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Banned
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powerclown, it is not as if I've only posted all of the following as a factual record that illustrates all of "the news reporting and documented (on the whitehouse.gov web site....) record" <h3>that Jonah Goldberg has had to minimize or entirely ignore in order to maintain his gushing</b> (as in unprofessional behavior and attitude on the part of one who is presented as a "journalist") Praise of Cheney. and the fact that I pointed this out:
"powerclown did not display the date that the JOnah Goldberg oped was written:"
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=34
....The <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=120447"> Official Declaration of War Against Bush - Cheney and their Republican Supporters</a> began with:
<h3>Here's the "editor at large", of one of your most prominent publications:</h3>
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19460029/
'Tucker' for June 26
Read the transcript to the Tuesday show
Updated: 10:43 a.m. CT <h2>June 27, 2007</h2>
Guests: Jonah Goldberg, A.B. Stoddard, Mort Zuckerman, Michael Chertoff
....Jonah, welcome.
<b>JONAH GOLDBERG, THE NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE:</b> Hey, thanks for having me, Tucker.
CARLSON: So, you are one of the very few people with the courage, the moxie to go into print, and say, you know, there is something good about Dick Cheney. Was this a parody or do you feel this way and if you do, defend it. <h2>Why are you defending Cheney?
GOLDBERG: No, I, I—well, first of all, I have—I just simply, I have always liked Dick Cheney.</h2> I think that he‘s, you know, as I put it in the piece, you know, everyone—everyone on both sides of the aisle, there‘s a lot of this you know, sort of talk about how we don‘t want politicians to go by the polls, who don‘t put their finger in the wind and go with just whatever the prevailing conventional wisdom is.
And yet, <b>Dick Cheney is really the only guy who doesn‘t bother talking the talk, he just walks the walk.</b> He does not care, and <h3> I think it‘s a sign of character and integrity on his part that he just doesn‘t care.</h3> There are a lot of people out there who worship the masses and Dick Cheney doesn‘t. He cares about history, he cares about the merits of the argument. He probably cares about power quite a bit, too.
But he‘s a serious guy, and the flip side to that is that I‘m not sure that‘s the best thing to have in a vice president. It turns out that there‘s something to be said for having the only other nationally elected candidate, other than the president themselves, be a politician, as it were. Care about winning the Oval Office for himself....
........CARLSON: That‘s right, and I agree with you completely that whenever people say, we need a politician who doesn‘t look at the polls, we need another Harry Truman, they don‘t know what they‘re talking about or they‘re lying. People want to be pandered to, they want someone to suck up to them, they want a very democratic president—small D democratic, I agree completely.
GOLDBERG: That is what Michael Bloomberg is, right?
CARLSON: I am bothered though—that‘s right, that‘s exactly right.
GOLDBERG: I mean, he‘s sucking up to the vanity (ph) of the independents.
CARLSON: But I‘m bothered by Cheney ‘s—but does—Cheney‘s secrecy, his penchant for secrecy. I mean, this is a cliche, a stereotype, but it‘s rooted, apparently, in truth. The guy really is secretive to a degree we haven‘t seen in a while. That is—I mean, we do have a right to know what our government is doing, don‘t we?
GOLDBERG: Yes, sure, although I think you would concede, even though you and I disagree about some foreign policy stuff, you and I would agree that there are some things that should be kept secret. We might disagree about what they are.
CARLSON: Right.
GOLDBERG: And you know, but I do think that what Cheney has learned after a lifetime in Washington as a power player, is that the person who holds the secrets has power. And he is using that for what I would say, or probably what he believes to be certainly good ends. A lot of people disagree on that, but he‘s trying to do best as he can and he sees holding onto power as a tool to do that.
I think it‘s got a real counter-productive side to it because it creates this kind of antibody reaction of such visceral dislike of the guy that it makes his policies that much less effective because he can‘t really get everything that he wants that way.
CARLSON: I think you‘re absolutely right.
Why is he so disliked? When you talk to—when you talk to liberals or just even garden-variety Democrats and Dick Cheney‘s name comes up, you‘re apt to see hyperventilation. People hate Cheney on this visceral level. <h3>What is so hateable about Dick Cheney?
