Bush attacks the Washington Times. The Washington Post springs to the defence of its sister paper. The storied but recently passive Post seems to have sipped some Kickapoo joy juice.
Glenn Kessler writes that
President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S. government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and prompting him to abandon the device.
The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable intelligence operation was first reported by a best-selling book, validated by the Sept. 11 commission and then repeated by the president.
But it appears to be an urban myth.
Then he wins the award for cautious inference with the following considered consideration.
Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could have persuaded bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in August 1998. A day earlier, the United States had fired dozens of cruise missiles at his training camps, missing him by hours.
naaaaah I'm sure he didn't even notice the cruise missiles as he was reading his morning Washington Times.
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