Jules Crittenden reviews the NIE document (if anybody still remembers that "scandal" from like two days ago).
Also, FOUAD AJAMI has a piece in WDJ online called Infidel Documents. I can't get the link to work, but I highly recommend you google it.
Intended or not, the release of the Senate report, around the fifth anniversary of 9/11, has been read as definitive proof that the Iraq war stands alone, that the terrors that came America's way on 9/11 had nothing to do with the origins of the war. Few will read this report; fewer still will ask why a virtually incomprehensible Arab-Islamic world that has eluded us for so long now yields its secrets to a congressional committee. On the face of it, and on the narrowest of grounds, the report maintains that the link between the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq cannot stand in a Western court of inquiry.
But this brutal drawn-out struggle between American power and the furies of the Arab-Islamic world was never a Western war. Our enemies were full of cunning and expert at dissimulation, hunkering down when needed. No one in the coffeehouses of the Arab world (let alone in the safe houses of the terrorists) would be led astray by that distinction between "secular" and "religious" movements emphasized by the Senate Intelligence Committee. They live in a world where the enemies of order move with remarkable ease from outward religious piety to the most secular of appearances. It is no mystery to them that Saddam, once the most secular of despots, fell back on religious symbols after the first Gulf War, added Allahu Akbar (God is great) to Iraq's flag, and launched a mosque-building campaign whose remnants -- half-finished mosques all over Baghdad -- now stand mute.
I have had more than one Arab friend tell me that when westerners say things like a seculist arab wouldn't work with an Islamic militant, they only laugh. You see, much of the Middle East and South East Asia is still very dog-eat-dog. The only motivation for a lot of these extremist types is what will get them what they want. Principles such as secular vs Islamic are hardly considered. Alliances arise and fall within moments, betrayal is the norm. Saddam didn't trust ANYBODY, so to say he wouldn't work with an Islamic extremist because he didn't trust them, that is foolish.
On another matter, I got a lot of response on the anthrax issue and I appreciate it. I will try to get back to everyone who wrote, but I am swamped, so please don't feel slighted. I was real happy that the article got people talking. I heard some interesting theories, and interesting facts. Good stuff.
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