No, some people were trusting that the administration would not mislead them on something as important as war. Actually, we were told that the data the President was giving us was supported, but that they couldn't document it for national security reasons. All politicians manipulate data, but not all of them claim to have nonexistant evidence and not all of them use intelligence reports that have been debunked by the CIA to help justify war. Well, for me the WMD and uranium arguments were the only real justification for war. If taking a dictator out so that you MIGHT have a more stable region is justification for war, there are at least 5 other countries that we should be lined up to attack.
(referring to the future success of American operations in Iraq: ) "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." Dick Cheney, September 14, 2003. Iraq was the geographic base for the trrorsits who assualted us on 9-11? Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie. He's still lying even after they finally told the truth, that there is no evidence of Iraqi involvement. That's pathological or something.
"Sam... Fisher... Okay dokey, mister. We'll see who lies once we've brought you to my... undisclosed location... for a little conversation. Monstro e mano."
If anyone really believed there was a link they were not researching the facts. Or they were taking the President at his word. I agree that Presidents like all politicians are not completely trustworthy. The question for me is what were the consequences of this particular lie. One would hope for more truthfulness from the President when a war is in the balance.
PS. They did not LIE, they simply reported things which got the general public more on their side. Guess what....EVERYONE in politics does this. I can not believe that you guys are that naive, in fact, you aren't, you are simply taking it to the extreme to make a point. Which you are doing badly.... DD
1. Why do you care? I thought it didn't matter to you if politicians lied. I thought you were content to live your life in blissful ignorance. 2. Answer the question: Was Iraq the geographic base, "the heart of the geographic base" for the terrorists who attacked us on 9-11? was it? Ansar al-Islam, hiding out up with the kurds, with vague connections to al qaeda (far less vague than those of the house of saud, or pakistan, btw), was the heart of the base, of the terrorists who attacked us on 9-11? It was? Your sliding definition of lies and truth are ridiculous; your "blissful ignorance/indifference/" is more credible than(albeit barely) this rationalization. You should have stuck with that rather than reversing course.
I am not that naive, I never really believed that Saddam posed a direct threat to the US, I never thought he had anything to do with 9/11, and I never thought that he had ties to al-Qaeda. I did, however, think that it was POSSIBLE that there were WMDs in Iraq and I was of the opinion that the weapons inspectors should not have been kicked out by the US. They should have been allowed to do their jobs. Once Bush et. al. started saying that there was ABSOLUTE proof of WMDs and went on in the SOU to claim that there was attempted purchase of uranium, THEN I started thinking that war was justified. Basically, they weren't getting the support they needed to go to war so they spouted some "technically accurate" information that was specifically designed to get people like me convinced that the war was justified. Then, they told us that the corroborating evidence was classified because of national security. Now, they just expect us to forgive them for misleading us into a war that was not necessary to disarm a dangerous regime. They expect us to forget that they lied to us and the world now that election time is almost upon us.
One thing is for certain. Bush tried to deceive the American people repeatedly into thinking that Sadam had something to do with 9/11. No big deal according to Hayes, who apparently believes in lying or at least deceiving the American people if it is to start a war. Hayes, do you also go along with the deception with regard to the budget and the environment? It should be interesting to see if Bush can maintain general credibility with these admissions. I think so, but maybe not enough to win reelection. It is very tough for most Americans to admit that "Yes, Mildred Geroge Bush, the President would lie to us to trick us into supporting his war. It is sort of like a child finally realizing there is no Santa Claus.
DD, you usually post well-reasoned ideas, but this is a pretty big leap of faith. If you want to absolve Bush because "everyone in politics" lies, that's your business. But that's just not good enough for me. Bush took our fear, anger, sadness and contempt from Sept. 11 and *used* it to attack a country that had nothing to do with Sept. 11. He *used* people's pain for political objectives. How can anyone defend that? Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11, they had no weapons of mass destruction, and they posed no threat to the United States. But we started a war because the Bush Administration *said* they did.
Media ignores the story A quick glance at CNN, NYT, AND MSNBC allignored the admission. Looks like Bush backers will be able to quote his admission as proof he never claimed a link between Sadam and 911. It is a little bit more transparent this time than with previous wars such as Panama and Gulf War I. Once you've seen through this type of propaganda effort, you never quite view the US news media the same again.
It was up there this morning, now it's just buried behind important stories about news reporters bravely risking their lives in order to bring us never before seen photographs of a hurricane coming ashore.
