Rumsfeld admits no link between Saddam and Al Queda
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3715396.stm



So there you go. Even the most ardent of "chicken hawks" or pro-war agitators now accepts that the link was bogus.

How do the neo-Con supporters on this board react now that their poster-child agrees with what the vast majority of people (here, in the US, around the world) have known for years?


Mr Mephisto

PS - I predict the usual raft of "just because no evidence has been found, doesn't mean it isn't there" kind of nonesense and replies from.... well, you know who. :-)

Zarqawi, no way an injured Al Qeada Lt. gets free safe passage and care in a hospital run by Uday. Ansar Al-Islam in Kurdistan had tactical and logistical support from Saddam. Perhaps this article isn't in reference to that 9-11 claim?

OK, you're right. Rumsfeld is wrong.

SIGH


Mr Mephisto

I'm saying it's suspect. Are you sure this is not in reference to the assertation that Iraq wasn't involved in 9-11?

As I didn't attend the event in New York in person I can only rely upon what he was reported as saying.

Emphasis added.


If you don't believe it coming from his own mouth, who will you believe?



Mr Mephisto

Rumsfeld put out a release afterwards (link) where he claimes he was misunderstood and that he does think there was a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.
I'm guessing it went down as Mojo_PeiPei suggests and either Rumsfeld misunderstood the question or the reporters misunderstood him.

AQ & Co. are next.
They ain't leavin the planet.
They're going to be sorry they ever crept out from under their rocks.

Or he's an idiot who spoke before thinking then realized what kind of damage the truth may lead to for the Bush campaign?

great, that fits the general pattern of this administration since the beginning:

claim one thing, then turn around and say exactly the opposite.

Then, depending on who heard what, let the people argue over it (the 'truth,' whatever that may be).


In the above link, Rumsfield doesn't even get into how his statement was misunderstood, just lists a string of sentences that directly contradict his earlier position.

I think it's bizarre that his credibility is still intact with so many people.


EDIT: Here's the text
What is up with the last sentence? From what I understand, that isn't even factually correct. But here he is anyway, dropping it in there. Maybe he means "described linkages" in the sense that they were described in refutation?

a strange admission indeed....i certainly can't imagine that he was "misunderstood" that badly. the transcript seems clear enough.

Key phrases in the above press release

"..what we believe..."
"...what we consider..."

Also, I agree with you Smooth. The 9/11 Commission report said there was no real link, apart from some initial approaches by low-level Al Queda operatives, that were rebuffed by Iraq.

But does anyone actually remember that Iraq was NOT invaded because of 9/11? Or have the waters been muddied too much? :-)


Mr Mephisto

At least this administration is starting to admit to some mistakes :rolleyes:

are there proofs for that, or are you just repeating powells presentation of "proofs" at the UN?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam

A CIA official met with Bin Laden while he was in hospital in Dubai, so maybe the US should invade itself too. :crazy:

It appears that there is currently no link between SH and BL. This is contrary to the belief of this administration following 911. Unfortunately this link was used as a basis for invading Iraq and it was possibly based on poor intelligence. I wonder if the intelligence community was misreading or overestimating the value of information gathered. I also wonder how this information was presented to this administration. Was it presented as truth or as snippets of data, subject to interpretation?

A president has to react to the information presented to them. Poor information equals poor decisions. Personally, I find it hard to swallow that Blair would support our efforts without at least some British intelligence collaborating what we had a the time.

I truly believe that there is more to this story and that it will take years to come out. Nitpicking each and every statement made is not productive without all the evidence.

I do hope that we, as a nation, have learned from this experience.

Blair's intelligence turned out to be suspect as well. There was a massive investigation into what was alleged to be intentionally "sexed up" intelligence reports and falsified claims - have a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...259805,00.html

Interestingly enough, the UK Conservative Party (who are currently holding their annual party conference) seem to be trying to redesign themselves as the "party that people can trust," mainly as a result of Blair's shenanigans during the run-up to the Iraq war. The shadow chancellor has not promised any tax cuts should the Tories be elected into power because he says the public are "tired of broken promises." Michael Howard has said that the public does not trust politicians anymore, something that he would seriously address if elected Prime Minister.

