FLIRTING, DATING, MARRIAGE

Okay, I'm stealing that metaphor from someone I heard yesterday, but I didn't catch who said it so I'm just stealing it.

Both the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission agree that al Queda and Iraq never married. The press claims that the two are in disagreement because the Commission says there was flirting -- no dating. The administration says there was dating, they never said there was marriage -- but that this is the Commission's position as well. Lee Hamilton says he can live with that formulation.

Lets start with Dana Milbank's representation of who said what yesterday about how tightly linked al Queda was with Saddam. This matters enormously, because there's what was said, there's whether it's represented as accurate or false, and there's whether it's represented as an attempt to mislead. In other words campers, this is once again an issue as much about politics as about national security. So lets take a look at the Post's version, and I'll add others through the day hopefully.

He begins:

President Bush yesterday defended his assertions that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, putting him at odds with this week's finding of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission.

Note, by the way, that an "assertion" is an unevidenced claim. Then of course, the frame of the article right out of the gate, is that the two positions are distinct (and to hell with Lee Hamilton.)

In the second graf he then uses the correct quote from the President:

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," Bush said after a Cabinet meeting. As evidence, he cited Iraqi intelligence officers' meeting with bin Laden in Sudan. "There's numerous contacts between the two," Bush said.

He then quotes Kerry's response, which is fine, and then writes:

The panel's staff reported on Wednesday that there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

In challenging the commission's finding, Bush and his aides argued that their previous assertions about the ties between Iraq and the terrorist organization were justified by the contacts that occurred.

"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda," Bush said. "We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda."

So, the Commission says no collaboration. The administration says no collaboration. But somehow those two statements, which are in not just fundamental agreement but complete agreement, are somehow drawn in sharp enough contrast that Milbank posits the administration as "challenging" the Commission, by the rhetorical trick of juxtaposing the administrations repetition of the claim with their description of it as justification for war.

But I love what he does next:

Officials with the Sept. 11 commission yesterday tried to soften the impact of the staff's finding, noting that the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, agrees with the administration on key points. "Were there contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq? Yes," Thomas H. Kean (R), the panel's chairman, said at a news conference. "What our staff statement found is there is no credible evidence that we can discover, after a long investigation, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein in any way were part of the attack on the United States."

"Soften" the impact? What they tried to do was undercut the press response by pointing out that there was no essential disagreement. Of course that would have been clearer if Milbank has quoted Hamilton instead of Kean, but even with this quote, Kean is not seen as disagreeing with the administration. But of course when public officials response to an event is to complain that the press coverage is unfair or inaccuate, it is quite rare that those quotes make it into the next days coverage.

Unless those attacks are against a competitor:

Vice President Cheney, in an interview yesterday with CNBC's "Capital Report," said "the press has been irresponsible" in reporting on the commission's findings, sometimes for "malicious" reasons. Referring to a New York Times front-page headline, "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie," he said: "What the New York Times did today was outrageous." Cheney added: "The fact of the matter is, the evidence is overwhelming. The press is, with all due respect, and there are exceptions, oftentimes lazy, oftentimes simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework."

The Times said it had no comment on Cheney's charges.

I'll bet they didn't. But it costs Milbank little to quote the administration complaining about the press. He's presenting them as on the defensive in responding the the Commission report. Quoting the Commission as saying the press got the story wrong is a bit tougher -- and costlier.

Then we're back to old fights:

While not explicitly declaring Iraqi culpability in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, administration officials did, at various times, imply a link. In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official. Later, Cheney called Iraq the "geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Bush, in 2003, said "the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001."

If Cheney said "pretty well confirmed" he went too far, but I want to see the whole transcript before I bite. I don't trust these guys on context. As to the "geographic base" line, I realize that had a lot of people up in arms but I never really got the punch of that one -- is the Middle East the region of concern, or is it not?

As to the line from Bush, he has consistently argued that Iraq is a battle in the larger GWOT, no question. But that's been a conceptual argument, a theoretical argument. I bet you could find dozens of quotes like that, but if you look at the entire paragraph, that context would become clear.

But get what he does next:

Beyond the Sept. 11 attacks, administration officials have also suggested that there had been cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda that went beyond contacts. Bush last year called Hussein "an ally of al Qaeda." Just this Monday, Cheney said Hussein "had long-established ties with al Qaeda."

What he doesn't say about the "ally" line is that it apparently happened after the war with Iraq started, so it clearly wasn't part of the effort to lead the country to war, and apparently it happened to once. And, excuse me, "long established ties" is exactly the argument. But it isn't "collaboration" it isn't "cooperation" and that's the position Hamilton says he can live with.

