NY Times attempts to deny the obvious

While the following sentence is from a nominal "news" story in the New York Times, it is hard to imagine how it could spin any faster:

When Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, suggested the war was not integral to the anti-terror effort since members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, sometimes called Al Qaeda in Iraq, the homegrown Sunni Arab extremist group that American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign-led, is not part of the Qaeda network behind the Sept. 11 attacks, the general offered a quick retort.

Hat Tip: BotW.