Baltimore Sun:

Part 1

Part 2

Sample (from Part 1): On why Due Process is not applicable to war-time military operations:

The strictures that bind the Executive in its role as a magistrate enforcing the civil laws have no place in constraining the President in waging war:

Soldiers regularly in the service have the license of the government to deprive men,the active enemies of the government, of their liberty and lives; their commission so to act is as perfect and legal as that of a judge to adjudicate …. Wars never have been and never can be conducted upon the principle that an army is but a posse comitatis ofa civil magistrate..

Military Commissions, 11 Op.Att’y Gen. 297, 301-02 (1865) (emphasis added); see also The Modoc Indian Prisoners, 14 Op. Att’y Gen. 249, 252 (1873) (“it cannot be pretended that a United States soldier is guilty of murder if he kills a public enemy in battle, which would be the case if the municipal law was in force and, applicable to an· act committed under such circumstances”).. As Attorney General Speed conciuded, the Due Process Clause has no application to the conduct of a military campaign:

That portion of the Constitution which declares that ‘no person shall be deprived… of his life,liberty, or property without due process of law,’ has such direct reference to, and connection with, trials for crime or criminal prosecutions that comment upon it would seem to be unnecessary. Trials for offences against the laws of war are not embraced or intended to be embraced in those provisions…. The argument that flings around offenders against the laws of war these guarantees of the Constitution would convict all the soldiers of our anny of murder; no prisoners could be taken and held; the anny could not move. The absurd consequences that would of necessity flow from .such an argument show that it cannot be the true construction-it cannot be what was intended by the framers of the instrument. One of the prime motives for the Union and a federal government was to confer the powers of war. If· any provisions of the .. Constitution are so in conflict with the power to carry on war as to destroy and make it valueless, then the instrument,instead of being a great and wise one, is a miserable failure “a felo de se.”

I thought it was a fine piece of work, placing the issues in the correct historical perspective, citing proper precedents, and arriving at just and accurate conclusions. The Bush Administration ought to have released it immediately upon its production, and staunchly publicly defended it.

New York Times:

The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Sunday took a step toward ending six days of intense combat between his militia allies and Iraqi and American forces in Basra and Baghdad, saying in a statement that his followers would lay down their arms providing the Iraqi government met a series of demands.

That sounds to me like the Mahdi Army has been getting its clock cleaned, and its fearless leader (generally believed to be directing operations from a safe location on the other side of the Iranian border) is looking for a face-saving way to keep his private (Iran-supported) militia, now facing the Iraqi Army backed by US air power, from being annihilated.

But the mainstream media is on the job, determinedly spinning reports and editorial analyses into gloomy tales of insuperable obstacles, righteous and invincible adversaries, and inevitable defeat for America and her allied government of Iraq.

James Glanz, at the same New York Times, tells us that we aren’t liberators, no, no, no, we are evil foreign invaders, and the Mahdi Army isn’t a bunch of gangsters funded by Iran’s fanatical mullahs. They are homies defending the ‘hood.

Sometime during my four years of traveling to Iraq, I developed a recurring dream in which a Middle Eastern country invades the United States and occupies, among other places, my old neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. The dream flashed briefly through my mind on Thursday as I walked the dirty, broken streets of Sadr City, a teeming Baghdad slum that forms the power base of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric.

Here is what happens in the dream: Because I know a little Arabic, I somehow find myself a translator for the invaders, even as some of my Chicago buddies are in the alleys plotting against my employers. And each night when I walk home along my beloved Dearborn Street under the rusty elevated tracks and past the White Hen grocery store, I wonder what the guys poring over maps in their armored vehicles plan to accomplish against a few million South Siders fighting in their own alleys. That’s usually when I wake up.
before dismissing the ragtag Mahdi fighters, it would be well to remember that — partly because the alleys of the neighborhoods they control are too narrow for the Iraqi Army’s armored vehicles — Mahdi units like Riadh’s have been fighting Iraq’s federal forces to a standstill in Basra, the country’s southern port city, for nearly a week now.

Alleys: they are dangerous only when used by those who grew up in them. That is the basic reason Mr. Sadr and his fighters simply will not go away in this war.

The Associated Press goes over the history of the last five years with a fine-toothed comb looking for scandals and bad news in order to buttress its cry of indignation over the Iraqi military finding US assistance desirable: After years of effort, Iraqi army still can’t ‘stand up‘

The US still has armed forces stationed in Germany more than 60 years after the end of WWII. How about an “After Six Decades, Europe Still Cannot Stand Up” story?

