Press misfires

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Which has become more politicized -- the major media or the September 11 Commission?

The answer was clear last week: The New York Times, NPR, the BBC, the television troika (Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather), the "news" columns of the Wall Street Journal ... in short, all the usual suspects in the media.

Note the big headline on the front page of Thursday's New York Times: "Panel finds no al Qaeda-Iraq tie."

The Times wasn't the only one to get out the big type. "Al Qaeda-Hussein link is dismissed," proclaimed The Washington Post. "No signs of Iraq-al Qaeda ties found," reported the Los Angeles Times. And so loudly on. (And earnest liberals wonder why folks increasingly turn to the Fox channel or talk radio.)

As for the "discovery" that Saddam Hussein's intelligence apparatus had no direct connection with September 11, well, the administration has never claimed it did. ("No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11." -- George W. Bush, Sept. 17, 2003.)

What the administration did claim was that Saddam's ties to terrorism go back at least a decade, which is when Iraq made the State Department's list of terrorist-supporting states. The administration also noted Saddam's agents established contacts with al Qaeda, which no one seriously disputes -- including the September 11 Commission, however its actual findings may have been distorted by the major media, or anybody with an interest in hunting this president.

Indeed, the commission's investigators confirmed an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Osama bin Laden himself in the Sudan as early as 1994.

All this editorializing in the guise of news was too much for even the usually patient Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the September 11 Commission and Mr. Integrity himself:

"I must say I have trouble understanding the flak over this. The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that. What we have said is ... we don't have any evidence of a cooperative, or a corroborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and these al Qaeda operatives with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me the sharp differences that the press has drawn, the media have drawn, are not that apparent to me."

Indeed, they are not apparent at all -- unless you're a believer in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, et al. "Challenges Bush," blared the subhead on the New York Times story about the September 11 Commission's report.