This is a bit much:

In January, Cheney said the "best source" of information on the subject was an article in the Weekly Standard, which reported: "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda -- perhaps even for Mohamed Atta -- according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum."

Cheney said the best source was the article itself, not that particular quote in the article. The article basically just goes through the so-called Feith Memo written for the Senate, and the memo goes through a long list of items which it makes clear are of different levels of credibility. It's a cheap move to go from that to the claim that therefore the administration has supported the idea that there's an operational relationship. It hasn't.

Bush, in a February 2003 radio address, said: "Iraq has sent bombmaking and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad."

Damn straight.

That's probably more than the Sept. 11 Commission would support. But that's probably more than was in their purview to study. Their one paragraph versus everything the administration has studied? Either way, the New York Times and every other headline proclaiming that the Commission's position was "no" meaning "zero" ties was just flat wrong.

The New York Times Takes Up the Challenge

The Times has to play this one carefully, since by now the Veep's interview with CNBC has gotten enough coverage that a good number of people at least know that he said something unflattering about their coverage yesterday. And so a page one, below the fold piece goes to the President and Vice President's having taken up the issue.

One could parse the words of the opening paragraph, and make an argument that it is rigorously, precisely accurate. But in tone, in attitude, in where it's trying to take you, the point is not to draw sharp distinctions but to ellide them.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney said yesterday that they remain convinced that Saddam Hussein's government had a long history of ties to Al Qaeda, a day after the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that its review of classified intelligence found no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" that linked Iraq to the terrorist organization.

Mr. Bush, responding to a reporter's question about the report after a White House cabinet meeting yesterday morning, said: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda" is "because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

Just before the jump, where the article is continued on another page, the Times brings up the Vice President's comments about it.

Last night Mr. Cheney, who was the administration's most forceful advocate of the Qaeda-Hussein links, was more pointed, repeating in detail his case for those ties and saying that The New York Times's coverage yesterday of the commission's findings "was outrageous."

"They do a lot of outrageous things,".

But not until the jump page, which fewer people are likely to read, is the substance of the Veep's claim made clear.

He said that newspapers, including the Times, had confused the question of whether there was evidence of Iraqi participation in Sept. 11 with the issue of whether a relationship existed between Al Qaeda and Mr. Hussein's regime.

But a little later in the article they make the exact same mistake again. They begin by quoting from that one key paragraph in the report.

"Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

Mr. Cheney expressed a slightly different view last night, saying, "We have never been able to prove that there was a connection there on 9/11." (My emph.)

How is that at all different? The report says that there's no evidence of any cooperation on attacks against the US, Cheney says no cooperation, not even a connection, on 9/11.

The next few sentences show that there is a difference on the Atta visit to Prague (the Commission says we flat don't believe it/Cheney says no way to determine it either way) but that seems a secondary question to the more encompassing question of whether the two groups ever worked together.

Later still the reporters note that, "Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were not alone in responding yesterday to the commission's findings." And then the note what House Speaker Hastert, Senator Kerry, and a Bush campaign spokesman had to say.

Grand.

It might have been more helpful if they'd bothered to tell us what the Commission Chair and Co-Chair had had to say. But, of course, they both weighed in on the President's side, against the press. Explicitly.

Update: Then there's the Los Angeles Times.

I should do a better job of following the LA Times; that's a huge market. On the other hand, I don't have to worry too much -- Patterico's got my back. This is a little bit wierdly circular, since he's using me to cover the NY Times, so we're linking to one another, but it's the only way to ensure both posts cover both papers.

Comments

[Ted]

You do such a thorough job that I am amazed that you still have patience for the daily battle.
I have given up getting mad about the headline writers and reporters like Milbank who are so patently trying to be mind benders.
I fear it is a losing battle, with only the small band of bloggers raising their voices in opposition. The MSM could care less about the critiques of their product. They blithely go right on with their Crusade to move the editorial pages to the news pages.
No matter what the facts, people I know will parrot the daily line of the media. And all of them will go see the new propaganda film (which I refuse to identify by name).

[athena]

The latest from Putin:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/iraq_russia_us_putin

[John Cunningham]

The media are a sick joke. Their actions since 9/11/01 add up to non-stop efforts to unseat Bush and to undercut the war effort. Consider that Iraq and Al-Qaeda had numerous contacts between representatives, as shown by Steven Hays _Connection_. Iraq was a totally closed and controlled society. How would the US get knowledge of contacts between iraqi intelligence operatives in say, Bahrein, if they were meeting and providing information to Al-Qaeda agents? We know that Qaeda has agents in dozens of countries all over the world. Similarly, Iraq had diplomats and agents all over. Meeting and exchanging money, documentary info, and other contacts would only rarely be visible by our hamstrung CIA.