McClatchy says negotiations prove Sadr was really winning and the Iraqi government losing.

After failing to break the resistance of Shiite militias in the five-day siege of oil rich Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki sent a top general to hold talks with his Shiite rival, Muqtada al Sadr, Saturday night only to be rebuffed by the firebrand cleric, an Iraqi official close to the negotiations said.

OK, well, maybe Sadr did order his men to stop fighting, says McClatchy a bit later, but the Iraqi Government and the US didn’t make him. It was the noble and peace-loving mullahs of Iran who sent their spiritually-enlightened special forces commander to preach the gospel of peace.

Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom over the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran’s Qods brigades in persuading Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations, members of the Iraqi parliament said.

Propaganda aside, it’s pretty obvious that Sadr chose a ceasefire because his forces were taking a beating and that resistance was not sustainable. Letting him have a ceasefire is a mistake. They should have wiped his militia out.

The leftwing Inter Press Service (“Journalism and Communication for Global Change!”) is peddling an anti-US propaganda meme, which ignorant leftist blogs like Think Progress are eager to lap up.

The reality is that blackwater fever is a term for a commonly fatal and very long known complication of malaria, hemoglobinuria, a condition in which the destruction of red blood cells by the malaria parasites floods the victim’s urine with hemoglobin, causing it to appear dark-red or black, producing the name “blackwater fever.”

Iraqi doctors in al-Anbar province warn of a new disease they call “Blackwater” that threatens the lives of thousands. The disease is named after Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. mercenary company operating in Iraq.

“This disease is a severe form of malarial infection caused by the parasite plasmodium falciparum, which is considered the worst type of malarial infection,” Dr. Ali Hakki from Fallujah told IPS. “It is one of the complications of that infection, and not the ordinary picture of the disease. Because of its frequent and severe complications, such as Blackwater fever, and its resistance to treatment, P. falciparum can cause death within 24 hours.”

Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin neglected to go down to the county courthouse and file a signed and notarized partnership agreement. Instead, Iraq’s government covertly supplied funding and weapons and provided training facilities, medical treatment, and sanctuary to individual terrorist leaders and to a confusing array of variously named and affiliated terrorist groups.

Deniability is, of course, precisely why governments, like that of the former Baathist regime of Iraq, employ surrogate non-state actors as instruments of violence against Western states. If Iraq attacked the United States openly, the legitimacy of a full-scale US military response would have been unquestioned. Because actual attacks are committed by a handful of individuals affiliated with obscure jihadist entities, leftwing members of the US Intelligence Community always find themselves conveniently able to maintain that no definitive proof linking a sponsoring state like Iraq is available.

Michael Tanji explains how the game is played.

There is perhaps no clearer example of why the U.S. intelligence community has such a serious credibility problem than the recently released report on the relationship between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and terrorist groups. Media outlets friendly to the meme that there was no such connection were leaked a copy of the report and latched on to the statement that there was no “smoking gun” linking Saddam and al-Qaeda. Clearly, however, none of those reporters bothered to actually read the report or ask any critical questions.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of Islamic terrorism who read the early headlines and then read the report cannot help but come away with a severe case of cognitive dissonance. Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism and had we not gone to war with Iraq after 9/11, it would still be a focal point in our fight against Islamic terror. That Saddam and bin Laden never shook hands–presumably the only “smoking gun” that the most obtuse analysts of this subject would accept–is hardly the point. …

Nothing illustrates this more clearly than documents from Saddam’s own intelligence service, which confirm that the regime was funding the group Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the early 1990s. Led by Ayman al Zawahiri, the EIJ eventually morphed into what most observers call “core” al Qaeda. Zawahiri became al Qaeda’s second in command when al Qaeda was formed in the late 1980s. Saying Iraq was not supporting al Qaeda, when there was no meaningful distinction between the EIJ and al Qaeda, strains credulity.

Therein lies the problem: this report–and every assessment dealing with intelligence or national security matters–is crafted with such extreme precision in an impossible quest to be “right” that they end up being absurdly wrong. This quest for false precision skews our understanding of very clear and simple truths. This is part of the reason why so many policymakers of all political persuasions hold intelligence in such disdain. The books and articles that document Saddam’s relationship with terrorist groups that were published before this report was issued are numerous and draw largely the same conclusions that this review of classified material shows. Secrets are only valuable if they tell you something meaningful that you didn’t already know.

