9/11 Report, Evidence and Eric Alterman

Eric Alterman is a hack. He makes a big stink about evidence: "where's your evidence?" he clucks at conservatives.

The problem is that he would not know evidence if it entered his lungs and killed him. He cited the 9/11 report on Washington Journal today as his evidence that Saddam had no WMDs and that Iraq has "nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. Well, guess what? I am reading the 9/11 report and have found plenty to contradict him.

The report is one of those raw evidence pieces that expose liberals for who they are. Yes, it is true that we have not yet found stockpiles of WMDs. But we have found some scary missiles. More importantly, the Report says two things:

1) There were plenty of meetings between Iraq leaders and Al-Qaida leaders. We do not know the content, nor do we know the results of these meetings. We have no evidence that the relationship was collaborative. Many experts believe that it was not. However, ask yourself this: why were there multiple meetings? I mean if Iraq and Al-Qaida did not feel positively toward each other in some way, why did they have these leadership meetings? I suppose we could say that they just wanted to make sure that they still did not agree. But, that would be irresponsible, no? Indeed, the fact that we do not know the nature of the relationship is precisely what should concern us. It is not like Al-Qaida was meeting with Tony Blair, whom we trust implicitly on these matters. These meetings are not enough to go to war, but they occur along with many other reasons. It was the totality of concerns that overwhelmed and forced us to enforce the UN resolutions. Anyway, here is what the report actually says:

"There is also evidence that around this time [1997] Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein's efforts at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Ladin.
In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative ...
Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq ... But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with Al-Qaida in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States." Page 66

You see Alterman and others read the last two lines and promptly forgot everything else. It is factually false that Iraq had "nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism." It is also important to note that for years we have know that Iraqi intelligence is very good at being secretive. The media was duped by them for years and our own agencies have been unable to penetrate Iraqi secrets. So, consider these premises:

a) the report says that there were meetings between Iraq and al Qaida
b) Iraq supported Palestinian terrorism and allowed terrorist training camps and more
c) we have no conclusive evidence concerning the Iraq/al Qaida relationship either way,

Conclusion: It is unreasonable to say definitively that Iraq and Al-Qaida were not collaborative. We can say that we have no conclusive evidence. Admittedly, it is impossible for Liberals to prove the negative. That is why we have to make reasonable judgments. Aristotle was right to exclude logic from politics and human affairs. We can use logic to help us, but in the end, it can not be the deciding factor since people rarely yield the totality of their existence to science the way that a rock does.

2) There is also a very suggestive passage in the report which has been ignored by virtually everyone. We had an indictment against Bin Ladin in 1998:

"The indictment also charged that al Qaida had allied itself with Sudan, Iran and Hezbollah. The original sealed indictment had added that al Qaida had 'reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaida would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq.' This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was 'probably a direct result of the Iraq-al Qaida agreement.' Clarke added that VS precursor traces found near al Shifa were 'the exact formula used by Iraq.' This language.. was dropped, however, when a superseding indictment was filed in November, 1998." page 128

Now, we do not know why this info was left out of the second indictment. It would be wrong for us to impute a reason. There may have been a legal reason which does not impugn the veracity of the evidence. (The Report does not impugn it either.) We have to assign this evidence it due merit. It is suggestive and threatening, but not conclusive. As above we have to use our judgment and a prudent concern for national strategy to evaluate the totality of the situation.

What we learned from 9/11 is precisely that we undervalued this kind of intelligence and under emphasized national security. As Bush has said since, the most important job of the president is and indeed government as a whole is national security.

Eric Alterman has not learned this lesson. Dennis Miller did. So did many other former Liberals. Zell Miller (no relation) was and is a lifelong Democrat. (He was never a Liberal.) His speech at the RNC Convention was a scathing indictment of the Left for not learning this lesson. Alterman's avowed Liberalism and clearly biased judgment leads him to ignore evidence and reach stupid conclusions.