So do we distrust politicians or our intelligence community? Is there more to it than they can release at this time? Too many questions.... too little sleep.

A little bit of both. It appears the intelligence community weren't as thorough as they could have been and presented intelligence that was undefinitive. However, the politicians were the ones who decided to interpret it the way they did and present it as definitive fact.

From the above linked article:

"In order to promote a war he had decided to fight with America come what may, the prime minister and his staff took intelligence that was sketchy and circumstantial and transformed it into something that appeared compelling and definitive. He can certainly argue that it was already faulty when it reached him. What he should not be allowed to do is evade responsibility for the way it was embellished once it reached his desk. Without this final step the case for war would have collapsed. "

A few things:

He said he has not seen hard evidence of its proof, that's not quite saying definitively that there was no link. He then asserts that the intelligence community beliefs have changed over the last year or so. Again, that does not say there was no link just that the possibility has become more remote.

And as Mr Mephisto said, Iraq was not invaded because of 9/11 but I suspect no one here wants to recall that because it's much easier to believe that the big bad Bush administration in its true to form evil ways went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein planned the 9.11 attack.

Bush's state of the union address (you all remember the one since so many bitch about his words "you're either with us or against us") clearly said he would go after countries who support, sponsor, and give terrorists safe harbor.

Terrorism does not just equal Al Quaeda.

And, since I haven't said this in the last couple of days, one of the main reasons Iraq was invaded was because its defiance of the UN and US accords were an example to every country who was considering ignoring world efforts to stamp out terrorism. If the worst that the world can do to you is sanction you while allowing you to retain power over your country and continue to fill your pockets through things like the oil for food program there isn't all that much of a consequence if you decide that you'll allow Al Quaeda or other terrorist organizations to operate within your borders (or do not do much to root them out).

No, Iraq was not invaded because of 9/11 but since no WMDs have been found we have heard repeatedly (including in the most recent presidential debate) that Iraq is central to the War on Terror. Which is rubbish.

And (I haven't said this in the last few days either) that invading a country because it has ignored UN resolutions is the most hypocritical reason I have yet heard for the invasion.

And since you mention it here, what exactly are "US accords" supposed to be? I don't remember the US having any authority over anyone else in the world.

US accords would be the agreements made by Saddam to end the first Gulf War which included minor things like not shooting at US planes in the no fly zone.

WMDs were not the only reason either but my last response covers why it is that some prefer to think in such simplistic terms.

this again....

i do not see why the wmd matter can be understood as "simplistic" given that it was central to bush's arguments for war.

which reverts to the problem of the american presentation before the unsc--which cannot really be interpreted as opposing the countries who "wanted to do something about terrorism" and those "which did not"--instead, you had a fundamental disagreement about which version of reality to accept--that generated by the un inspections teams as over against that generated by us/uk intel and visions of which way to proceed--multilaterally versus unilaterally.

the administration failed to persuade on either count--except obviously for american conservatives.


not a single of the general explanations for war offered above constitutes an element of a justification for how the bush administration chose to act in the real world--not one element would function to legitimate the treatment the neocons accorded the un at the time or since; not one of them would constitute a reason for going outside the institutional and legal framework set up to deal with iraq in the cadre of the un.

not one.

because for these explanations to have had weight, they would have had to compel the security council to act as a body. and they did not--perhaps because the bush case for war was, in the parlance of our times, bullshit?

so the tactic since has been obvious--amazingly so:

since the neocons lost in the un, it follows that they should try to erase the un politically, given that for them politics is the domain most suited to the presentation of their fantasies as if they described the world.

because in the end the question is only secondarily how you, onetime (for example), rationalize your personal support for the war.
rather what is at issue is how you understand what the administration did, in the contexts that situate/bind it in the world.

Of course, this wasn't really a given reason for the war which implies what, exactly? The American people wouldn't have supported invasion simply to make an "example" out of Iraq. If what you allege is true then there was deliberate misinformation coming out of the Administration. Or this reasoning could just be an excuse to vindicate a war that exhausted all of it's other justifications long ago.

