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Today is
"A word to the wise ain't necessary --
it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
-Bill Cosby
posted by Kate Marie | 5:28 PM | Permalink
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8 comments
8 Comments:
Kate Marie,
Melanie Phillips' brilliant commentary contains some pretty disingenuous use of sources. She cites a Con Coughlin article about a very damning "top secret memo" he acquired, but elides the following comments:
"While it is almost impossible to ascertain whether or not the document is legitimate or a clever fake, Iraqi officials working for the interim government are convinced of its authenticity, even though they decline to reveal where and how they obtained it. 'It is not important how we found it,' said a senior Iraqi security official. 'The important thing is that we did find it and the information it contains.'" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr114.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/14/ixnewstop.html)
The rest of her case is built of the same flimsy stuff. Iyad Allawi, Douglas Feith, and Dick Cheney are hardly impartial sources on the question.
"Iyad Allawi, Douglas Feith, and Dick Cheney are hardly impartial sources on the question."
-- But all of those who suggest that there was definitively no connection are?
Well, I wouldn't put together a case to the contrary based on the testimony of Al Franken, Michael Moore, and Bill Maher, if that is what you are asking. But that is basically what Melanie Phillips has done, inversely.
The testimony of Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Bill Maher carries the same weight as Iyad Allawi, Douglas Feith, and Dick Cheney?
They are all equally impartial on the question at hand. Substitute whom you like on the "left" (John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright)- my point was that unnamed "sources" quoted by Douglas Feith, allegations by Iyad Allawi, and a hot memo discovered by Iraqi interim government members who insist that "it is not important where we found it" is a pretty gelatinous foundation for a case. All of these people have a very strong vested interest in linking Saddam to Al Qaeda, anyone who uses their testimony uncritically is not reasoning in good faith.
The whole link between Saddam and Al Qaeda is a red herring in any case. If links to Al Qaeda are the strategic premise of this war, then Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have to be far above Iraq on the list of targets. Anyone proposing that Saddam had a meaningful operational relationship with Al Qaeda must explain why Al Qaeda's current top man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was a fugitive and anti-government rebel under Saddam. The strongest links between Iraqi Ba'athism and Al Qaeda have been forged by the Bush administration- its decision to invade Iraq fused these two groups into an alliance that would never have been possible before.
But, Madman, if the links are a red herring, they're a red herring that's being pursued by those in the media who keep echoing the notion that it has been *definitively* proven that no such links existed.
"The strongest links between Iraqi Ba'athism and Al Qaeda have been forged by the Bush administration- its decision to invade Iraq fused these two groups into an alliance that would never have been possible before."
-- NEVER have been possible? I think you're going a bit overboard with that one, Madman -- unless you mean an alliance in which they are openly cooperating, as they are now, in suicide-bombings/guerilla warfare against the U.S. Or do you mean to suggest that ANY kind of alliance between the two groups would never have been possible? Lots of people said that about Hitler and Stalin, too.
Kate Marie,
Anyone who predicted that an alliance between Hitler and Stalin wouldn't work out would eventually have been proven right, and those two were ideologically closer than Osama and Saddam. If you read Al Qaeda's propoganda, it portrays secular Arab regimes like Saddam's as enemy #1, even before the United States.
The kind of operational unity now evident in Iraq between Al Qaeda and Iraqi Ba'athism would never have been possible before. As for the media & links, etc., I don't see where it is significant whether some links between Iraq can be demonstrated or not. If a meeting or meetings between an Iraqi official and an Al Qaeda captain can be substantiated, so what? It can be definitively proven that no links between Iraq and Al Qaeda that provided sufficient moral or strategic cause to invade Iraq. Al Qaeda could not have survived without key financial support from powerful Saudis and logistical support from Pakistani military intelligence. If one were to go back and undo ALL of "links" that the Bush administration claims between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda the latter's operational capacity would not be retarded in the slightest. This is why "links" are a red herring- even if one grants that all of the ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam that the Bush administration has labored for almost three years to document, none of it amounts to a serious casus belli when compared to the links between AQ and US allies like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
"Anyone who predicted that an alliance between Hitler and Stalin wouldn't work out would eventually have been proven right, and those two were ideologically closer than Osama and Saddam. "
-- Now who's being disingenuous? I wasn't talking about people who predicted it would never "work out" (though it did keep the Soviet Union out of the war -- and communists everywhere encouraging the "pacifist" cause -- until Hitler decided to break the pact)but about people who said it would never be forged in the first place.
"If you read Al Qaeda's propoganda, it portrays secular Arab regimes like Saddam's as enemy #1, even before the United States."
-- Sorry to re-use this analogy, but if you look at Communist propaganda before the Hitler-Stalin pact, it portrayed fascism as the #1 enemy, too. Aren't you making the mistake of assuming that people like Zarqawi and bin Laden actually believe in and adhere to the propaganda they spew? If I took their propaganda at face value, I'd believe they really cared about the plight of the Palestinians, too.
"It can be definitively proven that no links between Iraq and Al Qaeda that provided sufficient moral or strategic cause to invade Iraq."
-- Again, that's a bit of a broad statement, but in any event, who has ever hung the entire "moral and strategic" justification for the war on links between Saddam and Al Qaeda? Those who continue to parrot the line about "definitively no links" are not only not really telling the truth but also trying to suggest that the moral/strategic justification for the war is undercut by this "definitive [negative] proof." In the process, they have over-simplified the discussion; you may say that the Bush administration has done the same thing, but -- even if I granted that for the sake of argument -- it isn't the media's job to "fight fire with fire."
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