alansmithee

I don't care for the article because I find it inaccurate and light on meaningful content. And there is no problem with linking Cheney to the Nixon Administration. But if you allow for that, you must also allow for comparisons to be drawn to the Clinton Administration, the Carter Administration, the Regan Administration, et al. You can't just cherry pick where you want to draw comparisions from if they are valid. But liberals like to opperate like Clinton (honestly, the only meaningful Dem pres since FDR) operated under some sort of separated from time bubble, where he should be immune to any negative associations. My only point is that if you want to make some comparisons, don't get angered when another equally valid but less flattering association is made.

Again, if actual discussion is wanted, I would be all for it. But this thread is the equivalent of asking "So, when did you quit beating your wife?". And when people came to say they aren't wife beaters, the were met with "So, you're a liar and a wifebeater now?". When the whole premise isn't to discuss Cheney, but for people to fling one-sided attacks, many who don't think Cheney some mix of Satan and Hitler might not bother trying to debate/discuss when they know any valid arguments will be disregarded anyway.

Again, it's about starting with a ridiculous/weighted premise, and expecting everyone to fall into line and stick with that view. It has nothing to do with ignoring anything, or denial. There was no desire for discussion, what was wanted was attack. And in that, this thread was a ringing success. And I personally find your claim that conservatives are narcissistic to be amusing and very ironic, especially when it is seen that liberals will rarely even concede that there can be another viewpoint on issues.

Ustwo

Is it great minds or weak minds that think alike?

I was going to post the same thing but I don't think the analogy isn't quite correct.

"So, when did you quit beating your wife?" is a loaded question while this was really a case of begging the question.

We were asked to concede that Cheney was some sort of evil powermonger bent on total power before we could answer the question posed. Without that concession the question was meaningless.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

roachboy

alansmithee:

i did not see anything so onesided in the article that it merits the kind of response from you--but then again i am not in a position where defending cheney is a matter of preserving my political identity---and since it is not de rigeur for me, i have no problem with considering fundamental critiques of his kind of politics.

the conservative set here could have handled this whole thing differently, you know: any one of you could easily have advanced counterarguments that refuted the op characterization of cheney--but you didnt.
you could have tried to point to other material that presented what you regard as a more balanced image of him and his politics--but you didnt.
you could have gone after the historical component of piece, and that from a number of angles--but you didnt.
you could even have tried to mount a defense of cheney---but you didnt.

instead, it was sophomoric idiocy time, food fight time blah blah blah.
it is strange that this kind of idiocy seems to pass for legitimate argument in conservativeland.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Elphaba

The "form" of discussion that attacks the source, and mysteriously devines the topic author's intentions is so old and overused that it seems unworthy of the time taken to respond to it.

My "intentions" are so foreign to Ustwo and Alansmithee that they must resort to projecting their own intentions. They have no inclination toward intellectual curiousity, and cannot conceive of the possibility that someone else would be so inclined. There must be some sort of comfort in protecting a very narrow world view.

alansmithee

You couldn't be further from the truth. My "political identity" isn't tied up in Cheney. I could name any number of things that I think he is wrong about, or has done wrong. What I don't see a purpose for is taking one-sided potshots and putting forth faulty arguements.

Again, it's because the whole thread and op-ed that started it wasn't worthy of a true rebuttal. I also wouldn't bother putting up a logical, well-thought out rebuttal if someone claimed the moon landing was fake, or that the earth is flat. To even bother to do so gives more credit than is warranted. There was no desire to debate the particular merits of Cheney or his politics, the point was for the liberals to pile on conservatives (yet again).

Sure, it was sophmoric. But it was intentional, as opposed to the unintentional humor and self-important idiocy of the op-ed piece and the OP. When serious discussion is warranted (or desired) I have no doubt that it can and will come about (as it has many times before by both the board's liberals and conservatives). But just like in this thread http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=97611 liberals totally were dismissive and mocking of the OP, because they felt it wasn't deserving of a real answer. This thread is nothing but the other side of the coin. And I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing-hopefully it leads to more actual debate instead of just wanting to pile on one side or the other.

pan6467

What I find amazing is that the Right wing posters find fault and attack the work and the posters, yet never offer substance and complain about how the topic is soooooo boring or done to death or whatever.... yet they keep posting.

