Looks like the State Department is still the dissenting voice in the Bush administration — no wonder we rarely hear from them:
It’s always important to keep your Web site up to date. Take, for example, a site the State Department put up, apparently a month or so after 9/11, with information about Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist network.
There are quotes from bin Laden praising the hijackers and quotes from President Bush and other administration officials outlining efforts to defeat terrorism. To be helpful, State put up a map showing in red where al Qaeda had been operating around the world.
Those places include this country, Europe and Russia, North Africa and most of the Middle East. But wait! There are a couple of countries in the Middle East where al Qaeda had not been operating as of the fall of 2001: Syria and Iraq.
But we now are told al Qaeda had been all over Iraq then, right next to the WMD. In any event, it’s operating there now, so best to update soon. The site is usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/terrornet/12.htm.
