A Second Hand Conjecture

Back-Stabbing Amongst the Warmongers

Joshua Foust on Apr 15 2008 at 2:15 pm | Filed under: Around the Web, Notes on the war

8 Responses to “Back-Stabbing Amongst the Warmongers”

1. on 15 Apr 2008 at 3:34 pm 1Synova

   

   Poor Zarqawi, getting blown up in Iraq.   Alone in a strange land.

    

    

    

2. on 15 Apr 2008 at 9:58 pm 2Ymarsakar

   

   Some people contest points in order to improve war conditions and thus save lives. You Josh, watch from the shores the struggles of those still on the sea and find it an entertaining point contest about who gets the social status of rightness.
    
   Big difference all said and done.
   If this is the kind of stuff you read and take on as your so called eye witness observer data, no wonder you turned out believing in the wrong things.
    

3. on 15 Apr 2008 at 10:22 pm 3Joshua Foust

   

   Again, with the baseless speculation about my experiences and vantage point. It is significant when one of the Bush administration’s primary war architects is walking back his original justification for starting the war… and when he’s even throwing supportive journalists to the wolves to do so.

   If you don’t see that amidst all your pontificating, that’s cool I guess. But point out something that is factually untrue there—I’m all ears. Otherwise, just stop.

4. on 16 Apr 2008 at 7:52 am 4MichaelW

   

   Uhh, Josh, you know that Spencer Ackerman is not a very reliable source don’t you?  I wouldn’t trust what he says about anything unless and until you verify by checking his linked sources.

   That being said, Hayes certainly didn’t like being left holding the bag.  I’ve never seen the Feith Memo, nor read the Hayes pieces purporting to show operational links between al Qaeda and Saddam, so I don’t know who’s right in this instance.  Anyone have a link to the memo?

5. on 16 Apr 2008 at 9:44 am 5Keith_Indy

   

   Seems to me the reporting on the memo (in the Weekly Standard) occurred after the fact… and in fact, the memo itself was after the war had already started.

   Feith seems to be saying, “I wasn’t making that my case, I was just reporting on the intel that led some other people to conclude there were ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. Other people overstated the connection, not me.”

   It is significant when one of the Bush administration’s primary war architects is walking back his original justification for starting the war…

   Not having read his book, I will assume that you are overstating here just a bit. There was a laundry list of items on the justification for going to war. In fact, a criticism from the New York Post before the war started said, in effect, that they couldn’t keep up with all the various justifications.

6. on 16 Apr 2008 at 4:27 pm 6Joshua Foust

   

   Michael, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Do you mean when he got fired from TNR for not supporting the War after it went south? Or something he got factually wrong more severely or more often than, say, Hayes and Feith?

   And Feith is most certainly walking back his claims, since he basically made up the intel reports he claims he was misquoted about. When even Tommy Franks thinks you’re “the stupidest f*cking guy on the planet” (though that might be high praise, given Franks’ performance), then it’s not surprising to see Feith so desperate to make himself look good.

   But the centerpiece of Feith’s role in the war was his office’s internal publication of finding “operational ties” between Iraq and al-Qaeda — ties not a single review has since found actually existed. And now even Feith won’t say his office said what it said, because it is so blatantly untrue.

7. on 16 Apr 2008 at 10:26 pm 7MichaelW

   

   Josh:

   Oh no, nothing like that. I didn’t even know that was him who was fired by TNR (I vaguely recall reading something about that). I was referring more to the fact that he frequently mischaracterizes his political opponents, is afflicted with a bad case of BDS, and rarely offers more than his poison pen opinions as to others’ character and motives. He’s not a reliable source.

   I’m not sure that makes much difference here. Hayes is certainly pissed. Whether or not he was left holding the bag regarding the Feith Memo I can’t really say (since I still haven’t found a copy), but if his summaries were correct (which I have now read) then he has reason to be pissed.

   On the other hand, the Feith Memo may not have been making the case for operational ties that Hayes claimed. The most damning evidence against Hayes is the DoD press release shortly after Feith delivered his Memo to Congress:

   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.

   Also problematic for Hayes’ interpretation of the Memo is Bryan Keefer’s analysis at Spinsanity:

   Yet many of the memo’s pieces of evidence come with caveats. For example, in regard to several meetings, the memo states that “None of the reports have information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings” (which are obviously crucial to establishing an “operational relationship” between Iraq and Al Qaeda). Other evidence is indirect, such as a note that “According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after learning Saddam agreed to assist Al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia.” (ellipsis in Hayes article).

   The memo also details the actions of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi living in Malaysia. Yet the only documented contact between Shakir and the Iraqi government is Shakir’s own claim that he obtained a job at an airport “through an Iraqi embassy employee.” And regarding the controversial meeting between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, the memo substantiates two meetings (one in December 1994 and one in June 2000) but notes that evidence surrounding two others, including one in April 2001 that has been cited by Bush administration officials, “is complicated and sometimes contradictory”.

   The connections reported between Iraq and Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, 2001 are also vague and far from conclusive. They include an alleged offer of safe haven in Iraq to Al Qaeda members, the provision of weapons to “Al Qaeda members in northern Iraq” beginning in “mid-March,” roughly the time of the beginning of US military action; and assistance provided by an Iraqi intelligence agent to Ansar al-Islam, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group which operated prior to the war in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq.

   [...]

   In short, the evidence remains contested, and the memo itself does not demonstrate the sort of high-level coordination between Iraq and Al Qaeda implied by phrases such as “operational relationship.”

   Of course, I’ve also read somewhere that there was a 2002 Memo from Feith’s office detailing alleged “operational ties,” so maybe Hayes was working from a compendium of Feith’s views. Without seeing the actual Memo (or at least what Hayes saw) it’s difficult to tell who should get the blame here.

    

8. on 18 Apr 2008 at 6:15 pm 8Ymarsakar

   

   t is significant when one of the Bush administration’s primary war architects is walking back his original justification for starting the war…
    
   It may be significant to you, but since he wasn’t somebody I had read when I made decisions concerning war support, he is insignificant to me. Why he is so significant to you, I’ll leave you to judge.
   If you don’t see that amidst all your pontificating, that’s cool I guess.
   What I see is that talking about these people can produce nothing beneficial to the people fighting in Iraq or the ultimate goals of the President in Iraq. There is no constructive criticism to be had on this topic regardless of who is right or wrong, so why would I waste time and energy propping up a strawman for your entertainment, Josh/
   
   

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