Bernanke, Chertoff, and Feith Classmate at Center of Goldman Sachs Fraud Scandal

That leads directly to another essential argument over the meaning of the past decade: whether the proper response to the Sept. 11 attacks included not only the widely supported retaliation in Afghanistan but also the invasion of Iraq. Obama's view -- that the Iraq war wasted U.S. power and dissipated goodwill toward us around the world -- is a direct reproach to the core assumptions of the Bush foreign policy.

So is Obama's refusal "to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means or our interests," as he put it in his West Point speech, as well as his insistence on appreciating "the connection between our national security and our economy." His measured approach to the use of force is antithetical to a foreign policy based on "bring 'em on" and broad pledges to "defeat our enemies across the world."

This conceptual clash makes it imperative for Obama to inspire trust in his capacity to thwart terrorism, and his administration's initial response to the Christmas Day airliner attack fell short. Republicans were shameless in politicizing the incident, knowing that rehabilitating Bush's approach to terrorism depends on discrediting Obama's. The president can't afford to give them anything to work with, as he finally seemed to grasp on Tuesday.

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/30/AR2009123002187.html

what does it represent and why are there bold lines?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmx...

Case Closed
From the November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
BY Stephen F. Hayes
November 24, 2003, Vol. 9, No. 11
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Editor's Note, 1/27/04: In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank reported that "Vice President Cheney . . . in an interview this month with the Rocky Mountain News, recommended as the 'best source of information' an article in The Weekly Standard magazine detailing a relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda based on leaked classified information."

Here's the Stephen F. Hayes article to which the vice president was referring.

-JVL

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.