This is a problem that is endemic in the intelligence community and particularly bad in agencies that have taken a beating in recent years for providing incomplete information about the threat posed by Iraq’s WMD programs. To compensate, agencies caveat their work to the point that ten different people reading the same report will come away with at least nine different interpretations of the report’s findings. By not making unambiguous calls about what is known and more importantly what is unknown, intelligence agencies don’t serve their consumers; they confuse and infuriate them.

Ambiguity, a permanent feature of Intelligence, becomes in the hands of the sophists of the Intelligence Community’s anti-Bush establishment a very effective tool for undermining policy. By utilizing a 100% standard of certainty, requiring unimpeachable and totally disinterested first-hand witnesses of excellent character, and clear documentary evidence, it becomes possible to exculpate both pre-2003 Iraq and today’s Iran of any role in terrorism or efforts to acquire WMD at all, and thereby to delegitimize the Bush Administration’s casus belli.

AP (employer of terrorist photographers) gleefully reports:

– A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Sunday, the military said, pushing the overall American death toll in the five-year war to at least 4,000.

It’s sad, of course, that 4000 American soldiers lost their lives over the course of five years in Iraq, but… the casualties entailed by current US military operations are, in fact, very small compared to losses in countless individual battles in previous wars. Grant lost 7000 men in twenty minutes at Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864, at a time when the US population was roughly one tenth the size of today’s. Imagine 70,000 casualties in twenty minutes.

In WWII, the Battle of Iwo Jima lasted under six weeks, not five years, and the US conquest of that small island cost 7000 Americans lives.

source: Congresssional Report

Kenneth R. Timmerman debunks the partisan Institute for Defense Analysis study, at Newsmax, with chapter and verse from his new book.

I have written about the Harmony data base of captured Iraqi military and intelligence documents in my recent book, “Shadow Warriors: Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender.”

One of the most damning documents to emerge from the Harmony data base, I wrote, was a Jan. 18, 1993 order from Saddam Hussein, transmitted to the head of Iraqi intelligence, “to hunt the Americans that are in Arab lands, especially in Somalia, by using Arab elements or Asian (Muslims) or friends.”

In response, the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service informed Hussein that Iraq already had ties with a large number of international terrorist groups, including “the Islamist Arab elements that were fighting in Afghanistan and [currently] have no place to base and are physically present in Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt.” In other words, al-Qaida.

The authors of the IDA study note that Saddam’s Iraq “was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism,” and that these particular documents provided ‘detailed evidence of that support.’”

The study also points out that the captured documents “reveal that Saddam was training Arab fighters (non-Iraqi) in Iraqi training camps more than a decade prior” to the 2003 war.

But the study shies away from identifying them as al-Qaida terrorists, even though many of them were members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose leader, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, became the deputy leader of al-Qaida in 1998.

While the IDA study includes no information that would show operational ties between Saddam’s regime and the 9/11 hijackers, it reveals that Saddam personally gave orders on Sept. 17, 2001 to his general military intelligence directorate to recruit Iraqi officers for “suicide operations” against the United States.

The 112-page Harmony data file ISGQ-2005-00037352 contains Saddam’s order, as well as personal pledges to carry out suicide operations from more than one hundred “volunteers,” including a brigadier general.

In the order he issued just one week after the 9/11 attacks, Saddam stated that the volunteers should sign pledges “to be written in blood,” presumably their own.

Four years before this order, Saddam announced with great fanfare that he had tasked a prominent Iraqi calligrapher to produce a Quran written with his own blood. Saddam reportedly had doctors draw his blood for the task.

Several other key documents are glaringly absent from the IDA report and provide direct evidence of Saddam Hussein’s deep involvement with al-Qaida and its component organizations.

Among them is a 1999 notebook kept by an unidentified Iraqi intelligence official that detailed meetings between top Iraqi leaders and visiting Islamic terrorists. (Harmony document ISGP-2003-0001412).

One Baghdad visitor was Maulana Fazlur Rahman a signer of Osama bin Laden’s infamous 1998 fatwa calling on Muslims to “murder Americans.” Another was Afghan mujahedin leader Gulbudin Hekmatyar, who was also supported by Iran.

Roy Robison, a former U.S. government contractor who published an analysis of Saddam’s relationship to al-Qaida last year, argues that when Rahman met with Iraqi Vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan in 1999 “he did so as the father of the Taliban and as a leader of the World Islamic Front which declared war on the U.S the year before.”

