Stumble it!Saddam, the Commission and McCarthy
posted in Politics by themaiden |Andrew C. McCarthy contributed an article, to the National Review, in an apparent attempt to dampen the shock of the 9/11 Commission Report. A couple of things struck me.
McCarthy notes the commission’s conclusions concerning the operational ties between al Qaeda and Iraq but that the celebration is premature. He proceeds to make a case.
The commission’s cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq confederated is puzzling. Given that the panel had three hours for Richard Clarke, one might have hoped for more than three minutes on Iraq.
The second sentence seem to be the buttress for the first. It must be, since the first statement cannot stand on its own. Taken as such it is a frivolous objection. The Commission had access to thousands of pages of documents, some of it still sealed, as well as the testimony of many people besides Clarke, some of that testimony still sealed as well. To argue that the Commission’s treatment of “so salient a national question” is cursory because they spent only a few minutes on the topic with Clarke in open session is ridiculous. It is akin to claiming that a biography is cursory because not enough time was spent interviewing the spouse. Such interviews would be desirable, but biographies– good ones– can and are written without them. The same is true of the Commission’s report.
All this, of course, is assuming that the commission hearing with Clarke is the only source of information from Clarke, and it isn’t. Clarke has not been shy since leaving his post under Bush. So again, the objection is frivolous.
Next McCarthy provides a clip from Statement No. 15 (”Overview of the Enemy”), and states that it is “both internally inconsistent and ambiguously worded.”
First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no “ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq.
Certainly not. Both statements cannot be true. First, the commission is not claiming that no ties exist, but that no operational ties existed. There is a difference. I might chance to sit on a bus beside a terrorist and strike up a conversation. Suddenly, I have a tie to terrorism, and frighteningly, tie enough to warrant an interview if the meeting came to the wrong ears. But do I have an operational tie? Not hardly. Even assuming that I guessed he was a terrorist and asked to join, I still do not have an operational tie any more than a job interviewee has a job just because he had an interview.
Secondly, it is clear from the staff statement that its authors are not claiming that no ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq, but the statements of two bin Laden associates is reported. This is neither inconsistent nor ambiguous. Two witnesses may give mutually exclusive accounts of an event, but that does not make the report itself inconsistent. This ought to be obvious. One or the other of the witnesses must be mistaken but the report is just a record. Is it inconsistent if a story contains elements that do not fit the main thrust? For example, I tell a friend about a fight I had with another friend, and while doing so I explain what my friend considers the
cause of the problem. This cause does not match what I believe. Is the story inconsistent? No. It highlights a difference of opinion but the story is not itself inconsistent. Similar situations occur all the time. It is nearly impossible to honestly tell a story without caveatting some part of it with the contrary opinion of another.
In light of the number of elementary things the commission staff tells us its investigation has been unable to clarify… it is fair to conclude that these two senior bin Laden associates may not be the most cooperative, reliable fellows in town regarding what bin Laden was actually up to.
The conclusion does not follow. That since some issues remain unresolved does not imply that the two bin Laden associates have been uncooperative. These individuals could have told all they know yet issues nonetheless remain unresolved just as witness to a robbery could tell all and the crime still remain unsolved.
Secondly, it probably is fair to assume, for different reasons than those given, that bin Laden’s associates are not being cooperative, but what is the point? The point appears to be this:
Moreover, we know from press reports and the administration’s own statements about the many al Qaeda operatives it has captured since 9/11 that the government is talking to more than just two of bin Laden’s top operatives. That begs the questions: Have we really only asked two of them about Iraq? If not, what did the other detainees say?
It doesn’t beg the question. Begging the question occurs when a statement, usually disparaging of an opponent or a position, is slipped into an argument inside a question and without supporting evidence.
Petitio Principii (Begging the Question): premises that are passed on as being valid without supporting evidence.
* When combined, Public Affairs majors and unmotivated Liberal Arts Majors make up 30% of the student population. (Unproven premise: Liberal Arts Majors are unmotivated).
The fallacy more commonly known as a circular argument is also sometimes called begging the question.
