BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Saddam and Osama, sitting in a
tree. Q: What would be the one thing -- other than nuclear
weapons -- that would have justified the war in Iraq?
A: Real evidence of ties between
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, especially if those ties extended
to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
That's why the hot insider story in
the Washington media right now is a Weekly Standard
cover
story by Stephen Hayes,
accompanied by the hyperbolic headline "Case Closed," reporting the
existence of a classified memo that concludes such ties really did
exist. The memo even revives those stories about 9/11 bomber Mohamed
Atta's supposed meeting(s) with a top Iraqi intelligence official in
Prague.
So why is this an insider story
instead of leading the nightly news? There are various theories.
Slate's Jack Shafer thinks
it's because the liberal media can't wrap their minds around
something that so contradicts their preconceived notions. Josh
Marshall argues -- on his weblog
and in his column
in the Hill -- that it's because Hayes is recycling
long-discredited crapola.
And the plot thickens. The Defense
Department has attempted to discredit Hayes's scoop, leading Hayes to
respond
on the Standard's website.
So who's right? Who knows? But
logic suggests there may be a lot less to the memo than meets the
eye.
The author of the leaked memo was
Defense Department official Douglas Feith, currently under
considerable fire for his previous efforts at exaggerating the threat
posed by Iraq. Feith, in other words, is a man with a track record,
and it's not a good one.
More important, even allowing for
the fact that the White House has to protect certain intelligence
assets, can we agree that the Bush administration would be moving
heaven and earth to get this information out there if it had any
confidence in it? After all, the Bushies are getting pounded day
after day for phonying up the case for war. Presenting convincing
evidence that Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11 would shut up a lot
of people -- just about everyone, in fact.
Instead, the last time the Dark
Lord, Dick Cheney, made such an assertion, George W. Bush felt
compelled to take
it back.
No, not every loose end has been
wrapped up. Edward Jay Epstein, writing in Slate,
asserts
that evidence of the Atta meeting in Prague has never been adequately
addressed.
Still, it's reasonable to expect
that the White House is capable of making its own best case. That it
has not only failed to embrace the Feith memo, but has actually
distanced itself from it, suggests that this is all little ado about
very little.
The Phoenix takes on
same-sex marriage. Tomorrow's Phoenix will include an
extensive package on the Supreme Judicial Court's decision to allow
same-sex couples to marry. It's
online now.
My piece argues
that the Democrats ought to get off the defensive and claim same-sex
marriage as their very own wedge issue.
Plug, plug. The website
Written
Voices has an
interview
with me about Little
People. It's in Windows
Media format.
Also, the new Online
Journalism Review has a
roundtable
interview with bloggers and
media critics, including yours truly. Unfortunately, they mixed up my
photo with Bill Powers's.
posted at 4:16 PM |
comment or permalink
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
