Friday, September 08, 2006
Saddam al Qaeda Whitewash
But here's what the Weekly Standard says about it:
ONCE AGAIN headlines from media outlets around the country declare "No Saddam, al-Qaeda link." This time the news cycle is being fed by the release of two reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, both of which purport to investigate the uses of prewar intelligence. The first of these two reports, titled "Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments," has pleased Democrats.
Senator Carl Levin says that the report is "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading, and deceptive attempts" to connect Saddam's regime to bin Laden's al Qaeda. Senator Jay Rockefeller agrees with Senator Levin's assessment, saying the report will confirm that "the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq was fundamentally misleading."
But beyond the obvious political gamesmanship, there is little merit to this posturing because there is little serious analysis in the Senate report: Far from providing the definitive word on Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, the report is almost worthless.
We forget we are at war, and we ought to band together against a common enemy, but it is more important to grandstand and bend the truth than it is to win the battle against our sworn enemy. Don't we realize that we're just extending the war by this kind of game?
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