BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Friday, November 07, 2003
More on that so-called Iraqi
peace offer. New York Times reporter James Risen and Iraq
expert Ken Pollack were on CNN's NewsNight with Aaron Brown
last night, chewing over Risen's story on a
last-minute peace overture
that appeared to have Saddam Hussein's blessing.
Maybe there's more to tell, but it
sounds like this is going nowhere. Pollack -- a prowar ex-Clinton
official -- was dubious in the extreme, saying, "There is no reason
to believe that Iraqi intelligence had any intention of delivering on
any of the promises that they were dangling in front of the United
States. Far more likely what they were trying to do was to derail
the US war effort without actually giving up anything."
And Risen himself made no great
claims for his story, other than to assert that it was accurate. For
instance:
I think, as Ken said, you
know, you can't get into the mind of Saddam Hussein very easily.
It's quite possible this was all, that he wasn't really serious
about this. All I'm saying in my reporting is that this happened.
This channel happened....
So, I'm convinced that Habbush
met with Hage, that Hage then met with Richard Perle, that Perle
then talked to the CIA. I'm not trying to say that this was real
or that Saddam Hussein was serious. I'm just saying this channel
happened.
Josh Marshall has a
different take on the whole
thing, arguing that the story was a setup by the neocons to help one
of their own -- Michael Maloof, who also figures in the story, and
who lost his security clearance earlier this year.
Marshall is very astute, but also a
bit too cynical for Media Log's tastes, given that he seems to think
that if you can speculate on the motive, you can dismiss the
story.
On the other hand, Pollack's and
Risen's comments were pretty convincing that there is a wisp of smoke
here, but no fire.
Divide and conquer. New
York Times columnist Paul Krugman today reminds
us of how the Republicans
have used the Confederate flag to advance their interests in the
South.
And the Boston Globe's Mary
Leonard reports that the GOP is salivating
over the prospect of making same-sex marriage an issue in the 2004
campaign.
posted at 12:07 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