LOL, yeah "deliberate misinformation" that's it. Because every other administration gives the public ALL the details of what's going on and why or that the government is somehow supposed to tell everything in every instance. The simple fact is that there are plenty of reasons not to come out and say such things. Not the least of which is the fact that it would severely reduce the effectiveness and give the potential targets ammunition to sway world opinion. This is politics people, it's not group therapy where you share all the details and the motivations for your actions.

Or perhaps the UN security council does not base their decisions solely on what's good for the world or the evidence put before it. Each and every member of the security council has an agenda and it's not solely "Let's make the world a better place for everyone." To assume that their inaction was solely due to the Bush administration's case being bullshit is factually anemic. At the time of the debates there was very little discussion about whether Iraq had WMDs or had a desire to build them. The discussion was mainly around giving sanctions more time. How much longer do you think it would have taken for Iraq to open his palaces to inspection? Perhaps a year? Maybe another decade? You will be hard pressed to offer any evidence that more weight could be brought to bear on him than he saw since 1991. The security council wanted to continue doing more of the same rather than taking a forceful approach (despite the resolutions threatening such enforcement). To say their lack of support was wholly a factor of the Bush case being thin is downright misleading.

As far as how I "rationalize" my support for the war, I have a totally different view of the world than you. Because of this I do not need to "rationalize" it. I accept what has happened and trust that decisions were made with the best of intentions. I do not see the Bush administration as empire builders and I view the UN as great at providing relief in war torn or disaster stricken areas but wholly ineffective at building a significant military force or applying what they do have effectively. Additionally, I recognize that the UN has not improved the situation in the Middle East significantly in the last 40 years and that a free and Democratic(ish) government in Iraq has probably the greatest chance to change the region than anything that's been put in place in the last several hundred years.

The public has a right to know in this society, particularly whenever war is involved. You aren't alleging some secret, damning information that drove the invasion but rather a vague display of power to show the "bad guys" what we're made of. You may accept that as justification but I'd wager that the majority of the country would disagree.

Well, at least we apparently agree on one thing...we did invade Iraq under false pretenses. LOL, indeed. I suppose the the probably fictitious Gulf of Tonkein incident and subsequent war was a good thing in the "political realists" handbook. We had to show the communists, right?

We did not invade Iraq for one or two reasons.

I wish people could be clear on this.

As to this latest, I seriously dislike the fact that our intelligence has failed so miserably regarding Hussein, but I still contend that on the balance, the war was justified.

I see if that's the case why have we not invaded Ireland. Do they not support the terroristic group the IRA?

As a writer that is clear, and has the respect of the board (i'll bet), I would love to see you elaborate on this comment. What are the reasons that we invaded Iraq?

I ask because it seems clear to me that WMD was the reason that 'we the people' got behind the war. It seems that that reason shifted to 'he's a bad man' after the fact. I understand that it's a complicated issue, and there are lots of reasons. But the prime mover was WMD. If you could go back in time, and remove that issue totally from the debate, would the people have backed this war?

I say "seems" twice, because I mean just that. That is my persective. It is clear from reading these boards for as long as I have that there are others that see it another way.

I really really really want to understand how others could see it different. But I'm struggling and need help. Can anyone step off the short soundbites, and assume that I'm actually trying to understand the other side of this issue?

This feels like a WWI battle to me: each side is so entrenched, and there is enough barbed wire between each side to hang up the others that we never get to hear the other. It's exhausting.

i do not know what you are talking about, onetime.

one more time through the facts of the matter:

the un inspections team was verifying that hussein had in fact dismantled the wmd systems. the failure to dismantle was one of the central arguments on which the case for war rested.

i do not know what you are talking about with the waiting business. one of the major arguments against bushwar was, at the time, that bush might have provided a rationale for going to war, but not for doing so at any particular time--which meant that the administration did not refute the contentions that the same objectives were being implemented via the un regime and therefore did not make a compelling case for going outside the sanctions regime.
that is why other countries did not vote with the administration. the other claims about france, germany, russia, etc, are simple rightwing bullshit. nothing more.

