of the Prague meeting? No. Did either of them grapple with what is to be inferred from Atta's trips to Prague in 2000? No — not a word about them. Just a flat conclusion that the meeting never happened.
Since it's Clinton week, maybe it's best to put it this way: For the Times and its allies, Iraq and al Qaeda are like the former president's trysts: If there ain't a blue cocktail dress, it never happened. If there isn't a photograph of Atta and al-Ani poring over diagrams of the World Trade Center, we just conclude that they never saw each other, and we see no reason to acknowledge that there's considerable evidence that they probably did.
This morning's report is more of the same. We know there were numerous contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda after the collaborative proposals discussed in the newly reported document. How does the Times know that Saddam never responded to bin Laden's overtures? It doesn't. Neither do I. Neither do you. That's why it's called an investigation. The idea is to keep digging until you know. To the contrary, the Times's idea is: bury it, pretend you don't even know the things you do know, grudgingly admit the bare minimum, and use the enormous weight of your own inertia to make the whole thing go away. Thus we get hilarious paragraphs, like this one in today's story:
Members of the Pentagon task force that reviewed the document said it described no formal alliance being reached between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence. The Iraqi document itself states that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."
(Emphasis added.) [I could not find any emphasis in the original - Xsysmgr]
That's a good one: a "formal alliance" between terrorists to terrorize. Did the Times expect a signing ceremony? What next? "The FBI's organized crime unit concluded today that there probably is no Mafia because the evidence does not describe any formal alliance between shadowy figures who, Vice President Dick Cheney claims, refer to themselves as 'Gambinos' and 'Bonannos'...."
Most pathetic of all in today's article is the Times's self-serving rationale for withholding critical information while it was accusing the president of misleading the country. First, even though the document inescapably shows a tie to bin Laden, the Times slyly suggests it may not really show a tie to al Qaeda. After all, so the story goes, this was the mid-90s, "before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization." Nice try. As established by federal indictments, the embassy bombing trial, the 9/11 Commission staff report released last week, and innumerable other sources, al Qaeda was formed in Afghanistan in the late 1980s — years before this document existed.
Al Qaeda, as even the Times is forced to acknowledge, was so full-fledged by 1992 and 1993 that it was launching international attacks against the U.S. military in Yemen and Somalia. The Times fudges this by claiming: "At the time of the contacts described in the Iraqi document, Mr. bin Laden was little known beyond the world of national security experts." That may be so, but it is a far cry from saying al Qaeda wasn't really al Qaeda back then, just because the Times may not have heard of it. And what exactly is the newspaper trying to tell us with this hair-splitting? That when it was blaring that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, it was considering any contacts between Iraq and bin Laden as a separate issue? If that ludicrous position is their position, it would have been nice if they'd told us.
As existential doubts about al Qaeda clearly won't fly, the Times next drags out one of its favorite hobbyhorses: Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. It appears, the Times says, that the INC was the source of this document. Translation: We get a pass for withholding this information because, after all, "[s]ome of the intelligence provided by the group is now wholly discredited[.]"
Strike two. What has allegedly been discredited are defectors who, the INC's detractors say, provided accounts about Saddam's military capabilities and the like that now appear dubious. What we are talking about here, though, is a document. Not only is it true, as the Times ruefully concedes, that "officials have called some of the documents [the INC] helped to obtain useful." This particular document, this spring, turns out to have been "reviewed by a Pentagon working group...[that] included senior analysts from the military's Joint Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and a joint intelligence task force that specialized in counterterrorism issues[.]" The result of that review: "The task force concluded that the document 'appeared authentic,' and that it 'corroborates and expands on previous reporting" about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan[.]"
And then, finally, comes strike three. With no apparent, positive reason to have doubted, and thus to have resisted reporting, this document showing a tie between Iraq and al Qaeda, the Times invents one out of whole cloth: "It is not known whether some on the task force held dissenting opinions about the document's veracity." This is just shameful.
If it is not known whether there were dissenting views, why suggest that there were? After all, the Times knows full well that there are robust dissenting views about the Commission staff's rejection of an Atta/al-Ani meeting in Prague in April 2001, yet it has had no trouble leaping with both feet on the Commission staff's conclusion. The Times knew in March, when it reported Richard Clarke's categorical claim that there was no Iraq/Qaeda connection, that in 1998, when Clarke had been the government's top counter-terrorism official, the same government filed a sealed indictment against bin Laden expressly alleging an Iraq/Qaeda connection.
