No al Qaeda, Iraq cooperation
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| Thu, 06-17-2004 - 4:34am |
The report contradicts statements from the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda.
In response, a senior administration official traveling with President Bush in Tampa, Florida, said, "We stand by what Powell and Tenet have said," referring to previous statements by Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet that described such links.
In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that Iraq was harboring Zarqawi, a "collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants," and he said Iraq's denials of ties to al Qaeda "are simply not credible."
In September, Cheney said Iraq had been "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Bush, responding to criticism of Cheney's comment, said there was no evidence Saddam's government was linked to the September 11 attacks.
Just this week Bush and Cheney have made comments alleging ties between al Qaeda and Iraq. ( Full story )
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry said, "the administration misled America."
"The administration reached too far," he told Detroit radio station WDET. "They did not tell the truth to Americans about what was happening or their own intentions."
The commission's report says bin Laden "explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan.
"The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda."
A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting bin Laden in 1994.
Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded.
"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report said.
"Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied" any relationship, the report said.
The panel also dismissed reports that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic on April 9, 2000. "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred."
The report said that Atta was in Virginia on April 4 -- evidenced by video that shows him withdrawing $8,000 from an ATM -- and he was in Florida by April 11 if not before.
The report also found that there was no "convincing evidence that any government financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11" other than the limited support provided by the Taliban when bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan.
The toppling of the Taliban regime "fundamentally changed" al Qaeda, leaving it decentralized and altering bin Laden's role.
Prior to the attacks, bin Laden approved all al Qaeda operations and often chose targets and the operatives himself, the report said.
"After al Qaeda lost Afghanistan after 9/11, it fundamentally changed. The organization is far more decentralized. Bin Laden's seclusion forced operational commanders and cell leaders to assume greater authority; they are now making the command decisions previously made by him," the report said.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/16/911.commission/index.html

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C
“…when they took Dick Cheney to an undisclosed location to switch him with a replicant. Instead of an affable, reassuring presence, as he was in Bush I, the Bush II vice president is a macabre automaton who keeps repeating, over and over, as contrary evidence piles up, that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked, and that Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague.
Mr. Cheney did it again on Monday in Florida speaking at — where else? — a conservative think tank; he said Saddam "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." This claim, used by the White House to justify its gallop to war, was once more flatly contradicted by the 9/11 panel's report yesterday: "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
The report says Osama did seek help from Saddam in the 90's, "despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime." But aside from sending an official to meet with Osama in Sudan, Saddam stiffed his request for weapons and training-camp space.
Mr. Cheney isn't programmed to process evidence that shows he was wrong; he simply keeps repeating the same nonsensical claims as if he has a microchip malfunction.
Unfortunately, there's no spouse to give him a knock on the head, as the Stepford husbands do when their Farrah fem-bots go haywire and keep repeating things like, "I'll just die if I don't get that recipe. . . . I'll just die if I-I-I don't get that recipe. . . ."
Cheney-bot just keeps going and going: "He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda. . . . He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda-a-a. . . . He-he-e-e—— brzzzrrrp!"
The complete article follows:
Smack That Cheney-Bot!
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
The whole thing was extremely suspicious.
People here still haven't stopped buzzing about the president's bizarre behavior at the White House unveiling ceremony for the Clintons' official portraits on Monday. Mr. Bush acted totally out of character: witty, engaged, amiable, bipartisan and magnanimous. Even to Bill and Hillary.
He gave a sly wink to his own black-sheep past and that of the wayward Rodham brothers, Hugh and Tony, when he greeted the Rodhams' mom, Dorothy: "Welcome, we're glad you're here. And those two boys you're still trying to raise."
W. gave lavish encomiums — and even a nickname — to the man he once accused of stripping the White House of dignity and honor. Saying his dad was 41 and he's 43, he grinned and said, "We're glad you're here, 42."
Even Bill Clinton was dumbfounded, not to mention confounded. Maybe that's why the usually articulate 42 declared he felt like "a pickle stepping into history." Shouldn't he have felt like the ham and cheese between two slices of Wonder bread?
Mr. Clinton told friends afterward that he was blown away, that W. had never been so nice to him before. There was no smirk, no begrudging. And Clinton pals at a Georgetown restaurant that night alternated between bellowing about getting rid of President Bush and marveling at how great he'd been at the unveiling.
"Maybe after a week of seeing the comparisons of himself and Reagan, in which he did not come out as well," one Clintonista speculated, "he's getting the knack of acting more like Reagan." Mr. Clinton used to study Reagan tapes to pick up pointers; why shouldn't Mr. Bush?
Perhaps we have a Potomac invasion of the body snatchers. Maybe, like the grumpy wives of Stepford, bristly W. has been replaced by soothing W. With the race with John Kerry so tight, the Republicans were reminded last week of the advantages of a leader with a light touch — not one who's at odds with the world, and rattled about the prison torture scandal creeping toward Rummy and the sulfurous reversals in Iraq. (Although it would be natural for Mr. Bush to feel churlish. After going to war to save Iraqis from a regime that "tortured children in front of their parents," now he can't even trust the Iraqis to bring Saddam to justice.)
Like the Stepford husbands, G.O.P. bigwigs could have met in a smoky men's club and decided they wanted a W. who was a little less pushy and a little more sunny. All world domination, all the time, can be wearing.
