Politics & Power Quote by Douglas Feith

Feith’s sentence is built to sound like a sober intelligence briefing while doing the political work of a courtroom insinuation. “There have been linkages” is the key move: a passive, foggy construction that laundered conjecture into something that feels documented. It doesn’t claim Saddam directed 9/11, or even that Baghdad operationally partnered with al-Qaeda. It suggests a web. And in a post-9/11 media environment trained to treat “connections” as evidence, a web is often enough.

The phrase “more or less a decade” is another tell. It’s imprecise on purpose, stretching time to create the impression of a long-standing relationship without committing to dates that can be checked. That elasticity mattered because the historical record cut against the insinuation: Saddam’s Baathist regime was secular, nationalist, and wary of Islamist movements that threatened its control; al-Qaeda defined itself against “apostate” Arab governments like Iraq’s. Any contacts that did exist were sporadic, opportunistic, and contested by analysts - the kind of ambiguous intelligence that can be amplified or minimized depending on policy aims.

Context is everything. Feith served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, associated with efforts to elevate worst-case interpretations about Iraq, often bypassing or pressuring traditional intelligence channels. The intent here isn’t just to inform; it’s to fuse two fears - Iraq and al-Qaeda - into a single storyline. The subtext: if Iraq even brushed up against al-Qaeda, then war looks less like choice and more like necessity. The sentence doesn’t prove; it primes.