The twisting of intelligence

Before the conventional wisdom cement dries regarding the lack of any relationship between Saddam and bin Laden let's take one more look at that DoD Inspector General Report about the Office of Special Plans.

As you may recall, the mainstream media and some lefty talkers heralded the report as conclusive evidence that Bush created the OSP as an instrument to twist intelligence for the purposes of justifying the Iraq war.

Without adequate background a casual reader might easily assume what Levin wants them to--that prior to the war both CIA and DIA were vehemently opposed to any notion that Saddam and UBL could possibly work together, not only that, but captured documents after Saddam's regime fell proved it never happened.

Who better to clarify all this but Weekly Standard reporter Thomas Joscelyn:

This is simply revisionist history at its worst..

I don't normally tell people to 'read the whole thing' but strongly suggest doing so if you're still confused as to what the captured docs revealed. You might want to check out this post from the Captain while you're at it. Both point to critical flaws in the no-relationship revisionism, including an example from CIA superstar Michael Scheuer's first book called "Through our Enemies' Eyes"(pointed out right here last month):

In 2004, after fashioning a career as a critic of the Bush administration, Scheuer did an about face. He suddenly claimed that there was no evidence of a relationship. He even decided to re-write history--literally. He revised Through Our Enemies' Eyes to be consistent with his newly formed opinion by claiming he was simply mistaken.

Indeed. And here's exactly what he said regards the revision:

Now, however, I believe that my description and analysis of CBRN and other cooperation between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq in this section--and elsewhere in this book--is incorrect. My judgment is not based on publicly available information, but rather an extensive review of the classified information pertinent to the subject located in the files of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Part of his revision was to disavow the chemical relationship he thought in existence between Iraq and al Qaeda during the 90s, part of which led to the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant bombing during President Clinton's second term. The attack was supported by CIA field work that suggested VX was being produced there under the tutelage of Iraqi scientists. To this day some still believe the plant was bubbling up nerve gas and point to the fact that America has never formally apologized to the government of Sudan as supporting evidence.

Speaking of evidence, there's none to indicate Mr. Scheuer revised his book for any other reason than to correct what he felt were misguided assessments. However, the fact he accessed top secret files at CIA HQ not publicly available sounds bizarre and brings to mind a few questions. Foremost is whether he was eyeballing new information or did he just misread old stuff? Did higher ranking people at CIA keep him from accessing the correct information at the time, and if so, why? He really didn't say.

But the bottom line is that if such a high-ranking person believed there were links as late as 2002 it seems to water down the consensus presumption. We might say it certainly wasn't nearly as strong as what the WaPo and Levin would have us all believe. Seems the "twisting of intelligence" can take many forms.

MORE 4/15/07

Based on the above link regards Hillary's Iraq War vote problem, I think it's time to hoist this up out of the vault. Surely a candidate could not possibly win the presidency on the back of such flimsily obvious falsehoods? Right?