I don’t know why this surprises me, but it does:
The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.
Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won’t be posted on the Internet.
The reversal highlighted the politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were first reported Monday by McClatchy.
It really is like they want to be compared to the old Soviet Union.
As an aside, I wonder how that moron the Gateway Pundit is spinning this.
scarshapedstar
If they’d released the report, the terrists would be gettin’ low in the streets.
Buck
Really. What does it matter? This country’s shock factor is screwed all to hell anyways.
bago
They really haven’t quite gotten a hold of the google yet, have they?
Reverend Spooner
It’s as true now as it was then: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Saddam Hussein was backing Osama, and no amount of contrary evidence will change that unalterable fact. The kind of scum who would doubt it is the kind of scum who’d believe in Darwinism. Or Copernicanism, for that matter.
numbskull
Yeah, but I read somewhere that they screwed up and actually did have them available as PDF docs and that people were able to download them.
demimondian
No, but if you send them a self-addressed, stamped envelope, they’ll send you a disk containing the report.
And, gosh, you know that there’s no way to show a pdf on the web…
demimondian
And, golly, it looks like some terrist luving amuricuh hatin news org has posted the pdf on-line already.
calipygian
But Stephen Hayes PROMISED that Osama Bin Laden was actually Saddam Hussein in disguise.
Is the Weekly Standard officially discredited NOW?
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
True, but who are you going to trust to deliver the report on unmolested? There still isn’t any such thing as “blogger’s ethics” and the New York Times doesn’t come with a digital section.
Although, I admit I’d be impressed with them for once if they _did_ on their online newspaper.
There should be one fat headline at the top of nyt.com: CLICK HERE FOR IRAQ/AL-QAEDA REPORT PDF
Think they’ll do it? Me neither.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
Dude, awesome. Go ABC! How did they link that?
The Moar You Know
Interesting. Won’t make a damn bit of difference to those of us who have been anti-war since ’03, as we knew this was the case all along…but still provides plausible deniability to the kool-aid drinkers/28 percenters.
It really is just like the old Soviet Union, and realizing that scares the crap out of me. As I recall, that empire didn’t end too well.
tBone
Obviously this is bad news for the Obama campaign. I suspect that Saddam Hussein (boy, that last name sounds familiar!) smuggled his WMDs into the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s mosque. And then made sexist remarks about Hillary.
maxbaer (not the original)
So, no public release, but you can get it anyway. The fuckin’ STUPID is killing me. Please make it stop!
Singularity
Just before its lamented demise, SPY magazine devoted an issue to the idea that the Soviet Union and the United States had stared into each others’ abysses for so long that they had each started to become the other. It was meant to be humorous, not prescient.
Zifnab
So they’re announcing a report they will only release on request? Sounds kinda silly, especially given that the report will be all over the interwebs about as fast as you can say WMD.
At least the Old Soviet Union knew how to not tell people things. Tubes 15677890234, Bush 0.
zack
“Politically Sensitive” is a term used instead of coming right out and saying:
Cheney said the evidence of an operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida was “overwhelming.”
Politically sensitive to whom?
By gosh, Cheney’s still got it! Clout, that is.
Dennis - SGMM
The Republicans and the war mongers will give the McCain response: “All of that is ancient history. It’s more important to elect someone who will blow more stuff up because that’s working out real well – we just haven’t done enough of it.”
Ed Drone
There’s an old saw to the effect, “Choose your enemy carefully, for over tiem, you will become like him.”
In which case, I now announce my enmity to Bill Gates.
Ed
Ed Drone
Oops!
“over tiem” — would you believe, “over time?”
Ed
Jake
Thanks Demi. The Chimperor must be choking on his reflexive urge to scream about leaks right now. “But … They … That ain’t fair!”
Damage control will consist of shoving Dana “Bubble Head Bleach Blonde” Purina out on the stage to claim that since no one requested a copy from the Pgon, no one cares about Iraq.
demkat620
Of course he does. It really doesn’t feel good to get shot in the face.
Dennis - SGMM
It’s clear that Saddam didn’t have access to the same intelligence that Bush/Cheney had.
joe
I think it’s obvious what happened: Saddam smuggled the al Qaeda connections across the border to Syria shortly after the invasion.
Ha! pwned, moonbats! Bush 4-evah!!
Bruce Moomaw
Actually, what they “want to be compared to” is the Kaiser’s Germany. Cheney has always clearly agreed with Bismarck — “Democracy means putting the children in charge of the nursery” — and Bush, to the extent that he has any coherent thoughts about anything, obviously agrees with him.