GOLDBERG: I have no—I really, I truly have no idea. I like Dick Cheney, love to have a beer with the guy. I think he is a smart, serious man in American life. I think one of the things that bothers them is that he doesn‘t care.</h3> You know, there‘s nothing—you know, the opposite of love isn‘t hate, it‘s indifference. It drives stalkers and some hard-core lefties crazy. He just doesn‘t care what they think about him.
CARLSON: Have you ever seen Dick Cheney give a speech? I mean, the contempt for the audience is palpable. He doesn‘t, he doesn‘t—he tells a joke that‘s written into his speech, <h3>he doesn‘t wait for them to laugh, he just blows right through it.
GOLDBERG: I know, I—see, I love that. He looks like he should be eating a sandwich while he‘s doing it, you know. I mean, it‘s just this sort of like matter-of-fact, eating lunch over the sink. Oh yes, and by the way, here is my view of the world. I love that.</h3>
CARLSON: Every time he speaks, I have the same thought. I can just see him yelling, hey you kids, get off my lawn. I love it. And I‘m glad to find someone else who will stand up for Dick Cheney. You are almost—you‘re almost alone in this nation of 300 million.
Jonah, I really appreciate you coming on, thank you.
GOLDBERG: You should come to our fan club meetings. There‘s lots of empty chairs.
(LAUGHTER)
CARLSON: Jonah Goldberg, thanks a lot.
GOLDBERG: Thanks, Tucker......
.....CARLSON: This is MSNBC, the place for politics.
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....now....facts to counter Jonah Goldberg and powerclown's assumptions:....
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my June 14th post:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...01&postcount=4
Quote:
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
What question(s) remain unanswered in the investigation?
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The answer to your question has been widely reported, ace...
(scroll down 65 percent from top of page: )
Quote:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politic...tin_070221.htm
<h3>
<a name="p6"></a>Fitzgerald: "<b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">Cloud</b>" <b style="color:black;background-color:#a0ffff">Hangs</b> <b style="color:black;background-color:#99ff99">Over</b> Cheney</h3>
<p>Prosecutors and defense attorneys on Tuesday delivered closing arguments in the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The <u>CBS Evening News</u> reported prosecutors "told the jury today there is a <b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">cloud</b> <b style="color:black;background-color:#99ff99">over</b> the <b style="color:black;background-color:#ff9999">Vice</b> <b style="color:black;background-color:#ff66ff">President's</b> role in the case because they say Libby obstructed justice. The defense contends Libby did nothing wrong and the case is about faulty memories." <u>Fox News' Special Report</u> says special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald "got the last word saying that the <b style="color:black;background-color:#ff9999">Vice</b> <b style="color:black;background-color:#ff66ff">President's</b> office was obsessed with the Wilson trip and used his wife as a weapon against him." And <u>NBC Nightly News</u> reported Fitzgerald "got political too, saying because Libby lied and obstructed justice, 'a <b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">cloud</b> still <b style="color:black;background-color:#a0ffff">hangs</b> <b style="color:black;background-color:#99ff99">over</b> the <b style="color:black;background-color:#ff9999">Vice</b> <b style="color:black;background-color:#ff66ff">President</b>.'"</p>
<p>
The <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-libby21feb21,1,3565678.story"><u>Los Angeles Times</u></a> also notes "Fitzgerald argued that Cheney's office was behind many of the prewar claims that Iraq had stockpiles of banned weapons and that it had aggressively sought to silence critics." The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/washington/21libby.html?hp"><u>New York Times</u></a> notes that "the prosecutors presented a detailed and businesslike summing up of their case."</p>
<p>
The <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c8e42f0e-c121-11db-bf18-000b5df10621.html"><u>Financial Times</u></a> and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022000122.html"><u>Washington Post</u></a> run similar reports on the closing arguments, while Dana Milbank in his <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001435.html"><u>Washington Post</u></a> "Washington Sketch" column is critical of the "cohesion of" defense attorney Ted Wells' "closing arguments. Libby was alternately portrayed as a man who told the truth, a man who inadvertently misspoke, and the victim of conspiracies involving everybody from <b style="color:black;background-color:#ff66ff">President</b> Bush to Tim Russert."</p>
<p>
