THE POST WEIGHS IN

The WaPo editorial page weighs in on what the media did with the 9/11 Commission report. And they ain't happy. A comprehensive review of the plot is released with all sorts of new information, and the media wants to obsess -- misleadingly -- on a single sentence of a single paragraph that wasn't part of the Commission's tasking to begin with.

IN A PAIR of interim staff reports, the Sept. 11 commission yesterday gave the fullest and most detailed report on the planning of the attacks that the American public has received to date. Yet showing a peculiar instinct for the capillaries rather than the jugular, part of the public debate immediately focused on a single passing point that is no kind of revelation at all: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." Administration foes seized on this sentence to claim that Vice President Cheney has been lying, as recently as this week, about a purported relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. The accusation is nearly as irresponsible as the Bush administration's rhetoric has been.

The importance of the two new reports lies not in the clarification of any supposed Iraq link but in the new details that fill in and correct the state of the public's knowledge of the attacks themselves. Osama bin Laden, we learn, has not actually financed al Qaeda himself and never received his famed $300 million inheritance; al Qaeda, rather, "relied primarily on a fundraising network developed over time." Sept. 11 was initially planned as an even more ambitious attack -- involving 10 planes and targets on both coasts. Osama bin Laden was directly involved in key aspects of planning and target selection. There was division within al Qaeda's leadership as to whether the plan should go forward. And internal disagreement among the conspirators at times threatened its success. The reports offer the first substantive look at what key al Qaeda detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh have been telling their interrogators, and it sheds light as well on the likely role of accused conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. The commission, in short, is adding a good deal of new information to the discussion and usefully reprocessing existing data.

All of which makes the flap over Mr. Cheney's statements a bit frustrating. The administration has not recently suggested that Iraq was behind Sept. 11. Nor, in fact, did the commission yesterday contradict what Mr. Cheney actually said -- and President Bush backed up -- earlier this week: that there were "long-established ties" between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Rather, the commission reported that a "senior Iraqi intelligence officer" met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1994 and that contacts continued after he relocated to Afghanistan. Captured al Qaeda operatives, the report notes, have "adamantly denied" a connection with Iraq, and the famed meeting in Prague between Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence operative appears never to have happened. Indeed, there is no evidence of operational support for the group by Iraq, the commission staff argues; al Qaeda's requests apparently went unanswered. That said, the commission has not denied that there were contacts over a protracted period.

But they aren't done:

The trouble for the administration is that Mr. Cheney has not always been careful to distinguish between Iraqi ties to al Qaeda and supposed support for the attacks. Indeed, it was he who kept the Prague meeting story alive long after others in the government thought it discredited. His recent comments not only overstate what now appear to be rather tentative ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, but they probably help to keep alive in the minds of many Americans a link between Iraq and the attacks that not even Mr. Cheney still alleges. If the U.S. intelligence community now believes that the relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein consisted of no more than what the commission reports, Mr. Cheney ought not be implying more.

On the one hand, as media complaints about the administration uses of the possibility of a link go, this is little more than a wrist slap. On the other hand, first, note that this, too, concedes that status of a definitive brining-to-closure to the Commission's staff report, although the report has only a paragraph on the issue. Second, while it's true Cheney is the one who continues to keep the "Prague meeting story alive," that isn't by claiming that it's true, that's by claiming that it hasn't been disproved, a position that George Tenet has testified to before the Senate. It just isn't clear that the report produced yesterday is the comprehensive and final statement as to what the entire intelligence community believes about the nature of the relationship, beyond the one meeting.

Again, this report completely upends the strongest argument against the relationship -- that religious fanatics would never go for it -- by conceding that it was bin Laden who initiated the contact -- and no one seems to notice it.

One last thing, and I've never seen the media pick up on this. What is disputed about the Prague meeting is that it is Mohammed Atta meeting with the Iraqi embassy official in surveillance pictures taken in April. I've never seen anyone question that it is indeed al-Ani, the Iraqi. That identity seems solid. But what no one seems to understand is that there's a reason there were surveillance photos of the Iraqi. He was under surveillance because both the Czeks and we believed he was casing the headquarters of Radio Free Europe prepartory to finding a young Muslim who would be willing to serve as a suicide bomber. In other words, whether or not it proves a link to 9/11, the Prague photos do go to the fact that Iraq was trying to engage in anti-American terrorism. It's why the Czeks threw his ass out of the country.

Comments

[Media Hound]

Well, the author of today's Washington Post editorial should talk
to Dan Eggen, who included the pointless 'Saddam / 9-11' paragraph
in his hard news Washington Post article yesterday:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45853-2004Jun16.html

[Kieran]

Not to mention that -- whether or not US intelligence officials now dispute the Prague meeting -- Czech intelligence still stand 100% behind the original report.

[Bryon Gill]

Everyone I know who doesn't follow politics closely thinks that we're in Iraq because we have evidence that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. They don't believe me that Bush said we have no such evidence until I play the audio, and even then they think I'm trying to trick them. They also express amazement when I tell them that none of the hijackers were Iraqis. We had "contacts" with Saddam over a long period of time too. That doesn't make us responsible for 9/11.

Having the VP push this conspiracy theory without solid evidence is doing some very bad things to the discourse in this country. The WP editorial board is too timid to come out and say that the VP is keeping this story alive because public support for the war in Iraq is predicated almost entirely on outrage over 9/11 and the perceived link between them, and if that link disappears in the public mind this administration is in deep voodoo.

