THE CONNECTION & THE MEDIA

This was posted on The Corner on National Review Online by Andy McCarthy:

Every word of Steve Hayes's latest article on Iraq/Qaeda ties is worth reading. But for top of my list, I don't know what's more amazing: the ties themselves or the media's obstinate refusal to cover them -- and their outright misrepresentation of them.

Best example: The Associated Press recently did a Freedom of Information Act request for documents on the Gitmo detainees justifiying their detention. One of the prisoners they got production on is an Iraqi who is an admitted member of al Qaeda, described as a "trusted agent" of bin Laden himself.

Here is what the AP reported about this detainee (all emphasis is mine): "There is no indication the Iraqi's alleged terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, OTHER THAN THE BRIEF MENTION OF HIM TRAVELING TO PAKISTAN WITH A MEMBER OF IRAQI INTELLIGENCE."

If that description is not furtive enough, consider what the document in question (part of the summary of evidence against the detainee) actually says: "In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence FOR THE PURPOSE OF BLOWING UP THE PAKISTAN, UNITED STATES AND BRITISH EMBASSIES WITH CHEMICAL MORTARS."

August 1998, it bears remembering, is when al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and when the Clinton administration retaliated, in part, by bombing the al-Shifa factory in Sudan because its intel showed al-Shifa was a chemical weapons processing facility that was a joint venture among bin Laden, Iraqi intelligence and the Sudanese government -- and which, it turns out, got a $199K payment from Saddam under the Oil-for-Food program (since, if you wanted to import "pharmaceuticals" for your country, Sudan would of course be the first place you would choose to shop for them, right?).

And guess what? It seems no "pharmaceuticals" -- or any other legitimate goods -- were actually produced to Iraqis in the 8 months between when the contract was signed in Junuary 1998 and when we bombed al Shifa in August. Is it possible that Saddam's money might have, just might have, gone for exactly what the Clinton administration believed was going on there -- namely, chemical weapons development by Iraq and al Qaeda?

Mind you, the above Iraqi intelligence operative/detainee that Steve's evidence describes as working in conjunction with bin Laden and Saddam's Intelligence Service is a DIFFERENT Iraqi intelligence operative from Ahmed Hikmat Shakir (see), the guy who was at the Kuala Lampur meeting in January 2000 with two of the 9/11 hijackers -- a 3-day session that not only kicked off the 9/11 plot but undoubtedly also involved the then-ongoing conspiracy to bomb a U.S. naval vessel in Yemen, the very conspiracy that resulted in the U.S.S. Cole bombing ten months later. (One of the Qaeda terrorists at the Kuala Lampur meeting with Shakir and the hijackers was Tafiq Muhammed Saleh Bin Roshayd Bin Attash, also known as "Khallad," who was a key player in the ship-bombing plot -- which had unsuccessfully tried to bomb the U.S.S. The Sullivans only 3 days before the Kuala Lampur meeting started.)

When does the country finally start asking (a) why the media (and parts of the intelligence community) are so hell-bent on discrediting Bush that they won't report on patently meaningful ties b/w Saddam & bin Laden, and (b) why isn't the Bush administration screaming to high heaven about this stuff?