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Thursday, June 17, 2004

Virginian Pilot 9/11 Commission Headline Lies

There are two headlines in today’s Virginian Pilot. The top one is a lie.

“ON IRAQ: No Links to al-Qaida”

As is so often the case, the real story is not the news; it’s the press’ spin on the news.

During the Clinton Presidency, the press reported the Clintons’ “spin” – which they knew to be a lie – not with outrage (that’s reserved for Republicans) but with a sense of admiration: see Clinton lie about having sex with Monica; isn’t it amazing how he can say that with a straight face? What a man! See Clinton redefining the meaning of “is.” Isn’t that just marvelous? The press suspended its judgment about the morality of the issues of lying, perjury, even rape. With almost no exceptions, it viewed these issues in a moral vacuum, judging only their political impact. Of course that was when their man was in office.

Having abandoned its vaunted neutrality the press has decided, like the woman who has lost her virtue, that it enjoys its freedom to be a whore.

I have read the 9/11 Commission reports that were released on June 16. You can find them here

On page 5 of Staff Statement No. 15 the staff of the 9/11 commission states that “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.” In this same paragraph, the commission staff states that “Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein’s secular regime….A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994….There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan ”

After the press willfully misinterpreted a single sentence in this report, the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Committee issued a statement defending the Bush administration in its characterization of the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. The administration never claimed that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. It has claimed that there were ties between many of the terror groups in Middle East, including al Qaeda and Iraq, but also including Iraq and Palestinian terrorists.

Unlike the headline, the reports state that there are links between Iraq and al Qaeda but the 9/11 commission is not charged with determining this. In fact, reading the reports one is struck by the commission’s single-minded focus on 9/11 and Bin Laden. Reading reports 15, 16 and 17; the commission has a laser beam on Osama bin Laden. Everyone else is a bit player in the commission’s drama.

But before we conclude that the staff report is the final word on terrorist connections, it is useful to understand how tenuous the commission staff ‘s ability to connect the dots.

I found the following paragraph fascinating:

“By this time U.S. intelligence learned that a year-and-a-half before the bombing of the Saudi National Guard facility, al Qaeda leaders and members of other aligned groups had decide to attack U.S. targets in Saudi Arabia and directed a team to ship explosives there. The shipment was a case study in collaboration: Bin Laden supplied the money for purchasing the explosives; the Sudanese Ministry of Defense served as the conduit for bringing them to Sudan; they were stored briefly in the warehouse of one of Bin Laden’s business facilities; transported in a Bin Laden company truck under cover of Ministry of Defense invoice papers; moved to a warehouse provided by the Ministry of Defense at Port Sudan on the Red Sea; and then transported on a Bin Laden-owned boat to Islamic army operatives residing in Yemen. From there they were moved by land to the eastern part of Saudi Arabia…...”


Before I end this paragraph, keep in mind that the 9/11 commission is critical of the FAA and US Air Force for not connecting the dots on 9/11; for not immediately realizing that these highjackers were not like dozens of highjackers before them; for losing the planes when the highjackers turned the planes’ transponders off; for not knowing what was on the minds of these particular thugs before they drove their planes into the Word Trade Center; for not directing the Air Force to blow American passenger planes filled innocent civilian out of the air within minutes of realizing the planes had been highjacked.

So with this amazing bit of hindsight in mind, here is how the staff report ends the previous paragraph:

“…Bin Laden’s role and his organization’s role in this attack remains unclear…”


The people who come to these conclusions make Inspector Clouseau look positively clever.

There is at least one additional piece of interesting information given no coverage in the press as they comb these reports with the sole purpose of impeaching the Bush administration. THE PERSON WHO ORIGINALLY CONCEIVED OF THE CONCEPT OF THE 9/11 ATTACKS, KHALID SHEIK MOHAMMED (KSM), WAS NOT PART OF OSAMA’S AL QAEDA ORGANIZATION WHEN THE PLAN WAS FIRST PROPOSED. KSM was a terrorist long before he pitched his idea to Bin Laden, who, according to Staff Statement No. 16 was at first non-committal.

Why is this important? The attempt to narrow the focus of the War on Terror to al Qaeda is ridiculous. The War is a global war and, just as Word War II involved numerous countries, the War on Terror involves numerous organizations. The attempt by the press and the Left to isolate al Qaeda as the sole source of Islamic terror is neither accurate nor particularly helpful.

Perhaps as a result of its charter, the commission has self-imposed blinders. The reports really do not address the issue of Islamic terrorism except in a very peripheral way. It is solely interested in convicting Osama bin Laden.

I predict that there will be very little that will result in the way of the management of homeland security as the result of the 9/11 Commission. The lessons we learned from that day of terror have already been applied to our defense posture. The focus of the report on al Qaeda may even have a negative effect. Those who learn to read between the lines of this blinkered glimpse of the world of terror will realize that the threat is much larger than one man and his relatively small organization.

Based on the headlines showing the willful obtuseness of the mainstream media, I hope the innate wisdom of the American people, the Internet and the “new media” will help a majority see this truth. Otherwise this war may be lost.

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