The war continues

Fox News

Between the Democrats and America, that is.

A story making the rounds this morning proves the point, leading to the predictable blog and media headlines such as this one on Yahoo:

Cheney reasserts al-Qaida-Saddam link

The headline was set-up to "catch" Cheney by reporting in the very next breath the news about Senator Carl Levin's declassification of a Pentagon Inspector General's full report about Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans, which asserted there was no relationship between Saddam and bin Laden. Yahoo simply described it as a "Pentagon report", a tad misleading since it suggests the entire Pentagon might be gang tackling Cheney, doubtful since Bob Woodward recently blurted out that Peter Pace, of Joint Chiefs fame, still believes there was a connection.

The "idiot" WaPo is all over the report this morning, suggesting that a newspaper that can tick off both sides on consecutive days might be worth the jingle. But it's funny the Democrats would declassify anything based on their prior outrage about Bush doing so with the 2002 NIE to debunk Joe Wilson:

DNC Chair Howard Dean: "The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put the interests of his political party ahead of America's security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe."

Shoe's now on the other foot, and such. It certainly looks like part of an overall strategy for the Democrats, which involves a determined effort to twist past intelligence to improve their chances for 2008.

Perhaps this effort is even being supported by some in Hollywood. Enter Alec Baldwin. Here are his comments from a few months ago:

Is there a war on terrorism worth fighting? Perhaps. Then let's call this the battle of Iraq, one of many battles to be fought. Not a war in Iraq. One battle, which we may be losing, but one we will learn from in order to better our efforts..

Sounds supportive of a view that losing Iraq would not represent a big loss in the overall war ("perhaps" worth fighting), which requires an isolation from the broader efforts. Yesterday he expanded on that paradigm by suggesting Bush was keeping the war going in Iraq to ruin Hillary's chances in 2008.

If such a concerted Democrat plot exists one sure cog would involve a formal tear down of any notion that Saddam's regime could have facilitated (or even maintained surveillance on) al Qaeda. As we saw with the outlawing of the GWoT terminology, the goal seems to be to isolate the Iraq war from all other global operations, which eases the politically dangerous tactic of calling Bush's bluff and defunding the war.

The byproduct, "perhaps" unintended, anoints the Butcher with some kind of weird posthumous sainthood while leaving a vague impression he might have been somehow helpful in the GWoT had we not invaded. Dangling that impression is almost a reverse of their criticism of President Bush for not publicly debunking the notion that Mohammed Atta might have visited al-Ani in Prague in 2001 (an event never fully settled, by the way).

As to the conventional wisdom on Iraq, we've been down this road over and over (and over) but the collective amnesia demands continual vigilance. Back in the 90s virtually NO ONE questioned the CIA's assessments of the threats Saddam posed. If you need confirmation check out this post on CIA superstar Michael Scheuer, who actually revised his first book to airbrush his 90s-era opinions about the Saddam-AQ link. Take a look:

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.

Remember, this man was the CHIEF of the bin Laden desk at Langley, not some political flunky. Surely the spooks have some kind of colloquialism for such a post-event cleanup.

Based on all this revisionism we could look at Iraq this way--too bad Levin and pals couldn't have done a better job getting to the bottom of this non-relationship back in the 90s and saved us all some trouble. You know the answer to that one.

The final paragraph in the WaPo's article is worth pasting:

Zarqawi, whom Cheney depicted yesterday as an agent of al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war, was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts. He publicly allied himself with al-Qaeda in early 2004, after the U.S. invasion.

Shall we remind the WaPo that the perpetrators of the first WTC attack were not "Al Qaeda members" when they pulled off that attack? The Khobar Towers bombers were also not card-carrying members. The goal of setting up proxy armies is to completely separate them from their funding sources and government ties. Don't they know this?

The bottom line is to not get wrapped up in the minutia of whether Saddam was funding or directing AQ or not but whether, in a post 9/11 world, his regime shared a similar goal regards the west. The answer was obvious.

MORE 4/6/07

More evidence to support the above. This just has to be a coordinated strategy.

MORE 4/6/07

Pelosi speaks:

"It became clear to President Assad that even though we have our differences in the United States, there is no division between the president and the Congress and the Democrats on the message we wanted him to receive.

Yes, but what message would that be? Did it jibe with the message just given to Assad by the three Republicans? We know Pelosi is in favor of a redeployment, which is basically what Syria desires. It would be nice to see a transcript.

UPDATE 4/7/07

The Gateway Pundit link above to Charlie Rangel's comments on Fox News contained a somewhat misleading headline. As pointed out by an aggravated commenter, Rangel didn't actually say what Jim Hoft quoted him as saying, and he should correct that. But it wasn't as if the error was grossly misleading.

My link to Mr. Charlie's comments involved his opinion that a withdrawal would not affect stateside safety--that there would be no vacuum left. This is not a line of thought the Democrats have been publicly pushing on TV so it struck me as part of a talking point campaign that lines up well with declassifying the IG report, outlawing the GWoT language and having Pelosi make a trip to Damascus.

Rangel may be correct, of course. It's impossible to know the future with precision and these two sects have been fighting each other since forever. But I would suggest the difference-maker continues to be 9/11 and the availability of mass casualty weapons reaching the hands of fearless fanatics, no different than our thoughts after the attack.

Perhaps we're now far enough away that a law enforcement approach coupled with military response after the fact will begin to re-resonate on the American street. Only one way to find out, which is to float trial balloons. It's doubtful the DNC wants anything to do with a strong on defense candidate if their early frontrunners are any indication so it would make sense to attempt to straighten the yellowbrick road before the voters get to the booths.