Mr. Abrams is full of it
The Abrams Report on MSNBC- incredibly- is accusing the Administration of Clintonesque "talking like lawyers" for insisting on the distinction between not having positive proof of Saddam Hussein's collaboration in al Quaeda's attacks on the U.S. and denying the well-established and long-standing relationship between the two.
Let me spell it out for you, Mr. Abrams. It's simply that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence where such collaboration is concerned- especially when, by the nature of the case, direct evidence would be hard to come by.
The 9/11 Commission said that it saw no clear evidence of collaboration. The problem is that, by the nature of the case, we really have no way of knowing whether they collaborted or not-and so it's absurd to draw definitive conclusions either way.
The Commission overstepped the facts when it jumped to the unsupportable conclusion that the long relationship between Saddam and al Quaeda bore no fruit. Worse, the liberal media-including Abrams- are trying to spin the Commission's words into a denial of the long-standing relationship it in fact acknowledged. And that is hardly a "lawyerly" distinction. Rather, it is- in the most direct and non-lawyerly sense of the word- a lie.
Let me spell it out for you, Mr. Abrams. It's simply that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence where such collaboration is concerned- especially when, by the nature of the case, direct evidence would be hard to come by.
The 9/11 Commission said that it saw no clear evidence of collaboration. The problem is that, by the nature of the case, we really have no way of knowing whether they collaborted or not-and so it's absurd to draw definitive conclusions either way.
The Commission overstepped the facts when it jumped to the unsupportable conclusion that the long relationship between Saddam and al Quaeda bore no fruit. Worse, the liberal media-including Abrams- are trying to spin the Commission's words into a denial of the long-standing relationship it in fact acknowledged. And that is hardly a "lawyerly" distinction. Rather, it is- in the most direct and non-lawyerly sense of the word- a lie.
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