In light of recent news, we took a look at National Review's The Corner to see what they are discussing. Here are two interesting statistics for 1 and 2 of June 2004:
Posts discussing coinage*: 16
Posts discussing Ahmed Chalibi: 1
* mostly in response to Safire's call to abolish the penny posted by Quiddity at 6/02/2004 07:19:00 PM
Why, if you thought there was a chance your communications were being read by U.S. intelligence, would you send a message saying that the U.S. was believed to have that capability?
You should never, within a secure channel, report about that secure channel's weaknesses.
The New York Times tries to explain it away thusly: (emphasis added)
Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code
American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.
According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.
Via Atrios, we learned of an excellent and fun graphic that was developed for Joe Hoeffel's website. (He's running for Pennsylvania's Senate seat as a Democrat.) It's a look at the process and rules associated with the Medicare Drug Card.
On this recent Sunday's Meet the Press (30 May), the roundtable consisted of:
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, Author, "The Connection: How al-Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America";
Joe Klein,Time Magazine;
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News;
Roger Simon, U.S. News & World Report
Now, of those listed above, which one is from a politically oriented organ? Stephen Hayes of the conservative (and currenty very anti-Kerry Weekly Standard). And what did he write? A book claiming there were connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda - just the sort of thing to keep the "Iraq War is revenge for 9/11" theme alive.
Viewers wondering if Hayes would bring up the alleged connection during the round table on MtP were not disappointed. Here is the key exchange:
MR. RUSSERT: You have written a book called "The Connection: How al-Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America." The president has gone out of his way to say there's no evidence of Saddam Hussein linked to September 11. What's your thesis?
MR. HAYES: A agree. I don't think--I think it's too strong to say there's no evidence, but at the same time I think that one has to consider the fact that he may have had something to do with it on even a marginal scale. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that a man named Ahmed Hickma Shakir, who, it looks like, was a Saddam Fedayeen lieutenant colonel, was present at the January 2000 planning meeting for September 11 in Kuala Lumpur. Is that definitive? It's not. But is it interesting? It certainly is. And I think the 9-11 Commission really needs to look carefully into who Ahmed Hickma Shakir was, and what, if any, was his role.
Now it happens that two days before MtP, Hayes had posted a story over on the Weekly Standard's website, The Connection. Here is a summary of what he wrote:
[WARNING: Even Hayes concedes at the beginning of the story that the claimed identity of this single man has problems because of discrepancies in spelling. There might actually be two people (terrorist and Iraqi agent) with similar names which would render the whole argument invalid.]
"This conventional wisdom--that our two most determined enemies were not in league, now or ever--is comforting. It is also wrong."
Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Hikmat Shakir was a member of Saddam Hussein's security force.
An Iraqi of that name had been present at an al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on January 5-8, 2000.
U.S. intelligence officials believe this was a chief planning meeting for the September 11 attacks.
Yazid Sufaat, an American-born al Qaeda terrorist, hosted the planning meeting.
Shakir had been nominally employed as a "greeter" by Malaysian Airlines. Shakir was instructed to work on January 5, 2000, and on that day, he escorted one Khalid al Mihdhar from his plane to a waiting car. Shakir climbed into the car with al Mihdhar and accompanied him to the Kuala Lumpur condominium of Yazid Sufaat.
Khalid al Mihdhar was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it plunged into the Pentagon at 9:38 A.M. on September 11.
Six days after September 11, Shakir was captured in Doha, Qatar. He had in his possession contact information for several senior al Qaeda terrorists. Shakir was released on October 21, 2001.
Soon afterwards, Shakir was detained by Jordanian intelligence. CIA officials who interviewed Shakir in Jordan reported that he was generally uncooperative. The interrogators concluded that his evasive answers reflected counterinterrogation techniques so sophisticated that he had probably learned them from a government intelligence service.
