9/11 Panel to back (a bit?) down on Saddam - AQ ties?

There's a story inside Saturday's New York Times saying that the 9/11 commission wants VP Cheney to put up or shut about his continuing insistence that al-Qaida and Saddam were bosom buddies. (Cheney said he "probably" had intel that the panel hasn't seen, so the panel said he should hand it over.) That's sort of interesting. But slog through to the 20th paragraph and you'll find this:

Commission members said Friday that as result of the furor created by that portion of the report, they may rewrite it significantly in preparation of the panel's final report, which is expected to be released next month.

[The commission's chairman] Thomas Kean [a Republican] suggested that the commission may want to limit the scope of the conclusion about ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq to only what is known about any possible collaboration between them on terrorist attacks against the United States, not against other targets.

"That's our mandate," he said. "This was a staff statement, and we've had commissioners who have disagreed occasionally with the staff statements, and this may be one of those occasions," he said.

Keep in mind, Kean doesn't seem to be backing off the staff report's conclusions. In other words, he appears to agree with Lee Hamilton, the Democratic vice chairman, who is quoted elsewhere in the story saying: The panel has found no evidence "of any collaborative relationship — period." Also keep in mind that there are some members of the panel who are, say, slightly more partisan than Kean and Hamilton and might, just might, object not on the basis of substance but just because something might look bad for the White House.

Now honestly, I feel for the panel. Fact-checking pre-war justifications isn't part of their mandate and they already have enough tsuris as it is. Then again, they've probably spent a wee bit of time--certainly more than you or me--examining the purported AQ-Saddam connections. And wouldn't it be, you know, a service to the country, if they don't try to hide their conclusions?

P.S. Total speculation: All this might be moot, not just because the panel might not back down, but because even if they do I suspect the media won't make a stink of it. I bet they won't even really cover it. That's because they'll (we'll) know that whatever the final report says, the commission doesn't have evidence that Saddam and AQ worked together on squat. But who knows, and all things being equal, probably better not to rely on others to put the final report in proper context.

Comments

[Mr Furious]

These days, Republicans don't serve their country, they serve their master.

Yeah, I know, Dems do too, but partisanship has been elevated to whole new levels under this Administration, and important work of all sorts are constantly being watered down if not completely suppressed based on the political needs of the White House.

Anything negative uttered by a Dem member of the Commission is labeled "pure politics." Well, if the final report is whitewashed by the Republican faction, what will they call it? Nothing. You're right, Eric, it will be mostly ignored. If a tree falls...

[Allen McPheeters]

But, Eric, regarding Lee Hamilton: I'm sure I heard him interviewed on one of NPR's shows (it would have to be either Morning Edition or All Things Considered) on Thursday or Friday. In that interview, he said only that there was no evidence of collaboration on 9/11; that there may have been contact between the Iraqi government and al-Qaida on other issues.

[Michael]

From a media standpoint, the interesting thing about this story is the fact that Kean and Hamilton are working the Timeswhich the day before made a puddle on the carpet when Cheney went on the offensive against itto serve notice that they're not going to let the Veep get away with distorting the commission's conclusions, no matter how spineless the Times may be. Seems to me an expert bit of kung fu, which I blogged about at Reading A1: http://blogs.salon.com/0003364/2004/06/19.html#a259

Great to see you blogging, Eric: TP's a real resource, and I look forward to reading you here regularly.