A fantastic New York Sun editorial, here. Guess who said this?
“Our evidence suggests that Baghdad is strengthening a relationship with al-Qaeda that dates back to the mid-1990s, when senior Iraqi intelligence officers established contact with the network in several countries.” “We have some evidence that Iraqi Intelligence has been in contact with elements in the northeastern area. And the al-Qaeda operatives there are in regular contact with other operatives located in Baghdad. The Iraqi government has also received information from other sources alerting it to the presence of al-Qaeda operatives in Baghdad.” “We have hard evidence that al-Qaeda is operating in several locations in Iraq with the knowledge and acquiescence of Saddam’s regime.”
It’s not — as you might have imagined — Dick Cheney or something published in The Weekly Standard. It was Carl Ford, from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. As the editorial notes, his agency “was singled out for praise after the war for its dissenting assessment of Iraq’s nuclear program.” (And, we would add, its general skepticism that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq presented any kind of a threat to the United States.) More from the editorial:
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