Jack Shafer is no wing-nut. He doesn’t have a big dog in this fight (maybe a feisty little Jack Russell terrier); so when he asks a simple question, it might have a little more clout than when voiced by a gung-ho war supporter like yours truly. He wants to know why the big media won’t touch the Weekly Standard story on alleged Osama-Saddam connections:
Many a reporter has hitched a ride onto Page One with the leak of intelligence much rawer than the stuff in Feith’s memo. You can bet the farm that if a mainstream publication had gotten the Feith memo first, it would have used it immediately-perhaps as a hook to re-examine the ongoing war between the Pentagon and CIA about how to interpret intelligence. Likewise, you’d be wise to bet your wife’s farm that had a similar memo arguing no Saddam-Osama connection been leaked to the press, it would have generated 100 times the news interest as the Hayes story.
I’ve been told off the record that some of this intelligence is very iffy. So let’s discover which bits are iffier than others. Isn’t that what the press is supposed to be about? On an issue that’s obviously extremely important?
The Dish 