Forget any questions of bias. It's not about that, it's not about any kind of gamesmanship. At the most fundamental level, it's about this before it's about anything else -- no city was more effected by the attacks of September 11th than was New York. Yesterday's hearings purport to give the most comprehensive account of the plot and the timeline that's ever been given. The New York Times has to give that the fullest possible coverage.
It's how the coverage is played out that gives us grist for the mill.
The four column headline above a photograph in large bold caps reads PANEL FINDS NO QAEDA-IRAQ TIE; DESCRIBES A WIDER PLOT FOR 9/11 So of all the things that happened in the hearings, of all the material presented in the staff reports, it is the question of the link with al Queda that is presented as first (therefore presumably most important), and it is misrepresented in the header. The report explicitly does find a tie, even if the extent of that tie is far less than many of us believe exist. The report found no evidence of a cooperative relationship.
The lead article is headlined, "Challenges Bush: A Chilling Chronology Rewrites the History of the Attacks." (That's on paper. Online the headline is "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11." The opening graf is:
The staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharpling contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for the Iraq war, reporting on Wednesday that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Al Queda and Saddam Hussein. The assertion came in staff reports that offer a chilling, richly detailed chronology of the Sept. 11 plot and rewrite much of the history of the attacks.
Short, sweet, to the point, and -- entirely accurate.
The second article (which isn't visible on the home page) is the details of the plot.
Interestingly, below the fold on the front page is an article which raises an important issue I've not seen raised anywhere else in the media. On the one hand, good for the Times for bringing it up. On the other, they've painted themselves into a corner. Given all their coverage of abu Ghraib, and their huge push on the question of how the US is interrogating prisoners, they're in a bit of a dilemna here. After all -- where do you think this information came from? How do you think it was obtained? The Times can't simply publish all these articles on the staff reports and what revelations they include and ingore the white elephant in the room.
So they have to, absolutely have to, have a front page article raising the question of whether or not any of this information is actually credible. (It's visible on the home page, but only under the label, "The Interrogation," hardly helpful in figuring out what the issue raised by the article is.)
Moreover, under harsh interrogation methods, both Mr. Mohammed and Mr. bin al-Shibh appear to have been willing to provide elaborate accounts of past events. But they appeared to have been less willing to describe operations that have not yet been carried out, leading some of the intelligence officials to raise questions about the truthfulness of some or all of their statements.
That could be one way to split the hairs. They're credible on what they've said about the past, but haven't coughed up any actionable intelligence. That permits a position that accepts what's in the staff reports (including the rejection of a link with al Queda) yet still rejects the use of aggressive interrogation techniques as ever being justified on pragmatic grounds.
What about those staff reports?
In releasing a staff report on the plot on Wednesday, the commission staff members wrote that they did not have direct access to any detainee and had based their account on intelligence reports drawn from the interrogations. "Some of this material is inconsistent," one report said. "We have had to make judgment calls based on the weight and credibility of the evidence."
Much of the information cited in the reports as fact is actually uncorroborated or nearly impossible to confirm, the officials said, citing as an example the statements contained in the reports about the thinking and motivations of hijackers like Mr. Atta.
The absence of corroborating evidence was one reason that so much of the material has never been cited before by senior law enforcement or intelligence officials who have testified repeatedly about the plot. At the same time, the commission staff investigators are the first independent researchers to review the large cache of interrogation reports, which has remained classified.
In other words, these staff reports are new they are not definitive in the sense of being final. This is not the last word, anymore than the staff reports have been the last word on any other topic that has been taken up.
But, having started down this path, the Times will walk to the end of the road:
The interrogation methods were authorized by a secret set of rules that were endorsed by the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The rules were among the first adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks and appear to have contributed to a new understanding throughout the government that intelligence and military officials would have wider latitude to deal harshly with detainees.