In a widely-distributed story, the <a href="http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-cia-leak-trial,0,7096756.story"><u>AP</u></a> reports deputy prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg pointed to a flow chart showing arrows tracking information from several officials to Libby and on to other sources. With each conversation, it became less likely the CIA operative would just slip Libby's mind." Using a "similar chart," Wells "noted their memory inconsistencies." <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070221/a_libby21.art.htm"><u>USA Today</u></a> notes "a tearful" Wells told jurors, "Don't...sacrifice Scooter Libby for how you may feel about the war in Iraq or about the Bush administration." The <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001858.html"><u>Washington Post</u></a> also runs a generally sympathetic profile of Wells, saying "a portrait emerges of a tough defense attorney who has mastered the balance between easygoing and hard-charging."</p>
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<b>....and I posted the following, on April 29th, at this link:</b>
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=48
Quote:
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
No. I think he refers to information made public and available prior to the invasion that Sadaam was in violation of UN resolutions, Sadaam used weapons of mass Destruction, Sadaam was supporting terrorist (at least their families), and that if Sadaam had nuclear weapons it would be a direct threat. I think these were the reasons Congress and people in the prior administration thought he was a threat.
Host,
Here is your second item:
First - Rusert states that Cheney stated there was no direct connection between Iraq and Al Queda regarding 9/11. Cheney refers to the intellegence released by the Czech saying the report was confirmed. Has there been any evidence disputing the Czech intelligence? How did Cheney lie?
Then Cheney says we want to look into the meeting further. Where is the lie?
What was the point of you posting this information, it doesn't seem to support your position and in-fact contradicts your position by an independent source, Russert.
Should we continue, do you want to start over with your best case, or what?
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uhhh....now that I've read this.....I understand......I'm done.....
Quote:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017470.php
April 28, 2007
Scandals and "Scandals"
Eleanor Clift's current column in Newsweek is unremarkable, but I was struck by this line:
With an unpopular war, scandals consuming the White House and a two-party system paralyzed by partisanship, voters are looking for an outsider, somebody who’s not tainted by politics as usual.
That's the liberal line, of course: the White House is consumed by scandals. Certainly Newsweek, along with pretty much every other mainstream news outlet, has done its best to convey this impression. But what, exactly are they talking about? Are there actual scandals, or faux "scandals" that die like a mayfly when the day's news cycle is over?
<h3>The truth is that the Bush administration has been extraordinarily scandal-free. Not a single instance of corruption has been unearthed. Only one significant member of the executive branch, Scooter Libby, has been convicted of anything. Whether the jury's verdict was right or wrong, that case was an individual tragedy unrelated to any underlying wrongdoing by Libby or anyone else.</h3>
What other "scandals" are consuming the White House? Eight United States Attorneys, who are political appointees serving at the pleasure of the President, were replaced. So what? Was it a scandal when Bill Clinton replaced all 93? So far, not a single fact--I'm drawing here the subtle distinction between "fact" and "speculation" that so often escapes our liberal pundits--has emerged to render the replacement of those Justice Department employees scandalous in any respect.
Last week's "scandal" was Henry Waxman's rather bizarre hearing on the Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch cases. There was indeed a mini-scandal connected with Jessica Lynch. It was a media scandal. The Washington Post rushed into print the story of Lynch's supposed heroics, based on an anonymous report from a "U.S. official." (Note that the Post did not say the "official" was even in the military.) The Army itself never made any claims whatever about Lynch's "heroism," and reportedly tried to warn the Post off the story. But the Post's position is that any leak must be true, as long as it's anonymous.
In an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times, Michael DeLong, who at the time was the deputy commander of United States Central Command, tells what really happened:
The initial reports from the field regarding Private Lynch stated that she had gone down fighting, had emptied her weapon and that her actions were heroic. Based on these reports, politicians from her home state, West Virginia, wanted the military to award her the Medal of Honor. Their request rose up the ladder until finally it reached me.
