Not that it matters...

But CNN, the aspiring news channel, has committed yet another journalistic transgression against truth and fairness in reporting. Today's big news item, played several times, was the spat between Rumsfeld and the ex-CIA/current-dissident McGovern during Rumsfeld's speech in Atlanta. CNN put together a short video segment on it, headlined "CNN Fact-check" (which you can watch if you follow the link), to help the viewer understand who was telling the truth.

One of McGovern's charges was that Rumsfeld, before the war, proclaimed that the connections between Saddam and Al'Qaeda were "bulletproof," And this began CNN's fact-checking. It starts with video and a voice-over, which notes that the New York Times in 2002 quoted Rumsfeld as using the word 'bulletproof,' and that a few days later Rumsfeld reiterated it. That is premise one: Rumsfeld really said it. The video segment then moves forward to provide the viewer with premise two, showing a question and answer session in 2004 in which a woman asks Rumsfeld why he said "evidence of Saddam's involvement in 9/11 was 'bulletproof.'" On the video, one sees Rumsfeld move quickly forward to say, "I never said that." The message (the conclusion) is clear: Rumsfeld said the evidence was "bulletproof," and two years later Rumsfeld refused to own up to his own words. CNN's report does not delve any further into the issue, and the viewer is left with the impression that McGovern was right: Rumsfeld is a dissembler and/or a liar.

But is this true? Well, actually, no, it isn't. As is often the case, the devil is in the details. This is what the New York Times actually reported on October 25, 2002 (which CNN couldn't be bothered to expound upon):

Mr. Rumsfeld said today that information he cited last month on Iraq's links to Al Qaeda was "bulletproof" because it was compiled and vetted by the C.I.A.

"When I said something was bulletproof, I was referring to the five or six sentences that I had read here off of a piece of paper which I'd received from the agency," he said.

Mr. Rumsfeld had cited information indicating that contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq stretched back a decade and had increased since 1998, that Qaeda members had been in Baghdad, and that Al Qaeda had sought help in acquiring weapons of mass destruction from Iraq.

The video clip CNN dug up showed a woman accusing Rumsfeld of saying "evidence of Saddam's involvement in 9/11 was 'bulletproof,'" which, of course, Rumsfeld was right in denying. He never said evidence of Saddam's involvement in 9/11 was bulletproof. Never. Not once. He said evidence of contacts between Saddam and Al'Qaeda was bulletproof -- and it is. We have loads of documentation on these contacts and connections (for instance, here, here, here, and here). Rumsfeld was right then, and he is right now.

The opponents of the Administration have long sought to conflate the two issues; for instance, the Press recast the 9/11 Commission's findings of "no proof of operational coordination" into no link whatsoever. That is a false meme, because the Commission did find quite a few contacts and connections between Saddam's Iraq and Al'Qaeda. This is not an arguable point; this is simply what they found.

Yet here, once again, CNN does the bait and switch, "proving" that Rumsfeld said bulletproof (without elaborating the circumstance), then showing a clip of him denying it. But what CNN doesn't tell you is that Rumsfeld was not denying the word, but the context -- and here, context is everything.

Rumsfeld says one type of evidence is bulletproof (connections and contacts), and gets accused of saying it about another (involvement in 9/11). He correctly denies the latter, and he has never backed away from the former. So what's the controversy?

It is not Rumsfeld's fault that this nuance is lost on his critics. CNN is either too dumb, or too dishonest, to report it.