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Bush: No evidence Saddam was involved in 9/11 attacks
Saddam did have al Qaeda ties, president says

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 Posted: 6:27 PM EDT (2227 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Wednesday there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 -- disputing an idea held by many Americans.

"There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties," the president said. But he also said, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11" attacks.

The president's comment was in line with a statement Tuesday by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said he not seen any evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks.

Yet, a new poll found that nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved. Rumsfeld said, "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

The administration has argued that Saddam's government had close links to al-Qaida, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden that masterminded the September 11 attacks.

On Sunday, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney said that success in stabilizing and democratizing Iraq would strike a major blow at the "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

And Tuesday, in an interview on ABC's "Nightline," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said that one of the reasons Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged."

In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney was asked whether he was surprised that more than two-thirds of Americans in a Washington Post poll would express a belief that Iraq was behind the attacks.

"No, I think it's not surprising that people make that connection," he replied.

Rice, asked about the same poll numbers, said, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."

*Lots* of backpedalling recently. Guess these pricks figure the Democrats are going to call them on all this crap so they may as well nip it in the bud now. Hah! Talk about misreading your opponent.

But even then, we still get howlers like, ""There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties."

No question? Really? He might have owned a tie with the words "al Qaeda" on it. Though he never wore it in public. The notion that he was in league with al Qaeda is far from a given. Anyone who knows anything about Middle East politics (which apparently excludes the entire Smirky McChimpster administration) knows that Saddam hated Islamic extremists and they hated Saddam. Saddam's Iraq was not an Islamist state, and it was regularly denounced by bin Laden as corrupt and insufficiently Muslim. Saddam's gonna give WMD to a guy who wants to overthrow him? Uh huh. Tell me another one.

They're saying something that's true at the same time as something that isn't, hoping the novelty of them telling the truth will cause us to believe the accompanying lie. What a bunch of raving sociopaths.

And then there are these gems:

On Sunday, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney said that success in stabilizing and democratizing Iraq would strike a major blow at the "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

And Tuesday, in an interview on ABC's "Nightline," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said that one of the reasons Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged."

Oh, so Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, but he lived in the same general part of the world as the guys who did? That's a legitimate reason to go stomp Iraq? That's like executing the guy who lived next door to Tim McVeigh and saying "close enough."

Yes, the Dems are a bunch of spineless pussies, but I'm so disgusted with the unelected wrecking crew in charge now that I'll vote Democratic even if they nominate Monica Lewinsky's blue dress.

Ryan

This isn't new, but it's fitting:

[url=http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-iraq.html]MEDIA ADVISORY:
Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments: [/url]
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence

June 20, 2003

Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday often make news for days afterward. Since prominent government officials dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual for the Monday editions of major newspapers to report on interviews done by the Sunday chat shows.

But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.

Here is a transcript of the exchange:

CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."

RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"

CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."

Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response "go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not."

Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the flawed intelligence-- and therefore the war-- may have been a result of deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The public deserves a fuller accounting of this story.

lukpac wrote:This isn't new, but it's fitting:

[url=http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-iraq.html]MEDIA ADVISORY:
Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments: [/url]
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence

I'm not going to post the whole thing here, but there's a Spinsanity article that cover this:

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030903.html