Not So Incredible After All

In all of the debates over the Saddam-Osama links that have gone on since 9-11, I've struggled to understand why there was a debate. Didn't people remember the 1990s? Did they forget that the link was discussed and assumed then? Do people forget that President Clinton struck al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and a suspected bin Laden/Saddam chemical plant in Sudan at the same time? Doesn't anybody remember Defense Secretary Cohen on TV with a 5-pound bag of sugar describing the danger to our country if it was Anthrax?

After a while, as serious people seriously debate whether the bleeding obvious is true, I could almost start to think that I was forgetting.

Well, no. Via Instapundit who links to Roger Simon. Reading the stories are one thing. Listening to this ABC report from 1999 (back when the MSM needed to defend President Clinton's actions by showing the al Qaeda-Iraq links; and not now when it needs to deny them with President Bush), just makes me furious.

One thing in particular struck me. One of the complaints about Iraq is that we purportedly failed to go after al Qaeda hard enough in Afghanistan and so therefore scattered the terrorists to the four corners of the world. Supposedly, we turned a concentrated al Qaeda directly controlled by bin Laden into a looser network of terrorists not even controlled by bin Laden. This looser network was more dangerous, critics said, and was the result of our distraction in Iraq.

Well again, bull. Listen to the tape near the end for this part:

[The al Qaeda] network is wide and there are people prepared to commit terror in his name who he does not even control.

I guess invading Iraq didn't cause the network to be diffused and beyond the control of bin Laden. I guess Iraq wasn't the cause of anything bad like that.

In the end, I need to trust my memory more even in the face of constant MSM denials of the recent past that they used to believe. On occasion, I've written about old articles I've run across while cleaning out old stuff. Usually, it is quite amazing in showing that complaints by the Left that the current administration is doing something or causing something is nothing more than what was happening back in the sensitive decade with a sensitive president.

The MSM can go screw itself. May their decline in their present form continue. They deserve every bit of pain they endure.