The Times speculates — in what are presented as straight news stories — that there simply must be dissenting views only when such views would support the ones transparently held by the editors of the Times. And that, above all, is what this is about.
The Times has been against the Iraq war from the start. Its relentless propaganda, in conjunction with its media allies, has taken a sizable toll. President Bush has taken a ratings hit, and a poll out this morning suggests that a slim majority of Americans now believes the war was a mistake. But that could turn around in a heartbeat. No one is more aware than the "newspaper of record" that if the American people become convinced Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots, the national perception of the necessity for this war will drastically change, and the president's reelection will be a virtual lock.
That's what this is about. And who knows what else the Times is not telling us?
Andrew C. McCarthy, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is an NRO contributor. He's reachable through www.benadorassociates.com.
What I don't understand why did they run this story today.....they have been sitting on it for 10 weeks....was someone about to out them?
Disgusting. But are the sheeple so confused now that this will make no difference?
Maybe that was there point.....in doing this.
I think it's great. Lets get some perspective here. I mean, the Democrats grabbed the story and ran with it like there was no tomorrow. But tomorrow came. Just yesterday Al Gore gave yet another one of his speeches, only to look like an idiot today. Demonstrating his adeptness for uncanny timing once, this speech rivals even his global warming speech on the coldest day in a century.
Which is the greater sin? Minimizing the inferences one draws from empirical evidence or maximizing them? I think I know what a good scientist or investigator would do.
The reports of contact between Saddam and Al Qaida have yet to demonstrate any collusion. In this the Times is completely accurate. This article would have us leap immediately from contact to co-conspiracy.
Follow this logic:
I one was enamored with a girl in high school. Several times I asked her out. The notes I left went unanswered.
Which is a more likely conclusion:
a) She never would give me the time of day
b) We were soon married
They figured today no one would read it, they snuck it in. They have already hurt Bush with the denials of Al Quaeda and Iraq connections, now they sneak out this story. They are pretty transparent, Not biased at all LMAO
You must be kidding. Did you not see the "sheeples'" public backlash against the LA Times' anti-Arnold lies during the recall, or against the Wellstone funerally in Minnesota?!
The public understands lying and liars...and the NY Times has just been outed.
Bump.
You think we could get Gore to scream about us not catching....Bin Laden....al Zawahiri...Zarqawi....etc. say tomorrow and we know what will happen next....:-)
They hate America.
One presumes that the reporter at the NY Times who obtained the document in question must have been getting pretty miffed at Management spiking his/her story for 10 weeks.
So there's that angle (i.e. that the reporter finally forced the story out into the open).
Then there is the angle that the NY Times has been unable to substantiate its repeated claims that Bush had tied Iraq to 9/11 itself. So the angle there is that the NY Times needs to start running stories that somehow soften the blow (i.e. about their anti-Bush lies). Thus, they have to gradually get out into the open that Bush was correct to say that Iraq had some al qaeda ties, while the NY Times was incorrect to say that Bush had tried to link Iraq to 9/11.
This story dovetails in with both scenarios above.
So you print it on a Friday and hope that the Public forgets about it by Monday.
Won't happen, but that's what they are surely hoping.
I think the people at the Times and other major lib papers are dreading getting up in the morning lately what with the recent disclosures of A-Q and Iraq contacts and more discoveries of those "nonexistent" wmds. If they had a shred of integrity, they'd just admit that they've been horribly wrong about the whole war. It's one thing to oppose the war, and it's quite another to withhold or twist facts for the sake of ideology. The Times fails badly in all categories of truth and responsibility.
I'm not kidding, but I did stay in a Holday Inn Express once.
Yes there was a point...put out what they want Dem-libs to rejoice over, then retract on back page that they didn't tell the truth. Mission accomplished, Bush looks bad and Kerry looks good, then they cover it with an apology.
After watching on Brit, and getting it forwarded via email this morning, I don't understand why this isn't top billing on FR Breaking News. Instead we have silliness about Kerry's divorce records....
Just so. What the Times wants to do is shore up its tattered threads of credibility with those insiders who are aware of its lies, while at the same time hiding the facts from the great mass of people who are completely unaware of the facts--and who will continue to be unaware of them, because this NRO story will not be reported by the mass media.
Good question, why now?
If you follow your logic and apply the analogy as it is known about what happened and has been reported so far, you would have to conclude that you got her pregnant and she had to marry you.
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