The Old News on Saddam and Osama
Stephen F. Hayes's article last week on the history of friendly contact between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden ("Case Closed") provoked criticism from several quarters, including from the Pentagon itself--where the secret memo on Iraqi-al Qaeda links obtained by Hayes originated. You can read detailed responses by Hayes to these criticisms at our website, weeklystandard.com.
But it's worth pausing to consider the core complaint from the Pentagon, which was then echoed in other stories reacting to "Case Closed." This was the old Clintonian mantra that the article contained nothing new. According to the Pentagon's November 15 press release, "reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate."
In fact this complaint is a straw man. As Hayes accurately reported of the memo's contents: "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."
But in another sense, the Pentagon is correct that contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq are old news. That's why it's all the more baffling that the administration has been so quiescent in the face of the propaganda campaign insisting that the story of these two enemies' cooperation is a fabrication.
Does THE SCRAPBOOK exaggerate? You be the judge.
Dick Cheney was asked by Tim Russert on September 14 whether there was a connection between Saddam Hussein ...