The Jordanians proposed to the CIA to "flip" him - allow Shakir to return to Iraq on condition that he agree to report back on the activities of Iraqi intelligence. The CIA agreed to Shakir's release. He posted a modest bail and returned to Iraq.
He hasn't been heard from since.
"The Shakir story is perhaps the government's strongest indication that Saddam and al Qaeda may have worked together on September 11. It is far from conclusive; conceivably there were two Ahmed Hikmat Shakirs. And in itself, the evidence does not show that Saddam Hussein personally had foreknowledge of the attacks. Still--like the long, on-again-off-again relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda--it cannot be dismissed."
Well, it's far from conclusive. Hayes peddles, in print and on Meet the Press, the "interesting" notion that there is a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda. Also, Hayes repeats claims (or speculation) that this Shakir fellow was at the three day al Qaeda summit. That appears not to be the case - otherwise why is Hayes spending so much time telling us about Sakir's activities as a greeter and ride-along companion of al Mihdhar?
Unsubstantiated claims of contacts tied to speculation about what happened even if the contacts took place are the stock-in-trade of Hayes. It's a real shame that he was invited by Russert to be on Meet the Press.
The Washington Post has a detailed story about New York Times reporter Judith Miller and her influence over U.S. military officials and operations. She is also closely connected to Ahmed Chalabi of the INC. In the wake of this news, Eric Alterman writes, "... if this story is true, it is really beyond belief." We agree. Miller has become part of the team(s), and should not be considered an impartial reporter. We diagram key points from the Post story below:
UPDATE: Miller has connections with Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum (story)
On JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS for May 26, there was a discussion by "regular folks" in Pennsylvania about Bush's speech at the Army War College. Woodruff interviewed three Democrats and three Republicans. The views of two Republicans were of interest. Here is a part of the exchange: (emphasis added)
THERES ALFANO, REPUBLICAN: For the past couple of years, we've had to worry about the war as well as the economy. So I think the economy kind of took a downslide. But I think now it's coming up in good ways. Also, one of the reasons why I voted for him is that I feel that he can possibly bring more Christianity, put God possibly even back in the schools eventually. I mean things can happen.
WOODRUFF: I want to -- I do want to stick to this point about Christianity and, Jim, come to you on that. Is that something that makes you more comfortable or less with President Bush or is that even a factor for you in your voting?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a factor. I think that he's -- I think that he wears his Christianity on his sleeve a little too much. I think he in some sense has made this kind of a holy war, a Christian against those people, the Muslims.
WOODRUFF: Glenda, what about for you? You brought that up as a reason. Is the fact that the president talks about his faith as Jim mentioned, what reaction do you have to that?
GLENDA LENTZ, REPUBLICAN: That's wonderful to me. That's wonderful. The fact that a president does look to a higher power, prays to God, looks to God for guidance. As a Christian I do that every day in my life.
You can be sure that no amount of politicking will get those two to vote for Kerry. Religion will trump policy every time.
We just found out about Hormel's website, spammobile.com, which is about something called a Spammobile.
A short excerpt:
They're the three largest SPAM® cans in the world.
Instead of containing pure pork shoulder and ham, however, each of the three cans is actually a vehicle used to prepare sample sizes of SPAMBURGER® hamburgers. The large replicas of a SPAM® can are crossing the United States to enable people to become more familiar with the great taste of SPAM® classic and SPAM® oven roasted turkey.
Be sure to check out the schedule and the pictures of the Spammobiles at various places (we liked the one at Pearl Harbor best).
BANDWIDTH ALERT! Some images of the Spammobile are very large files (1.5 meg) reduced in size by the HTML code to modest proportions (3"x4"). A small image, whose original size matches the display size, would normally be under 100k in .jpg format, but for some reason the folks at Hormel have decided to transmit the full-blown image (which can be seen by obtaining the URL and inserting that into the browser's Address field). For the pictures taken at Orlando, Florida, there are 4 images on the webpage, each 1.5 Meg in size. That's a 6 Meg download - no picnic if you are on a modem.
