As NEWSWEEK first reported last July, al-Libi has since recanted those claims. The new CIA document states the agency "recalled and reissued" all its intelligence reporting about al-Libi's "recanted" claims about chemical and biological warfare training by Saddam’s regime in February 2004--an important retreat on pre-Iraq war intelligence that has never been publicly acknowledged by the White House. The withdrawal also was not mentioned in last year’s public report by the presidential inquiry commission headed by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen. Charles Robb which reviewed alleged Iraq intelligence failures.It's getting kind of hot for the Bush war camp.
Should we expect some kind of massive terrorist attack somewhere in the world to boost Bush's poll ratings?
I don't know.
Capitol Hill Blue seems to think so.
A New Yorker friend of mine mentioned how the Jordan bombings stripped the headlines of the GOP losses at the elections.
Two years ago this friend refused to believe in conspiracies or anything of the like. Yesterday she asked me if I thought there was a relationship of convenience between the Bush administration and Al Qaida.
Well, could one really exist without the other?
AS I write this the BBC is showing a special called the Iraq Factor - the spreading of terrorism in the Middle East because of the invasion of Iraq.
It was 9/11 that made Bush popular. His ratings were in hell before that. They soared after that. Soared again when he took on the big bad monster Iraq.
And it got him re-elected.
Terrorism. And fear. That's the necessary ingredient for a president that smiles incessantly for the cameras as bodies float down the bayou.
And that's how a first lady stays popular when she can't even remember the name of the hurricane that devastated so many of her countryfolk.
So, it is not entirely far-fetched.
