There is the spin of the Bush Adminstration and there is the truth. The truth has taken quite a battering over the last six years, but I am hopeful that the truth will prevail.

# Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al- Qa’ida is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.

# We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa’ida going back a decade.

# Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa’ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression.

# Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa’ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad.

# We have credible reporting that al-Qa’ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa’ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.

# Iraq’s increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al- Qa’ida, suggest that Baghdad’s links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action.

The only one of these that has been “discredited” is the 2nd to last one, about training of al-Qaeda in areas of poison and gases. That is, there has been no credible information to show that it is true.

With that said, what is wrong with what Feith said? Nothing. Think Progress is deliberately playing semantics (”links” vs “connection” vs “contacts”) to play Gotcha.

And isn’t it funny that it has been claimed that Feith’s group came up with the poisons and gases intel – yet the director of the CIA was the one up there back in October 2002 noting it for the Senate.

Still waiting for you liberals to comment on William Arkin?

This view totally overlooks extensive connections between
Baghdad and bin Laden. Just ask Richard Clarke.

Yet, he told the September 11 Commission about Abdul Rahman Yasin,
the al Qaeda operative indicted who federal prosecutors
indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that rocked
the World Trade Center, killed six, and injured 1,042 people
on February 26, 1993.

“He was an Iraqi,” Clarke observed. “Therefore, when the
explosion took place, and he fled the United States, he went
back to Iraq.” While Clarke believes Baghdad did not
orchestrate that attack, he concedes that Hussein embraced
this assassin.

“The Iraqi government,” Clarke continued, “didn’t cooperate
in turning him over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give
sanctuary to other terrorists.”

“Last week, Day One confirmed he [Yasin] is in Baghdad,” ABC
correspondent Sheila MacVicar reported June 27, 1994. “Just
a few days ago, he was seen at [his father's] house by ABC
News. Neighbors told us Yasin comes and goes freely.”

Vice President Dick Cheney told National Public Radio last
January 22: “We’ve discovered since [Iraq's liberation]
documents indicating that a guy named Abdul Rahman Yasin,
who was a part of the team that attacked the World Trade
Center in ‘93, when he arrived back in Iraq was put on the
payroll and provided a house, safe harbor and sanctuary.”

A January 23, 1999,Washington Post article appeared in which Clarke defended the Clinton administration’s August 20, 1998, cruise-missile strike on the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. That
mission avenged al Qaeda’s demolition of U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania that August 7, which killed 224
individuals and injured more than 5,000. The Post quoted
Clarke as “sure” that Iraqi experts there produced a
powdered VX nerve gas component. According to the Post,
Clarke “said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to
El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas
experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.”

Meanwhile, Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas made news March 9 by dying of natural causes in U.S. military custody in Iraq. Green
Berets captured him last April 14 in Baghdad, where he had
lived under Hussein’s protection since 2000. After
masterminding the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking,
in which U.S. retiree Leon Klinghoffer was murdered, Abbas
slipped Italian custody. How? ”Abu Abbas was the holder of
an Iraqi diplomatic passport,” Italy’s then-premiere
Bettino Craxi announced then. So, Rome let him split for
Yugoslavia, and beyond.

Critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom ignore these and many
more ties among Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, Palestinian
zealots, and other Islamofascist mass murderers. Why?
Acknowledging these contacts would concede a major casus
belli behind Coalition efforts.

NOW!

Feith’s private business dealings have also raised eyebrows in Washington. In 1999, his firm Feith & Zell formed an alliance with the Israel-based Zell, Goldberg & Co., which resulted in the creation of the Fandz International Law Group. According to Fandz’s web site, the law group “has recently established a task force dealing with issues and opportunities relating to the recently ended war with Iraq. … and is assisting regional construction and logistics firms to collaborate with contractors from the United States and other coalition countries in implementing infrastructure and other reconstruction projects in Iraq.

Strawman arguements? Feith is another one of those straw brained cons.

The IG report comes out that Feith’s Office of Special Plans was providing the White House with false intelligence to promote the illegal war against Iraq.

And now Feith is back in the news.

I hope he’s got a good lawyer. Cause he’s gonna need one to keep his ass outa jail.

Troubled

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070209/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_security_plan

“Iraq – Iraqi commanders are urging the Americans to go after Sunni targets as the first focus of the military push to secure Baghdad, displaying a sectarian tilt that is delaying full implementation of the plan to drive gunmen from the streets, U.S. officers say.
American officers, interviewed at the sprawling Camp Victory base at the western edge of the capital, also acknowledge they are finding little in their initial searches of Baghdad neighborhoods — suggesting either they received faulty intelligence or that the massive publicity that preceded the operation gave militants time to slip away.”

So it looks like the Iraqi government is trying to get us to go soft on the Shia death squads.. nice to see freedom flourishing in Iraq. At least, the freedom to democractically operate Iranian backed death squads is flourishing. (And in the end, isnt the the only kind of freedom people like Whitey Aphromite are worried about?)

And I think its also funny how they excepted the insurgents to just bunker down and fight it out alamo style. Hell no, you idiots were rambling about the surge for so long, they packed up thier guns and moved somewhere safer… all these raids are going to do is going to create animosity in the raided neighborhoods, and those neigbors will be eager collaborators with the insurgents when they return because of the indignity they’ve suffered. Imagine trying to treat a cancer that has intelligence and knows how to move throughtout your body to evade radiation attack. Thats a rough equivalent of what georgie thinks he can handle. But hes wrong.. dead wrong.. sad is, the ones who will be dying for his dead wrongness is more iraqi civilians and american soldiers, the majority of whom want us to leave soon..