Which is it guys, if the posts aren't worthy then why post anything..... or are the posts worthy and you just can't seem to argue the points. If you have legitimate differing views air them. Instead we get attacks and told how stupid the article is, and subject changes...... hmmmmm why must they post if they can't add anything constructive?

I think Host's exposing Drudge is very worthy, yet there is silence......

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Seaver

Why? I'll tell you why.

The first time Bush = Hitler was issued we decimated that argument with facts.
The next time we did as well.
Same again.
Then again.
Then we'd see Bush and Hitler in the same sentence and we'd stop reading, cause we know everything they're going to say already.

Then yall pulled out stupid stuff, like how Bush sounds stupid speaking on his own and how he needs writers.
Then yall pulled out more stuff like how Bush wanted questions in advance so he doesnt sound stupid and needs to speak frankly.

Then it was Bush causes hurricanes and more crap.

Have you ever seen anyone on the Right start up threads about how Kerry = Hitler? No. We dont do it because it's stupid, indefensible, and it's a waste of time.

You want to know why we stop reading your posts all the way through? Because people post 18 different sources driving on about inane items.

Now dont take this wrong, it's not a personal attack on anyone. Host backs up his arguments completely. I respect him for taking the time, it's great for a debate, perfect for a thesis. However I'll pull out that same example, when he attacks someone for doing the exact same thing using polar arguments on how he's supposed to do the other... what's the point in reading it.

Whats the point in reading something from truthout? Do you read all of Coulter's last book? I didnt. Why not? The same reason I'll never pay to see a Moore film, 13 half truths dont make a full one.

alansmithee

I wouldn't know, but a narrow world view seems to do just fine for most liberals. And intellectual curiosity doesn't entail simply spreading your ideology. It usually starts without having your conclusions already drawn. But I guess it's only intellectual if a liberal says it, right

Ustwo

Elphaba I find it sort of sad that you can't even see the mistake you made in your original post.

It is one of those dreaded 'logical fallacies'.

This was your question.

Well really none of us has a clue what Cheney 'learned' in the Nixon presidency. Thats way to hypothetical and speculative to even dream of answering, but luckily you provided us with a 'article' to lead us along.


Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal thwarted his designs for an unchecked imperial presidency. It was in that White House that Cheney gained his formative experience as the assistant to Nixon's counselor, Donald Rumsfeld. When Gerald Ford acceded to the presidency, he summoned Rumsfeld from his posting as NATO ambassador to become his chief of staff. Rumsfeld, in turn, brought back his former deputy, Cheney.

From Nixon, they learned the application of ruthlessness and the harsh lesson of failure. Under Ford, Rumsfeld designated Cheney as his surrogate on intelligence matters.

This is just speculation, and based on the tone of the article and the source, we can assume that objectivity was not high on the authors list. This isn’t a scholarly work, but a hit piece. Yes this is attacking the source but it is the source YOU gave as a starting point for discussion. You were begging the question, you gave us assumptions to accept to begin answering your question.

Do you SEE where you went wrong and why this thread is so utterly pointless?

What your “intentions” were is irrelevant, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and we can not know your intent any more than we can know what Cheney learned 30 odd years ago, we can only know what you gave us, and what you gave us was bankrupt of potential.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Elphaba

Yawn.... Show me a discussion other than your rubber stamp replies. Refute the article with another, do *anything* that takes a moment of effort to participate in a positive manner. I have not seen that yet from you, so I'm off to more important things. Ahh, yes! Time to clean the toilet.

host

Research does wonders for a truly curious mind.........
One thing you are right about, ustwo, is that there is much that we cannot know for certain. Bush and Cheney have worked O.T., to insure that!
[quote]
roachboy....how long do you predict that it will be until these folks adopt a policy of airbrushing out, the faces of people in official photos who have offended our "leaders"?

Marvelous Marv

I fell in love with her when she told Lanny Davis on national TV that his defense of the Clinton administration was "the biggest pile of crap [she'd] ever heard."

But I'm certain the Dems are celebrating that she's been diagnosed with breast cancer.

