Edward J. Epstein's site is invaluable. I just discovered it a few weeks ago, and wish I had found it sooner. Real journalism asks the kind of questions he asks, and reports the information he reports. Here is the particular page dealing with Atta on 4/8/01.

I look forward to seeing this all over the major media (sarcasm off)

If there was anything to this or any of the other nebulous "proofs", the Bush Administration would use the bully pulpit to plaster it all over the news. That they haven't attests to the lack of confidence they place in it.

Imagine the celebrity Sy Hersh would get from reporting this story. Oh, wait a second.....

Picture liberal heads smoking and then exploding as they drool and mumble, "The lies were all true..."

Derek:

Why? The tricks worked and we got our war. Now we're pimping the "WMD are hidden in Damascus" storyline for next March.

Derek-- Why would they do that now? There's no reason to do that until they're quite sure they've got all their ducks in a row. There's no reason to risk putting out something that they're only mostly sure of, when they can pu out something that they're quite sure of. And doing it closer to the election can't hurt either.

Right-wing innuendo, bordering on fraud, here. The sole connection is a notation regarding a "Hamburg student" and Atta's prior status as a student in Hamburg. Never mind that the FBI has already determined that Atta was in Florida in April, 2001, and that the Czech government has disavowed the original report of Atta meeting with al-Ani (as detailed by the "Czech informant") for two years now.

The "Hamburg student" may have been real, but he wasn't Atta. In reply to Jim Hamlen, one can only say, Sy Hersh has standards. I'm not sure about Laurie Mylroie.

OJ: The answer to your question ("Why?") seems rather obvious, given past behavior. The Bush Administration loudly trumpeted every last fading trace of a hint as to the whereabouts of the nonexistent WMDs, and did so knowing full well the attention span of the mass media and its audience. The question remains, why not trumpet this? Because it's too laughable even for Bush, perhaps?

M:

You don't waste political capital on stuff you won already. Let Democrats bitch about NCLB, WMD, etc. History keeps them distracted from tomorrow.

Tim and OJ,

The polls in the U.S. are showing more people saying the war wasn't worth it. Having some proof of the justification would reverse that as well as take attention away from the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Really, if Bush had hard evidence, he'd be an idiot not to bring it out.

As for invading Syria, forget it. We haven't got the troops or the will. Be happy with Iraq.

Derek:

So what? There's been some blanket coverage of bad news. Give it a few weeks and we leave in July and opinion will swing back. Meanwhile, what are folks like you going to do: reinstall Saddam? It's over, we won, move on. Pyongyang and Damascus beckon.

"You don't waste political capital on stuff you won already."

Excellent point, OJ, but if you want to take Damascus next year, you will probably need some retroactive justification for Iraq, since the tricks have been revealed. As it stands, the "WMD in Damascus" line is worth a belly laugh, at best.

Upon further consideration, I take an earlier statement back. I am quite sure about Ms. Mylroie: she has no standards at all.

A quick Google search reminded me of where I'd heard the name before. She's a conspiracy theorist one small step removed from the alien abduction crowd, with a focus on the enduring (and as yet completely undemonstrated) terrorist threat posed to the U.S. by Saddam Hussein. So this article fits in quite nicely with the rest of her ouvre.

Hot pursuit, an even easier war than the 3 weeks in Iraq, a landslide re-election, 60 Senate seats. It'll be over by the time they authorize it.

M:

One correction about Ms Myhrolie---the threat no longer endures.

Hubris, thy name is Orrin.

We're not going to have to "take" Damascus next year.

What you'll see will be one of the following:

Worst case: a sharply destructive 3rd ID/1st Armor "thunder run" through the Syrian desert, one that stops short of Damascus, followed by a hand-off to a Sunni-majority interim government (which will have widespread support among Syrian Kurds).

Best Case: Afghanistan redux. We gin up a Syrian resistance force and let ride a short American bombing campaign into Damascus for us. The whole thing is just scary enough, just credible enough, to force Baby Doc Assad into permanent exile in Cannes. (Bashir ain't his daddy. He is NOT going down into the spider hole, a la Saddam. Trust me on that one.)

Don't forget that the Assads and their favorite cronies are Alawites, a minority group viewed as heretics by both Shia and Sunni alike.

In both cases we're going to avoid like crazy anything that takes us into downtown Damascus, or keeps us in Syria as occupiers.

It'll be fast and furious, and over in a week, much of it done through negotiations.

Miller's scenarios-- I hope you are correct in any case. I just hope that taking out Syria won't give the Iranian opposition the idea that all they have to do is sit back and wait for the Americans to do the dirty work of demullahfication for them, but instead inspires them to work even harder.

Epstein is on my list of people I wouldn't believe if they told me the sky is blue.

Harry - that proves what, exactly? Epstein documents his statements; does your refusal to believe them say more about you or Epstein?

As for M. Bulger, yeah, that sure is a laugher about Iraqi military intelligence and OKC! I mean, why in the world would any foreign leader ever try any kind of black bag job in another country? What a ridiculous notion. Better to use your own people so you get tied directly to the operation if its discovered, eh? Pure genius!

M Bulger and Derek --

I agree that it would simplify the discussion if those you see as beneficiaries of this allegation being true -- the Bush Admin -- would make hay of it. First, if you all think this story is too facile, and don't like the authors, then read Steven Hayes work in the Weekly Standard which has traced Iraqi - Al Qaeda connections well beyond the famous meeting. He makes a compelling case for at the very least WHY ARE WE ALL CHATTERES NOT ASKING MORE QUESTIONS?

The reason the Adminstration has not jumped (yet) on many of these stories is because the opposition's standards of proof shift, and then the relevance of an issue is downgraded or elevated to suit the after-the fact position new facts put them in. It is now abundantly clear that there was sufficient Al Qaeda - Ansar Al Islam collaboration via Zarkawi in Northern Iraq; this collaboration continues today; and testimony from Jordan shows that. But by now the topic has moved.

WMD's are all the same. Programs are found; suspicions of flow to Syria; even Kerry said we will likely found them but "not when Bush said we would or in the numbers he said"...This is what you are suppose to argue against. (There appears to be only one thing you can do: wait and save it all for aone big onslaught, or assume the media will never let you win, and let them forget about it.)

Screw the so-called facts.

There are very solid reasons for continuing to believe that Saddam could not possibly have had any connection with Al Qaida or international terror.

Just as there are very solid reasons for continuing to believe that Sunnis and Shi'a could not possibly act in concert.

Or that cooperation ever occurred between secular Arab regimes and fundamentalist Islamicists.

Fantasies all, for Bush and his neo-con rogues.

(For should it turn out otherwise, certain articles of faith will unravel very quickly, and this must be avoided at all costs.)