Hussein/al Qaida links

In this week’s Washington Times column “Inside the Ring”, Bill Gertz actually read the Pentagon’s IG report (unlike some other journalists) and relates parts of Eric Edelman’s rebuttal of the report in the report’s appendix;

The rebuttal is contained in the appendix of the IG report that criticized the alternative, pre-Iraq war intelligence assessment done by a Pentagon policy group on ties between Iraq and al Qaeda as “inappropriate.”
    Mr. Edelman stated that the policy group’s work on the issue was not only appropriate and legal, but directed by both former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
    “Apart from the numerous factual inaccuracies, omissions and mischaracterizations identified throughout these comments, the [IG] report suffers from a basic analytical flaw in attempting to paint the work under review as ‘inappropriate’ even though no laws were broken, no DoD directives were violated and no applicable policies were disregarded,” Mr. Edelman wrote in his counter to the February IG report made public April 5. 

Mr Gertz goes on to relate Edelman’s recharacterization of the links between al Qaida and Hussein. So why would the IG report misrepresent the findings of the study? According to Mr. Gertz;

The IG report was released by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, who defense officials say for years has quietly recruited agents within the Pentagon inspector general’s office to produce reports and audits sympathetic to the liberal Michigan Democrat’s views.

Nice. We need people spying on our own defense establishment from Congress.

Category: Politics, Terror War