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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
......One of the reasons I like Bush and Chaney is they say what they mean and mean what they say, even if what they say is not tactful or smooth.
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To All readers, forgive me for doing this.....it seemed to achieve the result, after posting the facts over and over and over.....of stopping the ludicrous statements that "Saddam had WMD but......",
ace......I read what I've quoted from you, above, and my reaction is that it is as if I am not even here....as if I have not already posted the following:
Bush and Cheney are frequent liars, ace....on life and death matters concerning our national security:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20011114.html
Interview of the Vice President
by CBS's 60 Minutes II
November 14, 2001
......<b>Gloria Borger: Well, you know that Muhammad Atta the ringleader of the hijackers actually met with Iraqi intelligence.
Vice President Cheney: I know this. In Prague in April of this year as well as earlier. And that information has been made public. The Czechs made that public. Obviously that's an interesting piece of information.</b>
Gloria Borger: Sounds like you have your suspicions?
Vice President Cheney: I can't operate on suspicions. The President and the rest of us who are involved in this effort have to make what we think are the right decisions for the United States and the national security arena and that's what we're doing. And it doesn't do a lot of good for us to speculate. We'd rather operate based on facts and make announcements when we've got announcements to make. .........
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20011209.html
December 9, 2001
The Vice President Appears on NBC's Meet the Press
.......RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq. When you were last on this program, September 16, five days after the attack on our country, I asked you whether there was any evidence that Iraq was involved in the attack and you said no.
<b>Since that time, a couple of articles have appeared which I want to get you to react to. The first: The Czech interior minister said today that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 terrorists attacks on the United States, just five months before the synchronized hijackings and mass killings were carried out..
</b>
........RUSSERT: The plane on the ground in Iraq used to train non-Iraqi hijackers.
Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?
<b>CHENEY: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.</b>
Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point. But that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue...........
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<b>Curiously, on June 17, 2004, VP Cheney seems to have denied his own Nov. and Dec., 2001, publicly televised, videotaped, and officially archived statements:</b>
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10036925/
'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Nov. 11th
Updated: 10:08 a.m. ET Nov 14, 2005
......MATTHEWS: All this week we‘ve been examining the Bush administration‘s claims about Iraq that sold America on the war. We‘ve looked at claims that Saddam was a nuclear threat, that our troops would be greeted as liberators and that administration ally Ahmed Chalabi could be trusted.
All of those claims, of course, were false. Tonight, we offer you a closer look at another key White House argument. The alleged link between Iraq and 9/11. HARDBALL correspondent David Shuster reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID SHUSTER, HARDBALL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just days after the 9/11 attack, Vice President Cheney on “Meet the Press” said the response should be aimed at Osama bin Laden‘s al Qaeda terror organization, not Saddam Hussein‘s Iraq.
DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Saddam Hussein is bottled up at this point, but clearly we continue to have fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned.
TIM RUSSERT, NBC HOST: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation?
CHENEY: No.
SHUSTER: But during that same time period, according to Bob Woodward‘s book, “Bush at War,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for military strikes on Iraq. And during cabinet meetings, Cheney quote, expressed deep concern about Saddam and would not rule out going after Iraq at some point.
That point started to come 11 months later, just before 9/11‘s first anniversary. The president and vice president had decided to redirect their war on terror to Baghdad.
So, with the help of the newly-formed White House Iraq group, which consisted of top officials and strategists, the selling of a war on Iraq began and the administration‘s rhetoric about Saddam changed.
Not only did White House hawks tell The New York Times for a front-page Sunday exclusive that Saddam was building a nuclear weapon, and not only did five administration officials that day go on the Sunday television shows to repeat the charge.......
CHENEY: That he is in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
SHUSTER: But the White House started claiming that Iraq and the group responsible for 9/11 were one in the same.
BUSH: The war on terror—you can‘t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.
We‘ve learned that Iraq has trained members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.
He‘s a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda.
SHUSTER: In pushing the Saddam/Iraq/9/11 connection, both the president and the vice president made two crucial claims.
