The Osama-Saddam Link - Continued

Case Open - Why is the press avoiding the Weekly Standard's intelligence scoop?

It certainly would seem that a recent Senate Intelligence Committee memo linking Saddam and Osama would be big news.

But not with our media:

What's keeping the pack from tearing Hayes' story to shreds, from building on it or at least exploiting the secret document from which Hayes quotes? One possible explanation is that the mainstream press is too invested in its consensus finding that Saddam and Osama never teamed up and its almost theological view that Saddam and Osama couldn't possibly have ever hooked up because of secular/sacred differences. Holders of such rigid views tend to reject any new information that may disturb their cognitive equilibrium.

The New York Times has not reported the story (at least on the web), but its columnists are mentioning it:

Former spooks who convinced reporters that there was never any connection between Saddam's Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden's terror network would forthrightly assert they were uninformed about the decade-long links that were revealed in the classified memo the Senate Intelligence Committee requested from Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. (The secret memo detailing 50 instances has gone relatively uncovered by major media because it surfaced in the current Weekly Standard, but is the subject of an automatic leak investigation — yet another time-wasting mistake.)

People who said that there could never be a link are ignorant of history - even US history: Leaders who hate each other can put aside their differences when they confront a common powerful enemy.

Didn't it ever dawn on these people that most of the people we've fought since World War II were once our friends? We once fought alongside Kim Il Jong, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Noriega - and we even armed Saddam and Osama.

Why wouldn't Saddam and Osama do the same?



- posted by total @ 11/19/2003 05:33:00 AM .