__________________
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher

Ustwo

I did not know that.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Ustwo

Elphaba despite what some people think, posting partisan links is not a discussion. Posting one in support of Cheney is no more valid than you posting yours. It doesn't change that you based this entire dicussion on an obvious logical fallacy and the apparent lack of understand of this on your part makes any discussion pointless. You have added nothing to your own discussion, you yourself did not answer your own question.

If you can show me where my analysis of your post was incorrect please do so, otherwise do not expect others to waste their time debating an illogical question.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

raveneye

Lawrence Wilkerson (Colin Powell's former chief of staff) is in the news again, stepping up his attack on Cheney, essentially implying that Cheney is guilty of war crimes for authorizing the torture of prisoners held in the "war on terror."

Basically he's saying that Cheney used the power of his office to permit Rumsfield to create a directive that suspended the Geneva Conventions on torture for U.S. prisoners of war.

Stansfield Turner also attacked Cheney today for the same reason.

Not a good time to be Dick Cheney. Was there ever a good time?

Elphaba

Post 56, and there seems to be plenty of discussion.

Elphaba

Wilkerson made another comment that goes to Cheney's desire to enlarge the power of the presidency, an objective he also held during the Nixon administration:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112905Z.shtml

Checks and balances are necessary and I can't imagine anyone arguing for an imperial presidency, but appears to be Cheney's goal. I found Wilkerson's comments regarding Bush's detachment from the details very interesting, too.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were allowed to do pretty much anything they pleased.

As I stated in the OP, I believe these two have brought great harm to the presidency. Sadly, Bush must share some of the blame for allowing it to happen.

raveneye

Here's a transcript of the Wilkerson interview from the BBC's website.

I notice that not all the quotes in Elphaba's post above are in this transcript, so it must have left out some details. I underlined the interviewer's questions and comments in the quotes.

Note that in this interview Wilkerson points out that there were two separate decision-making processes that were independent of each other, and that the process that Cheney was in control of ultimately became policy. That is very similar to Blumenthal's description of the two intelligence teams, the real one and the propaganda one controlled by Cheney during the Nixon administration.

Also: note that Wilkerson was initially sceptical of the idea that Cheney (and of course Bush by default) used intelligence as propaganda in the runup to the Iraq war, but with subsequent revelations about how the intelligence was used and obtained, he seems to have shifted his position and now is concerned that intelligence was "cherry-picked" to support policy.

On torture: it was interesting to see that one of the pieces of information used to defend a connection between Iraq and 9/11 was a "forced" confession from an AQ member; i.e. a confession obtained using non-Geneva techniques, which by definition are torture. We don't know what those techniques were, however; those responsible apparently aren't telling.

That confession was later recanted. I think using torture to obtain information that you want to hear, to support going to war, and then treating that information as credible intelligence is just revolting, in my humble opinion.

raveneye

Hot off the presses today, here's an interesting article right on target on the thread topic, in the London Financial Times by Catherine Daniel.

She doesn't focus as much as Blumenthal on the Nixon administration, but instead points to Cheney's experience in the Ford, Reagan, Bush I administrations, particularly his role as the minority chair of the Iran-contra committee. For Cheney, Iran-contra was simply a matter of the executive exercising its legitimate power against the illegitimate runaway power of Congress.

And his recent intransigence on the torture issue is very revealing in demonstrating his belief that the power of the president's office transcends international law and ethics.

Elphaba

I have bumped this thread with the hope of renewing discussion of Cheney's ideological influence upon presidents, past and present. Under the new rules of the politics forum, civil discussion may be possible.

I still believe that Cheney and Rumsfeld are the architects of this administration's policies. I also believe that their machinations are once again threatening the position of the executive. I find it so ironic the Cheney's continued pursuit of a universal presidency ultimately achieves the opposite result. Congress and the judiciary will reassert their roles, as they did under the Nixon administration.

host

In the Steve Colbert video thread, <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=2055690&postcount=42">ubertuber wrote</a>:
so....we'll "fight" here....so we don't have to "fight" over there......