First, they alleged there had been a 1994 meeting in Sudan between Osama bin Laden and an Iraqi intelligence official.
BUSH: We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.
SHUSTER: After the Iraq war began, however, the 9/11 Commission was formed and reported that while Osama bin Laden may have requested Iraqi help, quote, Iraq apparently never responded.
<b>The other crucial pre-war White House claim was that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met in a senior Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech republic in April of 2001.
GLORIA BORGER, CNBC HOST: You have said in the past that it was quote, pretty well confirmed.
CHENEY: No, I never said that.
BORGER: OK, I think that is...
CHENEY: ... I never said that. That‘s absolutely not...</b>
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Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
By Jim Miklaszewski
Chief Pentagon correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:14 p.m. ET March 2, 2004
......In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and <b>the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.</b>
....The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, >but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” Cressey added.
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Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3070394/
Positive test for terror toxins in Iraq
Evidence of ricin, botulinum at Islamic militants’ camp
By EXCLUSIVE By Preston Mendenhall
MSNBC
SARGAT, Iraq, April 4 - Preliminary tests conducted by MSNBC.com indicate that the deadly toxins ricin and botulinum were present on two items found at a camp in a remote mountain region of northern Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training center by Islamic militants with ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network.
<h3>.....The territory of northern Iraq where the traces of ricin were detected is not under the control of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.</h3>
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Quote:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh091806.shtml
.....As of August 21, Bush was still flatly asserting that Saddam “had relations with Zarqawi.” Raddatz asked him why he said it—and Bush engaged in standard blather. This has gone on, for year after year, because the press corps sits there and takes it—as they did last Friday, when Bush dissembled in their faces without challenge again.
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 21, 2006
Press Conference by the President
White House Conference Center Briefing Room
......Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?
THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- <h3>who had relations with Zarqawi.</h3>
(Watch him deliver the "Zarqawi" lie in a 2 minute video, here:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Bus...-08-21-062.wmv )
Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East.
Now, look, part of the reason we went into Iraq was -- the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction. But I also talked about the human suffering in Iraq, and I also talked the need to advance a freedom agenda. And so my question -- my answer to your question is, is that, imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment and so much hatred that people came and killed 3,000 of our citizens.
You know, I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of "we're going to stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.
Q What did Iraq have to do with that?
THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?
Q The attack on the World Trade Center?
THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case. .......
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3 weeks later, last September, when some of the the determinations about Iraq of the Senate intel. committee were finally released, Mr. Cheney spoke to Tim Russert and said the opposite of what the Senate intel. report and the CIA had concluded. Cheney did the same thing this week, on April 5.....telling the same long disproved falsehoods that he told last September, and many times before that:
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17970427/
Saddam’s pre-war ties to al-Qaeda discounted
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Updated: 10:56 a.m. ET April 6, 2007
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.
The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.
The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.......
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0070405-3.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
April 5, 2007
Interview of the Vice President by Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show
Via Telephone
1:07 P.M. EDT
Q It's always a great privilege to have the Vice President, Dick Cheney, with us. Mr. Vice President, welcome once again to our program.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, Rush. It's good to be back on......
.....Q It may not just be Iraq. Yesterday I read that Ike Skelton, who chairs -- I forget the name of the committee -- in the next defense appropriations bill for fiscal '08 is going to actually remove the phrase "global war on terror," because they don't think it's applicable. They want to refer to conflicts as individual skirmishes. But they're going to try to rid the defense appropriation bill -- and, thus, official government language -- of that term. Does that give you any indication of their motivation or what they think of the current plight in which the country finds itself?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure -- well, it's just flawed thinking. I like Ike Skelton; I worked closely with Ike when I was Secretary of Defense. He's Chairman of the Armed Services Committee now. Ike is a good man. He's just dead wrong about this, though. Think about -- <b>just to give you one example, Rush, remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated -- after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene,</b> and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq. ......
