When will they stop lying to us?

Habeas Iraqus - Do we have the goods on Saddam? By Fred Kaplan
Wolfowitz's speech on Thursday was dreadful to a degree not remotely suggested in news accounts. His basic theme, which he states right off and repeats throughout, is Iraq as an extension of al-Qaida and the upcoming Gulf War II as an answer to 9/11. "Iraq's weapons of mass terror and the terror networks to which the Iraqi regime are linked are not two separate themes, two separate threats?they are part of the same threat," Wolfowitz says. This is a point that he and his boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have been pitching for months now. Last fall they even set up a separate intelligence network, within the inner rings of the Pentagon, to find evidence of some Iraqi-terrorist link that the CIA and even the Defense Department's own spy agency had overlooked. If they have discovered a connection in the months since, they haven't told anybody about it. Nor does Wolfowitz reveal the proof here. He merely behaves as if stating it is proof enough. "Disarming Iraq of its chemical and biological weapons and dismantling its nuclear weapons program," he says, "is a crucial part of winning the war on terror."If war