June 15, 2004:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush repeated his administration's claim that Iraq was in league with al Qaeda under Saddam Hussein's rule, saying Tuesday that fugitive Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ties Saddam to the terrorist network.

"Zarqawi's the best evidence of a connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda," Bush told reporters at the White House. "He's the person who's still killing."

U.S. intelligence officials have said al Qaeda had some links to Iraq dating back to the early 1990s, but the nature and extent of those contacts is a matter of dispute.

Critics have accused the president and other administration officials of falsely inflating the links between Iraq and al Qaeda in the months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Monday in Florida, raised eyebrows by reasserting claims that Saddam "had long-established ties with al Qaeda."

Today:

WASHINGTON - There’s no evidence Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaida, according to a Senate report issued Friday on prewar intelligence that Democrats say undercuts President Bush’s justification for invading Iraq.

Bush administration officials have insisted on a link between the Iraqi regime and terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Intelligence agencies, however, concluded there was none.

Republicans countered that there was little new in the report and Democrats were trying to score election-year points with it.

The declassified document released Friday by the intelligence committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

It concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence community report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents.

The 400-page report comes at a time when Bush is emphasizing the need to prevail in Iraq to win the war on terrorism while Democrats are seeking to make that policy an issue in the midterm elections.

Whose report was this again? The Republican Senate's report.

Surely you mean, a Democrat report? No, a GOP Senate report.

So . . . Liberals? Um . . . No, conservatives.

Liberal mainstream media? Nope: right wing Senators.

Recently, of course, the President has backed away from his earlier dishonest conflation of Saddam and Al Qaeda. Why? Because he knew this report was coming.

Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) did his best to keep the lid on this report and play into the GOP's midterm "All Fear, All The Time" strategy, but two Republicans, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska joined Democrats in pushing for release of the report. Senator Roberts tried the usual Friday news dump -- releasing damaging information into the weekend's black hole of news.

Not so sure that'll work, Senator Pat.

Karl Rove is of course a brilliant political strategist. (We know because the liberal mainstream media keeps telling us so.) But his attempt to salvage the mid-terms by feeding the American people a diet of paranoia is already in flames. That agenda has been shot down by Republican senators like Mr. Hagel and Ms. Snowe who have insisted on releasing the uncomfortable truth in this case, and by Senators McCain (R-AZ), Warner (R-VA) and Lindsay (looks like a goober, sounds like a goober, and yet strangely is not a goober) Graham (R-SC) who are standing firm for American values against the entirely political attempt to stampede Congress into rubber-stamping Mr. Bush's POW and surveillance initiatives.

The Democrats seem unable to save us from Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove. Thankfully there are a handful of Republicans who put their country and its principles ahead of political expediency.

This entry was posted by Michael Reynolds, on Friday, September 08, 2006. You can leave your response.