jcookc6

Did anyone read the reports from the commision or just what the New York Times reported?

cthulu23

So you agree that our forays in Iraq have only formented more rage than they've cured? I'm glad to see that we agree on something. It's worth noting that the global view of our invasion of Afghanistan fundamentally differed from the view on the Iraq war. You didn't here the term "unilateralist" flying around when we took Khabul.

onetime2

It's always far easier to misconstrue others' statements than back up the ones you present.

Are you trying to say that the invasion of Afghanistan didn't create more terrorist recruits? Last I checked calling the US unilateralist didn't create terrorists. But whatever. Let me know when you want to have an actual discussion.

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Mojo_PeiPei

Nobody read past the headlines. They read "9/11 Panel: No Iraq/ Al Qeada Link" and then they start their whole "OMFG! Bush lied, he does like to kill puppies!"

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debaser

The sad thing is that no one has made a peep about the one country we know for a fact funded Al Queda.

I have yet to see any proof whatsoever from the exectutive branch that Al Queda had any link at all to Iraq, other than a meeting in which Iraq apparently blew them off altogether. The only evidence we have is Bush's insistance that it is so, and we have all seen what that is worth.

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Zeld2.0

Exactly where I stand as well...

I suppose there are many who are passionate about their stand and believe what they are saying but put it this way...

The 'other' side (whatever that means) presented its evidence, now the burden is to present yours to support it

Right now, its a matter of what they are insisting is so but they haven't proved it

cthulu23

The invasion of Afghanistan did not elicit the same storm of global protest that Bush's Iraq adventure has because it was perceived to be a rational reaction to aggression. The US rushed the invasion of Iraq, sidestepping the UN due to our insistance that Iraq posed an immediate threat. Since then, the administration's major justifications for the war have fallen apart, cementing the unpopularity of the conflict. Although the invasion of Afghanistan has undoubtedly alienated a few, it has not elicited the same avalanche of criticism as has the Iraqi invasion. Hell, Iraq has driven many of our closest allies further away from us. That's what I mean by unilateralist.

If you look at my earlier posts in this thread and in other, similar, threads, you'll find much evidence to back up my given statements. How do you respond to Colin Powell's 2001 statements that the Iraq threat has been contained? What about the emphasis on the Iraq invasion by neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle for the last decade...is that nothing but a coincidence? Can''t you at least admit the possibility that realpolitik might be at play here, and that the real goals might be slightly more complex than stated?

ARTelevision

This article presents an important position and some background on the way the findings of this Commisision and this report are being misrepresented by the press - and more important, the way in which partisanship is poisoning our dialog.
.........

The Zelikow Report
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON — "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ."

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" — just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.

The Zelikow report was seized upon by John Kerry because it fuzzed up the distinction between evidence of decade-long dealings between agents of Saddam and bin Laden (which panel members know to be true) and evidence of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attacks (which, as Hamilton said yesterday, modifying his earlier "no credible evidence" judgment, was "not proven one way or the other.")

But the staff had twisted the two strands together to cast doubt on both the Qaeda-Iraq ties and the specific attacks of 9/11: "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Zelikow & Co. dismissed the reports, citing the denials of Qaeda agents and what they decided was "no credible evidence" of cooperation on 9/11.

That paragraph — extending doubt on 9/11 to all previous contacts — put the story on front pages. Here was a release on the official commission's letterhead not merely failing to find Saddam's hand in 9/11, which Bush does not claim. The news was in the apparent contradiction of what the president repeatedly asserted as a powerful reason for war: that Iraq had long been dangerously in cahoots with terrorists.

Cheney's ire was misdirected. Don't blame the media for jumping on the politically charged Zelikow report. Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.

Yesterday, Governor Kean passed along this stunner about "no collaborative relationship" to ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Members do not get involved in staff reports."

Not involved? Another commission member tells me he did not see the Zelikow bombshell until the night before its release. Moreover, the White House, vetting the report for secrets, failed to raise an objection to a Democratic bonanza in the tricky paragraph leading to the misleading "no Qaeda-Iraq tie."

What can the commission do now to regain its nonpartisan credibility?

1. Require every member to sign off on every word that the commission releases, or write and sign a minority report. No more "staff conclusions" without presenting supporting evidence, pro and con.

2. Set the record straight, in evidentiary detail, on every contact known between Iraq and terrorist groups, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's operations in Iraq. Include the basis for the Clinton-era "cooperating in weapons development" statement.

3. Despite the prejudgment announced yesterday by Kean and Democratic partisan Richard Ben-Veniste dismissing Mohammed Atta's reported meeting in Prague with an Iraqi spymaster, fairly spell out all the evidence that led to George Tenet's "not proven or disproven" testimony. (Start with www.edwardjayepstein.com.)

4. Show how the failure to retaliate after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole affected 9/11, how removing the director of central intelligence from running the C.I.A. would work, and how Congress's intelligence oversight failed abysmally.

5. Stop wasting time posturing on television and get involved writing a defensible commission report.

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Zeld2.0

You got a link to that article ARTelevision?

To be honest I think stopping partisanship doesn't help when the article itself takes a stand from a partisan view...

It just wouldn't work as long as people think differently and see htings from different views

tiberry

Just to be clear, America isn't a democracy - its a republic. This isn't a lesson in government, so I'll stop there. America is not a dictatorship, as we ELECT our officials. If you don't like the job they're doing, fine - vote them out next time. But for the duration that they're elected, its up to them to run the country - not you. If you want to run the country, then get elected. Pandering to every american's whim is impossible, and it makes doing the tough things (like war) even harder and needlessly complicated. No - America isn't a dictatorship or a democracy - no more than the world is some eutopia that we can all just get along...what would you have done if YOU were president? Oh - and did you vote in the last presidential election?

[/emotions] Don't mean for anyone to take what I rant about personally - EVERYONE on TFP is a cut above the rest in my book!!

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ARTelevision

link to article above:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/op...ner=ALTAVISTA1

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create evolution

cthulu23

William Safire is not what I would consider a non-patisan source of information. For one thing, Atta's Prague meeting has been discredited in every report that I've seen. Let's see if this story makes it's way out of the Opinion pages. Columnists can be duped by a bad source when trying to break a story.

ARTelevision

I didn't say Safire is a non-partisan source.
I did say that partisanship is poisoning our dialog.

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create evolution

apeman

now if we can't all agree on that, we might as well give up and go home I reckon

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BenChuy

one thing. Guess who was trying to move to the petrol-euro from the petrol-dollar? When were they trying to do that? What group were they trying to persuade to do the same?