Another document not included in this latest report was a review by Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) of their ongoing ties with Osama bin Laden and other opponents to the Saudi regime (Harmony document ISGZ-2004-009247).

This document reads like a memorandum for the record, written in early 1997, tracing the beginnings of the Iraqi regime’s relationship to Osama bin Laden.

In a letter dated Jan. 11, 1995, Saddam Hussein personally authorized the General Director of Intelligence to establish direct contact with bin Laden in Sudan, the report states.

The initial meeting with bin Laden took place just one month later, on Feb. 19, 1995, and included an offer by Iraq to provide bin Laden with broadcasting facilities and a discussion of plans “to perform joint operations against foreign forces in the land of Hijaz [ie, Saudi Arabia].

Following bin Laden’s expulsion from Sudan, in July 1996, the memo states that the Iraqi intelligence service is “working to revitalize this relationship through a new channel.”

The IDA report includes in its supporting documentation a detailed report by the Iraqi general director of intelligence in response to an “action directive” issued by Saddam on Jan. 18, 1993, ordering his intelligence service to establish relations with terrorist groups around the world and to develop the “expertise to carry out assignments.”

In addition to a variety of Palestinian groups, the document lists the Hezb Islami of Afghanistan, the Islamic Scholars Group of Pakistan, the Jam’iyat “Ulama Pakistan, all of which subsequently became affiliated with al-Qaida.

The authors of the IDA report note in the abstract accompanying their work that the captured documents provide “evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including . . . Islamic terrorist organizations.”

While the documents “do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al-Qaida network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al-Qaida,” and to provide financing and training of these outside groups.

“This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a ‘de facto’ link between the organizations,” the report’s authors stated. …

Contrary to the accounts that have appeared in mainstream media outlets, the Harmony documents and the IDA report show beyond any doubt that Saddam Hussein was willing to fund, train, and use Islamic terrorists, including groups affiliated with al-Qaida, to carry out his long-standing plans against the United States and U.S. allies in the region.

A 2002 annual report to the Iraq Intelligence Service M8 directorate of liberation movements shows that the IIS hosted 13 terrorist conferences during the year, and that Saddam personally received 37 congratulatory messages from international terrorist groups. The annual report also noted that the IIS had issued 699 passports to terrorists during the year.

“Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al-Qaida [such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri], or that generally shared al-Qaida’s stated goals and objectives,” the IDA report states.

But an element of competition also kept Saddam from too much direct involvement with al-Qaida, the IDA report states.

While both Saddam and bin Laden wanted to drive the West out of Muslim lands and to create a single powerful state that would replace America as a global superpower, “bin Laden wanted — and still wants — to restore the Islamic caliphate while Saddam, despite his later Islamic rhetoric, dreamed more narrowly of being the secular ruler of a united Arab nation,” the report’s authors state.

The relationship between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden bore some resemblance to the Cali and Medellin drug cartels.

While the seemingly rival cartels were vying for market share, “neither cartel was reluctant to cooperate with the other when it came to the pursuit of a common objective,” the report’s authors state.

“Recognizing Iraq as a second, or parallel, “terror cartel” that was simultaneously threatened by and somewhat aligned with its rival helps to explain the evidence emerging from the detritus of Saddam’s regime,” the IDA report states.

One terror tie apparently put to rest in this latest report are the suspicions that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

Analysts such as Laurie Mylroie have argued for years that Saddam’s regime was behind the 1993 attack, and cited as evidence the fact that a key member of the plot, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Iraq immediately after the bombing.

As I reported in Shadow Warriors, Saddam Hussein recorded all meetings in his presidential office, and the Harmony data base includes tapes from a series of meetings during 1993 that discussed the interrogation of Yasin.

Saddam “discusses the possibility that the attack was part of the ‘dirty games that the American intelligence would play if it had a bigger purpose,’” and expresses concern that Yasin might be an American agent, the IDA report states.

According to Saddam, Yassin was “too organized in what he is saying and [he] is playing games, playing games and influencing the scenario” during his interrogations by Iraqi intelligence. Saddam ordered that the interrogations continue but “actually warns against allowing Yasin to commit suicide or be killed in jail,” the report states.