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That was Cheney, this week, and this was Bush, himself, in 2002 and 2003:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20030208.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 8, 2003
President's Radio Address
......... One of the greatest dangers we face is that weapons of mass destruction might be passed to terrorists who would not hesitate to use those weapons. Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases.
We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. ........
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030206-17.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 6, 2003
President Bush: "World Can Rise to This Moment"
.......One of the greatest dangers we face is that weapons of mass destruction might be passed to terrorists, who would not hesitate to use those weapons. Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.
We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. The network runs a poison and explosive training center in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. The head of this network traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment and stayed for months. Nearly two dozen associates joined him there and have been operating in Baghdad for more than eight months.
The same terrorist network operating out of Iraq is responsible for the murder, the recent murder, of an American citizen, an American diplomat, Laurence Foley. The same network has plotted terrorism against France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Republic of Georgia, and Russia, and was caught producing poisons in London. The danger Saddam Hussein poses reaches across the world.
This is the situation as we find it. Twelve years after Saddam Hussein agreed to disarm, and 90 days after the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 by a unanimous vote, Saddam Hussein was required to make a full declaration of his weapons programs. He has not done so. Saddam Hussein was required to fully cooperate in the disarmament of his regime; he has not done so. Saddam Hussein was given a final chance; he is throwing that chance away. ......
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds
By Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A01
...... Then, in declaring the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, Bush linked Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions."
Moments later, Bush added: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got." .......
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....and Bush again, here:
From my Sept. 12, 2006 post:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...24&postcount=3
We offer here, mostly what Bozell branded as, reporting of the "Liberal Media".
With a member of our family in the military, and now about to be deployed to the M.E., we wanted to know who to believe.
The "news" is, that it is not Mr. Cheney:
On sunday, he was saying this, during a prominent news program, telecast:
(From my last post, at the bottom)
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
.....Q Then why in the lead-up to the war was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al Qaeda -- whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11; separate and apart from that is the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern, a relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al Qaeda......
........we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02......
.........Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda......
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<b>Cheney was saying it, even though this was reported, just two days before:</b>
Quote:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2410591
By JIM ABRAMS, AP Writer Fri Sep 8, 12:17 PM ET
WASHINGTON - There's no evidence
Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on
Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts
President Bush's justification for going to war.....
.....It discloses for the first time an October 2005
CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates."......
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<b>The rest of this post consists of 17 news article excerpts that refute Mr. Cheney's assertions to Tim Russert last September, and to Rush Limbaugh, this week....</b>
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Posted May 2, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=63
Posted May 2, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=64
Posted June 26, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=22
Posted Sept. 9, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...93&postcount=7
Posted Sept. 15, 2006:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=47
.....and this article:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/po...tel.ready.html
Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: November 6, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.’’
click to read the rest... click to show
The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi’s statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration’s misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence.
An administration official declined to comment on the D.I.A. report on Mr. Libi......
....The report issued by the Senate intelligence committee in July 2004 questioned whether some versions of intelligence report prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libi’s claims.
But neither that report nor another issued by the Sept. 11 commission made any reference to the existence of the earlier and more skeptical 2002 report by the D.I.A., which supplies intelligence to military commanders and national security policy makers. As an official intelligence report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, the document would have circulated widely within the government, and it would have been available to the C.I.A., the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies. It remains unclear whether the D.I.A. document was provided to the Senate panel.
In outlining reasons for its skepticism, the D.I.A. report noted that Mr. Libi’s claims lacked specific details about the Iraqis involved, the illicit weapons used and the location where the training was to have taken place...
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060320-7.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 20, 2006
President Discusses War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom
.....Q Mr. President, at the beginning of your talk today you mentioned that you understand why Americans have had their confidence shaken by the events in Iraq. And I'd like to ask you about events that occurred three years ago that might also explain why confidence has been shaken. Before we went to war in Iraq we said there were three main reasons for going to war in Iraq: weapons of mass destruction, the claim that Iraq was sponsoring terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11, and that Iraq had purchased nuclear materials from Niger. All three of those turned out to be false. My question is, how do we restore confidence that Americans may have in their leaders and to be sure that the information they are getting now is correct?
