John Hinderaker of Power Line writes:
The current flap over the Pentagon Inspector General’s report on Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans has embarrassed the Associated Press, the Washington Post and, if he has any shame, the Inspector General. The controversy does have the merit, though, of raising once again the issue of the relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorists.
The Inspector General said it was “inappropriate” for Feith’s group to question the wisdom of the CIA’s dogma that Saddam Hussein, a “secularist,” would never cooperate with bin Laden or other Islamic terrorists. There was a time, though, when the likelihood of such collaboration was widely reported and understood. Thus, courtesy of Power Line Video, we are rescuing from the memory hole this ABC News report from 2000.
As I wrote in June of 2004:
The more I think about it, the more this quote by Dennis Prager hits home:
As a famous Soviet dissident joke put it: “In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it’s the past which is always changing.”
In the 1990s, President Clinton and his administration released numerous bits of intel and information on Bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein to the press. As a result, The New York Times, as well as Newsweek, and NPR each ran stories documenting his ties to Bin Ladin. Yesterday, the 9/11 commission confirmed those ties, and admonished the press for ignoring them. Was Saddam directly tied to 9/11? President Bush never said he was. But clearly, Iraq and Al Qaeda were quite cozy with each other. Something the press spent the past decade documenting when it benefited one administration, and the past three years chucking down the memory hole when it hindered another.
I’m very happy to see Power Line rescue ABC’s video from the archives.
Update: Don Surber spots more war amnesia.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member