Etalkinghead

The 9-11 Commission has been a side show for left wing partisan attacks against the Bush administration since its inception. Any one who expects a fair balanced and well reasoned report from the commission probably decided to vote against Bush before he finished taking the oath of office for this term. When the bias of the commission meets the bias of the media the result can only be described by editing the ia out of bias.

A perfect example is the media’s reporting of the recent commission staff report on Iraq.

The focus of all the spin and blather is “Statement 15.” Specifically the last two sentences:

Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

The inclusion of the first of those sentences speaks volumes for the credibility of the commission. I wonder if it occurred them all that basing their conclusions on the adamant denials of a couple of terrorists was not going to register a lot of points on the believability meter.

The last very carefully nuanced sentence is the one getting the most media focus. A news report on ABC Radio in New York today paraphrased that sentence and saying the commission found “no evidence of an Iraq/al Qaeda link.”

But, what does the sentence really say?

It does not say that there was no link between Iraq and al Qaeda. It does not, in fact, say that there was no cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda on attacks against the United States. It says that they have no “credible evidence” of cooperation.

Which is to say that they have no evidence the consider more credible than the denials of two al Qaeda “associates.”