In addition to the lie that Cheney told Gloria Borger, documented in my preceding post, above.....concerning his earlier attempt to link 9/11 "mastermind", Mohammed Atta, with Iraq, there are the following:

and.....
The cardinal "sin" is the 9/11 hijacking "ringleader" met with Saddam's intelligence officer, just 5 months before 9/11...blah...blah...blah story that Cheney said, on television, was "pretty much confirmed"....when it wasn't...and he knew it wasn't.

The followup by the "lap dog" press, imprinting this story in the minds of the American people, only added to the travesty. Without Cheney's "pretty much confirmed", comment, this would not have been a "center piece" indictment of Saddam's complicity.

Cheney is obviously aware of this, and that is confirmed by the curious risk he took....denying his own, previous televised statement, in a more recent televised statement, when he responded to CNBC reporter Gloria Borger's question. If it wasn't damning to admit that he told Russert that it "was pretty much confirmed", why would he risk telling such a blatant lie, to Borger?

ubertuber

Host, thanks for sticking this is a different thread. I've got a couple of points and a couple of questions.

First, can you link the second, long quoted section? Thanks.

Now, you've posted many inches worth of material that amount to documentation of one comment by one official. At that, Cheney's comment was that the Czech government had confirmed a report (which at that point, they had, however haphazardly) and this was something he said in December of 2001. The invasion of Iraq began in March of 2003. Further, your own linked article indicates that Cheney was responding to this question from Russert: "Do you still believe there's no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?” Even the wording of the question asserts that Cheney had originally said there was no question - and this is further confirmed by your linked article. First, Russert reminded Cheney that on Sept. 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. Since that time, a couple articles have appeared which I want to get you to react to.” As long as we're in the way back machine, I think this is really worth highlighting - that Russert Cheney saying Iraq WASN'T involved in 9/11.

Heck, even if the Czech government had been right, a meeting isn't indicative of support, and I don't see here that Cheney claimed it was. If this meeting took place (and there's no reason to think it did) it could have been Atta asking the Iraqi government for support and getting told to go f*ck himself. Basically, I don't see this as a claim of a connection between Iraq and 9/11.

It seems to me that this instance you are citing (and particularly the articles you've quoted) are damning evidence of sloppy and leading reporting, not deceipt actively practiced by our administration. There must be more, given the prevalent meme that Bush and Cheney claimed that Iraq backed the 9/11 attacks.

__________________
Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

host

I fixed the link to the counterpunch.org article....

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council
Posted Feb. 5, 2003
Out of the entire media, only one reporter from a major news outlet seriously questioned Powells' presentation to the UN, in a timely manner.....in that same week. Greg Miller's article did not develop any traction in the U.S., that I have found.....
A year later, along comes an MSNBC reporter, "revealing" the training camp story, as if it was "new" news.......
ubertuber, the preponderance of the evidence is that the administration lied about Iraq's connections to Al Qaeda, and planted false stories to play off the MSM as having verified it's false claims.....

<b>The administration has done enough, on it's own, from what I've read that has been exposed about their activities to twist the truth, and to manipulate an already compliant press into helping them do it, to diminish any semblance of credibility....how could anyone trust what they've said?</b>[quote]

host

Of course...there was more...this time, from the WSJ, 18 months after Powell's UN presentation, but.....in time to be examined just before the 2004 presidential election....
Defense Department spokesman Larry Di Rita seemed to confirm that the Zarqawi terrorist camp was simply a propaganda prop, left intentionally in place by the Bush administration so that they could direct Colin Powell to use it's existance as the main "evidence" to offer to a skeptical UN, that Saddam had terrorist ties to Al Qaeda. In fact, it actually demonstrates that the U.S. administration had no argument that the camp...or Zarqawi was actually a major terrorist threat that it actually took seriously itself.

Ustwo

What an interesting way to read that, I read it in a completely different way.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

ubertuber

host,

I've read every word of each article you linked. There's a lot of stuff there. However, hardly any of it has to do with the question at hand: what form did the Bush administration's alleged claims of a tie between Iraq and 9/11 take? You posted lots of stuff about Zarqawi, and lots of stuff about broad ties between Iraq and terrorism in general, and ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in particular. However, these don't answer the question we're examining here - which is Iraq and 9/11. I'd like to focus on this one particular aspect before moving to larger things. I, for one, don't think that a general coexistance of Iraq and Al Qaeda agents is equal to a link to the 9/11 attacks. We've thought from almost the beginning that those attacks were orchestrated and executed by a small number of people within the Qaeda organization.

