Let the investigations commence!

If you needed more evidence that the new crop of Democrats who swept into Congress this month aren't exactly Dean clones, this might be it:

Before he was elected to Congress on an antiwar platform, Carney had served in the Pentagon, where he was a senior counterterrorism-and-intelligence adviser in the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, an office set up by Douglas J. Feith, then the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy. Many critics of President Bush consider the group to be responsible for some of the least reliable and most inflammatory intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Critics say that the purpose of the office was to find links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that could be used to justify a preëmptive war against Iraq.

“I was looking at terrorist links between Al Qaeda and state sponsors of terrorism, including Iraq,” Carney said. “On a scale of zero to ten, where zero would be none and ten would be operational control,” he said, the ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda “were about a two and a half.” He went on, “Saddam had links to every terrorist group in the region. I still think there were links to Al Qaeda.”

Maybe this explains why Murtha was torpedoed (aside from his cuss ridden cameo on the Abscam tape). It looks like the new Democrats weren't necessarily as opposed to war or favored immediate redeployment more than they were just fed up with how it was being run. We've long been told such was the position of Hillary and other moderates, but this vote might represent actual ground truth.

Speaking of Iraq, the clock is ticking on Saddam's appeal, which is yet to be filed. Seems the court is having a spot of trouble getting the 100 page verdict on their website or something. Meanwhile Omar was even more impressed with this development, while Ahmad wondered about him a year ago:

Also in the letter, al-Dhari states that al-Zarqawi and the Saddamites are Muslims and that we must corporate with them, and everything they do is according to Shariah even if they killed all the Iraqis, it doesn't matter, what is important in the end is that the "resistance" succeed!

So apparently he's quite the divisive character.

With divisions such as the above it's hard to believe that the 40 pound brains involved with the Iraq Study Group or even the new Secretary of Defense will be able to solve this problem overnight. Just so many deceptions. But if you're really looking forward to investigations in the next year, perhaps these will provide more intrigue.

HT World Threats.

MORE 11/17/06

A lot of sites are running wild with this quote:

Tony Blair: Iraq Is "Pretty Much A Disaster”...

But they don't readily tell you the rest of his comment:

He said: “It has, but you see what I say to people is, ‘Why is it difficult in Iraq?’ It is not difficult because of some accident in planning, it is difficult because there is a deliberate strategy, al-Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other, to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war.”

Sounds about like what he's been saying all along, without the optimism.