Details! Details!

We watched the Fox News Sunday round table discuss Stephen Hayes' Weekly Standard article that everybody is talking about. It's the one about what Douglas Feith sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee. As Josh Marshall writes "I was watching Fox News Sunday this morning and saw Fred Barnes --- Executive Editor of the Standard --- go almost apoplectic about how devastating and case-closing a piece it is." Fred was certainly excited. And he kept on mentioning that the reports were full of details. Here is a transcript of the round table on the Hayes article: (emphasis added)

SNOW: Fred, let me ask you about a series of memos that were first reported by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard which seemed to indicate that our intelligence agencies thought there were some very strong connections or at least some coincidences that would link Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. Now we haven't been able to get anybody to bite on this officially, but looking at the memos it does appear that the intelligence community thought there was some pretty strong evidence that Saddam had been working with al Qaeda and for a considerable period of time.

BARNES: And your first word was right, "connections", not just coincidences. The interesting thing about this report in particular is the detail that it has of meetings between officials of Saddam Hussein's government at top officials of al Qaeda. Have met repeatedly over thirteen years from 1990 to 2003. Met in many different places, and developed, really, an operational relationship of providing sanctuary for terrorists, and training of terrorists in explosives and weapons of mass destruction and so on. Look, they say this is raw intelligence but this is raw intelligence with great details, much of it coming from the CIA. You know - I love - the press' in particular selective use of intelligence which they accuse the Bush administration of - the same people who will raise doubts about this intelligence are praising the CIA assessment of what's going on in Iraq right now. Now - look - there are repeated meetings that went on between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. It's clear that there was a strong connection.

WILLIAMS: I don't know about a strong connection, the president himself has said we haven't proven anything.

BARNES: Whoa! Whoa! He said we haven't proven

HUME: 9/11

BARNES: Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11.

WILLIAMS: And I don't think there's any proof - that meetings may have occurred - there's no proof of any kind of connection that would say "here are funds, here are troops, here's our effort to attack Americans, to create terrorism". We don't know that Fred.

BARNES: You're setting up a straw man.

WILLIAMS: But that's what I think this is. I think if there are some connections here ...

BARNES: Strong!

WILLIAMS: I think there's a big difference between the CIA memo that was released this week, the one that Bremer knew about, and that every White House official that I know says, "Yes, that's a legitimate memo", and this one that is speculative.

BARNES: No, no! Please.

WILLIAMS: Because you're trying to make a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

BARNES: Juan, you cannot call that report speculative. It is filled with details. It doesn't speculate at all. There's no speculation in there. And Juan, I wonder why would your reaction be to try and knock it down, rather than say, "Hey, there really was a strong connection between Saddam and al Qaeda".

WILLIAMS: Because I think the American people realize that after 9/11 we had to do something about Afghanistan. Had to do something about al Qaeda. The whole issue about Iraq is separate and you're trying to make it - conflate them - because what we did was take preemptive action against Iraq. Most people - I think everyone on this panel - say, "Okay we did it, we're going to stay with this president", but you don't have to create this kind of, you know, cotton candy: "Oh yes, we knew there was a connection". Sounds a lot like what happened to Jessica Lynch. All of a sudden you realize this week that the Defense Department was building her up ...

BARNES: These are hard facts. You can call it speculative. You can call it cotton candy. These are hard facts, and I'd like to see you refute any one of them!

WILLIAMS: I think the case is not to refute it. I think the case is to prove it, and it's yet to be proven.

[Note: For about a week, a .wav file of this exchange will be available here. It is 1.5 meg in size. We do this to assure our readers that the transcripts are accurate.)

Now anybody can provide raw, unsubstantiated data, replete with details. For instance:

Fred Barnes was seen wearing a blue shirt and driving a Ford Taurus at 10:32 AM on Saturday. He parked the car next to a mailbox and then, wearing a red had and carrying a wrench and screwdriver, broke into the 2nd window to the right of the main entrance of the Library of Congress.

Plenty of details, but completely false.


posted by Quiddity at 11/16/2003 03:41:00 PM