Oh, THAT Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection: III

The universe of the NY Times must be a very strange one, indeed. Just a week after the Times editorial page found vindication in the report of the 9/11 Commission with its straw man argument that the Bush administration's claims of a Saddam-9/11 connection had been fatally undermined (the Bush administration never made any such claim), the Times is now forced to acknowledge that Saddam and Bin Laden did indeed, at a minimum, explore ways to get into bed with one another.

But of course that doesn't stop the Times from putting its own spin on the story. The headline itself says it all:

Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says

You can already see the spin emerging, and the article most bears this out: Saddam didn't seek out Bin Laden to attack the U.S., but merely because he wanted to cooperate with groups opposed to the Saudi regime:

The document states that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and that a request from Mr. bin Laden to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered. There is no further indication of collaboration.

No interest here in attacking a common enemy. Nothing to see. Move on. Well, except for this:

Mr. bin Laden "also requested joint operations against foreign forces" based in Saudi Arabia, where the American presence has been a rallying cry for Islamic militants who oppose American troops in the land of the Muslim pilgrimage sites of Mecca and Medina.

But [you knew there had to be a "but" -- ed.] the document contains no statement of response by the Iraqi leadership under Mr. Hussein to the request for joint operations, and there is no indication of discussions about attacks on the United States or the use of unconventional weapons.

The whole article is in this same vein of wanting desperately to bury one's head in the sand. The writer makes no effort to account for a number of contradictions. For example, there's this oddity early in the piece:

American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization. (emphasis mine).

But the article also asserts that the first key meeting occurred in 1994, which was after the first WTC bombing. Wasn't Al Qaeda involved in the first WTC bombing, and wasn't one of the bombers given safe haven in Iraq?

And the article notes, without a trace of irony:

The document details a time before any of the spectacular anti-American terrorist strikes attributed to Al Qaeda: the two American Embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998, the strike on the destroyer Cole in Yemeni waters in 2000, and the Sept. 11 attacks.

I suppose that the writer meant for us to draw the conclusion that, since these contacts occurred in an age of relative innocence (during Clinton's first term, actually -- why hasn't the Left come up with a theory that Bin Laden only went "bad" after the Republican takeover of Congress?), the purposes of the contacts must have been benign. But a more sensible conclusion is that these contacts marked the early stages of a collaboration.

And can we finally dispense with the meme that Saddam and Bin Laden could not have cooperated because one was godless and the other was a fundamentalist?

The document, which asserts that Mr. bin Laden "was approached by our side," states that Mr. bin Laden previously "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative," but was now willing to meet in Sudan, and that "presidential approval" was granted to the Iraqi security service to proceed.

At the meeting, Mr. bin Laden requested that sermons of an anti-Saudi cleric be rebroadcast in Iraq. That request, the document states, was approved by Baghdad.

If the Times were only willing to give itself a dose of its own medicine, those paragraphs would have been followed by the sentence: If true, this would flatly discredit the widely held view among liberals that Saddam and Bin Laden were too ideologically opposed to one another to ever cooperate.

UPDATE: Ace beat me to the punch. He has similar thoughts, expressed in his usual, trenchant idiom.

Comments

[freddie]

What a tortured way to make a piont that still makes no sense. You bash the Times, par for the course, but simply put: the NY Times is simpy saying there may have been this chat or that tal but AlQaeda and Saddam have no clear-cut connection to terror as a joint operation. None. Saddam would not allow training camps in his country etc...why not simply move on and stop bashing the Times and beating an ideological horse till you are senselss but not the horse?