In all that material, the argument that the Bush administration claimed Iraq was tied to 9/11 occupied approximately 9 lines, and came to 2 things. The first was a reiterated story about Cheney citing the Czech government's confirmation that Atta met with Iraqi officials in Prague. Certainly this was faulty intelligence. There's no reason now to believe that it happened.

The second thing in ALL of those articles is op-ed columnists stating that the Bush administration was trying hard to link Iraq to 9/11. None of them cites any specific instances of this effort other than Cheney's repeated mistaken reliance on the Czech report (which was thought for some time to be true).

Here's the crux of my question. If, in fact, the administration engaged in an devious attempt to link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, there should be a broad and clear pattern of stating this in media outlets. Can you cite these? Or is this meme due to Cheney's mis-statements on one incident and the broadly pursued theme of Zarqawi?

Since I'm going to bother to read all of the links you provide, please do me (and other posters) the courtesy of ensuring that they are topical and organized in a way that supports whatever your contention may be.

__________________
Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

Elphaba

I thought this was the Cheney/Rumsfeld "then and now" thread.

host

Elphaba, I apologize....but mitigating factors are....this thread is active again, and it seemed like the appropriate place to continue....because the last post on the first page is a prequel to what's happening here now....but that may have been a threadjack, too ....again....sorry!

ubertuber, I try to avoid op-ed pieces, unless they are rich in links to MSM news reports, or they add to, or provide background for actual news reporting.

Please point out any link that I've posted to an op-ed, in this discussion, that does not meet the standard that I described above. I appreciate receiving your attention and your challenge to me to make the best case that I can here.

I hope that you are not discounting the signifigance of Cheney's intimidation tactics used in an escape attempt from Gloria Borger's question. He decided to lie by adamantly denying that he had made his previously televised statement. His response was bullying, and extraordinary, given that it was about a matter so serious. Remember....Cheney "blew off" Gloria Borger in June, 2004. This report shows that it isn't possible that he just "didn't remember what he had said on Dec. 9, 2001. His reaction to Borger backs that up:
and....this was reported just a week after Cheney said that Atta's Prague meeting was "pretty well confirmed"....Cheney had to know about the doubts, but on Dec. 9, 2001....he said "confirmed", anyway, and he was still asserting that Atta traveled to "meetings" in Praque, nine months after the following reporting:
Please consider that I can only present the "tip" of the iceberg that floats mostly below the surface. I believe that Helen Thomas's accusatory question was legitimate, and the pattern of Bush-Cheney, et al, deception, is evident in Bush's reply to Helen; "Afghanistan, Taliban, terrorists, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.....I determined that Iraq....blah blah blah".

The administrations "linkage" of Saddam to 9/11, was a deliberate, slick, and sometimes subtle, propaganda campaign. As often as Bush supporters erroneously maintain that the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, or the Silberman Commission, investigated and reported on how the Bush admin. analyzed, prioritized, and conveyed pre-invasion intelligence on Iraq...to congress and to the American public, all three of the reports issued by those Commissions state that they specifically avoided looking into those administration/intelligence handling related issues, and thus, did not make determinations about them, in the three reports.

Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate-SCI, is now trying to split up the second half of his committee's report, which promised to address these issues in a timely manner....first in July, 2004, and then after a senate democrats' unanimous protest that the report was overdue....last November,
when 17 months had passed with no progress seen on finalizing the report's second phase. Now Roberts is trying to split the second half report into, two, to presumably further delay examining and issuing a report on the administration's handling of pre-Iraqi invasion, intelligence. The goal is transparent....the 2004 delay was to avoid disclosure before the November presidential election, and the new "split" proposal, is to delay issuing the report until after the November, 2006 mid-term election, and possibly beyond.

So....you can't "know" anything beyond a reasonable certainty. The rubber stamp, republican congress offers only it's track record of Sen. Pat Roberts' broken SSCI investigative "process" to bring the facts out for the American people to see. The democratic party is in the congressional minority. Democrats have no authority to convene a hearing, or to subpoena and the swear in any witness, without permission from republicans, who hold all committee and sub-committee chairs in both houses.