Some Bush administration officials have said that the interrogation techniques stopped short of torture as defined in a federal criminal statute that outlaws the use of extreme methods against detainees by Americans overseas. They have said that the methods were justified in order to obtain potentially lifesaving information to disrupt pending attacks.
The interrogation of the high-level Qaeda operatives was among the most secretive of the administration's intelligence efforts after the attacks. All of the 12 to 24 detainees are being held outside the United States. None has ever been visited by a lawyer or human rights organization.
Other articles are stuffed inside the paper. There's an entire article devoted to the two or three sentences on the Prague meeting. That, right off the bat, tells you something. It is, after all, the Times that initially published the story that Czeck President Havel called President Bush to take back their story that they had a source saying that Atta had been in Prague at all. In fact, the Czecks say that Havel never made any such call, and they stand by their source and their story. For whatever reason, there seems to be a commitment here to put some energy into quashing this story, instead of just saying, look, there isn't enough evidence here one way or another. It's an intriguing story, and in all likelihood -- that's all it's ever going to be. It's just one of those fascinating historical blips we learn to live with.
Instead we get this:
A report of a clandestine meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer first surfaced shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. And even though serious doubt was cast on the report, it was repeatedly cited by some Bush administration officials and others as evidence of a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
Of course, there's a difference between "evidence" and "proof," and there are members of the administration (read: Cheney) who continue to refer to the possibility of a meeting as possible evidence of something. Tenet's also said that there's no way to disprove it. At this point, even though they aren't wrong to say it hasn't been disproved, since there's no way to prove it either, they should just drop it: the level of argumentative heft you get from referring to something that can't be proven one way or the other isn't worth slogging through the defensive work you have to do every time it comes up to prove you aren't a liar. Like, say, here.
But on Wednesday, the Sept. 11 commission said its investigation had found that the meeting never took place.
In its report on the Sept. 11 plot, the commission staff disclosed for the first time F.B.I. evidence that strongly suggested that Mr. Atta was in the United States at the time of the supposed Prague meeting
True they said that was their conclusion, true they reached that conclusion based on evidence suggesting Atta was in the US. Lets take a look at that evidence. Again, this is really just nuts. The best you can do on this is win that "we can't prove anything one way or the other." But you have to slog through all this now because otherwise the media makes the administration out liars. We call this an argument that cannot under any circumstances be an offensive winner. So why even put it out there? At this point the only reason to discuss it is to make sure the record's clear.
The report cited a photograph taken by a bank surveillance camera in Virginia showing Mr. Atta withdrawing money on April 4, 2001, a few days before the supposed Prague meeting on April 9, and records showing his cellphone was used on April 6, 9, 10 and 11 in Florida.
The bank photo is certainly new. The cellphone records most certainly are not, since Stephen Hayes discusses them in his book, and as he says, given the lack of any other kind of paper trail for those days, when there's a clear papertrail for the rest of the month, that just isn't definitive evidence.
But there the piece broadens out:
The Sept. 11 commission report also forcefully dismissed the broader notion that there was a terrorist alliance between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
The report said there might have been contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1996, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
In effect, the commission report endorsed the views of officials at the C.I.A. and F.B.I., who have long been dismissive of a supposed Prague meeting and of the administration's broader assertions concerning an Iraq-Qaeda alliance.
The panel's findings effectively rebuke the Pentagon's civilian leadership, which set up a small intelligence unit after the Sept. 11 attacks to hunt for links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. This team briefed senior policy makers at the Pentagon and the White House, saying that the C.I.A. had ignored evidence of such connections.
The C.I.A.'s evidence of contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq dates to the early 1990's, when Mr. bin Laden was living in Sudan. The debate within the government was over their meaning.
The C.I.A. concluded that the contacts never translated into joint operational activity on terrorist plots; the Pentagon believed that the C.I.A. was understating the likelihood of a deeper relationship.
The staff report cited evidence that Mr. bin Laden explored the possibility of cooperation with Iraq in the early and mid-1990's, despite a deep antipathy for Saddam Hussein's secular regime.
