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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Friday, May 30, 2008

Making stuff up about Al Qaeda

First we have CIA director Michael Hayden in a WaPo interview saying that we're winning against Al Qaeda (despite the fact that the all the recent officially vetted intelligence reports say otherwise. Remember "reconstituting in safe havens," training camps, recruiting, etc?)

Then, we have this wonderfully anonymously sourced, "Senior US officials," trying to tie Iran to Al Qaeda.
Senior U.S. officials tell ABC News that in recent months there have been secret contacts between the Iranian government and the leadership of al Qaeda. It's a development that has caught the attention of top officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community.

(If you read the article, the reported "contacts" appear to be anonymous one sided messages by Al Qaeda trying to get some detainees freed. The Iranians are completely ignoring it, so implying the mutuality of "contacts" is pretty deceptive.)

White House and White House appointed national security figures trying to misrepresent facts about Al Qaeda. I guess we can gather that the 2008 election has officially begun.

Later: (Reuters) The Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Donald Kerr, says that although he has no new data or facts to revise the standing Iran NIE, he still talks about "significant concerns over Iran's intentions."

2 Comments:

  • This pretty much makes it official: everything the Administration said about Iraq to promote an invasion is now being said about Iran. WMD? Check. Threat to regional stability? Check. Obstacle to regional democracy? Check. We will be hailed as liberators? Check. And now we have vague ties to 9/11, requiring "payback" -- unless you are some kind of defeatist traitor eager for the Scary Muslims to kill your family in their sleep.

    Also sadly stupid is that, once again, Congressional Democrats are taking the bait so as not to seem "soft". Hillary, we're looking at you...

    By Blogger Todd Dugdale , at 8:50 AM  

  • I also think it's part of an effort to shift "enemy status" from nuclear program to bad actor whether that's training Shia, working with Hezbullah, or this.

    That NIE that said Iran had no imminent nuclear weapons capability really played havoc with the Bush policy, so they're trying to gin up other things to threaten an attack.

    (If you don't talk, all you have is to threaten to attack.)

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 10:43 AM  

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