Black Box Report

From the Department of Tell Us Something We Didn't Know:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

B-b-b-but...Dick Cheney said there was “overwhelming evidence?” Rumsfeld said that evidence was "bulletproof?" And President Bush supposedly put the whole issue to rest in 2004, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." What are we to make of this? They were lying misinformed lying?

Why on earth would they do that?

The Iraq-Al Qaeda link was cultivated through hundreds of the 935 false statements the Bush Administration made in the run-up to war. Without it, there would be no pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq, no case made to the public that both wars represented the same fight against terrorism.

Oh, right. That. So, where did this "evidence" come from? I'm sure you'll be waterboarded shocked to find out:

Intelligence failures had much to do with the atrocity of September 11, but those had nothing to do with a lack of torture. Let me be clear on one crucial point: it is the terrorists whom we won over with humane methods in the 1990s who continue to provide the most reliable intelligence we have in the fight against al-Qaeda. And it is the testimony of terrorists we tortured after 9/11 who have provided the most unreliable information, such as stories about a close connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
......

Jack Cloonan, a twenty-five-year veteran of the FBI, was a special agent for the Bureau's Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 2002.

Hmmm. Torture provides unreliable information? You don't say. Next they'll be telling us smoking causes cancer, or some other nutty conspiracy theory. In the meantime, the Pentagon's report is a major black eye for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell...really, the entire right side of the American political spectrum going back to, say, Sept. 12, 2001:

The only ones who think that OBL and SH were working together, closely, are complete and utter fools. These two were enemies. Sure, Saddam used religion whenever useful, but he was basically a secular dictator, who didn't have a whole lot of patience with religious extremists. All the more so because they posed a threat to his regime.

Which is almost word for word what I was saying back in 2002 while the big wingnut meme of the day was MOHAMMED ATTA WAS IN PRAGUE!!!
(Note: This also turned out to be false)

The Pentagon was going to put the report online yesterday and then hold a press briefing with its authors. Then they abruptly cancelled the briefing and annouced the report would not be made available online; they wouldn't even email it to reporters. If you want to see it, they'll send you a DVD via snail mail. It's almost like someone doesn't want this report to get much attention:

If asked, I'm certain (Press Secretary) Dana Perino would insist, with a mostly straight face, that the White House never contacted the Pentagon about this, and it was solely the decision of military officials, who, for whatever reason, preferred to hide its own report.

And no one will believe her.

I hate to say I told you so, but......Wait, no I don't.

I told you so.