9/11 Comission Staff and Mainstream Media Cooperate to Bamboozle American Public

Anybody surprised?

Jack Kelly writes at the Communist Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sunday:

On Thursday [Jun. 17], the lead headline in the Post-Gazette was "Saddam, al-Qaida Not Linked. Sept. 11 Panel's Conclusion at Odds with Administration." In the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that day, the banner headline read: "9/11 Panel Debunks Saddam Link. Report: No Evidence of al-Qaida Ties."

This was false, as the chair and vice chair of the 9/11 commission hastened to make clear.

"Were there contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq? Yes. Some of them were shadowy, but they were there," commission Chair Thomas Kean told reporters on Thursday.

"There were connections between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's government," said commission Vice Chair Lee Hamilton. "We don't disagree with that. What we have said is that we don't have any evidence of a cooperative, or a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and these al-Qaida operatives with regard to attacks on the United States [italics added]. So it seems to me that the sharp differences that the press has drawn, that the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me."

Since the Bush administration has never claimed that Saddam had a role in planning the 9/11 attacks, or earlier attacks on the USS Cole, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Khobar Towers bombing, or the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, there is essentially no difference between what the commission said in its staff report, and what President Bush has been saying all along....

And William Safire writes at the New York Times, yesterday (quoted ellipses in original):

"Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission...." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda...."

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes... no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections... we don't disagree with that" — just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 06/22/04 06:22:28 PM
Categorized as Media & Political.

Catholics in Political Life?

A statement, for some reason or other, from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

One must wonder, Faithful Reader, what St. John Fisher (bishop & martyr) and St. Thomas More (politician & martyr) would have to say about it. And what the other bishops and politicians of their day — who do not have "St." in front of their names now — would have to say about it.

Or, need one wonder at all?

(Thanks, Bill.)

P.S. Confer U.S. Cardinals' Statement, April 24, 2002.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 06/22/04 06:03:21 PM
Categorized as Religious.

Ss. John Fisher & Thomas More

St. John Fisher, cardinal of the Roman Church and bishop of Rochester, was executed on this day in 1535 for refusing to adhere to the English schism by acknowledging the king as head of the Church in England. He is commemorated today by the Roman Church, along with St. Thomas More, sometime Lord Chancellor, who was executed for the same reason on July 6th that same year. They were among the earliest and most prominent of a host of martyrs in the British Isles who refused to betray the Christian faith during the Reformation in England.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 06/22/04 07:54:32 AM
Categorized as Religious.