Well this is just a bit of an overclaim. Again, Tenet's testified that there's nothing conclusive about Prague, but that aside. We're now conflating Prague, operational relations, collaborative relations, and alliances. The conclusion that there was no operational relationship is simply a red herring. It is not and has not been anything other than a straw man in this debate. The question is whether or not they've had a non-aggression pact, given assistance, talked strategy and tactics, perhaps loaned trainers. The CIA sure thought that was the case when it was time to come up with the target set for the retaliatory strike after the embassy bombings. The intelligence community, including Richard Clarke, sure thought it was the case when it was time to draw up the federal criminal indictiment for bin Laden in the '90s. It wasn't even questioned then -- when did it suddenly become a bedrock consensus position among the intelligence professionals, as the documentary evidence got better and better, that the likelihood was less and less?
Joint operations? Hardly.
Visits back and forth? You bet.
Loaning experts? I believe it. Hell, the staff report here confirms OBL did it with Hezbollah.
Suspicously feeling one another out with an eye to the future, with no decisions made? I believe it.
And again, the single best argument is just taken off the table and no one bothers to notice.
They're sure getting alot of mileage out of one little graf and two or three sentences.
But the article that gets the biggest play on the web site is another one that's stuffed in the paper edition, one marked "News Analysis," and headlined, "With 9/11 Report, Bush's Political Thorn Grows More Stubborn."
As an analysis of the way the media has covered the story, the opening of this piece is exactly right:
The bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks further called into question on Wednesday one of President Bush's rationales for the war with Iraq, and again put him on the defensive over an issue the White House was once confident would be a political plus.
In questioning the extent of any ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the commission weakened the already spotty scorecard on Mr. Bush's justifications for sending the military to topple Saddam Hussein.
Well, maybe not exactly right. It was not so much the Commission per se that made this about the justification for war. It was the way the staff report was interpreted. The report is a piece of information. Like any piece of information, the media has to find a way to translate that into a coherent form that will make sense to their audience.
The reporter continues:
Banned biological and chemical weapons: none yet found. Percentage of Iraqis who view American-led forces as liberators: 2, according to a poll commissioned last month by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Number of possible Al Qaeda associates known to have been in Iraq in recent years: one, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose links to the terrorist group and Mr. Hussein's government remain sketchy.
One equals none, of course, as the nature of evidence and the relationship between evidence and proof is always subject to debate, rather than being self-evident. By the way, that's not a slam of this reporter, that's a statement of fact. What counts as evidence in a particular debate is always subject to argument. And how much evidence of what kind constitutes proof of a particular claim also is subject to argument. So the fact that a sarin shell has been discovered does not constitute proof of WMD is absolutely debateable. However, that it is a chemical weapon and that it has been found? Harder to argue that point. So it's a bit problemmatic for him to make that blanket statement.
Percentage of Iraqis who view us as liberators is low, no doubt. But one could as easily say: percentage of Iraqis actually liberated: 100. Yes, there's a great deal of violence in Iraq now. But there's an Iraqi government in place, there's a hand over coming up, there's the most progressive constitution in the region, in short, there's a reason for the violence. And, hey, say what you want to say about abu Ghraib, pile on all the adjectives you want, it's still the case that torture as a matter of state policy is done, the torture of children as state policy is done, the mass graves are not being filled, and if people are pissed -- they can say so without fear.
Number of al Queda associates in Iraq, one? What drugs are you smokin'? The whole Ansar crew is down there, my friend, plus God knows how many Saudis, Jordanians, and Egyptians. Number of al Queda associates whose names are famous: one. Who do you think was standing next to Zarqawi in the Berg video, members of the Knights of Columbus?
That is the difficult reality Mr. Bush faces 15 months after ordering the invasion of Iraq, and less than five months before he faces the voters at home. The commission's latest findings fueled fresh partisan attacks on his credibility and handling of the war, attacks that now seem unlikely to be silenced even if the return of sovereignty to the Iraqis comes off successfully in two weeks.