But initial combat reports are often wrong. Time must always be taken to thoroughly investigate all claims. In the case of Private Lynch, additional time was needed, since she was suffering from combat shock and loss of memory; facts, therefore, had to be gathered from other sources. The military simply didn’t know at that point whether her actions merited a medal.
This is why, when the request landed on my desk, I told the politicians that we’d need to wait. I made it clear that no one would be awarded anything until all of the evidence was reviewed.
The politicians did not like this. They called repeatedly, through their Congressional liaison, and pressured us to recommend her for the medal, even before all the evidence had been analyzed. I would not relent and we had many heated discussions.
The politicians repeatedly said that a medal would be good for women in the military; I responded that the paramount issue was finding out what had really happened.
So, along with the Washington Post, the villains of the story are politicians from West Virginia. Let's see: every member of West Virginia's Congressional delegation but one is a Democrat, and the Democrats control West Virginia's legislature. So the targets of Waxman's investigation should have been the Washington Post and the Democratic Party, not the military, which never uttered a false word about Lynch.
The Tillman case is only slightly less silly. The commander on the ground made the foolish decision not to tell Tillman's brother Kevin, who was nearby when Pat was killed, that the cause was friendly fire. So the version originally released by those on the ground in Afghanistan was that Pat was killed in an encounter with the enemy. That was stupid. But an investigation was done, and when the matter worked its way up the chain of command, the original decision was reversed, and, only a month or so after Tillman's death, the correct story was released to the public. Far from being a case where senior generals or politicians tried to cover up the circumstances, as was falsely suggested by Kevin Tillman, the exact opposite happened: it was some combination of senior generals and politicians who learned the truth and quickly made it public.
These "scandals" obviously have no legs, but that isn't the point. Waxman has already moved on to a new one, issuing subpoenas to Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet to testify about Saddam's efforts to obtain uranium. And so it goes. Waxman hasn't even gotten to 2005 yet; he can keep this going through the rest of the Bush administration, and his committee is only one of many.
<h3>The purpose of these faux "investigations" of faux "scandals" is to further sully the image of President Bush, and to allow liberal reporters and pundits like Eleanor Clift to write that the White House is "consumed by scandals." The fact that there isn't a genuine scandal in the bunch goes unremarked.</h3>
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Just kidding.....ace.....do you read powerline blog ?
I'll run through it in short bursts:
Cheney on Nov. 14, 2001:
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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...and Cheney, answering the same question, less than a month later:
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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Quote:
From: http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm
http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/artI1FG.pdf
....or, here:
Quote:
Transcript of Interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney on Meet ...
Sunday, September 8, 2002 GUEST: Vice President DICK CHENEY MODERATOR/PANELIST: Tim Russert - NBC News This is a rush transcript provided for the ...
www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/meet.htm
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VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I'm not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can't say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We've seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn't he there, again, it's the intelligence business.
Mr. RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that? Is it credible?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: It's credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it's unconfirmed at this point. We've got...
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Quote:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/0...l-the-message/
With the news on the Pentagon and Douglas Feith's breaking today–("inappropriate" actions in advancing conclusions on al-Qaida connections not backed up by the nation's intelligence agencies)—I wanted us to see how these manipulations were put into play on Meet the Press, the show that the OVP thought was the perfect place to "control the message."
From Hardball 11/08/05. Remember when Dick Cheney said it was pretty well confirmed before he didn’t?
video_wmv Download (4636) | Play (4046) video_wmv Download (2231) | Play (2347)
In ‘01, Cheney said this on MTP:
CHENEY: It‘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.
<b>on 6/19/04 CNBC, he said:</b>
GLORIA BORGER, TV SHOW HOST: You have said in the past that it was, quote, “pretty well confirmed.”
CHENEY: No, I never said that. BORGER: OK.
CHENEY: I never said that. BORGER: I think that is…
CHENEY: Absolutely not. (Cheney continues, here:
http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/...202_flash3.htm
......What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.
BORGER: Well, now this report says it didn't happen.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: No. This report says they haven't found any evidence.
BORGER: That it happened.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Right.
