Cheney now admits Iraq had NOTHING to do with 911!

[Coyote]

They all had to say there was no connection when asked directly but there was always a strong implication that there was a connection. When the reasons for the Iraq war and the alleged WMD were discussed, 9/11 was often mentioned as if there was a connection.

I think the media did that work for them. I remember watching Fox and they were pushing the Czech meeting REALLY hard. I am sure other organizations pushed the same story. I think the amount of energy they put into that made the American people believe there was a connection and that Saddam was just as much a threat to the US as bin Laden.

exactly, the MEDIA pushed a lot of shit that was never once claimed by the Bush admin

I don't think so. I think the Bush administration represented a whole new era in media manipulation. I wouldn't be surprised if the Obama administration followed suit. Both include/included a number of very media-saavy people.

Look at how carefully select material was "leaked" from the White House while a shitload of other stuff was kept rigidly under lock and key. For one of the most secretive administrations since Nixon - I find that odd.

But a some of the blame lies with the media - for some time they've been an abysmal failure as the Fourth Estate maintaining a check on government excess. They fail to ask tough questions and they've failed check facts and they've allowed themselves to be manipulated by the very people they are supposed to report on instead concentrating on such important issues as the paternity of Anna Nicole's baby....

 

[DiveCon]

I think the media did that work for them. I remember watching Fox and they were pushing the Czech meeting REALLY hard. I am sure other organizations pushed the same story. I think the amount of energy they put into that made the American people believe there was a connection and that Saddam was just as much a threat to the US as bin Laden.

exactly, the MEDIA pushed a lot of shit that was never once claimed by the Bush admin

I don't think so. I think the Bush administration represented a whole new era in media manipulation. I wouldn't be surprised if the Obama administration followed suit. Both include/included a number of very media-saavy people.

Look at how carefully select material was "leaked" from the White House while a shitload of other stuff was kept rigidly under lock and key. For one of the most secretive administrations since Nixon - I find that odd.

But a some of the blame lies with the media - for some time they've been an abysmal failure as the Fourth Estate maintaining a check on government excess. They fail to ask tough questions and they've failed check facts and they've allowed themselves to be manipulated by the very people they are supposed to report on instead concentrating on such important issues as the paternity of Anna Nicole's baby....

and you actually expect the media to report the facts NOW?
after the way they have been fawning over Obama

if you believe that, i have some ocean front property in AZ for sale

 

[garyd]

I think you represent a whole new level of insanity, dude or dudette as the case may be. Bush was never on record as saying that Saddam knew anything about 9/11. There was evidence that Sadaam and Al Qeada were holding talks of some sort though no one has ever found out what the hell they were talking about though I doubt they were exchanginf baclava recipes. Our wondrous media along with many on the left immediately leaped to the conclusion that they were sharing operation info.

The first ones on that Bandwagon was the NY Times and Bush immediately issued a correction on that point which virtually everyone ignored.

 

[Political Junky]

"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Mr. Hussein] was involved in 9/11," Mr. Cheney told an audience gathered for lunch at the National Press Club in Washington. "We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true."
Newsvine - Cheney admits Iraq had no link to 9/11

Ya cause he only said that repeatedly before the invasion of Iraq. As did the President and the Military and the Intelligence.

Iraq was invaded for misdeeds Iraq did, not because of 9/11. That is one of the biggest lies ever told, that we invaded Iraq claiming they had anything to do with 9/11.

Cheney repeatedly spoke of secret meetings in Prague, and more. You forget that all this is easy to find on Google.

 

[garyd]

there you go again. No one knows to this day what those meetings were about you flaming idiot. It is doubtful in the extreme that in such early stages of a possible rapprochement that they would be sharing operational plans.

In other words dolt it is quite possible that Saddma and Al Queada could be talking and Saddam still not know a damn thing about Osama's plans for the WTC and the Pentagon.

 

[Political Junky]

there you go again. No one knows to this day what those meetings were about you flaming idiot. It is doubtful in the extreme that in such early stages of a possible rapprochement that they would be sharing operational plans.

In other words dolt it is quite possible that Saddma and Al Queada could be talking and Saddam still not know a damn thing about Osama's plans for the WTC and the Pentagon.

It was proved that the Prague meeting didn't ever happen. It was a talking point of Cheney's.

 

[jreeves]

there you go again. No one knows to this day what those meetings were about you flaming idiot. It is doubtful in the extreme that in such early stages of a possible rapprochement that they would be sharing operational plans.

In other words dolt it is quite possible that Saddma and Al Queada could be talking and Saddam still not know a damn thing about Osama's plans for the WTC and the Pentagon.

