Appalling and shocking connections exposed

A new book is reporting that, gasp, the former executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, actually had some previous ties to Bush administration officials. Who knew? Well, uh, everyone .

Of course Bush tried to get a friendly on the staff. Was he supposed to just sit back while Clinton got Jamie Gorelick and Richard Ben Venista appointed to what everyone figured might be a finger-pointing food fight of epic proportions?

But no matter, it's clear that bashing Bush is the gift that keeps on giving for many in nutroot forest. All that's required is to mention Saddam, al Qaeda, Bush and Rove in the same paragraph and sales await, as evidenced by one of the book's "charges":

The book says that in early 2004, Zelikow allegedly sought to add to an initial staff report wording that linked al-Qaida to Iraq. The wording would have said the terrorist network repeatedly tried to communicate with the government of Saddam Hussein, a claim of cooperation the administration had cited to justify the war in Iraq.

Disregard all those documented meetings or the other terrorists Saddam coddled, he had no WMDs! And AQ was a rootless, stateless, non-state entity operating outside of all known states from super caves in the mountains. That we're still waiting for the Commission to speculate on where all their funding came from, or what role Ramzi Yousef played, is a mere side matter.

And let's not dwell on the fact a former Clinton official was caught sneaking out the side door of the National Archives with material relating to the investigation (the stuff he hadn't already scissored). Trivia. Bush lied.

But wait, it makes no difference our very same sticky fingered former cabinet member later welcomed one of the 9/11 Commissioners to his international consulting firm. Maybe that's why the former commish replied in a sort of "I'm OK, you're OK" fashion when asked for comment:

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the panel's Democratic vice chairman, praised Zelikow as a "person of integrity" who was up front in disclosing his background and White House contacts.

Or maybe he just remarked that way because this is much ado about nothing. I'm going with the latter.

MORE 2/4/08

Paul Craig Roberts, who's always introduced as a former Reagan official but has pretty much been a raving moonbat for quite some time now, thinks he's solved the mystery of the destroyed CIA tapes:

Was the video evidence withheld from the 9/11 Commission because the alleged participants in the plot did not confess, did not implicate al Qaeda, and did not implicate bin Laden?

No. If the administration engineered 9/11 they'd really have no need to deal with any tapes whatsoever. Thinking they staged fake secret interrogations so they could later use them as a misdirection play by destroying tapes of said fake interrogations because they implicated the wrong players doesn't make sense from a truther standpoint. Or any other.

Mr. Roberts notion only makes sense if the answers given were shockers. In other words, the perpetrators confessed that yes, they did the deed, but that al Qaeda itself wasn't as rootless and stateless as the 9/11 Commission and others wanted everyone to believe.