Josh Marshall TPM needs combatting Bush spokespeople lies

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Since Nexis searching is a crude measure, I'd like to know if any readers can point me to pre-9/11, published references to Wolfowitz stating his belief that al Qaida was a "major threat." Doesn't have to be that phrase of course. Just any reference that would back up the present claim.

More generally, and this is the real request, there are a lot of White House appointees and surrogates hitting the airwaves bashing Clarke, many of which are making willfully deceptive claims or simply lying.

Sixty or seventy thousand people come to this site every week day. That should be more than enough eyes to monitor all the relevant chat shows. If you find instances where you think someone is pulling a Cheney and especially if you can point me to a transcript or an online replay, I'd be greatly obliged if you can send it my way.

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To test my hypothesis I went to the Nexis database and tried this search: "wolfowitz w/100 bin laden". That is, all instances where Wolfowitz's name comes up within one hundred words of 'bin laden'. I set the date range between January 1st, 1980 and September 10th, 2001.

I got 14 hits. By way of contrast, when I plugged in Richard Clarke's name I got 48, with Sandy Berger, 502.

<snip>

You might say that the comparisons with Clarke and Berger are unfair since they were in government and Wolfowitz wasn't. But when I swapped bin Laden's name for 'Saddam' in my search, I got 546 hits, and well over 400 of them were from after he left government in 1993.