Even I'm subject to those live, late-breaking, on the scenes, reports!! (And I'm on the west coast...in canada, even). "It's really windy now...trees are swaying...just saw an emergency vehicle drive by. We'll keep reporting just as long as we can" Anybody else picture Behad's well photoshopped image?? Gots to love network media. (No disrespect to those facing the storm -- it is a serious matter -- just a curious prioritizing of news stories). Carry on.
It's good to know that Bush learned something important in his 30 years of substance abuse: how to lie. If there's one thing that substance abusers learn how to do, it's how to lie through their teeth, then reverse direction without so much as an apology for doing so. I'm sure he got a lot of practice with Laura, and she looks like she will buy any story he tells. Hey, George. Stop making it up as you go along.
Cheney's misspeaking streak By Derrick Z. Jackson, 9/17/2003 Boston Globe DICK CHENEY has lived off his press clippings far too long. In 2000, Cheney was the stealth vice presidential candidate whose image obliterated his radical associations with the far right and oil. Next to presidential candidate George W. Bush, who had little foreign experience. Cheney, a former defense secretary, White House chief of staff, and congressman, was described by both Republicans and Democrats as adding "gravitas," "weight," "heft," and "integrity" to the ticket. His balding dome, round body, and soft voice led many to describe him as "grandfatherly." He was described by political analysts and journalists as a safe and even boring addition to the ticket who would "do no harm" to Bush's bid for the White House. Three years later, the stealth grandfather is the hired gun. His harm to America's integrity is now incalculable. On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Cheney claimed that the White House has "learned more and more that there was a relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of his pieces of "evidence" was the old report of a meeting in Prague in early 2001 between Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 airplane hijackers, and what Cheney described as "a senior Iraqi intelligence official." The Czech government began backing away from the claim almost as soon as it was made. American and British intelligence agencies never found any hard evidence of a meeting. The claim became a dubious if not a dead issue in intelligence circles more than a year ago. The more likely possibility, according to intelligence records, was that Atta was in Virginia Beach, casing naval facilities. Yet Cheney on his own brought it back up Sunday as if the meeting remains a real possibility, with an investigation still in progress. "With respect to 9/11, of course, we've had the story that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack. But we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know." Cheney also made the claim that Al Qaeda "sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained" on biological and chemical weapons and bomb making. No such training sessions have ever been confirmed. Cheney offered no new evidence to substantiate his claim. The Globe, in a story yesterday, quoted a senior defense official as saying, "There isn't any new intelligence." Cheney's claim that we have learned more when we have learned nothing more is one more lie in the chain of deception that convinced a critical number of Americans to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- at the loss of nearly 300 American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians. The fact that he dredged up the thinnest of alleged links between Iraq and Al Qaeda shocked his own intelligence officials. The fact that his own senior defense officials say there is no new intelligence is a dead giveaway that there never was a justification for this invasion. It is fitting that Cheney is the man showing the White House's empty hand. It was he who said during the buildup: "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." "We know he's reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War." "We know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization." "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." The string of claims has finally reached the point where the media are challenging dear old granddad. On Sunday's "Meet the Press," NBC's Tim Russert replayed the quote about Saddam currently having reconstituted nuclear weapons. Russert said to Cheney, "You misspoke." Cheney responded, "Yeah, I did misspeak. I said repeatedly during the show `weapons capability.' We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon." Misspeak? In March, Russert asked Cheney, "What do you think is the most important rationale for going to war with Iraq?" Cheney responded, "Well, I think I've just given it, Tim, in terms of the combination of his development and use of chemical weapons, his development of biological weapons, his pursuit of nuclear weapons." With no proof that Saddam had any of those weapons at the time of the invasion, Cheney's claim that he misspoke becomes yet another lie. Cheney once wowed the Washington elite with his gravitas. With so many soldiers and civilians dead, his gravitas now leads to the grave.
