Fiction from Feith Means Caution on Iran

Fiction from Feith Means Caution on Iran

Dwight D. Eisenhower Strike Group Generals weigh in on Feith

It\’s remarkable that Douglas Feith has the audacity and the energy to even
attempt to save his sullied reputation. But today on Fox \”News\” he
did just that, much to his own embarrassment, which was topped a bit later when
none other than Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal had the unmitigated gall
to suggest the Senate owes Feith an apology.

But when outlets like the Washington Post cover the IG\’s report and mix up the facts with statements from senators in the process, which demands a rambling correction, it just adds another chapter to Feith\’s fiction that confuses the average American to thinking that Feith has been unfairly judged, something that is patently untrue. The fact remains, however, that when you have an article entitled Official\’s Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted \’Dubious\’ Intelligence Fueled Push for War, it would be nice if you got the story correct, especially since Feith did just as the headline suggests.

As Laura Rozen
offers today, though I\’ll use my own words, anything Feith offers in his own
defense simply is not credible. In fact, I didn\’t even think the IG\’s report
was particularly newsworthy at this late date, because it\’s so widely known
that Mr. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet and everyone else around the White House
Iraq Group fabricated the case for war based on intelligence that no one else
in the intel community believed, except those people whom Cheney badgered into
submission. Mind you, I have little respect for those intel analysists either, who belong in the category of Colin Powell, because we
are talking war and peace and they should have simply resigned rather than go
along with an overblown case for war in Iraq.

Revisiting the insanity, I give you Stephen Hayes, running with Feith\’s leaked
memo.

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda–perhaps even for Mohamed Atta–according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD. (snip) The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America\’s most determined and dangerous enemies. According to the memo–which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points–Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis. … .. Case Closed From the November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S. government\’s secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

The last line from Stephen Hayes and the Weekly Standard sums up Feith\’s leaked memo with this whopper: But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein\’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.

John C. Stennis Strike Group

The unequivocal outcome of any number of subsequent investigations has proven
just the opposite. Then today not only did Feith get a megaphone to say that
he did nothing wrong by disseminating this hogwash, he said that because he
didn\’t break any laws putting out opposition research to push back on our own
CIA is his duty, to which Gigot said amen, brother, we need amateurs checking the experts, Where\’s the apology?

So now we\’re to accept that insiders of an administration should not only question
our own intelligence experts, but also take it upon themselves, even
though they\’re not experts, the dissemination of abject horse manure so that
the public will have the facts, as well as competing political positioning, compliments of the inside
source propagandists, in effect confusing the issue so that no one knows whom
to trust?

Don\’t look now but war has finally become fact free, follow your politics.
Bombs away, baby. Next stop Iran. To that end, we have two carrier groups in
the region, the Stennis and the Eisenhower, with a third one on the way, which
\”This Week\’s\” George Stephanopolous talked about today. Some asserting that the Stennis is just readying to replace the Eisenhower when it finishes its job in March 2007.

Obviously, none
of this is good news, but who has the spine to stop it? The Senate won\’t even debate Iraq.