Fresh off of yesterday's presses. I'm trying to reconcile this in my head, because, you know, they had me fooled.
No. But smoke started pouring from his ears. Here are some quotes from the story: They can't even get their lies straight. Poor lost souls.
Actually, this is a well thought-out strategic move. Bush screams assumptions and Cheney whispers the facts. Keep the frenzy up now and cover your ass for 2004.
I thought the Bush administration was lying to the American people and repeatedly saying Iraq was involved in 9/11? I thought the whole justification that Bush put forth for war in Iraq was that Saddam was involved in 9/11? Oh wait, nobody in the administration has said at any point that Saddam was behind 9/11, and now Rumsfeld has said he almost certainly wasn't. My bad.
So when Cheney said on 9/14(that's two days ago) he wasn't trying to draw a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein (his definition of "discredited" by the way is at odds with Webster)? But they weren't linking Iraq to 9/11.
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003 Aboard the USS Lincoln Condoleeza Rice, Sept. 25, 2002 But they weren't linking Iraq to 9/11
I will supoprt any Democratic candidate who advocates branding the current adminstration's diseased sheep with an emblem depicting a steaming pile of crap. Right across their foreheads. This will save the rest of us a LOT of time. "Nobody in the administration has said at any point that Saddam was behind 9/11". That's just surreal. It's also the kind of insane rambling one would expect to hear from under a freeway overpass. But it now passes for conservative foreign policy analysis.
Bush joins the bandwagon: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030917/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_saddam_5 (Edit) part of the article: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties," the president said. But he also said, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks" Huh? I like the pic of Cheney that accompanies the the story: [evil grin] "Brainwashing works!!! We're good, damn,we're so good!" [/evil grin]
And just in case there is any doubt that the administration at least wanted to link Iraq and 9/11, we have this.
Holy fuck Alex. For a history major (I think I read that you are one) you sure do have a pretty bad short-term memory.
What exactly is untrue about what he said? There was a Czech intelligence report that Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague. That is a fact. The report has been neither definitively discredited or definitively confirmed. That is a fact (spun a bit, since most evidence indicates they didn't meet, but they're not sure of this so a fact nonetheless). You know, you spent 3 posts and put up a lot of quotes saying Saddam was allied with al Qaeda, and you put up one quote saying that we must act pro-actively to prevent the next 9/11. What you did not post, and will never post because it's never happened, was a quote explicitly saying "Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11". You won't even find a quote, except perhaps in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, saying "Saddam Hussein might have been behind 9/11".
OK, chief, then find me a single quote from a top administration official (hell, any administration official) that said Saddam was behind 9/11. Get back to me when you've found it...
OK, I understand the problem. There's a bit of misunderstanding here. Look, Bush and other administration officials have said several times that Saddam was allied with al-Qaeda. This is true, as we have seen after the war. There have been numerous terrorist training camps found in Iraq (including one with a plane fuselage that had apparently been used to practice hijackings), and we are 100% sure that Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group operating in Kurdish territory, was receiving funding from both al-Qaeda and Saddam. In addition, several Palestinian terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad received funding from both al-Qaeda and Saddam. So there clearly was something of an alliance between the two. What administration officials have NEVER said, was that Saddam was behind 9/11. Let me put it to you this way: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were allies during World War 2. Still with me? Now, on Dec. 7, 1941, Imperial Japan without warning or provocation attacked the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i. Now, not only was Nazi Germany not involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor, they were not even told about it ahead of time by the Japanese. Despite this, the end result of the Pearl Harbor attack was American involvement in the war against Nazi Germany (yes, they declared war on us after we declared war on Japan, but this was a formality that we easily could've shrugged off, at least for the time being, if we really didn't want to get involved in the war in Europe). Now by making this comparison, I am not comparing Iraq to Nazi Germany (that comparison can certainly be made, but that's a matter for a different discussion)--I am simply comparing the situations. The fact that Saddam probably didn't have anything to do with 9/11 does NOT mean that he was not allied with al-Qaeda; just like the fact that Nazi Germany didn't have anything to do with Pearl Harbor didn't mean that they weren't allied with the Japanese. Understand better now?
Wow, so by 2:40 pm on the day of the attacks, you had already completely dismissed the possibility that Iraq might be involved? You must have a high-ass security clearance!
I must've thought I read somewhere that you were a history major, because there's no way you could be with drivel like this. Al Qaeda was NEVER allied with Saddam or the Baathist Party. Comparing the alliance of Japan and Germany to Saddam and Al Qaeda is ludicrous. If you are a history major, your professors should resign.
I don't think anyone in the government ever said Hussein was behind 9/11, i.e. either planned or knew anything about it. But wasn't the suggestion that Hussein was harboring al-Qaeda suspects in his country one of the main arguments for going after him in a war? The linking of those "weapons of mass destruction" to possible use by bin Laden's thugs? Saddam may have been exploring links with al-Qaeda because of their shared common goal of screwing with the U.S., but generally, the secular tyrant had no use for an Islamic revolution and the kind of religious fundamentalism bin Laden and his ilk support. Hussein had been appealing to the Arab world in religious terms in the period leading up to the war. But everyone knows that he was a softie when it comes to Islam (Can you say, "porno stash"?) And now that there is a power vacuum in Iraq, now you may see pockets of al-Qaeda sympathizers or cells spring up throughout the country.
Hahahaha, oh man, thats rich. Rumsfeld should be forced to appear in public muzzled in all future occasion to keep him quiet. He's up there with Reagan and Kissinger on my list of people who really can't die soon enough.
Why, because Japan and Germany's (and Italy's) alliance was open while al-Qaeda and Saddam's alliance was under-the-table? Because that's the only major difference I can see.
I see another major difference. The alliance between Italy, Japan and Germany was real. The alliance between Saddam and Al Qaeda was imaginary. Other than that, they're exactly the same.