Philip Giraldi of the American Conservative is disputing Ron Suskind's new book over the source of the pre-war lie that Saddam and Al-Qaeda were linked. Suskind blames the CIA; Giraldi says actually it was Douglas Feith at the Pentagon serving as Cheney's catspaw. "Unlike the agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of
false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that
Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity."
I dunno. Though I would point out that in his book War and Decision, where he tries to cleanse his past of any ideological fervor, Feith specifically whitewashes a 50-point memo he prepared for the Congress, in which he was insistent on the alleged connection between Al-Qaeda and Saddam. Today Feith writes, "It was not a 'case' at all, much less an argument that an 'operational' relationship existed between Iraq and al Qaida."
That's funny. "Case Closed" was the title of the cover story in the neoconservative Weekly Standard, which excerpted the confidential memo barely a month after Feith wrote it. The story was written by Cheney amanuensis Stephen Hayes and makes clear that Feith mounted a feverish argument:
According to the memo–which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered
points–Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through
mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began.…[Point] 18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with
several other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source
claimed that Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit
direction.
Saddam is the neocons Hitler, and Feith is lying about his record. The man will never leave us, he is the best character to come out of the Iraq war. I wish Shakespeare were alive today, he would have such fun with Feith.
As Malvolio is the most memorable character in Twelfth Night,
Shakespeare could have written a whole play around Feith–a nebbish with a zealous hidden agenda.
