Secretary Rumsfeld, 9/11, Iraq and the joys of the FOI Act

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Well well well. As the man whom Momus assumes I am in love with because Momus thinks if you're not with him you're against him says:

The most revealing items, of course, are the following: in discussing whether Iraq could have been involved, the notes say: "judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. at same time." Later comes: "Hard to get a good case." Then there's this: "Go massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not." (My italics).

Fun fun.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 25 February 2006 00:16 (twenty years ago)

haven't we known about this forever?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 25 February 2006 00:47 (twenty years ago)

I'm sure you've believed it forever.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 25 February 2006 00:59 (twenty years ago)

why isn't this huge?

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Saturday, 25 February 2006 18:07 (twenty years ago)

well, the notes were reported a long time ago. i guess what's new is having the actual photocopies of them. here's the earliest citation i could find, from sept. 4, 2002.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 25 February 2006 18:16 (twenty years ago)

so basicly this won't amount to anything, right?

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Saturday, 25 February 2006 18:25 (twenty years ago)

well it's not like it hurts to keep bringing this stuff up, especially because the media has about a 30-day amnesia cycle. but if by "amount to anything" you mean "will lead to someone being held accountable in a meaningful way," then no, of course not. as our president has told us, we had the chance to hold him accountable in 2004.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 25 February 2006 18:32 (twenty years ago)

The difficulty is that there is legitimate ambiguity here, due to the terseness of the notes, about whether 'going massive' means starting a massive public relations campaign against "S.H."; it could as easily mean something like 'because it is difficult to make a good case based on the evidence at hand, let us launch a massive investigation, sweeping in everything whether or not it seems related or not, so that we not overlook some clues to help us establish a better case.'

Of course, in light of what BushCo later did, the less innocent interpretation ("let's lie and say we have a good case") is much easier to project onto these notes. However, without the note-taker's testimony, the notes are a Rorschach blot.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 25 February 2006 18:42 (twenty years ago)

I'm sure you've believed it forever.

only since it was first publicized, back in 2002

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 25 February 2006 19:25 (twenty years ago)

i think it's pretty clear from the context and from the abundance of other things we know (from paul o'neil, richard clarke, etc.) that he was looking for anything that could be used as a pretext for an attack on iraq. they understood they had to go after bin laden too, since he actually did it, but since they planned to do iraq anyway, anything that would help that cause was going to be welcome.

xpost: uh, i just posted that link, gab.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 25 February 2006 19:27 (twenty years ago)

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