As was widely reported this week, the Pentagon has prepared a new report on non-existent ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. The document is the culmination of an exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion. Not surprisingly, officials discovered what we already knew — there was no “direct operational link” between Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion.
As the war enters its sixth year, this was yet another embarrassment for the Bush administration, which seemed intent on not only downplaying the significance of the report, but also making the report itself less accessible.
But leave it to Bill Kristol to embrace the report as proof of how right he and the White House have been all along. Indeed, in his new Weekly Standard piece, he complains that the Bush gang didn’t use the report as a political cudgel to bludgeon their critics.
If you talk to people in the Bush administration, they know the truth about the report. They know that it makes the case convincingly for Saddam’s terror connections. But they’ll tell you (off the record) it’s too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, they’ll say. Furthermore, once the first wave of coverage is bad, you can never catch up. […]
So, this week’s fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war will bring us countless news stories reexamining the case for war, with the White House essentially pleading nolo contendere…. The president has a responsibility to help the American people understand the nature of the threat we faced in 2003 and the threats we face today — how terror groups work, the extent of state sponsorship, and how that sponsorship transcends Sunni-Shia or secular-jihadist differences.
It’s not too late. Bush can still override his cautious aides and tell the American people the whole truth about the situation we faced in 2003 and would face today if Saddam were still in power. This is more than a matter of political advantage. It is a requirement of war leadership.
Let’s unpack this, just a little.
The point of the Pentagon report was to scrutinize Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to al Qaeda, which turned out to be non-existent. As McClatchy’s report explained, “President Bush and his aides used Saddam’s alleged relationship with al Qaida, along with Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, as arguments for invading Iraq after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” These claims turned out to be false, which makes the Pentagon’s report newsworthy.
But, Kristol said, Saddam did have ties to terrorism. That’s true, and no one has suggested otherwise. Saddam was a brutal thug with a bloody and vicious agenda, but he wasn’t connected to 9/11 and he wasn’t in league with al Qaeda. Kristol may find this inconvenient, but facts are stubborn things.
What’s more, as ABC News reported this week, Saddam’s support for terrorism was rather specific — and not targeted at the U.S.
The report says Saddam’s bureaucrats carefully recorded the regime’s connections to Palestinian terrorists groups and its financial support for the families of suicide bombers.
The primary target, however, of Saddam’s terror activities was not the United States, and not Israel. “The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq.” Saddam’s primary aim was self preservation and the elimination of potential internal threats to his power.
But Kristol apparently doesn’t care. He wants to be right, he wants the Bush White House to say that he’s right, and he’s unconcerned about the details of a Pentagon report that prove he’s wrong. If news outlets highlight the report, the media is being “misleading.” Why? Because they’re not emphasizing the bogus angles Kristol likes best, while leaving the pesky details (i.e., the truth in relation to the administration’s claims) on the editing room floor.
Remind me, why did the New York Times give this guy one of the most prestigious jobs in American journalism?