Of course, I think that the "evidence" that I offer you to examine, increases in stature and signifigance because the POTUS and his fellow federal elected party members have made such a thorough effort to avoid bi-partisan investigation of what the POTUS and the VP knew, by March 19, 2003, and when they knew it....vs what they told us, and what they did, not in spite of it. We now live in a climate where previously declassified material, some of it as old as forty to sixty years, is being rapidly, methodically, and secretly reclassified, and where something as simple as an FOIA request for the secret service white house logs of Abramoff's visits since 2001, was ignored, and only obtained after a judge's ruling in the lawsuit that followed:
Much of what I described above is detailed here....including document reclassification, and the fact that Cheney kept the details of his 2001 "Energy Task Force" secret...not disclosed, to this day:
So....now that I've painted the case that they are obsessively secretive...the Cheney Energy Task Force meetings took place before they could use the excuse of 9/11 as a shield....here is what I've got. For me....it's enough...because it's all we're gonna get for the time being....and these folks have acted in an alarmingly un-American manner. No respect for FOIA, accountability to the people, or even respect for the structure of the constitutional government, or for the law: (I thought it would help to post these in chronological order.)

The first Bush quote reminds me of a song:
<a href="http://www.lyricsdownload.com/sprung-monkey-coconut-lyrics.html">put the lime in the coconut and mix em both up</a>

smooth

Here's an article I remember reading when it was fresh:

I have some things to say about this topic, but I'm tired.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

ubertuber

host,

I've snipped out the sections of your previous that have to do with the Bush administration (through its officials) asserting a link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. The first is what I characterized as an op-ed piece. This may not be a fair label, but I'm not sure what else to call it. It's merely Benjamin's claim that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld (notable not Dick Cheney or even G.W. Bush) said things, without any quotations, context, or proof.

Holy Zarqawi
Why Bush let Iraq's top terrorist walk. By Daniel Benjamin
Cheney's Debate Misrepresentations on Iraq.

This one is a news report, but is not much more than a rehash of the one claim of Cheney's statement that Atta met Iraqi agents once in Prague. Once again, while this statement is now unproveable, it was for a short time confirmed by the Czech government. And yes, I know that their confirmation was sloppy, unwarrented, and bizarrely delayed and later retracted. I bolded Cheney's interesting and indignant claim that he never made that claim (other than the one thing, which he admitted saying in a very specific way).
Please note that this post concerns your posts 63 and 64, and your question about my characterization of some of their contents as op-ed. While I admit that I may have applied that label inappropriately, I'm not sure what to call the first of these snippets. The second is, as we both acknowledge, another report of one claim, which may have been made several times.

And please forgive me for harping on this, but it is striking that I could only pull 6 lines of directly relevant text out of your approximately 26 pages of linked text (all of which I read).

I'm currently reading through your more recent post, so I'll respond when I've finished. I promise I haven't forgotten or moved on.

This may be a moot point by now (and I'll find out soon), but I again want to emphasize that the question I asked was about the Bush administration alleging that Iraq was linked or responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I saw many people decrying those claims, but don't remember hearing administration officials making them (your incident with Cheney's favorite citation of a temporarily confirmed report aside). I'm thinking that if the Bush administration was really making that claim as a justification for invading Iraq, then we ought to be able to find out when and where they said it, not to mention just what was said. At this point, I think Wolfowitz is the most likely suspect, as he has always seemed the most hawkish of the bunch.

I should state outright that I don't think claims of co-existence or even cooperation between Iraq and Qaeda agents are enough to support an Iraq-9/11 connection. They are a claim that Iraq consorted with terrorists, but as we've noted, it is widely accepted that the 9/11 attacks were planned and perpetrated by a small number of people - it seems to be the only way they could have been kept secret. If your assertion that the Bush administration has claimed a link between Iraq and 9/11 is based on the Zarqawi stuff or non-aggression pacts between bin Laden and Hussein, I think we'll have to agree to disagree - I just don't think that is strong enough to justify the outrage over that claimed connection.

