What Good Is The Truth If Nobody Knows It?

I'm not one to read or rely upon The Weekly Standard for my news, but when someone gets it right, they get it right. There's a piece in the 24 March issue called Saddam's Dangerous Friends by Stephen F. Hayes which lays out a somewhat more complete picture of the recent Pentagon report on the connection between the Saddam Hussein regime and al Qaeda than you'll find in the mainstream media. The report, titled Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, is derived from analysis of some 600,000 documents seized in Iraq since the beginning of the war.

Not surprisingly, the left-leaning media got it wrong. They seem to have seized on some partial quotes from the report's executive summary which appeared to support the "Bush Lied" meme running rampant in the reality-impaired community and pretty much ignored the rest of the thing, which actually paints a quite different picture. Saddam's regime was quietly supporting various and sundry terrorist groups, some of which were offshoots of al Qaeda and some of which were allied with it. That's a wee bit different than the glib "No smoking gun!" headline so quickly and easily swallowed by those who already leaned that way, isn't it?

Anyway, read the piece and judge for yourself. I found it interesting and thought it should get wider attention.