[IceCold]

No credit only to the WaPo here -- read that last passage again. If US media were remotely competent or reasonable, it would not be neccessary for the Vice President to "distinguish" in every statement between what he's saying and what he's not saying. Cheney's statements have been very clear, very simple, and very reasonable. Especially his statement (can't recall when, but high-profile forum, perhaps Meet The Press) that "we just don't know" the full story of the 9/11 attacks and any Iraqi or other involvement.

How rich is it for a media outlet to admonish Cheney for not being careful enough in his statements?

But here's the whopper: "a link between Iraq and the attacks that not even Mr. Cheney still alleges". "Still"? Whuh? When did Cheney EVER allege such a link?

And the semi-whopper: "The accusation is nearly as irresponsible as the Bush administration's rhetoric has been." How has the admin. rhetoric been irresponsible? Even in chastising other media for the focus of their reports on the latest commission product, the WaPo can't escape the media make-believe world in which various undocumented admin. sins are simply stipulated and reeled off as facts, when they're of course not true at all.

The substance of the commission report on the Iraq question only raises one question, and answers none. Simplified -- is the CIA's assessment of the issue as embodied in Tenet's Oct. '02 letter to the Senate committee implicitly rejected or addressed by the commission staff effort? Or simply not factored in?

BTW, I think you should reconsider the idea that a purported general unwillingness of AQ to collaborate with secular regimes is or was even an argument, much less the "strongest" argument, that Iraq-AQ cooperation would never happen. The claim is absurd on its face. Abstract arguments of this sort aren't really relevant, only information -- of whatever reliability, with that factored in -- and logic are. If one wants abstract arguments against AQ-Iraq collaboration, the only good ones there are operational security (esp. important to AQ's operating style) and control (two megalomaniacs don't often make good partners). Iran's theocracy has the world's premier terror-sponsoring organization, which works effortlessly with groups of any stripe who can help them advance their agenda. Syria's secular "Arab nationalist" regime works effortlessly with Iran's (Persian) theocracy and terror outfits of any stripe or denomination that will help them advance their agenda. Saddam's thug Ibrahim swears on the Koran fidelity to Zarqawi. Religious or other nominal labels are little help in understanding the cold-blooded murderous chess being played by folks in the MidEast.

[dauber]

I'm sorry, I was unclear: I was more precise last nt. I've never thought that argument was "strong" in the sense of "good" and I've argued that on several occasions. I mean here "strong" in the sense of "most often cited, strongest in the minds of advocates, most often taken as self-evident by the media, argued with most force." Thanks for making me clean that up.

[PJ]

"Religious or other nominal labels are little help. . ." Yes, as it has always been, even in the European and Japanese terrorism that sprouted up in the 1960s. Once a person crosses over from protest to killing, morality disappears. One minute Baader-Meinhof is protesting the Holocaust; the next minute they're training in Bekaa camps with the PLO.

I wonder why the Bushies don't explain more about the nature of terrorism. Is it because they think we won't get it, or see it as a hopeless case given the enmity of the press? AFter one year of observation, I have to agree with Glenn Reynolds on the press: they're on the other side.

[Media Hound]

Have you folks read about this document found in Iraq?

The Toronto Star
April 28, 2003

Star finds bin Laden-Iraq links
Three pages of documents point to the arrival of a messenger

By MITCH POTTER

Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization and Saddam Hussein's regime
shared direct contact as early as 1998, according to top-secret Iraqi
intelligence documents obtained by the Star.

The documents, discovered yesterday in the bombed-out headquarters of
the Mukhabarat, Iraq's most feared intelligence service, amount to the
first hard evidence of a link long suspected by the United States but
dismissed as fiction by many Western leaders.

The handwritten file, three pages in all, relates to the arrival of a
secret envoy sent by bin Laden to Iraq in March, 1998, apparently to
establish a clandestine relationship with the Iraqi regime.

http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1051125568646&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News

[deb]

And another...

The Tennessean
June 25, 2003

Document links Saddam, bin Laden
By GILBERT S. MERRITT

Federal appellate Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of Nashville is in Iraq as one of 13 experts selected by the U.S. Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system.
Merritt, 67, has made trips to Russia and India to work with their judicial systems. He has been sending periodic reports to The Tennessean about his experiences in Iraq and filed this dispatch recently:
Through an unusual set of circumstances, I have been given documentary evidence of the names and positions of the 600 closest people in Iraq to Saddam Hussein, as well as his ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.
I am looking at the document as I write this story from my hotel room overlooking the Tigris River in Baghdad.
One of the lawyers with whom I have been working for the past five weeks had come to me and asked me whether a list of the 600 people closest to Saddam Hussein would be of any value now to the Americans.
I said, yes, of course. He said that the list contained not only the names of the 55 ''deck of cards'' players who have already been revealed, but also 550 others.
When I began questioning him about the list, how he obtained it and what else it showed, he asked would it be of interest to the Americans to know that Saddam had an ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.
I said yes, the Americans have, so far as I am aware, have never been able to prove that relationship, but the president and others have said that they believe it exists. He said, ''Well, judge, there is no doubt it exists, and I will bring you the proof tomorrow.''
So today he brought me the proof, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is right.

More at: http://tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/03/06/34908297.shtml?Element_ID=34908297

[dauber]

The Toronto Star's find is critical, and amazing, and I still have the urge to smack something everytime I think about its discovery not getting press coverage. You want to talk about something no one knows about? That's it.

[Media Hound]

Deb, I remember that article, thanks for posting.

If I recall correctly, Judge Merritt was appointed
by Jimmy Carter, which heads off any accusations
of partisanship.