No Syrian Connection, Maybe, Says the Duelfer Report

I wonder when we started shifting the definition of the word “evidence”.

Here’s the headline and lead paragraph from a story in today’s Washington Post.

Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms

U.S. investigators hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have found no evidence that such material was moved to Syria for safekeeping before the war, according to a final report of the investigation released yesterday.

To read that you would think that the ISG was on record saying flatly that there was…well…no evidence. As it happens, that’s not quite the case. Here’s the second paragraph – the one that expounds on the lead.

Although Syria helped Iraq evade U.N.-imposed sanctions by shipping military and other products across its borders, the investigators “found no senior policy, program, or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD.” Because of the insular nature of Saddam Hussein’s government, however, the investigators were “unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials.”

So what the Duelfer Report said about Syria, basically, was that it couldn’t find someone who either would or could talk about official cooperation. Further, as the article notes, they had an opportunity to talk to a Syrian intelligence official who says his country did cooperate, but they couldn’t finish that investigation. For the Iraqis part, all who have spoken to the ISG have denied everything, which is…you know…a shock. I don’t know if lack of a willing eyewitness actually equates to “no evidence” but apparently the Post thinks it does.

I’m going to have to read the report for myself before I make a decision quite that dogmatic. From the quotes in thie article, the report isn’t even as firm in its statements as the article, which is a testimony to the people who wrote the report. It appears that they knew their limitations and didn’t go beyond them in their conclusions. Most of what they said seems to boil down to “while we could not review as much evidence as we would have liked, what we have seen leads us in this direction, though we can not entirely rule out other plausible conclusions”. That’s a good report, to my thinking.

The Post, on the other hand, seems unable to be quite that honest.

Would it have hurt the paper to run a headline that said “Report Finds No Willing Eyewitness to Syrian Assistance with Iraqi WMDs”? Admittedly it would have been longer, but it would have been more accurate and much less misleading.

UPDATE: It didn’t take long for the talking point to get out this morning, did it?

Not only did Saddam not have any WMD in Iraq, the Iraq Survey Group has now officially concluded that he didn’t secretly hand it over to Syria either:

Drum quotes pretty much the same stuff from the article I did, but leans on the headline to draw his conclusion. I suppose he didn’t read what he quoted.

That or he doesn’t much care about the article, since the headline already confirmed his theory.

UPDATE 2: Lawhawk was on the story, too and wonders might be hidden in the Beka’a Valley. It’s a heck of a question. I wonder if we’ll ever get an answer?

Captain’s Quarters breaks all sorts of bad on another media outlet’s report today and asks many of the same questions (though in ways that only Captain Ed can).

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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media.