No doubt.
The article notes that Sen. Kerry has already jumped on the report, has a pretty smart quote from former Sen. Warren Rudman (who we don't really hear enough from, by the way) and then continues:
Mr. Bush has said that he knows of no direct involvement by Mr. Hussein and his government in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the president has repeatedly asserted that there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a position he stuck to on Tuesday when he was asked about Vice President Dick Cheney's statement a day earlier that Mr. Hussein had "long-established ties with Al Qaeda."
Mr. Bush pointed specifically on Tuesday to the presence in Iraq of Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadist who sought help from Al Qaeda in waging the anti-American insurgency after the fall of Mr. Hussein, and who has been implicated by American intelligence officials in the killing of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American who was beheaded by militants in Iraq in March.
The White House said Wednesday that there was a distinction between Mr. Bush's position and the commission's determination that Iraq did not cooperate with Al Qaeda on attacks on the United States.
Why is that so hard to understand? Aren't there people you have friendly relationships with in the business world but who your company is not going to merge with?
After repeating what the report says about the link the article notes that "an interview with National Public Radio in January, Mr. Cheney cited intelligence reports about the possibility of such a meeting in asserting that there was not confirmation 'one way or another' about links between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks."
Exactly, so, really, why does he keep bringing it up?
The article continues by discussing the impact of Iraq on the election.
There's a great graphic in the paper version I can't seem to find online that I'd love to show you guys. It has a series of quotes from Bush and Cheney on the link on the top, and then the Commissions critical graf, and when you carefully compare the two it becomes pretty clear that the Commission just isn't putting paid to this issue.
And, with that, I need to move on for now, but I may come back later and do the close textual reading of the front page pieces.
Update: Slammed! The Vice President, in an interview yesterday, went straight after the New York Times. Unfortunately, it was an interview on CNBC, so no one will ever find out about it. Hat tip Andrew Sullivan.
It has been interesting to see how the press has used this report, taking it entirely out of context. The commission was asked to look in 9/11 specifically, not any and all connections between Iraq and Al Qaida. And the administration has never pointed the finger at Iraq for 9/11!
Posted by: Bostonian | June 17, 2004 at 01:28 PM
You keep stipulating key, baseless distortions by the media, most notably that the commission's staff report in any way touched upon -- much less "weakened" -- an "already spotty" record of justifications for the Iraq war. Nothing in the report has come close to doing so. Nothing about the "record" on this is in the least "spotty." This is the whole ball game, and you just breeze by it. Odd, given how you skilfully zero in on particular elements in other respects.
From a purely legal perspective -- subsidiary as always in vital national security matters -- Iraq refused to provide required cooperation and documentation on its disposal of WMD stocks and programs, and intel analysis reasonably indicated it retained both. Iraq never complied. The question of WMD stocks remains unresolved -- but Iraq's non-compliance isn't in any doubt.
Iraq's status as an intolerable threat in the post-9/11 world didn't rest on any particular short-term intel matter of existing WMD stocks, but on its capabilities, resources, and proven behavior patterns. This was the heart of "justification" for war taking out the regime, and isn't affected in the slightest by this or that tidbit of intel info or estimate, and certainly not by off-topic and superficial commission staff reports.
Posted by: IceCold | June 17, 2004 at 03:06 PM
Consider relations between Hitler's Reich and the Japanese before and during WWII. They had a formal alliance [including Italy] but they shared virtually no operational plans, nor did they ever actually do joint operations. Japanese diplomats had no notice from Germany before the Western offensive in April 1940, nor any notice of Operation Barbarossa in 6/41. Similarly, the Japanese kept Hitler in the dark as far as their intentions in the fall of 1941. But Hitler and Tojo both had the same enemies.
Posted by: John Cunningham | June 18, 2004 at 01:24 AM
icecold,
you said that "intel analysis reasonably indicated" that Iraq retained stocks and programs of WMD.