The Republicans messed up their first attempt at this, when they took Dick Cheney to an undisclosed location to switch him with a replicant. Instead of an affable, reassuring presence, as he was in Bush I, the Bush II vice president is a macabre automaton who keeps repeating, over and over, as contrary evidence piles up, that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked, and that Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague.
Mr. Cheney did it again on Monday in Florida speaking at — where else? — a conservative think tank; he said Saddam "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." This claim, used by the White House to justify its gallop to war, was once more flatly contradicted by the 9/11 panel's report yesterday: "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
The report says Osama did seek help from Saddam in the 90's, "despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime." But aside from sending an official to meet with Osama in Sudan, Saddam stiffed his request for weapons and training-camp space.
Mr. Cheney isn't programmed to process evidence that shows he was wrong; he simply keeps repeating the same nonsensical claims as if he has a microchip malfunction.
Unfortunately, there's no spouse to give him a knock on the head, as the Stepford husbands do when their Farrah fem-bots go haywire and keep repeating things like, "I'll just die if I don't get that recipe. . . . I'll just die if I-I-I don't get that recipe. . . ."
Cheney-bot just keeps going and going: "He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda. . . . He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda-a-a. . . . He-he-e-e—— brzzzrrrp!"
http://nytimes.com/2004/06/17/opinion/17DOWD.html
">Cheney-bot just keeps going and going: "He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda. . . . He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda-a-a. . . . He-he-e-e—— brzzzrrrp!""<
There are posters on iV boards that still believe it too. One would like to think that
Much of these "findings" have been in the 'liberal' press for ages.
For instance.........
>"The panel also dismissed reports that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic on April 9, 2000. "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred."
The report said that Atta was in Virginia on April 4 -- evidenced by video that shows him withdrawing $8,000 from an ATM -- and he was in Florida by April 11 if not before."<
The above
Probably a recycled speach that he just repeated. Please reprogram the man!
And we all know that Bushies don't believe the "liberal" press. They have faith in GWB, GWB is an honorable man, honorable men don't mislead, ergo the liberal press tells lies because they hate GWB. The belief in GWB is up there next to god--What I believe is Right any other idea is Wrong. Nothing penetrates a closed mind.
It's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.
Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different.
Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide. While it's possible that Mr. Bush and his top advisers really believed that there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, they should have known all along that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. No serious intelligence analyst believed the connection existed; Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief, wrote in his book that Mr. Bush had been told just that.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to 9/11. And since the invasion, administration officials, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, have continued to declare such a connection. Last September, Mr. Bush had to grudgingly correct Mr. Cheney for going too far in spinning a Hussein-bin Laden conspiracy. But the claim has crept back into view as the president has made the war on terror a centerpiece of his re-election campaign.
On Monday, Mr. Cheney said Mr. Hussein "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." Mr. Bush later backed up Mr. Cheney, claiming that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist who may be operating in Baghdad, is "the best evidence" of a Qaeda link. This was particularly astonishing because the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime.
The staff report issued by the 9/11 panel says that Sudan's government, which sheltered Osama bin Laden in the early 1990's, tried to hook him up with Mr. Hussein, but that nothing came of it.
This is not just a matter of the president's diminishing credibility, although that's disturbing enough. The war on terror has actually suffered as the conflict in Iraq has diverted military and intelligence resources from places like Afghanistan, where there could really be Qaeda forces, including Mr. bin Laden.
Mr. Bush is right when he says he cannot be blamed for everything that happened on or before Sept. 11, 2001. But he is responsible for the administration's actions since then. That includes, inexcusably, selling the false Iraq-Qaeda claim to Americans. There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/11 world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/opinion/17THU1.html
I accept the last alternative: and what I find more terrifying is the way Bushies insist on slithering around the story to their previous conclusing.
A Disconnect on the Al Qaeda Link
Thursday, Jun 17, 2004; 11:45 AM
Is there a contradiction, or not?
Yesterday, a staff report from the Sept. 11 commission concluded that there was "no collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda.
And this morning, pretty much every mainstream media outlet in the world concludes that this knocks down one of the Bush administration's few still-standing justifications for the war in Iraq.
But the White House says there's no contradiction, because President Bush never made an explicit link between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration/whbriefing/
This column provides numerous links, including the Iraq on the Record Database
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/pdfs_108_2/pdfs_inves/pdf_admin_iraq_on_the_record_rep.pdf
which was compiled at the request of Rep. Waxman.
Also, Administration statements on Iraq list fourteen statements, their source and how it is misleading.
http://www.reform.democrats.house.gov/IraqOnTheRecord/index.asp?start=10&Speaker=President+George+W%2E+Bush&Subject=Al%2DQaeda&Phrase=iraq&submit=Search+Database
There was never a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda has been shown.
Yes and what that slim connection showed was that hussein refused to supply weapons or permission to bin laden to set up a training camp in Iraq. Hardly fits with the theory that Iraq was supporting the terrorists who attacked us sept 11th.
>"The belief in GWB is up there next to god--What I believe is Right any other idea is Wrong. Nothing penetrates a closed mind."<
Yes this bypasses other's opinions & intellectual discussion. W's beliefs gave him strength to stop drinking but this faith doesn't make every gut instinct appropriate.
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