As Victor D. Hanson wrote this weekend, in his article, "No Hype Needed, Saddam, Al-Qaida linked":"As American casualties mount in Iraq, politicians at home now fight over who said what and when about weapons of mass destruction and the need for going to war. One of the most frequent charges is that President Bush hyped a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida — and that as a result, we diverted our efforts from finishing off the real terrorists to start a new and costly war to replace a secular dictator.
This charge is false for several reasons — and illogical for even more. Almost every responsible U.S. government body had long warned about Saddam's links to al-Qaida terrorists. In 1998, for example, when the Clinton Justice Department indicted bin Laden, the writ read: "In addition, al-Qaida reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al-Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaida would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."
Then in October 2002, George Tenet, the Clinton-appointed CIA director, warned the Senate in similar terms: "We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade." Seventy-seven senators apparently agreed — including a majority of Democrats — and cited just that connection a few days later as a cause to go to war against Saddam: " ... Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq."More and more we are seeing how links between Saddam and Al Qaeda not only were established but flourished. Yet the media continues to report the exact opposite. The reason of course isn't for lack of information or evidence - which is overwhelming, but because of political agenda.
Yet as story after story comes out, and even from the past from their own pages - where even their own were reporting the links a year ago, but now tell a different story.
This story in Newsmax today shows this hypocrisy:
"Press Heralds Iyad Allawi's Claims
The global media is finally taking the pronouncements of former Iraq Prime Minister Iyad Allawi seriously - at least as long as his comments seem to undermine the war on terror.
The Iraqi police "are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse," complained Allawi, referring to the brutality of the old regime in an interview with the London Observer. "These are the precise reasons why we fought Saddam Hussein and now we are seeing the same things."
Within hours Allawi's comments had been picked up by hundreds of newspapers around the world.
In June 2004, however, when Allawi linked the Iraq war to the 9/11 attacks in a U.S. television interview, he was ignored by the rest of the media.
"We know that [the Iraq war] is an extension to what has happened in New York," he told NBC's Tom Brokaw. "And the war [has] been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists."
The press was equally silent six months earlier, when Allawi told the London Daily Telegraph that a newly uncovered document from the old intelligence service showed: "Not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
As I said as more and more of the evidence comes out and the links shown the American public are going to want to know why the press went to such great effort to hide the truth.
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