Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Media buries "Boogie to Baghdad"

Byron York:

I have to admit that I have failed miserably in my small effort to make the words “Boogie to Baghdad” part of the national conversation on ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In case you don’t remember, “Boogie to Baghdad” is the phrase that Richard Clarke, when he was the top White House counterterrorism official during the Clinton administration, used to express his fear that if American forces pushed Osama bin Laden too hard at his hideout in Afghanistan, bin Laden might move to Iraq, where he could stay in the protection of Saddam Hussein.

Clarke’s opinion was based on intelligence indicating a number of contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq, including word that Saddam had offered bin Laden safe haven.

It’s all laid out in the Sept. 11 commission report. “Boogie to Baghdad” is on Page 134.

Now, given the intensity of the current debate over prewar intelligence and the role of al Qaeda and Iraq, you might think that would have attracted some notice — if only because “Boogie to Baghdad” is a nice, catchy phrase that editors would find irresistible for headlines.

But, no. A search of the LexisNexis database reveals only about a dozen instances in which the phrase has appeared. A significant number of them were in articles by me, either in this newspaper or in National Review. Most of the others were in The Weekly Standard.

According to the database, the phrase has never appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time or similar publications. It’s as if those words — and the Sept. 11 commission report that revealed them — never existed.

If you’ve forgotten, here’s the short version of the story behind “Boogie to Baghdad,” taken from the Sept. 11 report....

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Read what the mainstream media does not want you to see, becuase it undercuts the Democrats specious arguments on prewar intelligence.