THE PRESIDENT: That's a great question. (Applause.) First, just if I might correct a misperception. I don't think we ever said -- at least I know I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein. We did say that he was a state sponsor of terror -- by the way, not declared a state sponsor of terror by me, but declared by other administrations. We also did say that Zarqawi, the man who is now wreaking havoc and killing innocent life, was in Iraq. And so the state sponsor of terror was a declaration by a previous administration. But I don't want to be argumentative, but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America.
Like you, I asked that very same question, where did we go wrong on intelligence. The truth of the matter is the whole world thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't just my administration, it was the previous administration. It wasn't just the previous administration; you might remember, sir, there was a Security Council vote of 15 to nothing that said to Saddam Hussein, disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. The basic premise was, you've got weapons. That's what we thought.
When he didn't disclose, and when he didn't disarm, and when he deceived inspectors, it sent a very disconcerting <b>message to me, whose job it is to protect the American people and to take threats before they fully materialize.</b> My view is, he was given the choice of whether or not he would face reprisal. It was his decision to make. And so he chose to not disclose, not disarm, as far as everybody was concerned. ......
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Mr. Bush was talking about "take threats before they fully materialize"......and when the "Zarqawi was there" declaration is exposed as a lie what remans to justify the invasion of iraq aside from illegal aggressive war?
Note how the Bush administration reacted to Sen. Levn's damning September 8, 2006 statement:
Quote:
http://www.senate.gov/~levin/newsroo....cfm?id=262690
News from Senator Carl Levin of Michigan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 8, 2006
Contact: Press Office
Phone: 202.228.3685
Senate Floor Statement on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Phase II Report
Today the Senate Intelligence Committee is releasing two of the five parts of Phase II of the Committee’s inquiry into prewar intelligence. One of the two reports released today looks at what we have learned after the attack on Iraq about the accuracy of prewar intelligence regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al Qa’ida. The report is a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration’s unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was linked with al Qa’ida, the perpetrators of the 9-11 attack.....
......The Administration statements also flew in the face of the CIA’s January 2003 assessment that al-Libi was not in position to know whether training had taken place.
So here’s what we’ve got.
<h3>The President says Saddam had a relationship with Zarqawi.</h3> The Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA concluded in 2005 that “the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.”
<h3>The President said Saddam and al Qa’ida were “allies.”</h3> The Intelligence Committee found that prewar intelligence shows that Saddam Hussein“viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime.” Indeed, the Committee found that postwar intelligence showed that he “refused all requests from al-Qa'ida to provide material or operational support.”
The Vice President called the claim that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta met with the Iraqi intelligence officer “credible” and “pretty much confirmed.” The Intelligence Committee found the intelligence shows that “no such meeting occurred.”
<h3>The President said that Iraq provided training in poisons and gasses to al Qa’ida.</h3> The Intelligence Committee found that postwar intelligence supported the prewar intelligence assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qa'ida training at “anywhere” in Iraq and that the terrorist who made the claim of training was “likely intentionally misleading his debriefers” when he said Iraq had provided poisons and gasses training.
But the Administration’s efforts to create the false impression that Iraq and al Qa’ida were linked didn’t stop with just statements. One of the most significant disclosures in the Intelligence Committee’s report is the account of <h3>the Administration’s successful efforts to obtain the support of CIA Director George Tenet to help them make that false case.</h3>
These events were of major significance – going to the heart of the Administration’s case for war on the eve of a congressional vote on whether to authorize that war.
On October 7, 2002, at a speech in Cincinnati, the President represented that linkage existed between Saddam and terrorist groups. He said that “Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorist.”
But that very day, October 7, 2002, <h3>in a letter to the Intelligence Committee the CIA declassified,</h3> at the request of the Committee, the CIA assessment that it would be an “extreme step” for Saddam Hussein to assist Islamist terrorists in conducting a weapons of mass destruction attack against the United States and that the likelihood of Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction, if he did not feel threatened by an attack, was “low.”