one other argument was the link to terrorism--which alone was able to support the self-defense claims---which would have perhaps made the war legitimate internationally (all facts aside)--but even this contention has proven to be false. rumsfeld is only the most recent conservative to admit as much--though not without a subsequent burst of spin from the bush campaign, which knows enough about its business to see a political catastrophe when it sees one. too much dissonance is bad for conservative morale. might even wake up the constituency. cant have that.

so that claim does not hold water either.

what you are left with is hussein was a bad guy--which no-one doubts----but given the history of american foreign policy and its support of despots worse than hussein ever was around the world, that holds no water either. and is certainly not a justification for war either in general or in this particular case.

the last shred of legitimation seems to be repeat the wolfowitz doctrine. that was not persuasive when i read it on the project for a new american century website before the war, and it is not now as an argument in itself.
as a tactic in the present political environment, this same doctrine has the effect of a wholesale transposing of the logic of the situation into irrelevant territory. that is functions in conservativeland only serves to show that what might not be relevant for much of the planet can be made to appear relevant in that space. which seems a pretty damning critique of that political space itself.

so far as i can tell then support for the war rests on nothing.

but lets say the democracy argument were to hold--you might counter that if the americans think democracy is so great, they could start to show it by instituting one in america.

but in this climate, maybe that would count as a cheap shot...

but whatever--nothing personal, onetime--i enjoy the debates with you in general--however this particular debate is getting old because it amounts to the same thing every time. at this point, the usual defense is "i have a different view than you" which seems to be nothing more than a way to set up a denial of the situation you face. so fine.

And I wish people could be clear on the fact that the vast majority of American's would not have supported the war without the WMD aspect. All of the other "reasons' were filler. In fact, the majority of American's didn't even support the war without UN authorization.

You may feel it was justified, but the simple fact remains that we wouldn't be there in this chaotic mess if the over-hyped, non-existent WMD reason hadn't been the cornerstone of the explanation for the war.

That the administration continues to claim Al Qaeda/Saddam connections with not a single shred of evidence to back them up is nothing more than pure, unfiltered propaganda being used to maintain their grasp over the gullable, borderline true-believers. They want a connection to exist so bad, because then they can more easily forget that the WMD issue, the issue that sold the public, was bullshit.

ANd that, Roachboy, is what I meant by simplistic. The constant attempts to narrow the causes behind the invasion down to one or two easily digestible pieces motivated solely by partisan politics.

I'm sure there are plenty on the board who think it's because they don't control any oil.

This debate was old a year ago. The UN inspection teams did not confirm the destruction of his weapons. And you have yet to supply any compelling argument that the more stringent UN resolutions (without being backed up by force) would encourage Saddam to be any more forthcoming than he was during the mid to late 90's. I guess the days of "Our missiles are not in violation of the agreement"; Followed by proof that they were; Immediately followed by the deadline for destruction passing and Saddam making the announcement of "well ok, they are in violation but you have to understand it will take time to destroy them"; Followed, of course by months of delay are only figments of my right wing imagination.

You seem to think I need to "rationalize" my beliefs or set up "denials" in the discussions. Your disillusioned claim of America not setting up a Democracy at home is perhaps the best evidence I can offer of you living in a completely different world from me.

You just described every politician that has ever walked the face of the earth.

Well when you are finished here in Ireland move across the water to England as their forces have been supporting Unionist terrorist groups(UVF UFF LVF just to name a few) here as well :hmm:

Well, what do you think? You have yet to explain your view regarding the hypocrisy evidenced in every single one of the justifications you have given for the war.

If every other administration murdered children in gas chambers, would that make it okay for this one to do it as well?

If an administration doesn't give me all the reasons for building a road, or implementing emission regulations, or constructing a pipeline, fine, whatever. But to instigate an invasion and send my cousin/brother/father into war and possible death and not only not divulge the proper reasons for it, but lie about most of it, that is far, far from fine. You don't feel they owe it to the very people who's interests they are supposed to have at heart and to whom they are ultimately responsible to disclose their reasons for going to war?

If it was so necessary to invade and remove the "evil one" why didn't they invade when he was actually gassing the Kurds ?

Unbelievably good point and one that has brought this discussion to a dramatic and sudden close.