Murray Waas, writing in the National Journal, breaks new information regarding the level of knowledge President Bush had prior to the Iraq war about the supposed Iraq/al Qaeda link:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information, which was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the “President’s Daily Brief,” corresponds with the accounts of two former White House counterterrorism advisers:

“One week after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, White House counterterrorism director Paul Kurtz wrote in a memo to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that no ‘compelling case’ existed for Iraq’s involvement in the attacks and that links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government were weak.” [Washington Post, 7/23/04]

According to the 9/11 Commission report, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Richard Clarke’s office sent a memo to the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, at the President’s direction, concluding that “only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda”¦Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime.” [9-11 Commission Report, p.334]

This information did not prevent Bush and Cheney from presenting the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda as an undisputed fact. Read more

Jonah Goldberg has a website he’d like you to know about:

The “database” offers a wealth of new racial epithets. Among them, a term to mock African Americans “due to their poor swimming abilities,” and a slur against Indians, a.k.a. “all the 7-11 workers of the world.”

Just the latest gem from the Los Angeles Times’ newest op-ed columnist.

Percentage of Americans who want the troops to come home from Iraq within the next year. (Via Atrios)

Today we’re launching a new short interview series on ThinkProgress. It’s called ThinkFast. Our inaugural edition features Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

On whether New York Times editor Bill Keller is right when he says that blogs only “recycle and chew on the news”:

Some bloggers break news. Some bloggers push the “mainstream media,” so-called, into paying attention to issues they might not have paid attention to. Some bloggers are indeed utterly parasitic on the mainstream media. [But] I don’t think there’s any substitute for good, old-fashioned reporting of that kind. It doesn’t make you anti-blog to say that.

On whether Samuel Alito is a closet moderate:

The place where a circuit court judge really shows what their beliefs and priorities are, are in dissents. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissents were not nearly as liberal as Alito’s dissents were conservative. I think this whole notion that Alito is really a closet moderate is just not true. And at least some conservatives, such as Bruce Fein, who’s a real staunch conservative, says, “No, that’s nonsense, he’s one of us,” meaning a staunch conservative.

On the White House response to Congressman Murtha’s redeployment plan:

You saw the President himself seeming to realize that going after John Murtha, for example, was just not a good idea. And I think a lot of people were very offended. People are perfectly free to disagree with John Murtha, but to say as the White House spokesman said that he is like Michael Moore… Well if he’s Michael Moore, then I’m Johnny Damon.

Dionne moderated yesterday’s American Progress event, “The Ownership Society: Why No One is Buying, and a New Progressive Alternative.” For more on the event, including video, click here.

Full interview below: Read more

Earlier today on MSNBC, White House Communications Director Nicolle Wallace said the administration supports a “conditions-based withdrawal” from Iraq. As an example of the improved security there, she pointed to today’s transfer of a Tikrit palace to the Iraqis:

“¦[C]urrent administration policy, which is for a conditions-based withdrawal from Iraq, which means that as the Iraqis can take control of their own security – and you saw an important handover today in Tikrit in Iraq. This was a lavish palace that once housed Saddam Hussein’s mother. It’s now going to be enjoyed by the Iraqi people.

If that’s their example of a success story, things are worse than we thought. From the AP today:

Insurgents fired a mortar at a U.S. ceremony attended by top officials on Tuesday to hand over a presidential palace in Saddam Hussein’s hometown to Iraqi authorities, sending the U.S. ambassador and top commander scrambling for cover but causing no injuries.

As a U.S. colonel was giving a speech, the mortar whistled as it fell into a field about 300 yards away from the palace in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. The mortar failed to explode when it hit the ground.

Tim Grieve breaks it down on Salon.

During Rep. Jean Schmidt’s (R-OH) shameful attack on Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) on the House Floor she said she was communicating a message from Marine Colonel Danny Bubp:

A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body – that we will see this through.

Bubp denies he said that:

Danny Bubp, a freshman state representative who is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, told The Enquirer that he never mentioned Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., by name when talking with Schmidt…”There was no discussion of him personally being a coward or about any person being a coward,” Bubp said.

Schmidt needs to come clean.