Editorial from yesterday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune... _______________ startribune.com Editorial: Truth / Too little of it on Iraq Published 09/17/2003 Dick Cheney is not a public relations man for the Bush administration, not a spinmeister nor a political operative. He's the vice president of the United States, and when he speaks in public, which he rarely does, he owes the American public the truth. In his appearance on "Meet the Press" Sunday, Cheney fell woefully short of truth. On the subject of Iraq, the same can be said for President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. But Cheney is the latest example of administration mendacity, and therefore a good place to start in holding the administration accountable. The list: • Cheney repeated the mantra that the nation ignored the terrorism threat before Sept. 11. In fact, President Bill Clinton and his counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, took the threat very seriously, especially after the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. By December, Clarke had prepared plans for a military operation to attack Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, go after terrorist financing and work with police officials around the world to take down the terrorist network. Because Clinton was to leave office in a few weeks, he decided against handing Bush a war in progress as he worked to put a new administration together. Instead, Clarke briefed national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney and others. He emphasized that time was short and action was urgent. The Bush administration sat on the report for months and months. The first high-level discussion took place on Sept. 4, 2001, just a week before the attacks. The actions taken by the Bush administration following Sept. 11 closely parallel actions recommended in Clarke's nine-month-old plan. Who ignored the threat? • Cheney said that "we don't know" if there is a connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He's right only in the sense that "we don't know" if the sun will come up tomorrow. But all the evidence available says it will -- and that Iraq was not involved in Sept. 11. Cheney offered stuff, but it wasn't evidence. He said that one of those involved in planning the attack, an Iraqi-American, had returned to Iraq after the attack and had been protected, perhaps even supported, by Saddam Hussein. That proves exactly nothing about Iraq's links to the attack itself. Cheney also cited a supposed meeting in Prague between hijacker Mohamed Atta and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer -- but the FBI concluded that Atta was in Florida at the time of the supposed meeting. The CIA always doubted the story. And according to a New York Times article on Oct. 21, 2002, Czech President Vaclav Havel "quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports" of such a meeting. Moreover, the United States now has in custody the agent accused of meeting with Atta. Even though he must know how much he would benefit by simply saying, "Yes, I met Atta in Prague," there has been no announcement by the administration trumpeting that vindication of its belief in an Iraq-Sept. 11 link. • In trying to make that link, Cheney baldly asserted that Iraq is the "geographic base" for those who struck the United States on Sept. 11. No, that would be Afghanistan. • On weapons of mass destruction, Cheney made a number of statements that were misleading or simply false. For example, he said the United States knew Iraq had "500 tons of uranium." Well, yes, and so did the U.N. inspectors. What Cheney didn't say is that the uranium was low-grade waste from nuclear energy plants, and could not have been useful for weapons without sophisticated processing that Iraq was incapable of performing. Cheney also said, "To suggest that there is no evidence [in Iraq] that [Saddam] had aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons, I don't think is valid." It's probably not valid; Saddam wanted nuclear weapons. But Cheney is changing the subject: The argument before the war wasn't Saddam's aspirations; it was Saddam's active program to build nuclear weapons. Cheney also said "a gentleman" has come forward "with full designs for a process centrifuge system to enrich uranium and the key parts that you need to build such a system." That would be scientist Mahdi Obeidi, who had buried the centrifuge pieces in his back yard -- in 1991. Obeidi insisted that Iraq hadn't restarted its nuclear weapons program after the end of the first Gulf War. The centrifuge pieces might have signaled a potential future threat, but they actually disprove Cheney's prewar assertion that Iraq had, indeed, "reconstituted" its nuclear-weapons program. Cheney also said he put great store in the ongoing search for Saddam's WMD program: "We've got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay, who used to run UNSCOM [the U.N. inspection effort]." In fact, Kay did not run UNSCOM; for one year he was the chief inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency's team in Iraq. But it's funny Cheney should mention Kay. Last summer, the leader of the 1,400-person team searching for WMD expressed great confidence that they would find what they were looking for. He said he wouldn't publicize discoveries piecemeal but would submit a comprehensive report in mid-September. Apparently he has submitted the report to George Tenet at the CIA. The question now is whether it will ever be made public; several reports in the press have suggested that Kay has come up way short. In five months, 1,400 experts haven't found the WMD locations that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said before the war were well-known to the United States. Cheney also said that an investigation by the British had "revalidated the British claim that Saddam was, in fact, trying to acquire uranium in Africa -- what was in the State of the Union speech." The British investigation did nothing of the kind. A parliamentary investigative committee said the documents on the uranium are being reinvestigated, but that, based on the existence of those documents, the Blair government made a "reasonable" assertion and had not tried to deliberately mislead the British people. To explore every phony statement in the vice president's "Meet the Press" interview would take far more space than is available. This merely points out some of the most egregious examples. Opponents of the war are fond of saying that "Bush lied and our soldiers died." In fact, they'd have reason to assert that "Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lied and our soldiers died." It's past time the principals behind this mismanaged war were called to account for their deliberate misstatements.