It was proved that the Prague meeting didn't ever happen. It was a talking point of Cheney's.

Saddam did collaborate with AQ though that is proven. Would you like links?

 

[Political Junky]

there you go again. No one knows to this day what those meetings were about you flaming idiot. It is doubtful in the extreme that in such early stages of a possible rapprochement that they would be sharing operational plans.

In other words dolt it is quite possible that Saddma and Al Queada could be talking and Saddam still not know a damn thing about Osama's plans for the WTC and the Pentagon.

It was proved that the Prague meeting didn't ever happen. It was a talking point of Cheney's.

Saddam did collaborate with AQ though that is proven. Would you like links?

By all means give links ... do you have any that aren't from wingnut sites?

 

[DiveCon]

"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Mr. Hussein] was involved in 9/11," Mr. Cheney told an audience gathered for lunch at the National Press Club in Washington. "We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true."
Newsvine - Cheney admits Iraq had no link to 9/11

Ya cause he only said that repeatedly before the invasion of Iraq. As did the President and the Military and the Intelligence.

Iraq was invaded for misdeeds Iraq did, not because of 9/11. That is one of the biggest lies ever told, that we invaded Iraq claiming they had anything to do with 9/11.

Cheney repeatedly spoke of secret meetings in Prague, and more. You forget that all this is easy to find on Google.

and the government of the Czech Republic still stands by their claim

 

[DiveCon]

there you go again. No one knows to this day what those meetings were about you flaming idiot. It is doubtful in the extreme that in such early stages of a possible rapprochement that they would be sharing operational plans.

In other words dolt it is quite possible that Saddma and Al Queada could be talking and Saddam still not know a damn thing about Osama's plans for the WTC and the Pentagon.

It was proved that the Prague meeting didn't ever happen. It was a talking point of Cheney's.

really?
prove it

 

[DiveCon]

It was proved that the Prague meeting didn't ever happen. It was a talking point of Cheney's.

Saddam did collaborate with AQ though that is proven. Would you like links?

By all means give links ... do you have any that aren't from wingnut sites?

where are YOUR links asshole?

 

[Political Junky]

Saddam did collaborate with AQ though that is proven. Would you like links?

By all means give links ... do you have any that aren't from wingnut sites?

where are YOUR links asshole?

jreeves promised links .. I'll wait.

 

[jreeves]

By all means give links ... do you have any that aren't from wingnut sites?

where are YOUR links asshole?

jreeves promised links .. I'll wait.

Here you go...
Report Details Saddam's Terrorist Ties - March 14, 2008 - The New York Sun
600,000 documents captured in the Iraq war attests to Saddam Hussein's willingness to use terrorism to target Americans and work closely with jihadist organizations throughout the Middle East.

The report, released this week by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says it found no "smoking gun" linking Iraq operationally to Al Qaeda. But it does say Saddam collaborated with known Al Qaeda affiliates and a wider constellation of Islamist terror groups.

The report, titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," finds that:

• The Iraqi Intelligence Service in a 1993 memo to Saddam agreed on a plan to train commandos from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat and was founded by Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

• In the same year, Saddam ordered his intelligence service to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia." At the time, Al Qaeda was working with warlords against American forces there.

• Saddam's intelligence services maintained extensive support networks for a wide range of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations, including but not limited to Hamas. Among the other Palestinian groups Saddam supported at the time was Force 17, the private army loyal to Yasser Arafat.

• Beginning in 1999, Iraq's intelligence service began providing "financial and moral support" for a small radical Islamist Kurdish sect the report does not name. A Kurdish Islamist group called Ansar al Islam in 2002 would try to assassinate the regional prime minister in the eastern Kurdish region, Barham Salih.

• In 2001, Saddam's intelligence service drafted a manual titled "Lessons in Secret Organization and Jihad Work—How to Organize and Overthrow the Saudi Royal Family." In the same year, his intelligence service submitted names of 10 volunteer "martyrs" for operations inside the Kingdom.

• In 2000, Iraq sent a suicide bomber through Northern Iraq who intended to travel to London to assassinate Ahmad Chalabi, at the time an Iraqi opposition leader who would later go on to be an Iraqi deputy prime minister. The mission was aborted after the bomber could not obtain a visa to enter the United Kingdom.

The report finds that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who is wanted by the FBI for mixing the chemicals for the 1993 World Center Attack, was a prisoner, and not a guest, in Iraq. An audio file of Saddam cited by the report indicates that the Iraqi dictator did not trust him and at one point said that he thought his testimony was too "organized." Saddam said on an audio file cited by the report that he suspected that the first attack could be the work of either Israel or American intelligence, or perhaps a Saudi or Egyptian faction.

