NP: iTunes DJ

I've seen at least one liberal blog say that Dick Cheney linked al Qaida and Iraq again this morning, but that's not quite true. Here's Jacob Heilbrunn at TPM Cafe:

First, he revived the bogus claim that Saddam Hussein was working hand-in-glove with al-Qaeda: "We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."

This is an old Cheney trick, for sure, but it's not "linking" the two, per se. It's dictators "like" Saddam Hussein who have those known terrorist ties. Is it Cheney's fault that everybody jumps to the conclusion that he actually means Saddam Hussein?

Well, yes, actually, it sort of is, in that this sort of wording is intended to deliberately do that while giving Cheney "plausible deniability" that he never actually said Hussein had ties to 9/11. But I still think the "Cheney links Saddam to Osama" description isn't accurate.