Saddam believed that “the most important thing is not to let the Arabic public opinion [believe] we are cooperating with the US against the opposition. I mean that is why our announcement [that Yasin is being held] should include doubts . . . [about] who carried out this operation. Because it is possible that in the end we will discover — even if it is a very weak possibility — that a fanatic group who carried it organized the operation.”

Saddam and his advisors were hoping to use the interrogations of Yasin, and whatever information they could gather from him about the organizers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to enhance their position in world public opinion.

If handled correctly, Saddam said, Yasin’s confessions “will benefit us greatly; it will benefit us in our issue in the matter of the stance that the U.S. has taken against us.”

Osama has a new video in which he accuses coalition forces of deliberately killing women and children (He’d never do that!), but notes that the Danish cartoons were much worse.

Rusty Shackleford has the 5:05 video at the bottom of his article.

THE MSM (example: New York Times) pounced when, on a recent trip to the Middle East, in Amman Jordan, Senator John McCain heretically spoke of Iran providing training and financing for al Qaeda.

Thomas Joscelyn debunks the well-known liberal meme about how it’s absolutely impossible for Shiites and Sunni to make common cause against unbelievers.

• Earlier this month, the U.S. military and the current head of Iraqi intelligence reported that Iran has been targeting al Qaeda’s enemies–not al Qaeda itself–inside Iraq. There have also been a number of reports on Iran’s support for al Qaeda in Iraq. The Kurds have routinely complained about Iran’s support for al Qaeda’s affiliate, Ansar al-Islam. For more on Ansar al-Islam’s ties to Iran, and other bad actors, see Dan Darling’s excellent primer. As Darling wrote: “Another apparent relationship exists between Ansar and radical elements of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which seeks to use Ansar as a proxy force against the Coalition in Iraq.”

• More generally, the theological differences between Iran and al Qaeda have never been a serious impediment to cooperation. For example, I wrote a lengthy essay on the topic of Iran’s cooperation with al Qaeda going back to the early 1990’s. And in a recent piece, I detailed the evidence cooperation between Iran’s chief terrorist, the late Imad Mugniyah, and al Qaeda.

• The 9-11 Commission found extensive evidence of collaboration between Iran and al Qaeda. For example, the Commission concluded (p. 61): “The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations.”

• The Clinton administration recognized the relationship between al Qaeda, Iran, and Iran’s terrorist proxy, Hezbollah. Here is, in part, what the Clinton administration charged in its indictment of al Qaeda following the August 1998 embassy bombings: “USAMA BIN LADEN, the defendant, and al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with representatives of the government of Iran, and its associated terrorist group Hizballah, for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.”

• The mainstream media, including the Washington Post itself, has reported on Iran’s ties to al Qaeda. But now a blog hosted by the Washington Post dismisses the idea that the two could collaborate.

John McCain was right the first time. He shouldn’t have taken his comment back. But this whole imbroglio shows just how much ignorance there is concerning our terrorist enemies.

Richard Miniter, at PJM, tells you what the MSM will not about the scope, details, and omissions of the Institute for Defense Analysis study whose recently leaked executive summary was widely reported to have shown that there was “no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.”

Miniter provides considerable details on Iraqi officials’ meetings with al Qaeda, Iraqi funding of al Qaeda affilates, Iraqi provided training, and al Qaeda personnel carrying Iraqi passports or obtaining refuge in Iraq.

Professorfate, at Daily Kos, proposes a lesson for Americans.

As a nation the United States no longer has the remotest idea about what it really feels like to be part of a war zone. Americans have lost the empathy that is necessary to make an informed, meaningful, compassionate decision about whether or not war should be waged. While candidates fight over who has the required experience to properly oversee our republic’s international interests, none realize that none of them have ever felt what it is like to have war waged in their neighborhood and occupied by intruders. While they may claim to know when to wage wars and to know the horrors of war, they only know them intellectually. They can’t claim that they have emotionally felt them. No one who was born and raised in the United States can claim that and none can really feel it. We have allowed a Congress and an administration to encourage hate and to hi-jack our compassion. In fact, as a nation we have lost our compassion.

Unfortunately, America is at a point that to be able to really feel again, to regain that compassion, it needs to be invaded and occupied in the same way that we have invaded and occupied Iraq.

I think myself that Professorfate ought to advance that kind of thesis somewhere in the real America. There are a lot of people around who have a moral lesson to share with him.

H/T to SavannahWinslow via Charles Johnson.

Michael Barone sees the same conflict between the permanent government and Bush at work in the case of Admiral Fallon.