Powell himself declared not long ago that those "analysis" were inaccurate, incomplete, and, above all, wrong.
There was no WMD programs going on, no stocks of WMD, and no involvment with AlQaeda either[according now to this Commission].
"Iraq's status as an intolerable threat in the post-9/11 world didn't rest on any particular short-term intel matter of existing WMD stocks, but on its capabilities, resources, and proven behavior patterns."
Actually Iraq's status as a threat to the US national security rested too on stocks of WMD that Powell showed on this meeting at the Security Council. But these stocks never exhisted, nor its capabilities or resources to produce WMD have actually been proven.
And past behaviour patterns do not account as a threat to US national security but only prove that Saddam didn't obey to UN resolutions [as well as other States in the world but that's another issue].
Iraq was not a threat for US security, didn't possess WMD nor capabilities or programs to produce them, therefore. These are not "unsolved issues" but are facts.
Posted by: lookha | June 18, 2004 at 03:42 AM
BTW you can watch Powell presentation at the Security Council back to Feb 2003 here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-powell.v.html
Posted by: lookha | June 18, 2004 at 03:44 AM
"Iraq was not a threat for US security, didn't possess WMD nor capabilities or programs to produce them, therefore. These are not "unsolved issues" but are facts."
Iraq posed a national security threat to the United States irregardless of WMD.
The two may be correlational, but they're not completely hinged upon one another.
Other variables include harboring terrorists and financial support of terrorism. Iraq was not a completely defensive strategy, which some people fault as illegitimate, but I think in many ways is brilliant. And really, it's not so much offensive strategy like "conquering nations" as it is protecting long term defense.
Posted by: athena | June 18, 2004 at 06:18 AM
And, Icecold is right, the legal demands on Iraq were clear -- and had been since 1991. And they had continually violated them since 1991. That's why the continuation of the situation was intolerable from the perspective of both our deterrence posture and the UN's credibility. "Stop! or I'll say Stop again!" is not much of a posture on which to hinge a world order, or a national security structure.
But, Icecold, I wasn't trying to justify the war, just speak to what was in that particular article.
Posted by: dauber | June 18, 2004 at 06:42 AM
Athena, don't get me wrong, but consider Saddam a brilliant mind is a bit exaggerated.
Althoug Israel has been doing the same for the past 40 years, violating UN resolutions isn't such a brilliant idea or is it?
And let's remember that Saddam was installed in Iraq by the US for the Iran-Iraq war.
He wasn't such a brilliant mind after all, he just did what he was told and when he wanted more power just went the wrong way [invading Kuwait].
And for financing terrorism, I dare to suggest you this book, is quite accurate on the subject, and will give you a more correct perspective, I believe.
Posted by: lookha | June 21, 2004 at 03:19 AM
the book:
http://www.modernjihad.com/index_home.html
Posted by: lookha | June 21, 2004 at 03:21 AM
As is well documented, bin Laden wanted to war on Iraq, but the Saudis let the US do it, and on sacred soil, thus was Al Qaeda born. After 911, after Afghanistan, when Bush prepared for an attack on Iraq, bin Laden reached out quite publically to Iraq. Now that the US has made such a shambles of Iraq (not in liberating it, but in torturing, raping and killing guilty and innocent civilians), Al Qaeda is whole heartedly involved. No further proof is neccessary.
Dear Republican USA : It doesn't matter what your reasons for attacking Iraq were. You did it, and now Iraq (a formerly secular dictatorship) is part of the Jihad. You are making enemies. Your president is even making childish xenophobic remarks against France.
You are fighting a guerilla war with tanks, and they will come with more box cutters. Another 911 is guaranteed because of Iraq. It doesn't matter how you spin it to the US voters. You now must make sure no damn Cat Stevens gets into your precious country, and you are going to have to wait a long long long time before everybody forgets about this.
Spin is an ineffective weapon in assymetrical warfare.
Posted by: Chuck Werden | October 05, 2004 at 08:43 AM