From USA Today: “President Bush on Thursday disputed the Sept. 11 commission’s finding that there was no ‘collaborative relationship’ between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the attacks.”
“There was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda,” Bush insisted following a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House.
“This administration never said that the 9-11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda,” he said.
“We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, for example, Iraqi intelligence agents met with (Osama) bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda in Sudan.”
“The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said Wednesday that no evidence exists that al-Qaeda had strong ties to Saddam Hussein
Goalposts?
Shiite, the Dems just want to take the ball back and go home. They don’t want to play anymore.
Like a little tantrum, they have decided to sacrifice unwilling college kids to the draft in order to score political points. This from the same party who led the charge to abolish the draft.
They have gone insane Jeff. Nothing short of a picture of Osama standing next to Saddam in a field full of anthrax tipped missiles would convince them the war is justified.
Hey George, faster, please.
I’ll disagree Jeff. These people are very serious about fighting and winning the war. Their war against Bush, that is. And if the country ends up as “collateral damage,” that’s a price they seem to be willing to pay.
Well, the Commission staff says that they “have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks on the U.S.” That’s a distinction, and one that is different than “they didn’t cooperate.”
As Andrew McCarthy (prosecutor on 1993 WTC attack) has pointed out, “The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden’s ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.” See: http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406170840.asp
Also, contrast how the staff report characterizes the Khobar Towers attack:
“We have seen strong but indirect evidence that his [Bin Laden’s] organization did in fact play some as yet unknown role in the Khobar attack.”
They have indirect evidence of an unknown role. Which means what exactly? I’d say they have no credible evidence. (It’s been reported for some time that it was an Iranian-backed Hezbollah group that was responsible.) But why the lack of clarity in this concluding statement, as compared with the statement discussing the Iraq/al Qaeda connection?
We’ve seen demonstration of a lack of seriousness on behalf of the Commission, and now we see evidence of an agenda on behalf of the staff. Sorry state of affairs.
As Forbes has pointed out, the media reports on this Commission report ( BTW, did the Commission ever have any credibility ? ) are uniformly misrepresenting what the Commission report says, and misrepresenting what the Bush administration has said in the past.
But other than that, they are perfectly accurate … we think.
I think it is counter productive for our government to characterize each individual Islamic terrorist group as some sort of competing olympic team.
Hey folks, THEY are all on the same team, WHY AREN’T WE??????
It is getting harder every day to continue giving Big Media the benefit of the doubt concerning their blantant misrepresentations of the facts.
The forecast is for deep depression. And more ammo.
Not to be contrarian (again), but the question preceding Bush’s answer was whether there was a “colloborative relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The answer posited “a relationship” with “numerous contacts.”
I mean, before the advent of the “Do Not Call” registry, I had numerous, albeit one-sided contacts with Sprint. My telling them to “fuck themselves” did not equate to a colloborative relationship, unless they unexpectedly took my advice.
Couldn’t you say that the commission staffers and Big Media have caused President Bush to admit he didn’t beat his wife . . . he’ll never get a break.
(why does Sullivan make that a small “p” in president? huh? Is it because he has a small “p”?)
I don’t mean to be contrarian back, norbizness, but James Thompson of the 911 Commission just told Bill O’Reilly that there was no collaborative relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda with regard to 9/11 , but that there were clear ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda—which is precisely in line with the Bush position. He said further that he is quite angry with the press—particularly the NYT—whom he feels are couching the Commission’s findings in completely misleading terms.
He’s a Republican, so take that for what you think it’s worth. To me he seems like an honest fellow.
As I’ve sworn off cable news talk shows for Lent (Norbizness Lent = 40 years), I’ll have to check out the transcript when it comes out. I just read a story quoting Lee Hamilton saying that the national press has set up a false dichotomy between the Commission’s findings and the Administration’s position; so I definitely don’t want you to think that I was defending the headline-mongering.
The question that remains to be answered was whether the ties/contacts ever produced anything resembling colloboration or cooperation.
Heh. I watch it so I can yell at the TV, and so that I can argue to my wife that I’m too busy arguing with the TV to change a diaper at the moment.
Re: colloboration / cooperation. I think you’re right that the question remains to be answered, and I think time will tell. One of the problems, I suspect, in determining the level of cooperation, is that a lot of these terror groups tend to be fluid—which is to say, just because a particular terrorist doesn’t “belong” to Al-Qaeda, doesn’t mean that terrorist doesn’t belong to Al-Qaeda, if you know what I mean.
Oh. And off-topic: Alan Ashby isn’t fit to hold Steve Swisher’s jock.
I’m not a liberal, let me just state that up front here. I just wonder ‘why?’ after Sept 11th Bush didn
I don’t think it’s either / or, Mary. I think we’re quite capable of doing several things at once. After all, you’re certainly not going to use a lot of conventional American military forces to ferret out Al Qaeda cells in Hamburg or Paris or Detroit or Casablanca.
As for Homeland Security…well, you’ve got people here now who want to burn the PATRIOT Act. What more would you like done? We’re an open society. The way to preserve that open society in a fight with terrorists is to take them on outside of the homeland, while simultaneously taking away their safe harbors, either by military force (as in Afghanistan and Iraq, or through other means). Personally, I can’t think of a better strategy.