Circulus in Demonstrando (Circular Argument, Begging the Question): restating the premise in the conclusion rather than proving or disproving.
* President Kennedy was an excellent speech giver because he delivered exceptional speeches.
And since the fallacy of the complex question is an interrogative form of the circular argument, that too could be considered by extension, begging the question.
Complex Question (Fallacy of Loaded Question, Fallacy of the False Question): this is the interrogative form of circulus in demonstrando.
* How long did it take you to come up with that excuse for misreading the text?
* Which sources did you use to plagiarize your policy brief?
Clearly, none of these apply. In fact, the only question begging I see is McCarthy’s intimations that something is being hidden, that the reports of only two witnesses are being reported because other witnesses say things the commission does not want let out of the bag.
Additionally, McCarthy asks what the ‘other’ detainees have said. Is it really reasonable to think that the Bush administration would keep silent about testimony that helps it case?
Now lets talk about inconvenient facts.
McCarthy raises the issue of an indictment of bin Laden from 1998, the text of which reads “al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq.” The first important point that needs to be made is that this indictment was from 1998– six years ago and five years since the invasion of Iraq. Intelligence changes over time and what once may have been a reasonable conjecture may become unreasonable as information surfaces. It is not enough to simply reach back in time and grab something convenient. It would possible to prove or disprove nearly anything that way. The issue needs to be taken deeper.
As McCarthy states, this link between al Qaeda and Iraq was based on the testimony of Ahmed al-Fadl. Al-Fadl fled into US custody after siphoning over a hundred thousand dollars from al Qaeda. He needed US protection both for himself and for his family. It would be human nature to provide strong, valuable intelligence under these circumstances, even if that intelligence was not true. Police investigators have this problem with informants, as do newspaper reporters. Intelligence agencies, for this reason, shy away from reports that come from only source. People frequently have ulterior motives.
It is curious to that McCarthy, who a few sentences above shows such reluctance to accept the testimony of two al-Qaeda operatives, now shows such enthusiasm for the testimony of just one.
Now, assuming al-Fadl was truthful, what more can we learn? Al-Fadl worked for bin Laden up until 1996. He can’t have information pertaining to latter than that date. During this time he ‘understood’ that an agreement had been made between Iraq and al Qaeda. It appears that al-Fadl ‘knew’ this second-hand, at least. It was during this time, also, that bin Laden and Hussein made some efforts to negotiate an alliance. These negotiations fell through, as current intelligence reveals. In other words, al-Fadl is talking about a period in the early ’90s when Hussein and bin Laden were attempting to forge a partnership but failed.
Additionally, al-Fadl’s information pertains to six or seven years prior to our invasion of Iraq. We did not go into Iraq because of what Hussein had done six years earlier but because of what he was supposedly doing at the time.
McCarthy makes the same mistake when quoting Tenet. He reaches back into time and grabs something convenient. He asks, “Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has provided faulty information to Congress?” Anyone following the news ought to know that the CIA appears to have been providing faulty information, for various reasons, to a whole lot of people. Tenet has now resigned because of it, but with cover story.
Kabul and Baghdad. The point seems to be this:
If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?
Certainly that is a fair assessment. The problem, of course, is that ‘if.’ That ‘if’ has not been sufficiently substantiated by anyone, let alone by McCarthy in his article. In fact, thus far, his point have been fairly vaporous.
Next McCarthy takes issue with Mohammed Atta under a heading he calls ‘Prague Problem.’ Atta, now believed to have been the lead 9/11 conspirator, allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. The staff statement presents the conclusion that the meeting never happened. McCarthy would like to cast doubt on this conclusion. There are three main components to his objections.
The first is that Czech intelligence claims to have spotted Atta in Prague on April 8th or 9th, 2001. Czech intelligence, McCarthy does not mention, refuses to release documents proving this claim and both the CIA and the FBI have long dismissed it as false. It is not, in effect, the staff’s conclusion as McCarthy writes, but the conclusion of US intelligence agencies. The staff report follows their lead. It is deceptive to leave out these details. Thus the key component of the Atta/Prague story fails. This would have been the only evidence, the eye-witness account McCarthy mentions, putting Atta in Prague and it is utterly unsubstantiated. McCarthy ought to know this. An article from MSNBC from 2003, for example, reports just these facts.
