Inside Out

Billmon writes:

…the White House and its allies appear to have a backup strategy in case this particular up-is-down argument proves a little too upside down. It’s the time-tested tactic of claiming that everything – including the 9/11 Commission itself – has been contaminated by partisan politics:

The panel has become “a tool for partisan politics,” Rep. Eric I. Cantor (Va.), a member of the House Republican leadership, charged in an interview last week. “With the latest commission finding coming out that there were allegedly no ties between Hussein and al Qaeda, I think they are totally off their mission, and I think that’s indicative of the political partisanship.”

The RNC talking points on this must have gone out earlier last week, because Porter Goss, the intelligence committee chairman in our Chamber of People’s Deputies, and Dennis Miller, the anti-intelligence chairman of late night televsion, have both been yammering about that same basic theme. But Cantor’s quote is such a gem of non-logic, I’d like to look at it again more closely.

The 9/11 commission, Cantor argues, is partisan. Why? Because it went “off mission” by questioning the alleged relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

Now since the 9/11 commission was specifically instructed by Congress to “make a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the [9/11] attacks,” and to “investigate relevant facts and circumstances … including intelligence agencies … diplomacy … the flow of assets to terrorist organizations … and other areas of the public and private sectors determined relevant by the commission,” it’s fairly ridiculous to argue the commission exceeded its mandate by reviewing the evidence regarding Bin Ladin’s alleged contacts with Iraq. What Cantor is really arguing is that the commission went “off mission” by arriving at conclusions that were extremely embarrassing to the administration, and possibly damaging to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

I loved that one too.

Since Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, the commissioners were “off mission” by investigating any ties between al Qaeda, which did perpetrate the attacks and Iraq, which didn’t. The fact that the commission was working on the assumption that the administration’s repeated assertions of ties between the two were meaningful is evidence of its rabid left wing partisanship.