To hear much of the news reporting yesterday, you'd think a national 9/11 Commission report had blown a giant hole in the Bush administra tion's rationale for toppling Saddam Hussein.
Take a look at the "Times" front page. nytimes.com. They led with
WASHINGTON, June 16 - The staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharply 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 Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
They list this article as an "Analysis," not news, on the Web page. But they lead it as a "news" story. Then, on the inside, the editorial leads,
The Plain Truth
t's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.
Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different.
Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide. While it's possible that Mr. Bush and his top advisers really believed that there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, they should have known all along that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. No serious intelligence analyst believed the connection existed; Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief, wrote in his book that Mr. Bush had been told just that.
This couldn't have been spun more if Michael Moore had done it. That is why you are seeing the stories in the Trib and the Post. They are reacting to this outrageous approach of the Times.
Come election time, the Times just can't help themselves. |
