Americans have grown used to reading unadulterated propaganda in the opinion pages of our newspapers. Most of us understand that we are being inundated with distortions and half-truths from both sides of the political divide, and we can connect the dots to construct a reasonable picture of the whole truth. This state of affairs is unfortunate but generally not worth getting worked up about.

Occasionally, however, a column appears that is so deceptive, so politically motivated, and has so little basis in fact that it must be challenged. Such was Michael Barone�s column in the March 8 issue of the Dispatch. Readers without critical thinking skills � clearly Barone�s intended audience � could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that there is a mountain of evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, which is being concealed from us by shadowy elements of our own government. The primary villains, as so often in right-wing fantasies, are the dreaded �State Department Arabists.� How these alleged traitors manage to survive and thwart the noble aims of the president and secretary of state in an administration that ruthlessly purges anyone who fails to toe the party line cries out for explanation.

The reality is that there is not one shred of credible evidence linking Saddam, regardless of his myriad other crimes, to 9/11. The supposed �smoking gun� of a meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent is now believed by all but the most fanatical ideologues as having been a false claim. And given the Bush administration�s demonstrated willingness to exaggerate intelligence information for political advantage, if there was any hope of finding such evidence in untranslated papers recovered from Iraq, the documents would have been picked apart with a fine-tooth comb long ago.

Most Americans have long since lost interest in the moot question of whether Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks. We know that there were many other excellent justifications for removing the tyrant from power; we only disagree over whether it has been worth the cost. Why then are Republican pundits so desperate to maintain this fiction, along with the equally unsubstantiated claim of Iraqi WMD being transported to other countries just before the war? One can only assume that it is political posturing for the next election. Whether the American people continue to entrust our nation�s security to the Republican Party depends on our evaluation of their stewardship to date; the question of whether the current administration launched an unncessary war based on false premises is the key to that judgment.

Sincerely,

James E. Toney