Rush reinvents the 9/11 report
A key part of the Bush administration's case that Iraq and al-Qaida were dangerously in cahoots rested on the assertion that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Saddam's intelligence agents in Prague not long before the attacks. The bipartisan 9/11 commission discredited that assertion last week in a staff statement: "We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available -- including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting -- we do not believe that such a meeting occurred."

Radio host Rush Limbaugh, however, offered a different version of the 9/11 commission's findings during his June 17 broadcast:

"The [9/11 commission] report said that Mohamed Atta did meet with an Iraqi Intelligence Agency, or agent, in Prague on April 9th of 2001. We've known this for a long time."

Even so, on the same broadcast, Limbaugh parroted the administration line that the Bush White House never tried to link 9/11 to Saddam.

"Bush and Cheney have never, ever linked 9/11 to Iraq and Al-Qaeda. There are countless bits of evidence of connections between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, but nobody in the administration ever said there was to 9/11."

Al-Jazeera: Nazis on speed?
Never mind the acclaimed new documentary film "Control Room"; Army veteran and New York Post contributor Ralph Peters says Arabic satellite news station Al-Jazeera is the ultimate outlet for U.S. hatred in the Middle East.

"Al-Jazeera is so bigoted and morally debased that its reporters and producers delight in Coalition casualties, in dead Iraqi doctors and engineers and (above all) in dead Kurds. Al-Jazeera not only encourages the assassination of American soldiers, but pulls out all the stops to excite anti-U.S. hatred throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

"The response of our own officials in Iraq? Al-Jazeera is only exercising freedom of the press. Isn't that why we fought to bring down Saddam? This is idiocy, a perverse political correctness based upon a rejection of common sense ...

"When I toured al-Jazeera's studios in January, the lack of interest in objective reporting was startling. All the staff cared about was popularity and power. It was unreality TV at its worst. They bragged about their technology ('Better than the BBC!') and their influence, but never mentioned integrity, veracity or responsibility. It was the Nazi propaganda ministry on amphetamines."

Though it was widely reported that hundreds of Iraqi civilians died in Fallujah during the heavy fighting between U.S. Marines and insurgents earlier this year, Peters argues that al-Jazeera invented the collateral damage, and sent the Bush administration fleeing for cover.

"By alarming our closest allies with staged footage and Big Lies, al-Jazeera drove the Bush administration to retreat from Fallujah -- creating a terrorist city-state, a plague boil on the body of free Iraq. Al-Jazeera triumphed by inventing tales of slaughtered infants and rabid attacks on civilians. We let them get away with it unchallenged."

Peters hints that it may soon be time to prepare Guantánamo for a new batch of prisoners.

"Al-Jazeera has become the most powerful ally of terror in the world -- even more important than Saudi financiers ... Soon enough, we ourselves may need to recognize that 'journalists' with deadly agendas should be classified as enemy combatants ...

"Apologists for al-Jazeera are legion, of course. Even though the network never seriously criticizes Arab terrorists, Arab hate speech, torture by Arab governments, Arab corruption or Arab atrocities ... In the end, the most tragic factor of all is that, while al-Jazeera prompts the murder of individual American soldiers, it's simultaneously poisoning the entire Arab world by reinforcing the fatal Arab addiction to blaming others for every home-brewed disaster."

"We can kill a lot of them"
Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and formerly the majority leader, shared a few thoughts about Iraq with reporter Deborah Solomon in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

SOLOMON: How do you think the war in Iraq is going?

LOTT: There are terrorists in Iraq who have been drawn into that part of the world. Every day we eliminate some of them; that's one more that won't be coming here.

SOLOMON: What do you mean by eliminate them? Where are the terrorists and insurgents going to go?

LOTT: Well, they are going to be killed. When they attack our troops, 20 or 30 or 40 at a time are being eliminated.

SOLOMON: We can't kill everyone who hates America!

LOTT: We can kill a lot of them, particularly when they try to kill us.

Lott also elaborated as to why he has no problem with the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison.

SOLOMON: You recently created a stir when you defended the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib.

LOTT: Most of the people in Mississippi came up to me and said: "Thank goodness. America comes first." Interrogation is not a Sunday-school class. You don't get information that will save American lives by withholding pancakes.

SOLOMON: But unleashing killer dogs on naked Iraqis is not the same as withholding pancakes.

LOTT: I was amazed that people reacted like that. Did the dogs bite them? Did the dogs assault them? How are you going to get people to give information that will lead to the saving of lives?

Lott is apparently unfamiliar with the details of the U.S. Army's widely circulated Taguba report, which describes, in addition to beatings and sodomy perpetrated by U.S. soldiers at the prison, "using military working dogs to intimidate ... and actually bite a detainee." This isn't terribly surprising: He refused to join fellow U.S. lawmakers in viewing more evidence from Abu Ghraib during congressional hearings in May, telling the New York Times: "I've already seen enough. Why would I want to go see a bunch of perverted pictures?"

But if he's irked by the media's focus on the torture scandal, Lott is overjoyed by the gilding of the late President Reagan.

SOLOMON: You worked closely with President Reagan. Do you think his funeral has been overblown?

LOTT: I think Ronald Reagan was the best president of the last century.

SOLOMON: Some members of Congress would like to see Alexander Hamilton pushed off the $10 bill and Reagan's face installed in his place.

LOTT: I am an advocate of having a gold dollar with Reagan's picture on it, and calling it the Ronnie. The Canadians have the Loonie, and we can have the Ronnie.

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