The Wall St. Journal's James Taranto was off duty today, so we'll have to wait till tomorrow to see how he backpedals from a little premature bragging he did yesterday:
Last week the partisan "mainstream" press pounded President Bush by falsely claiming that the 9/11 commission had found no connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank gave away the game yesterday in an "analysis" that began: "The White House's swift and sustained reaction last week to the preliminary findings of the Sept. 11, 2001, commission showed the potential threat the 10-member panel poses to President Bush's reelection prospects."
Yet Reuters reports the commission "has been told 'a very prominent member' of al Qaeda served as an officer in Saddam Hussein's militia, a panel member said on Sunday":
Republican commissioner John Lehman told NBC's "Meet the Press" program that the new intelligence, if proven true, buttresses claims by the Bush administration of ties between Iraq and the militant network believed responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
This isn't news to readers of this Web site, which published a May 27 Wall Street Journal editorial on the officer, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir.
It took exactly one day for Lehman's claim to fall apart. Turns out -- and, as Jon Stewart might say, this is funny -- a "senior administration official said Lehman had probably confused two people who have similar-sounding names."
True, the Journal's May editorial was careful enough to include a disclaimer. But just barely:
It is possible that the Ahmed Hikmat Shakir listed on the Fedayeen rosters is a different man from the Iraqi of the same name with the proven al Qaeda connections. His identity awaits confirmation by al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody or perhaps by other captured documents. But our sources tell us there is no questioning the authenticity of the three Fedayeen rosters. The chain of control is impeccable. The documents were captured by the U.S. military and have been in U.S. hands ever since.
After all, the U.S. military never makes mistakes, right?