Ted
John, I noticed Ace O. Spades is not in the official Balloon-Juice ‘Blogs we monitor and Mock…’ section. Perhaps Ace should be added, and checked in on for the occasional mocking. He’s very risible and it would be fun.
jo6pac
I for 1’m schocked by this news and I totally agree with this because it it means B-Tra-se is winnning.
jo6pac
demimondian
Fixed
As My Great Grandmother
Neah, they knew the report would get out. This was just one more way for the Bush administration to give the finger to us 72 percenters.
tBone
“But the plans were on display . . .”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'”
xephyr
Typical crap totally in keeping with the downwardly mobile status quo of this once great country, since taken over by idiots who govern other idiots. Wake me up when it’s over.
Chuck Butcher
How odd that Fallon would have to go away and then the Pentagon would decide it should not release the Hussein/Ossama report.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Gullible much? If you can’t trust an unbiased, mainstream source like McWhacky (Speaking Truth To Power!), who can you trust? Why don’t you just quote the National Enquirer next?
Also, Larry Johnson says that Cheney’s going to be indicted any day now! Must be true!
cmorenc
Perhaps some folks within the Pentagon who are secret unadmirers of the Bush/Cheney/neocon crowd deliberately screwed up such that a link to the .pdf version was available, to a few reporters who *wink* *wink* were clever enough to know how to find it.
Ted
Sure, and you can quote the comparable National Review.
AnneLaurie
It really is just like the old Soviet Union, and realizing that scares the crap out of me. As I recall, that empire didn’t end too well.
Yes, but ask the Bushbots: Unlike them Commies, we have GOD on our side!!!!1!
Unfortunately, He might be the God from the last volume of “His Dark Materials” — a shrunken, senile, terrified shell kept in a neverending half-life for His former minions to use as a totem in their eternal war of All against All…
Or maybe I’m thinking about Dubya?
TenguPhule
I just remember the awesomeness that was former and serving members in government getting bumped off by their rivals left and right.
Sure the country went to hell. But a good lot of the people who made it that way went first.
TenguPhule
The story of EEEL’s life.
That and “Of course I’ll still respect you in the morning.”
TenguPhule
The floggings will continue until morale improves.
cleek
don’t they realize they’ve just made this information 3x more interesting than if they’d just threw it out there and kept quiet?
PK
This information has been known since before the war. I don’t know if anyone remembers this, but before the war, proof of the link between Saddam and Al Queda was that Atta met an Iraqi agent in Prague. The Czecks denied that a meeting took place, but of course the media never cared to follow up.
Secondly, I remember Scott Ritter saying on Bill’O’ Reilly’s show that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, because “We got rid of them after the Gulf war”. Of course Bill’O’Reilly immediately discredited him by talking about some film Ritter had made for Saddam and indirectly accused him (Scott Ritter) of taking 400,000 dollars from Saddam.
Even today I cannot believe how people took the word of the dumb-ass Bush administration over the word of those who actually knew what they were talking about.
I know it is not going to happen, but if there was a Nuremberg type trial for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, they would get the death penalty for their crimes.
b. hussein canuckistani
If this information is released, Al Qaeda might discover that they had no ties with Saddam in 2002. And then where would we be? Why do you want to help the terrorists?
Evinfuilt
Thus Redstate
Bush/Putin
Our Agriculture Policy (based off of the Soviet 5yr program)
Our Torture policy
Our Wiretapping
Roves Commisars
USSR’s Enemy (Osama) became USA’s Enemy
I think Bush was upset he didn’t get to be called Comrade Bush. They fought the enemy so hard, that they became them.
I swear this country didn’t do this on purpose. Yet here we stand, as equal to a failed nation. I’m thankful, that this can be undone. All we need is a Government not beholden to a single person. A president who doesn’t think that they are King/Queen.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
I’ve been saying for a while now that the modern Republican Party and the old Soviet Communists are mirror images of one another.
Memorial to Ideological Icon
Soviets: Lenin’s tomb
Republicans: Reagan’s Library
Propaganda megaphone masquerading as news outlet:
Soviets: Pravda
Republicans: Fox News
Place where “enemies” detained without trial:
Soviets: Gulag
Republicans: Guantanamo Bay
Disastrous Military Adventure:
Soviets: Afghanistan
Republicans: Iraq
Truth-tellers who suffered political retribution:
Soviets: Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Republicans: Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame
And so it goes…