PROPAGANDA WATCH

Fair: LINKING 9/11 TO IRAQ

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting says major media is ignoring the
story that flawed intelligence " may have been a result of
deliberate deception, rather than incompetence." According to FAIR,
"former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush
administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate
Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very
day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to
link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because
of a lack of evidence. ... Clark's assertion corroborates a
little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4,
2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: 'Barely five hours
after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the
secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about
striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam
Hussein to the attacks.' According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes
from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the 'best info fast' to
'judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only
UBL.' (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama
bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously,
that the administration's response 'go massive...sweep it all up,
things related and not.'"