When made public, the CIA assessment would undercut the President’s case. Something had to be done. So, on October 8, 2002, the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, issued a statement that “There is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam's growing threat and the view as expressed by the President in his speech.” The Tenet statement was aimed at damage control and undercut the CIA’s own crucial assessment at a critical time. The New York Times quoted Tenet prominently in a major story on October 9th.
<h3>We called Tenet before the Intelligence Committee on July 26, 2006.
In his testimony, quoted in the Intelligence Committee’s report, Mr. Tenet admitted that perhaps there was an inconsistency between the President's statement and the CIA's assessment.</h3>
Mr. Tenet said that he issued his statement denying an inconsistency after policymakers expressed concern about the CIA’s assessment as expressed in the declassified October 7th letter again, that it would be an extreme step for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack.<h3> Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to “say something about not being inconsistent with what the President had said.” Tenet complied.</h3>
Tenet acknowledged to the Committee in his July 26, 2006, testimony that issuing the statement was the “wrong thing to do.” Well, it was much more than that. It was a shocking abdication of a CIA Director’s duty not to act as a shill for any administration or its policies. Director Tenet issued that statement at the behest of the Administration on the eve of the Congress’s debate on the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. The use of the Director of Central Intelligence by the Administration to contradict his own Agency’s assessment in order to support a policy goal of the Administration was reprehensible and seriously damaged the credibility of the CIA.
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The following is a compilaton of their reaction to Levin and the senate committee report. it is more or less in chronological order. i detailed more of it in the OP of this thread......
Quote:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213211,00.html
Transcript: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 'FOX News Sunday'
Sunday, September 10, 2006
WASHINGTON — The following is a partial transcript of the Sept. 10, 2006, edition of "FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace":
.....WALLACE: I don't have to tell you that one of the criticisms of the Bush administration — we heard it again today from Sen. Jay Rockefeller — is that all of you manipulated intelligence to push the country into war.
I want to discuss just one area, the issue of whether Iraq helped Al Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction.
Here's what the president said in October of 2002.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: And in March 2003, just before the invasion, you said, talking about Iraq, "and a very strong link to training Al Qaeda in chemical and biological techniques."
But, Secretary Rice, a Senate committee has just revealed that in February of 2002, months before the president spoke, more than a year, 13 months, before you spoke, that the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded this — and let's put it up on the screen.
"Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful CB" — that's chemical or biological — "knowledge or assistance."
Didn't you and the president ignore intelligence that contradicted your case?
RICE: What the president and I and other administration officials relied on — and you simply rely on the central intelligence. The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, gave that very testimony, that, in fact, there were ties going on between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime going back for a decade. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission talked about contacts between the two.
We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq. We know that Zarqawi ordered the killing of an American diplomat in Jordan from Iraq. There were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Now, are we learning more now that we have access to people like Saddam Hussein's intelligence services? Of course we're going to learn more. But clearly ...
WALLACE: But, Secretary Rice, this report, if I may, this report wasn't now. This isn't after the fact. This was a Defense Intelligence Agency report in 2002.
Two questions: First of all, did you know about that report before you made your statement?
RICE: Chris, we relied on the reports of the National Intelligence Office, the NIO, and of the DCI. That's what the president and his central decision-makers rely on. There are ...
WALLACE: Did you know about this report?
RICE: ... intelligence reports and conflicting intelligence reports all the time. That's why we have an intelligence system that brings those together into a unified assessment by the intelligence community of what we're looking at.
That particular report I don't remember seeing. But there are often conflicting intelligence reports.
I just want to refer you, though, to the testimony of the DCI at the time about the activities. ...
WALLACE: That's the head of central intelligence.
RICE: Yes, head of central intelligence — that were going on between Al Qaeda and between Iraq.