P.S. According to Webster's' " lie : (li) n; 1. To tell an untrue statement made deliberately; falsehood. 2.To give a false impression. Nice chatting with you.
Cheney link of Iraq, 9/11 challenged By Anne E. Kornblut and Bryan Bender , Boston Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, 9/16/2003 WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Evidence of a connection, if any exists, has never been made public. Details that Cheney cited to make the case that the Iraqi dictator had ties to Al Qaeda have been dismissed by the CIA as having no basis, according to analysts and officials. Even before the war in Iraq, most Bush officials did not explicitly state that Iraq had a part in the attack on the United States two years ago. But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally televised interview two days ago, claiming that the administration is learning "more and more" about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks. The statement surprised some analysts and officials who have reviewed intelligence reports from Iraq. Democrats sharply attacked him for exaggerating the threat Iraq posed before the war. "There is no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11," Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat running for president, said in an interview last night. "There was no such relationship." A senior foreign policy adviser to Howard Dean, the Democratic front-runner, said it is "totally inappropriate for the vice president to continue making these allegations without bringing forward" any proof. Cheney and his representatives declined to comment on the vice president's statements. But the comments also surprised some in the intelligence community who are already simmering over the way the administration utilized intelligence reports to strengthen the case for the war last winter. Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism specialist, said that Cheney's "willingness to use speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations is appalling. It's astounding." In particular, current intelligence officials reiterated yesterday that a reported Prague visit in April 2001 between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent had been discounted by the CIA, which sent former agency Director James R. Woolsey to investigate the claim. Woolsey did not find any evidence to confirm the report, officials said, and President Bush did not include it in the case for war in his State of the Union address last January. But Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press," cited the report of the meeting as possible evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link and said it was neither confirmed nor discredited, saying : "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know." Multiple intelligence officials said that the Prague meeting, purported to be between Atta and senior Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, was dismissed almost immediately after it was reported by Czech officials in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and has since been discredited further. The CIA reported to Congress last year that it could not substantiate the claim, while American records indicate Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time, the officials said yesterday. Indeed, two intelligence officials said yesterday that Ani himself, now in US custody, has also refuted the report. The Czech government has also distanced itself from its original claim. A senior defense official with access to high-level intelligence reports expressed confusion yesterday over the vice president's decision to reair charges that have been dropped by almost everyone else. "There isn't any new intelligence that would precipitate anything like this," the official said, speaking on condition he not be named. Nonetheless, 69 percent of Americans believe that Hussein probably had a part in attacking the United States, according to a recent Washington Post poll. And Democratic senators have charged that the White House is fanning the misperception by mentioning Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks in ways that suggest a link. Bush administration officials insisted yesterday that they are learning more about various Iraqi connections with Al Qaeda. They said there is evidence suggesting a meeting took place between the head of Iraqi intelligence and Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the mid-1990s; another purported meeting was said to take place in Afghanistan, and during it Iraqi officials offered to provide chemical and biological weapons training, according to officials who have read transcripts of interrogations with Al Qaeda detainees. But there is no evidence proving the Iraqi regime knew about or took part in the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush officials said. Former senator Max Cleland, who is a member of the national commission investigating the attacks, said yesterday that classified documents he has reviewed on the subject weaken, rather than strengthen, administration assertions that Hussein's regime may have been allied with Al Qaeda. "The vice president trying to justify some connection is ludicrous," he said. Nonetheless, Cheney, in the "Meet the Press" interview Sunday, insisted that the United States is learning more about the links between Al Qaeda and Hussein. "We learn more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s," Cheney said, "that it involved training, for example, on [biological and chemical weapons], that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems." The claims are based on a prewar allegation by a "senior terrorist operative," who said he overheard an Al Qaeda agent speak of a mission to seek biological or chemical weapons training in Iraq, according to Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement to the United Nations in February. But intelligence specialists told the Globe last August that they have never confirmed that the training took place, or identified where it could have taken place. "The general public just doesn't have any independent way of weighing what is said," Cannistraro, the former CIA counterterrorism specialist, said. "If you repeat it enough times . . . then people become convinced it's the truth."
