...more recent posts
orcinus on the organization behind the 911 fakeumentary
mydd on disneys motives
WASHINGTON (AP) -- There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war.
The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.
The report comes at a time that Bush is emphasizing the need to prevail in Iraq to win the war on terrorism while Democrats are seeking to make that policy an issue in the midterm elections.
It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government ''did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,'' according to excerpts of the 400-page report provided by Democrats.
Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaida. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June this year.
White House press secretary Tony Snow played down the report as ''nothing new.''
empire eclipsed over strategic ellipse.
couric lowers news porn bar right out of the gate
frontal asalt
universal health care in california?
Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn't thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame's identity. "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing," he later told Carl Ford Jr., State's intelligence chief. Ford says Armitage admitted to him that he had "slipped up" and told Novak more than he should have. "He was basically beside himself that he was the guy that f---ed up. My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat," Ford recalls in "Hubris," to be published next week by Crown and co-written by the author of this article and David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation magazine.
kirsten powers handles ann coulter as she should be handled -- with distain. and its on hannitys show, no less. guess chivalry along with civility is dead.
kirsten brings da blog along with da funk.
wanker du jour: former oklahoma tailback jc watts. stunting powers of illogica and propaganda.
Village Voice writer Wayne Barrett wrote a scathing biography of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani a few months before the 9/11 attacks. Giuliani became a hero after the attacks and has maintained that image ever since. But Barrett has just co-written a new book that questions his handling of the situation. In Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani, Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins argue that Giuliani's leadership may have exacerbated the crisis. Plus, the Fringe Festival turns 10.