Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
"At least a handful of ranking members of al Qaeda have taken refuge in Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday," writes Bradley Graham in today's Washington Post.
If you read the whole story, and I do suggest doing so, you find that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made the announcement but declined to give any specifics as if there was no reason for anybody to be skeptical about such an announcement at this point in time. Rumsfeld didn't elaborate where the al Qaeda members are located or even if they are allied with Saddam Hussein's government. Graham's story did say:
Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, said in an interview with CBS News yesterday that members of al Qaeda are operating in Iraq, but in the northern part of the country under the control of Kurdish opposition leader Jallal Tallabani, "an ally of Mr. Rumsfeld."
"It is not under the control of the government," Aziz said.
Douglas Anderssays that Matthew Yglesias' post on this topic "reinforces my posts: the Bush administration ought to make the case to the American people."
He's right in theory but realistically Bush and co. are more likely to say they, and the salesmen before them, have gotten this far by keeping the public in the dark save for occasional scraps to justify the chanting of three letters -not three syllables- and doing the same will continue to serve them fine in the future. posted by micah holmquist at 8/21/2002 01:54:00 PM