Though everyone involved denies it, Fallon was kicked out for insubordination, or something very close to it. His conduct became impossible to overlook after the publication of a jauntily written article in Esquire by Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of “The Pentagon’s New Map.”

Barnett paints Fallon as a seasoned officer who coolly and wisely has been frustrating George W. Bush’s desire to invade Iran. He points out that Fallon opposed the surge in Iraq ordered by Bush in January 2007 and that he has tried to rein in Gen. David Petraeus, whose leadership of the surge has produced such impressive results. He seems to take it for granted that readers will applaud Fallon for opposing a move that converted likely defeat to a high chance of success.

Fallon also made it plain that he wants to withdraw troops from Iraq, as soon as possible — even though Defense Secretary Robert Gates has approved Petraeus’ request for a pause after currently scheduled troop withdrawals end in July.

Fallon is not the first subordinate to work openly to undercut the commander in chief. The authors of the National Intelligence Estimate headlined a conclusion that Iran had abandoned part of its nuclear program, while underplaying the more important news that the mullahs were continuing the critical parts of the nuclear program and retained the capacity to rev up the rest quickly at any time. Leaks from the State Department and CIA have been clearly designed to frustrate administration policy.

Civilian and military, those who have been undercutting administration policy do so in the belief that their views are more in the nation’s interests than the conclusion of the Texas cowboy whom the voters somehow elected president. State and CIA are filled with professionals educated in elite universities dominated by the left and, while not as wacky as their professors, have come away with the default assumption that liberals are always right.

Many military officers, who increasingly have graduate degrees from such universities, seem to have imbibed similar habits of mind.

In addition, officers assigned to regional commands seem, like diplomats assigned to one area, inclined to go native. As head of Pacific Command, Fallon (at least as Barnett paints him) seemed transfixed on cooperating with China; at Central Command, he came to believe that pressuring Israel toward a settlement with Palestinians was the way to solve every problem in the region. After all, those are the things the Chinese and Arab military officers he’s been interfacing with have told him.

In my view, George W. Bush has been unduly tolerant of the efforts of civilian career professionals to undercut his policies. But Fallon’s abrupt resignation suggests that he and-or Gates decided that things had gone too far when a commanding military officer was lionized for opposing the president’s policies in the pages of Esquire.

Bush’s entrenched opponents within the admnistration fabricate another sophistical analysis denying the obvious and leak it to the Press, and George W. Bush fails to answer them. Bill Kristol explains why the Bush Administration is again ducking debating the case against Saddam.

Late last week, the Defense Department released an analysis of 600,000 documents captured in Iraq prepared by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally funded think tank. Here’s the attention-grabbing sentence from the report’s executive summary: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e. direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.”

Relying on a leak of the executive summary, ABC News reported that the study was “the first official acknowledgment from the U.S. military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda.” There followed a brief item in the Washington Post that ran under the headline “Study Discounts Hussein, Al-Qaeda Link.” The New York Times announced: “Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie.” NPR agreed: “Study Finds No Link Between Saddam, bin Laden.”

And the Bush administration reacted with an apparently guilty silence.

But here’s the truth. The executive summary of the report is extraordinarily misleading. …

Take a look …at the documents showing links between Saddam Hussein and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Apparently whoever wrote the executive summary didn’t consider the link between Saddam and al Zawahiri a “direct connection” because Egyptian Islamic Jihad had not yet, in the early 1990s, fully been incorporated into al Qaeda. Of course, by that standard, evidence of support provided to Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s might not be deemed a “direct connection” because al Qaeda as we know it today did not yet exist.

If you talk to people in the Bush administration, they know the truth about the report. They know that it makes the case convincingly for Saddam’s terror connections. But they’ll tell you (off the record) it’s too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, they’ll say. Furthermore, once the first wave of coverage is bad, you can never catch up: You give the misleading stories more life and your opponents further chances to beat you up in the media. And as for trying to prevent misleading summaries and press leaks in the first place–that’s hopeless. Someone will tell the media you’re behaving like Scooter Libby, and God knows what might happen next.

So, this week’s fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war will bring us countless news stories reexamining the case for war, with the White House essentially pleading nolo contendere. Even though there is abundant evidence that Iraq was a serious state sponsor of terrorism–and would almost certainly have become a greater one if Saddam had been left in power–most Americans will assume there was no real Saddam-terror connection. After all, they haven’t heard the Bush administration say otherwise.