On Saddam’s Order

National Review ^ | 3-26-08 | Mark Eichenlaub

[ikez78]

The Iraqi tyrant didn’t “just” aid anti-American terrorist groups; he explicitly ordered them to attack.

By Mark Eichenlaub

Links. Ties. Operational links. Sponsorship. These terms have vastly different meanings to different members of the media when they discuss relations between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the al-Qaeda network. This became clear yet again last week when news outlets reported on the Department of Defense-sponsored Iraqi Perspectives Project (all five volumes of which are now available here). The vast majority of news reports focused on a single sentence that was incorrectly taken to mean that no ties, links, relations or connections of any sort existed between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the al-Qaeda movement.

[ikez78]

This piece is based on comments with mainstream press "journalists"

[ikez78]

PING

[jveritas]

Mark

Excellent article.

[highlander_UW]

Highly unlikely the MSM will pick up and run with this story...it doesn’t fit with their meme.

[arderkrag]

Links. Ties. Operational links. Sponsorship. These terms have vastly different meanings to different members of the media

And to different members of the general public. For example, I see it this way:

Link - Group A has interacted with Group B, maybe positively, maybe not.
Ties - As Link, but contact is frequent.
Operational Links - Operations are similar: using the same tactics, fighting with the same weapons, same organizational structure, etc.
Sponsorship - direct funding and support by Group A of Group B, or vice versa.
(I might be wrong on some of these.)

The press intentionally muddles the meanings of these words to indice confusion. Confusion leads to panic. Panic means more people read papaers and watch news.

[ikez78]

Good points arderkrag. I discussed them with them and pretty much told them as much. I said they should put all the specifics out there and let readers decide instead of just making that decision for them.

Joseph,
Thanks. Still gonna do something on al Qaeda being in Iraq prewar using your work. There is a lot on that topic from al Qaeda docs and Saddam’s docs.

[PGalt]

OUTSTANDING! Thanks, Mark.

[griswold3]

Word?!!? Just Words!?!!!

[arderkrag]

Eh?

[griswold3]

Just saying you can frame the argument on your own terms with ‘words’...

[Ben Hecks]

Outstanding. Thanks for the ping. More evidence that Saddam was actively involved in terrorism is contained in this 2006 article by Stephen Hayes:

http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=11990&R=EC0D16975

[arderkrag]

Well, yes...I’m still confused as to whether you’re agreeing with my earlier post or disagreeing.

[griswold3]

Sorry, I totally agree with you.

The MSM always frames the argument and tells us what is important, or at least tries to. It’s their business.

[arderkrag]

Yep. Most journalists honestly go into journalism to try to change the world around them, not report the actual story. Thus they frame stories to fit their mold of success.

[jveritas]

Mark

This will be great.

[tomnbeverly]

Those inflicted with BDS are the only ones that can’t see the correlation between Saddam and Terrorists. Islamic Radicals were willing to launch suicide attacks against Amrican cities at the request of Saddam Husseins government. George W. Bush ensured that never happened.

The correct way to frame the debate is to make the Liberals state that they trusted the tyrant.

[marron]

Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al-Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al-Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.

EIJ formed the nucleus of Al Qaeda, and the head of EIJ is Bin Ladin's second in command, he may be in fact the operational leader of Al Qaeda. Which means that the constant drumbeat that Saddam had nothing to do with Al Qaeda is not only not true, it is the opposite of the truth.

Bin Ladin's inner circle was riddled with people who were on Saddam's dime.

Saddam's Iraq was Terror Central. He used terror as a tool of state power, sending his intel officers to supply, fund, and coordinate the actions of the various supposedly free-lance operations we usually consider "Al Qaeda". If "Al Qaeda" is understood to be a collection of ad hoc terror groups who admire Bin Ladin, the term may have some use, but Saddam's intel used these groups as if they were his own.

[Steve_Seattle]

The MSM has its story and it’s sticking to it.

[ikez78]

yes, already emailed back and forth with a few of them. they still revert back to “saddam” wasn’t a threat. they will stand next to a brown wall and tell you it isn’t brown with a straight face. too bad these people wont’ seriously engage.

[Steve_Seattle]

Many years ago, liberal Democrat Sen. Eugene McCarthy made this comment about the press, and it's still true today: "The press is like a flock of birds sitting on a wire. They sit and sit and sit, and when one flies off in a certain direction, all the others follow." Nothing I've seen in the past 30 years contradicts that. Newsrooms are like echo-chambers; a newsroom full of liberal Democrats is an atmosphere where the conventional liberal wisdom is never questioned, but constantly reinforced. This coupled with their arrogant assumptions that they are both unbiased and smarter than everyone else, makes them almost impervious to facts which do not fit their worldview.

Thus, when Obama purports to "open the discussion about race," a discussion that has actually been going on for more than 50 years, the libs in the MSM all applaud him for his pioneering courage. Everybody else just scratches their head and says, "Haven't we been here before?"