That Czech report, as mentioned, would have been the only real evidence that Atta was in Prague. The rest of the evidence, on both sides, concerning Atta’s location during the disputed time is indirect and circumstantial but flatly leans toward the conclusion that Atta was in the US. Consider what McCarthy writes:
Atta had withdrawn $8,000 cash from a bank in Virginia on April 4 and was not eyeballed again by a witness until one week later, on April 11. The new detail added by the staff is that Atta’s cell phone was used in Florida on three days (April 6, 9 and 10) during that time frame.
Atta is known to have been in the US just before and just after the alleged meeting in Prague. There are no known records of any kind of Atta leaving the country or of him returning. He would have had to have smuggled himself out of the country, gotten to Prague , and then smuggled himself back into the country all within the space of a week and without leaving a paper trail. Is this possible? Certainly. But likely? Not really. One has to assume quite a bit in order to make the story plausible. For example, due to the time constraints, Atta would have almost certainly had to fly. There are no tickets under his name so he would have had to have flown under an assumed name. That would require a forged passport. Such a document has not been found. He could have flown hidden aboard some aircraft, a private or a cargo plane perhaps, but no evidence of that exists either. Essentially, to make the story work one has to make things up.
Atta did withdraw a large sum of cash. McCarthy suggests that such a withdrawal indicates Atta was traveling covertly. This begs the question of whether Atta was traveling at all. The money could have been intended for any number of things. Atta was, for example, involved in the Trade Center and Washington attacks of September 11th. There would have been expenses associated with that plot. Flight school fees for example. But the fact is that we don’t know what he did with the cash. That we don’t know simply means that we don’t know. Picking one possibility out of the many is very poor reasoning.
McCarthy’s final sentence begins with “The new detail added by the staff…” This is utterly false. This detail is not new. It is mentioned, in fact, in the MSNBC article cited above. I can’t imagine why McCarthy would make this claim. Either he is uninformed, or attempting to soften the statement by attributing it to the ’staff’ rather than to the CIA and FBI, as is proper. He continues this tactic through the article.
McCarthy notes that Atta’s cell phone was used in Florida during the week of the Prague meeting, but that this does not mean that it was Atta who was using it. That is a fair statement, as far as it goes. McCarthy presents a scenario whereby it is Atta’s roommate using Atta’s phone. This is plausible as well, but it is entirely made up. There is no evidence to support the tale. At best, it means the telephone calls must be considered carefully. It is much more reasonable to believe that Atta was using his own phone than to construct a scenario purporting otherwise.
I am perfectly prepared to accept the staff’s conclusion about Atta not being in Prague — if the commission provides a convincing, thoughtful explanation, which is going to have to get a whole lot better than a cell-phone record.
It is more reasonable to believe that Atta was in Prague based upon discredited information and invented stories than to believe he remained where all the credible, if thin, evidence puts him? Why is it more reasonable to assume he traveled thousands of miles invisibly than to assume he didn’t?
What is the staff’s reason for rejecting the eyewitness identification?
It is unsubstantiated.
Is the “Hamburg student” entry bogus?
It doesn’t really matter. There is no evidence that Atta is the “Hamburg student” mentioned. True, he put on his passport that he was a Hamburg student. How many other students attending university in Hamburg also put such down? How many students attend Hamburg? This is not an strong identifier. Al-Ani himself, the man who supposedly met with Atta and for what it is worth, has denied that the meeting took place.
McCarthy ends with a series of question, some of which have no good answers. He intends, I imagine, for these questions to cast doubt on the staff report. It is a sad fact that many questions remain unanswered. It is also a fact that decisions need to be based answers we have not on those we don’t have. To do otherwise is no better than fabrication. Plausible stories without supporting evidence are meaningless.
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