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host,
I've read every word of each article you linked. There's a lot of stuff there. However, hardly any of it has to do with the question at hand: what form did the Bush administration's alleged claims of a tie between Iraq and 9/11 take? You posted lots of stuff about Zarqawi, and lots of stuff about broad ties between Iraq and terrorism in general, and ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in particular. However, these don't answer the question we're examining here - which is Iraq and 9/11. I'd like to focus on this one particular aspect before moving to larger things. I, for one, don't think that a general coexistance of Iraq and Al Qaeda agents is equal to a link to the 9/11 attacks. We've thought from almost the beginning that those attacks were orchestrated and executed by a small number of people within the Qaeda organization.
In all that material, the argument that the Bush administration claimed Iraq was tied to 9/11 occupied approximately 9 lines, and came to 2 things. The first was a reiterated story about Cheney citing the Czech government's confirmation that Atta met with Iraqi officials in Prague. Certainly this was faulty intelligence. There's no reason now to believe that it happened.
The second thing in ALL of those articles is op-ed columnists stating that the Bush administration was trying hard to link Iraq to 9/11. None of them cites any specific instances of this effort other than Cheney's repeated mistaken reliance on the Czech report (which was thought for some time to be true).
Here's the crux of my question. If, in fact, the administration engaged in an devious attempt to link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, there should be a broad and clear pattern of stating this in media outlets. Can you cite these? Or is this meme due to Cheney's mis-statements on one incident and the broadly pursued theme of Zarqawi?
Since I'm going to bother to read all of the links you provide, please do me (and other posters) the courtesy of ensuring that they are topical and organized in a way that supports whatever your contention may be.
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Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam
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