BORGER: But you haven't found the evidence that it happened either, have you?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: No. All we have is that one report from the Czechs. We just don't know.
BORGER: So does this put it to rest for you or not on Atta?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: It doesn't add anything from my perspective. I mean, I still am a skeptic. I can't refute the Czech plan. I can't prove the Czech plan. It's ...(unintelligible) the nature of the intelligence (unintelligible).
BORGER: OK, but let's...
Vice Pres. CHENEY: But that is a separate question from what the press has gotten all in a dither about, The New York Times especially, on this other question. What they've done is, I think, distorted what the commission actually reported, certainly according to Governor Thompson, who's a member of the commission.
BORGER: But you say you disagree with the commission...
Vice Pres. CHENEY: On this question of whether or not there was a general relationship.
BORGER: Yes.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Yeah.
BORGER: And they say that there was not one forged and you were saying yes, that there was. Do you know things that the commission does not know?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Probably.
BORGER: And do you think the commission needs to know them?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: I don't have any--I don't know what they know. I do know they didn't talk with any original sources on this subject that say that in their report.
BORGER: They did talk with people who had interrogated sources.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Right.
BORGER: So they do have good sources.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Gloria, the notion that there is no relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida just simply is not true. I'm going to read this material here. Your show isn't long enough for me to read all the pieces...
BORGER: Sure it is.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: ...but in the fall of '95 and again in the summer of '96, bin Laden met with Iraqi intelligence service representatives at his farm in Sudan. Bin Laden asked for terror training from Iraq. The Iraqi intelligence service responded. It deployed a bomb-making expert, a brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence.
BORGER: OK, but now just let me stop you there, because what this report says is that he was not given the support that he had asked for from Iraq, that he had requested all of these things but, in fact, did not get them.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: He got this. We know for a fact. This is from George Tenet's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee February 12th, 2003, etc. I mean, it's there. It's ...(unintelligible).
BORGER: So is the commission credible as far as you're concerned?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: I haven't read their entire report on everything. I think they're doing good work. I think it's a very tough job they've been doing and I don't mean to be overly critical of them. I think this is not an area they looked at. According to Governor Thompson again, they didn't spend a lot of time on the question of Iraq and al-Qaida except for the 9/11 proposition.
That's what they're asked to look at. They did not spend a lot of time on these other issues. They've got one paragraph in the report that talks about that. And so the notion that you can take one paragraph from the 9-11 Commission and say, `Ah, therefore that says there was never a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida.' It's just wrong. It's not true. I'd love to go on on all of this stuff, but the fact of the matter is there clearly was a relationship there. Now...
BORGER: Let me just ask you, bottom line, though, on 9/11...
Vice Pres. CHENEY: On 9/11...
BORGER: ...Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: We have never been able to prove that there was a connection there on 9/11. The one thing we have is the Czech intelligence service report saying that Mohammad Atta had met with the senior Iraqi intelligence official at the embassy on April 9th, 2001. That's never been proven. It's never been refuted.
BORGER: OK. And let me ask you one more personal note. The commission also reported today that you gave the order to shoot down those airplanes that were commandeered by the terrorists but that your orders never reached the American pilots. Can you tell us how agonizing that was?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Well, actually it went very fast.......
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ace: "ATTA IN PRAGUE" didn't happen:
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5233810/
Cheney blames media for blurring Saddam, 9/11
'We have never been able to prove that there was a connection,' VP says
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 11:31 a.m. ET June 18, 2004
WASHINGTON - Blaming what he called "lazy" reporters for blurring the distinction, Vice President Dick Cheney said that while "overwhelming" evidence shows a past relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, the Bush administration never accused Saddam of helping with the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We have never been able to prove that there was a connection there on 9/11," he said in the CNBC interview that aired on NBC's "Today" show Friday.
Cheney was echoing comments by President Bush on Thursday, and they followed a report by the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission that found no "collaborative relationship" between the former Iraqi leader and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
Cheney, however, insisted the case was not closed into whether there was an Iraq connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. "We don't know."
