Dig dig dig dig…

Atrios points to this entry from The Daily Howler:

On last night’s Special Report, Brit Hume started the panel in orderly fashion; he read off six “false impressions” about Iraq which Al Gore had blamed on the Bush Admin. “Well, some of it was true,” Juan Williams said, agreeing with the things Gore said. And that?s when Barnes began his faking. No, we really aren’t making this up. Yes, the corrupted man said it:

WILLIAMS: Well, some of it was true.
BARNES: I didn’t notice any.
WILLIAMS: Well, I think it’s true when [Gore] says that President Bush led us to believe that somehow Saddam Hussein might have had connections to Al Qaeda?

At this point, Fred cut Williams off. Try to believe that this fake, phony man has reached the point where he’ll actually say this on television:

BARNES (continuing directly): I think Bush said exactly the opposite, consistently! Exactly the opposite!

So was it Barnes’ own intelligence sources that led him to write stories featuring passages such as:

March 30, 2003: Terrorists might be able to slip out of the country ahead of American or British troops. On the other hand, credible evidence of the sanctuary given them in Iraq by Saddam could be supplied by captured Iraqi officials. And if al Qaeda members are apprehended, say, in Basra, the case is closed.

March 26, 2003: He’s [Hussein] not in bed with al Qaeda. But he’s in contact with them.

February 27, 2003: That outcome is not likely to make Saddam willing to disarm or stop tormenting his own people or threatening his neighbors. Nor is it likely to make him skittish about getting up close and personal with terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. One significant result: The security of the United States will be further imperiled.

February 17, 2003: It was reinforced by Secretary of State Colin Powell’s irrefutable indictment of Iraq at the U.N. Security Council last week for stockpiling forbidden weapons of mass destruction and forging links with al Qaeda terrorists. “Enough, enough,” Powell concluded. Bush backed that up the next day by declaring, “The game is over.”

February 10, 2003: Iraq became the next logical step in the war on terrorism. Bush believes September 11 revealed Saddam now has a delivery vehicle to reach the United States with his WMDs–not intercontinental missiles but al Qaeda terrorists who’ve proven their ability to slip into the United States.

February 5, 2003: And just as important was the solid evidence Powell outlined of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Did you see that last one? Barnes wrote:

And just as important was the solid evidence Powell outlined of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Bush was saying “exactly the opposite.” Which is why Barnes was writing exactly the opposite of the opposite.

Update: More! We want more! Here we go… (No links for these, sadly. All entries from The Weekly Standard.)

August 12, 2002: Mohamed Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers, visited Prague twice in the fifteen months before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, in June 2000 and April 2001, and met with an Iraqi agent at least once during the second visit. […] The meeting has political and international importance. A connection between Iraq and Atta, an al Qaeda operative under Osama bin Laden, bolsters the case for military action by the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

Sep. 11, 2002: It’s Saddam’s potential for secretly slipping weapons of mass destruction to terrorists like al Qaeda.

November 25, 2002: But the war–against al Qaeda and Iraq–is most crucial of all.

January 22, 2003: But since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, it’s clear there’s another delivery vehicle available to him [Hussein:] al Qaeda terrorists operating in the United States.

Update 2: From the comments section, Harry points to this list of Barnes nonsense.