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The Levin "report"
SENATOR CARL LEVIN, the Senate's fiercest and most partisan critic of the Bush administration, released a "report" Thursday challenging the administration's claim that Iraq had a relationship with al Qaeda. The report was produced by the Democratic staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with no input from the panel's Republicans. Its release comes 13 days before the presidential election. If those facts alone don't suggest a transparently political maneuver, the contents of the report do. The 45-page Levin report is third-rate partisan hack-work. Its anonymous authors and its namesake should be deeply embarrassed. I say this not only because I disagree strongly with its inherently subjective conclusions. Basic facts are wrong. Congressional testimony is misdated. Quotes are erroneously sourced. Context is nonexistent.First, some background on Levin. No one in Congress has been as dogged in his efforts to downplay the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. He has grilled witnesses in Congress, crafted numerous press releases, and sent dozens of letters to the executive branch. He even held a preemptive press conference to challenge the Senate Intelligence Committee's review of pre-Iraq war intelligence. He did this despite the fact that he signed the unanimous, bipartisan report. Shortly after the end of the Iraq war, Levin faulted the intelligence community for bowing to administration pressure and producing overheated intelligence products. This is how he put it in a June 16, 2003, interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. "We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq." Eight months later, Levin reversed himself in an interview on Fox News on February 2, 2004. "The intel didn't say that there is a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. That was not the intel. That's what this administration exaggerated to produce." Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-10-23 |
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