Post Pull's Putin

Russia warned about Iraq's terrorism against US and the story is buried on page 11 of the Saturday paper. Doesn't Putin's revelation alone justify the war?

The Post doesn't address the importance of the revelation....it doesn't have a clue.

Russia Warned U.S. About Iraq, Putin Says

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 19, 2004; Page A11


Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that his intelligence service had warned the Bush administration before the U.S. invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government was planning attacks against U.S. targets both inside and outside the country.

The Post, rather than directly addressing the importance of the revelation, links it to the commission investigating 9/11 and reports that the commission finds no collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda.

....hmmmm....what does that have to do with Putin's revelation?

Putin's statement came as Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials are defending their statements -- made before the war and as recently as this week -- that Hussein's government had a relationship with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. Earlier this week, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

But isn't the issue whether there were threats against the US and isn't the real revelation of the 9/11 Commission report that there was an "evolving terrorist threat" across the 1990's that was largely ignored.

And regarding the Commission's report about those links...over to Stephen Hayes...to show the Post get's it wrong as usual.

There They Go Again
From the June 28, 2004 issue: The 9/11 Commission and the media refuse to see the ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
by Stephen F. Hayes
06/28/2004, Volume 009, Issue 40


But the contents of the documents have been widely misreported. Together the new reports total 32 pages; one contains a paragraph on the broad question of a Saddam-al Qaeda relationship, the other a paragraph on an alleged meeting between the lead hijacker and an Iraqi agent. Nowhere in the documents is the "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link...Dismissed," as Washington Post headline writers would have us believe. In fact, Staff Statement 15 discusses several "links."