But let me make a broader point. The notion, somehow — and I've heard this — the notion, somehow, that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power seems to me quite ludicrous.
Saddam Hussein had gone to war against his neighbors twice, causing more than a million deaths. He had dragged us into a war in 1991 because he invaded his neighbor Kuwait. We were still at war with him in 1998 when we used American forces to try and disable his weapons of mass destruction. We went to war again with him, day in and day out, as he shot at our aircraft trying to patrol no-fly zones. This was a mass murderer of more than 300,000 of his own people, using weapons of mass destruction.
The United States and a coalition of allies finally brought down one of the most brutal dictators in the Middle East and one of the most dangerous dictators in the Middle East, and we're better off for it.
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060912-2.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 12, 2006
Press Briefing by Tony Snow
...Q Well, one more, Tony, just one more. Do you believe -- does the President still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to Zarqawi or al Qaeda before the invasion?
MR. SNOW: The President has never said that there was a direct, operational relationship between the two, and this is important. Zarqawi was in Iraq.
Q There was a link --
MR. SNOW: Well, and there was a relationship -- there was a relationship in this sense: Zarqawi was in Iraq; al Qaeda members were in Iraq; they were operating, and in some cases, operating freely from Iraq. Zarqawi, for instance, directed the assassination of an American diplomat in Amman, Jordan. But they did they have a corner office at the Mukhabarat? No. Were they getting a line item in Saddam's budget? No. There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship. They were in the country, and I think you understand that the Iraqis knew they were there. That's the relationship.
Q Saddam Hussein knew they were there; that's it for the relationship?
MR. SNOW: That's pretty much it.
Q The Senate report said they didn't turn a blind eye.
MR. SNOW: The Senate report -- rather than get -- you know what, I don't want to get into the vagaries of the Senate report, but it is pretty clear, among other things, again, that there were al Qaeda operators inside Iraq, and they included Zarqawi, they included a cleric who had been described as the best friend of bin Laden who was delivering sermons on TV. But we are simply not going to go to the point that the President is -- the President has never made the statement that there was an operational relationship, and that's the important thing, because I think there's a tendency to say, aha, he said that they were in cahoots and they were planning and doing stuff; there's no evidence of that. ....
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Quote:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/15/bush-zarqawi-iraq/
Bush Rewrites History on Zarqawi Statements
During today’s press conference, ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz asked Bush why he continues to say Saddam “had relations with Zarqawi,” despite the Senate Intelligence Report findings that Hussein “did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.” Bush replied: “I never said there was an operational relationship.” Watch it:
In fact, Bush has repeatedly asserted that Saddam “harbored” and “provided safe-haven” to Zarqawi:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040617-3.html
BUSH: [Saddam] was a threat because he provided safe-haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi… [6/17/04]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040923-8.html
BUSH: [Saddam] is a man who harbored terrorists - Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Zarqawi. [9/23/04]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030306-8.html
BUSH: [Zarqawi’s] a man who was wounded in Afghanistan, received aid in Baghdad, ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen, USAID employee, was harbored in Iraq. [3/6/03]
Transcript:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060915-2.html
MARTHA: Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda. A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And yet a month ago, you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that? Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?
BUSH: The point I was making to Ken Herman’s question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan. <b>I never said there was an operational relationship.</b>
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....and Cheney was "at it" again a month later:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...061019-10.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
October 19, 2006
Satellite Interview of the Vice President by WSBT-TV, South Bend, Indiana
2nd Congressional District -
Representative Chris Chocola
........Q Are you saying that you believe fighting in Iraq has prevented terrorist attacks on American soil? And if so, why, since there has not been a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq established?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact of the matter is there are connections. Mr. Zarqawi, who was the lead terrorist in Iraq for three years, fled there after we went into Afghanistan. He was there before we ever went into Iraq. The sectarian violence that we see now, in part, has been stimulated by the fact of al Qaeda attacks intended to try to create conflict between Shia and Sunni......
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....please, ace.....Bush and Cheney do not "say what they mean", they are well documented to be habitual liars........ |