The vice president noted a disputed report about an alleged meeting between an Iraqi intelligence official and lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in the Czech Republic in April 2001. "We've never been able to confirm or to knock it down," Cheney said.
<h3>The 9/11 commission, however, said in one of three reports issued this week that "based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred."</h3>
Cheney responded that, for his part, the findings remained inconclusive. "It doesn't add anything from my perspective. I mean, I still am a skeptic."
Firm stance
Overall, the vice president defended the administration's view of Iraq's links to al-Qaida, saying the "the evidence is overwhelming" and citing the commission report's evidence of a meeting between bin Laden and an Iraqi official in 1994 in Sudan, <h3>as well as the presence of terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.....</h3>
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Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14824384/site/newsweek/
Atta in Prague
The story that the ‘intelligence community’ doesn’t want you to hear.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 7:48 p.m. ET Sept. 13, 2006
Sept. 13, 2006 - The claim that terrorist leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague with an Iraqi spy a few months before 9/11 was never substantiated, but that didn’t stop the White House from trying to insert the allegation in presidential speeches, according to classified documents.......
.......According to two sources familiar with the blacked-out portions of the Senate report that discuss the CIA cable's contents, the document indicates that White House officials had proposed mentioning the supposed Atta-Prague meeting in a Bush speech scheduled for March 14, 2003. Originated by Czech intelligence shortly after 9/11, the tendentious claim was that in April 2001, Atta, the 9/11 hijack leader, had met in Prague with the local station chief for Iraqi intelligence. The sources said that upon learning of the proposed White House speech, the CIA station in Prague sent back a cable explaining in detail why the agency believed the anecdote was ill-founded.
According to one of the sources familiar with the Senate report's censored portions, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, the tone of the CIA cable was “strident” and expressed dismay that the White House was trying to shoehorn the Atta anecdote into the Bush speech to be delivered only days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The source said the cable also suggested that policymakers had tried to insert the same anecdote into other speeches by top administration officials..........
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1121/dailyUpdate.html
World>Terrorism & Security
posted November 21, 2005 at 11:00 a.m.
Germany: CIA knew 'Curveball' was not trustworthy
German intelligence alleges Bush administration repeatedly 'exaggerated' informant's claims in run-up to war.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
Five top German intelligence officers say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly ignored warnings about the veracity of the information that an Iraqi informant named 'Curveball' was giving about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The Los Angeles Times, in a massive report published Sunday, reports that "the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq." They also say that 'Curveball,' whom the Germans described as "not a psychologically stable guy," never claimed that he had produced germ weapons, nor had he ever seen anyone do it.
The Independent reports that proof of Curveball's lack of credibility came when the US sent its own team of inspectors to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They discovered the informants's personnel files in Baghdad.
It showed he had been a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted. Moreover he had been dismissed in 1995 – just when he claimed to have begun work on bio-warfare trucks.
The Independent also provides what it calls its list of "intelligence red herrings." There was Curveball himself. There was Ahmed Chalabi, who brought to US attention defectors that "proved to be false, as was his claim that US invaders would be met with bouquets." There was the Niger-Iraq uranium story, which later turned out to have been fabricated by a former Italian spy. And there was Iraq's possession of aluminum tubes, which the administration said were for nuclear weapons, yet turned out to be for small conventional military rockets.........
Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm. "This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."
http://groups.google.com.tw/group/al...9995877e60e9d?
........According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.
The Times report also says that the White House ignored evidence presented by the United Nations that showed that Curveball was wrong, and that the CIA " punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and [the CIA] refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion." Much of the information Curveball gave to the CIA later turned out to be stories he had gleaned from research on the Internet.....
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Don't misunderstand me, ace. Cheney had plenty of company. Bush spouted this garbage....refuted in the preceding quote box....twice...just days apart, around the time of Powell's phoney presentation at the UN:
Quote:
The Iraqi regime's violations of Security Council resolutions are evident, and they continue to this hour. The regime has never accounted for a vast arsenal of deadly biological and chemical weapons. To the contrary; the regime is pursuing an elaborate campaign to conceal its weapons materiels, and to hide or intimidate key experts and scientists, all in direct defiance of Security Council 1441.
