Chris Wallace smashes Feith's pre-war Qaeda 'lies'

[danarhea]

Can't believe that Douglas Feith had the cahonas to actually state in an interview that he never charged that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. Neither did Chris Wallace, who proceeded to completely rip him apart on this notable "noble lie", which was used by the Bush administration as part of their justification to go war with Iraq. The Bush administration lied, and soldiers died. That is not supporting the troops.

Article is here.

 

[Hatuey]

Yeah I saw this a few days ago. That man has balls the size of the moon.

 

[RightinNYC]

Can't believe that Douglas Feith had the cahonas to actually state in an interview that he never charged that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. Neither did Chris Wallace, who proceeded to completely rip him apart on this notable "noble lie", which was used by the Bush administration as part of their justification to go war with Iraq. The Bush administration lied, and soldiers died. That is not supporting the troops.

Article is here.

2 things:

1) Where's his rebuttal? You'd think that if you wanted to really decimate someone, you'd have them on the show, or at least ask them for comment. Nowhere was he given a chance to explain this.

2) Look at the exchange:

Douglas Feith: Nobody in my office ever said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. It's just not correct. I mean, words matter.

Wallace: But it turns out he did make that case in a memo he sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October of '03. The Weekly Standard, who saw the Feith memo, described it this way: 'Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003

So, we don't actually know what the memo said.

We know what the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol's neoconservative magazine, claims to have seen in a memo.

Considering how frequently you call into doubt the words of Kristol and his other neoconservatives, why in this instance are you taking their claims as sacrosanct? Isn't it equally, if not more likely, that the Weekly Standard lied or hyped the phrasing in their reporting?

 

[Chanda]

From a partially declassified report (compiled and presented by Feith's group) produced by the Pentagon's inspector general:

“ntelligence indicates cooperation in all categories” and a “mature symbiotic relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaida, Feith conveniently reported to superiors who had already decided on the need to overthrow Saddam and were seeking a way to link it to Americans’ rage at Osama bin Laden. These alleged “multiple areas of cooperation” included “shared interest and pursuit” of weapons of mass destruction and “some indications of possible Iraq coordination with al Qaeda related to 9/11.” All of those claims were known by the intelligence community to be false or completely unproven, as documented by the nonpartisan 9/11 commission. Yet, they were presented by Feith’s office “unbeknownst to the Director of Central Intelligence,” according to the report, were “not vetted by the Intelligence Community” and were “not supported by the available intelligence.”

Truthdig - Reports - Before the Invasion, There Was Feith

 

[Trajan Octavian Titus]

2 things:

1) Where's his rebuttal? You'd think that if you wanted to really decimate someone, you'd have them on the show, or at least ask them for comment. Nowhere was he given a chance to explain this.

2) Look at the exchange:



So, we don't actually know what the memo said.

That's because the Feith memo is still classified and the DOD won't release it but here's the article in question with excerpts of the memo which does make a strong case for a collaborative relationship:

Case Closed
From the November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
by Stephen F. Hayes
11/24/2003, Volume 009, Issue 11


The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

Case Closed

Here's the DOD response to the Weekly Standards dessimination of the memo:

DoD Statement on News Reports of Al Qaeda and Iraq Connections​

News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.

A letter was sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Oct. 27, 2003, from Douglas J. Feith, under secretary of defense for policy, in response to follow-up questions from his July 10 testimony. One of the questions posed by the committee asked the department to provide the reports from the intelligence community to which he referred in his testimony before the committee. These reports dealt with the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

The letter to the committee included a classified annex containing a list and description of the requested reports, so that the committee could obtain the reports from the relevant members of the intelligence community.

The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the National Security Agency or, in one case, the Defense Intelligence Agency. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the intelligence community. The selection of the documents was made by DoD to respond to the committee’s question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.

Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal.



DefenseLink News Release: DoD Statement on News Reports of Al Qaeda and Iraq Connections

And here's the Weekly Standard's response to the Pentagon release:

The Saddam-Osama Memo (cont.)
A close examination of the Defense Department's latest statement.
by Stephen F. Hayes
11/19/2003 12:00:00 AM

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT late Saturday, November 15, issued a statement that began: "News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate."

The statement didn't specify the "inaccurate" news reports, but most observers have inferred that the main report in question was an article in the most recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD--Case Closed: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. "Case Closed" described an October 27 memorandum to the Senate Intelligence Committee from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, which included 50 numbered items of intelligence from a variety of sources and agencies on links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
The Pentagon's statement continues:

The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the NSA, or, in one case, the DIA. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the Intelligence Community. The selection of the documents was made by DOD to respond to the Committee's question.​

The Pentagon statement goes on to claim: "The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions."
This statement has confused, rather than clarified, the issues raised by the Feith memo.

The Saddam-Osama Memo (cont.)