Enter Thomas E. Ricks on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show Tuesday.
Discussing last Sunday's bombings in Baghdad, Ricks declared, "Which means a Sunni extremist probably working with al Qaeda. Simultaneous large blast is one of the al Qaeda signatures that they like to do. We all remember that from 9-11."
Just last April, Jonathan S. Landay (McClatchy Newspapers) was again reporting, "In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime." For the debut of Bill Moyers Journal, the focus (for 90 minutes) was the lying a nation into war with Moyers observing at the start of the show, "Two weeks before he will order America to war, President Bush calls a press conference to make the case for disarming Saddam Hussein. For months now, his administration has been determined to link Iraq to 9/11. At least a dozen times during this press conference he will invoke 9/11 and al Qaeda to justify a pre-emptive attack on a country that has not attacked America. But the White House press corps will ask no hard questions tonight about those claims."
Yet there was Thomas E. Ricks pretending that a homegrown (in Iraq) group (al Qaeda in Mesopotamia) is the same as the group alleged to have attacked on 9-11. Even after Bully Boy Bush and the former president of vice Dick Cheney have been forced to admit no link, there was Thomas E. Rick trying to draw a connection between the two groups -- a connection which doesn't exist.
Despite being one of three guests for the hour, Ricks still found plenty of time to continue to show his ass. He insulted Matthew Hoh as a nobody, as someone who (he said) didn't even have a key to men's room. Thomas E. Ricks thought that was funny which may be the scariest thing of all. Who is Matthew Hoh? You could read Karent DeYoun'gs Washington Post report. -- the report that Ricks insulted, stating that there was nothing there and the paper was blowing up a story of no importance. That was a triple for Ricks: He managed to insult Hoh, The Washington Post and Karen DeYoung.
Mainly he just showed his ass over and over.
Illustration of Ricks is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Fair Play For Old Men."
For more on this topic, see C.I. and Elaine.