This deception is directed from the highest levels of the Iraqi regime, including Saddam Hussein, his son, the Vice President, and the very official responsible for cooperating with inspectors. In intercepted conversations, we have heard orders to conceal materiels from the U.N. inspectors. And we have seen through satellite images concealment activity at close to 30 sites, including movement of equipment before inspectors arrive.
The Iraqi regime has actively and secretly attempted to obtain equipment needed to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Firsthand <b>witnesses have informed us that Iraq has at least seven mobile factories for the production of biological agents</b>, equipment mounted on trucks and rails to evade discovery. Using these factories, Iraq could produce within just months hundreds of pounds of biological poisons....
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.....The regime has never accounted for a vast arsenal of deadly, biological and chemical weapons. To the contrary, the regime is pursuing an elaborate campaign to conceal its weapons materials and to hide or intimidate key experts and scientists. This effort of deception is directed from the highest levels of the Iraqi regime, including Saddam Hussein, his son, Iraq's vice president and the very official responsible for cooperating with inspectors.
The Iraqi regime has actively and secretly attempted to obtain equipment needed to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Firsthand witnesses have informed us that Iraq has <b>at least seven mobile factories for the production of biological agents -- equipment mounted on trucks and rails to evade discovery.</b>
The Iraqi regime has acquired and tested the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction. It has never accounted for thousands of bombs and shells capable of delivering chemical weapons.....
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They did it over and over....ace....putting out their fearful message....attributing it to others....pulled it back.....put it out, again...and now, we know that they knew when they were doing it, that it was unreliable....that there was no consensus in the US intelligence community or in the intelligence community of NATO allies....but they "put it out", ace....because, as Tenet tells us, this week, they never considered anything but war as the "solution" in Iraq. They had to "fix the facts" around the "policy".
How can you tell that they were lying to us then, and now....because all Bush and Cheney had was "Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague", and "Zarqawi was in Baghdad and ran a "poison camp" in Iraq"....and Cheney still justifies the invasion of Iraq, this month, and Bush did as recently as last September, with the worn out mantra that "Zarqawi was present", even though he had no relationship with Saddam or his government, and was located at a "poison camp" in an area of Northern Iraq that US military and it's Kurdish allies could access....if they wanted to.....but Saddam's military could not......
[quote]
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
<h3>August 21, 2006</h3>
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 --who had relations with Zarqawi.....
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
<b>Sept. 10, 2006</b>
.....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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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213211,00.html
Transcript: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 'FOX News Sunday'
Sunday, September 10, 2006
......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.....
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060912-2.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
<h3>September 12, 2006</h3>
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......
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060915-2.html
<h3>Sept. 15, 2006</h3>
......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. I never said there was an operational relationship.....
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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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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0070405-3.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
<h3>April 5, 2007</h3>
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 -- 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, 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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<b>....consider that I also posted the investigative report of March 22, 2007, by DOJ Inspector General Glen Fine, that contradicts most of what Jonah Goldberg asserted, in his article dated 42 months before Geln Fine's report.</b>
It is not my "politics" that is your REAL objection, powerclown, it is the consequences of where your preference for "information" sourced from filtered conservative talking points ends up leading you to, when the your resulting POV is displayed competitively alongside the POV of "the rest of us".
You would not receive, without protest, assertions by willravel and I, for example, that the three major WTC towers collapsed as a reult of any means other than the crashes of airliners into two of those towers, <h3>if we justified our opinions on support as questionable as the support you've offered here to qualify your opinions</h3> in defense of Bush and Cheney on matters related to Libby's guilt and sentence, and accusations that Bush broke the laws protecting us against illegal surveillance, searches, or intelligence gathering.....
You accused me, in the post I linked in my reply to roachboy, in a recent post on this thread, of <b>"posting "guerilla oped pieces" 99 percent of the time"</b>...but it is more accurate to say that I post more links to whitehouse.gov and doj.gov pages, than every other poster here, combined, to back my arguments..... Your "stuff" is almost always contradicted by "stuff" that has not been spun through conservative filters.....
Last edited by host; 07-07-2007 at 01:23 PM..
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