Well, at 2:58 p.m. today, the Houston Chronicle posted an al-Reuters story that is headlined "9/11 panel links Iraqi officer to al-Qaida" and says:
The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has been given new evidence that "a very prominent member" of al-Qaida served as an officer in Saddam Hussein's militia, a panel member said today.Republican commissioner John Lehman told NBC's "Meet the Press" program that the new intelligence, if proven true, buttresses claims by the Bush administration of ties between Iraq and the militant network believed responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
Lehman said the information, contained in "captured documents," was obtained after the commission report was written that stated there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaida.
So, not having watched Meet the Press today because Tim Russert has been such an asshat recently, I check the transcript and find John Lehman quoted thus:
There's really very little difference between what our staff found, what the administration is saying today and what the Clinton administration said. The Clinton administration portrayed the relationship between al- Qaeda and Saddam's intelligence services as one of cooperating in weapons development. There's abundant evidence of that. In fact, as you'll soon hear from Joe Klein, President Clinton justified his strike on the Sudan "pharmaceutical" site because it was thought to be manufacturing VX gas with the help of the Iraqi intelligence service.Since then, that's been validated. There has been traces of Empta that comes straight from Iraq, and this confounds the Republicans, who accused Clinton of doing it for political purposes. But it confirms the cooperative relationship, which were the words of the Clinton administration, between al-Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence.
The Bush administration has never said that they participated in the 9/11 attack. They've said, and our staff has confirmed, there have been numerous contacts between Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda over a period of 10 years, at least. And now there's new intelligence, and this has come since our staff report has been written because, as you know, new intelligence is coming in steadily from the interrogations in Guantanamo and in Iraq and from captured documents. And some of these documents indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al-Qaeda. That still has to be confirmed. But the vice president was right when he said that he may have things that we don't yet have. And we are now in the process of getting this latest intelligence.
But in any case, it demonstrates the difficulty that we've had in this commission, because we're under tremendous political pressures. Everything we've come out with, one side or the other seizes on in this election year to try to make a political point on.
All of which brings out several thoughts, such as...
• This information is not new and has been in the public domain for weeks. It was discovered in February and reported in the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard in late May. If I know about it, how is it possible that the Commission staff did not? In fact, it is not possible.
• Lehman is spinning shamelessly following the barrage of well-founded criticism the Commission received after their confused and highly political "staff report" was issued this week and immediately spun by our empty-headed media into "the Bush Administration lied" about the connections between Iraq and al Qaeda.
• Lehman is still trying to pin it all on a vague implication that the Bushies haven't given the Commission what it needs, but also wants to try to have it both ways: Bush & Co. are proven right, but it's still their fault.
• Ergo, Lehman is confirmed as a weasel and another public nuisance.
• The 9-11 Commission is indeed nothing but a a wasteful fraud and bad for our country. Or, as Jeff Jarvis said earlier:
The 9/11 Commission has perverted its work and, in my view, committed the unpardonable sin of politicizing 9/11 and turning the attacks of mudering terrorist nutjobs into a litany of things we did wrong, things that are our fault.Posted by Alan at June 20, 2004 04:52 PMNo, 9/11 is the fault of murdering terrorist nutjobs and the only solution to this is to hunt down and capture or kill every one of them we can find wherever we find them -- yes, even in Saudi Arabia, even in Iraq, even in Pakistan, even in New Jersey. I wish I heard the Commission giving us a few more suggestions about how to do that.