Incidentally, I would have no problem with your being liberal, just so long as you don’t start attacking other commenters or me with a lot of name calling, and with accusations that veer toward the wildly general.
I go after very specific leftists or left-liberals on this site. I generally do it only to public figures, and I use very broad satire to do so. What I don’t do is go after “liberals” in general, as there are plenty of moderate liberals with whom I would probably agree on many issues. What I don’t like are nanny-statist “progressives” (as a group) and hard leftists (socialists, etc). I tend to be classically liberal, which these days aligns me more with hawkish libertarians and conservatives. Such is the nature of labels, I guess.
“I watch it so I can yell at the TV, and so that I can argue to my wife that I’m too busy arguing with the TV to change a diaper at the moment.”
I would rather change diapers than watch TV news coverage. There is less shit involved.
mary: If we are serious about getting rid of terrorism with a global reach (and I believe this administration is), then we are going to engaged in the ME for the duration. Now, if you were in charge, would you want to have a declared enemy of your country sitting on your flank, every move you make, waiting for the change to help out your other enemies? No, you take him down. In WWII we went into Italy before France because we didn’t want them causing problems for us as we pushed into Germany.
I swear that they explicitly said they did not believe Saddam was connected to the attacks on the US.
To those saying we don’t know the level of collaboration yet, how long do you think we should have waited to find out? Two years? Five? Ten? Would the smoking gun then be a chemical bomb going off at New Years in Times Square? How long could we afford to wait?
Personally, the fact that there were ANY CONTACTS AT ALL is good enough for me. Here you had two entities that:
1) had a common enemy (we)
2) had an utter disregard for life and a desire to inflict horrendous casualties
3) One had the scientific talent and the infrastructure to manufacture weapons of mass destruction which they had shown in the past they had no qualms about using
4) One had the ability to infiltrate and carry out massive attacks against our country while leaving no fingerprints as to the ultimate culprit
An analogous situation would be if a burglar were to enter my home in the dead of night. I am not waiting for the muzzle flash to defend myself and my family, I will shoot to kill.
And, remember Bush’s SOTU speech. We cannot wait for the threat to become imminent. If we do, it is too late.
Aaron, stop mindlessly repeating the talking point. Nobody is arguing about Saddam’s direct connection to the 9-11 attack. We are arguing about his ties to Al Qaeda in general, which the commission confirmed existed.
I was refering to the administration stating prior to the war that they did not believe Saddam was directly involved in 9/11, that Saddam did, however, provide broad support for terrorism, dumbass.
What’s left to say? I mean, now the quibble is over the relative strength of the ties between committed mass murderers, each of whom declared war on the US…?
I like that line enough to steal it. But I can expect to be challenged, “What do you mean, Saddam declared war on the U.S.?” Could you amplify a little? Did you have something specific in mind, or rather his general pattern of behavior in the late ‘90s and early 2000s?
Violated conditions of the cease fire, attempted to assasinate a former president, consistently fired on US and British planes patrolling the NFZ, etc., etc., …
Now Putin is chiming in, saying Russia provided intel of Saddam Hussein’s plans to conduct terror attacks against the US. Hey, if you can’t trust ex-KGB’s word, who can you trust?
Mary, the problem with focusing all of our efforts on destroying every last Al Qaeda cell, is that Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist organization out there that wants you, me, and every other person in Western civilization dead. They just happened to be the group that pulled of the 9/11 attack. It could have just as easily been any one of several other terrorist organizations; every one of them wishes they’d done it. In a way, Al Qaeda was just the tool of choice, no more or less different from picking between two similar guns from different manufacturers.
That’s why taking out every last Al Qaeda cell isn’t as important as taking out Saddam was. Saddam supported terrorists of all flavors. Removing him from power struck a blow against all terrorists, not just Al Qaeda.
Regarding the idea of focusing on taking out terrorist cells around the world, think about the reactions of our “allies” that the Dems feel we’ve “antagonized into uncooperation.” Just imagine the outrage from Europe when it’s discovered we had agents carrying out targetted killings of known and/or suspected terrorists. That scenario, while it’s used in action/thrillers all the time, is one of the most egregious violations of diplomacy and sovereignty, imaginable. Countries, knowingly or unknowingly, that allow foreign agents assemble within their borders in preparation for acts within, or without their border, have forfeited their sovereignty. As is the case with Afghanistan and Iraq, is also the case should CIA agents target terrorists in Hamburg or Paris.
(It is admitted, of course, that CIA and FBI work hand in hand with foreign governments around the world, sharing intelligence in a collaborative fashion, a distinction very much at the centerpoint of this thread. The CIA and FBI are not merely having tea with foreign officials. It’s naive to believe that’s all al Qaeda and Iraq were doing.)
It’s possible to carry off such a strategy in a third world country, e.g. the Phillipines, but then it’s our military that’s invited in to assist the locals on the ground, and it’s very much out in the open. We’re also doing that in the Sahara Africa countries of Mali and Niger. While clearly not Al Qaeda, it is about terrorist organizations taking advantage of near-nonexistent governments unable to control their territories and borders, conditions that made Afghanistan and Iraq similarily attractive to terror groups.