The report also undercuts the claim made by many on the left and many at the CIA that Saddam, as a national socialist, was incapable of supporting or collaborating with the Islamist al Qaeda. The report concludes that instead Iraq's relationship with Osama bin Laden's organization was similar to the relationship between the rival Colombian cocaine cartels in the 1990s. Both were rivals in some sense for market share, but also allies when it came to expanding the size of the overall market.

The Pentagon study finds, "Recognizing Iraq as a second, or parallel, 'terror cartel' that was simultaneously threatened by and somewhat aligned with its rival helps to explain the evidence emerging from the detritus of Saddam's regime."

A long time skeptic of the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq and a former CIA senior Iraq analyst, Judith Yaphe yesterday said, "I think the report indicates that Saddam was willing to work with almost any group be it nationalist or Islamic, that was willing to work for his objectives. But in the long term he did not trust many of the Islamist groups, especially those linked to Saudi Arabia or Iran." She added, "He really did want to get anti-American operations going. The fact that they had little success shows in part their incompetence and unwilling surrogates."

 

[jreeves]

By all means give links ... do you have any that aren't from wingnut sites?

where are YOUR links asshole?

jreeves promised links .. I'll wait.

I wouldn't say something unless I had proof...

 

[jreeves]

You sure as hell didn't here the TV news media reporting on this. Especially that the report found that Saddam collaborated with AQ.

 

[Chris]

Saddam couldn't care less about AQ.

He was a secular leader who only cared about staying in power. The Godfather was his favorite movie.

How pathetic that Bush-Cheney used this bogus link to waste 4,000 American lives and $800 billion dollars.

 

[jreeves]

More on the report, 'Saddam and Terrorism'....
Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism
Abstract: Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist–operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a “de facto” link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

 

[jreeves]

Saddam couldn't care less about AQ.

He was a secular leader who only cared about staying in power. The Godfather was his favorite movie.

How pathetic that Bush-Cheney used this bogus link to waste 4,000 American lives and $800 billion dollars.

They collaborated together albeit hesitantly....

 

[Political Junky]

Saddam couldn't care less about AQ.

He was a secular leader who only cared about staying in power. The Godfather was his favorite movie.

How pathetic that Bush-Cheney used this bogus link to waste 4,000 American lives and $800 billion dollars.

Exactly

 

[jreeves]

Saddam couldn't care less about AQ.

He was a secular leader who only cared about staying in power. The Godfather was his favorite movie.

How pathetic that Bush-Cheney used this bogus link to waste 4,000 American lives and $800 billion dollars.

Exactly

You both are pathetic.

PJ you claim that there was no ties between Saddam and AQ. Yet when I show there is ties, you claim it wasn't justified. When in Actuality, the intelligence community was reporting....
Declassified Excerpts from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq
Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction

We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and
restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as
well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if
left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during
this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these
Key Judgments.)
We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD
efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception
efforts. Revelations after the Gulf war starkly demonstrate
the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information.
We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's
WJMD programs.
Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its
chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and
invested more heavily in biological weapons; in the view of
most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons
program.
Iraq's growing ability to sell oil illicitly increases
Baghdad's capabilities to finance WMD programs; annual
earnings in cash and goods have more than quadrupled, from
$580 million in 1998 to about $3 billion this year.
Iraq has largely rebuilt missile and biological weapons
facilities damaged during

[[Page E1546]]

Operation Desert Fox and has expanded its chemical and
biological infrastructure under the cover of civilian
production.
Baghdad has exceeded UN range limits of 150 km with its
ballistic missiles and is working with unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs), which allow for a more lethal means to
deliver biological and, less likely, chemical warfare agents.
Although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear
weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent
on acquiring them. Most agencies assess that Baghdad started
reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that UNSCOM
inspectors departed--December 1998.
How quickly Iraq will obtain its first nuclear weapon
depends on when it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile
material.
If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad
it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a
year.
Without such material from abroad, Iraq probably would not
be able to make a weapon until 2007 to 2009, owing to
inexperience in building and operating centrifuge facilities
to produce highly enriched uranium and challenges in
procuring the necessary equipment and expertise.
Most agencies believe that Saddam's personal interest in
and Iraq's aggressive attempts to obtain high-strength
aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors--as well as Iraq's
attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines,
and machine tools--provide compelling evidence that Saddam is
reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's
nuclear weapons program. (DOE agrees that reconstitution of
the nuclear program is underway but assesses that the tubes
probably are not part of the program.)
Iraq's efforts to re-establish and enhance its cadre of
weapons personnel as well as activities at several suspect
nuclear sites further indicate that reconstitution is
underway.