Again, I'm not necessarily arguing that you're wrong. I'd just like to see the administration's words from their own mouths. I've never understood where all that hoopla was coming from. I'd very much appreciate someone pointing it out to me more clearly. I'll get back to sorting through your most recent posts, so I apologize if you've already done so.

__________________
Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

ubertuber

host,

You seriously just posted the same article for a second time without saying anything new about it. I'm referring to the msnbc.com article about the Vice Presidential debates.

Here I quote from your second article. New Clue Fails to Explain Iraq Role in Sept. 11 Attack
I'm skipping the Abramoff and classification stuff, but I'll comment there in the end of this post.
From the whitehouse.gov transcript of President Bush's interview with President Uribe of Colombia you might have done better to post this snippet (below). However, this STILL isn't a claim that Iraq was responsible for (or even aware of) the 9/11 attacks. He's saying that since we were shocked by those attacks we've learned that we have to proactively address threats to our national security (which they then tried to show Iraq was through the whole WMD debate). This is like me seeing a car accident and resolving to tell my mother I love her because she might die unexpectedly as well. That's not me saying that she'll die in a car accident - just that a lesson learned from one event can be proactively applied to similar situations.
I won't quote your information from the State of the Union speech - you've narrowed it down pretty well. However, once again this is not an assertion that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. It's a fear that next time could be worse, if Iraq DID assist terrorist organisations.

The radio address is probably the best link you used. It is an example of President Bush himself asserting that there have been past links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. However, these claims range over a decade and while specific, never mention the 9/11 attacks or even Osama bin Laden. Hang on to this for a second, because it'll be part of the end of this post.

Following that, you've got Bush's letter to Congress, which states that disarming Iraq is "consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organiza-tions, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. United States objectives also support a transition to democracy in Iraq, as contemplated by the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338)."

I'll admit. This is pretty darn close to what I was asking about. Here's the thing (and I know I sound like I'm splitting hairs - I'm sorry, please bear with me). This letter asserts that disarming Iraq is consistent with...including those nations... The words "consistent" and "including" are key, as they allow the interpretation that, once again, Iraq is similar to agents that prosecuted the 9/11 attacks without being those agents. You're right in that this instance is hard to take in other ways. However, this letter was written at the beginning of hostilities with Iraq, not during the time that the Bush administration was trying to drum up support for the war - so it can't be part of the public idea that the Bush administration claims that Iraq was linked to 9/11 in ways other than being a lesson to learn from.

Which brings me to your Christian Science Monitor article... This article explicitly makes the point that I'm suspecting. That the Bush administration DID NOT make claims that Iraq had any involvement with the WTC/Pentagon attacks of 9/11/2001. In fact, even in the transcripts and articles that you've posted, there are several explicit claims to the contrary. However, there are numerous (if not tons) of instances in which administration officials mention 9/11 and Iraq in close proximity to each other. That's hardly surprising since Bush and his administration seem to sincerely believe that after 9/11 we find ourselves in a new world. They link those attacks to virtually every issue in international and domestic politics. Further, there's a repeated idea that we should invade Iraq because 9/11 taught us to proactively engage these sorts of threats before it's too late. In abstract, this isn't such a bad lesson to have learned from September 11th. On the other hand, extrapolating that to Iraq and determining that Saddam Hussein represented the most significant threat to US interests seems to be quite a leap. Of course that's a topic for another thread.

So am I correct in concluding that there are not clear and repeated instances of Bush administration officials publicly claiming that Iraq had any involvement with the 9/11 attacks? I see a broad attempt to link the sense of danger we felt after 9/11 to Iraq. I remember many critics of this policy complaining that the Bush administration had made these claims - and I didn't remember hearing them. Of course (as you're probably realizing now), I'm an unusually literally-minded person. The list of quotes at the end of Smooth's article support my memory, and my literally minded interpretation.

Smooth's article probably states this more concisely than you or I could. (Thanks Smooth - I'd like to hear your thoughts when you're not too tired.)
Finally, and I'm trying to be gentle here... Once again, I had to wade through lots and lots of quoted and linked material that is unrelated to the topic at hand. I know Abramoff and Cheney are your pet issues, but there's nothing here related to Congress, classification, lobbying, energy commissions, or any of the other myriad links you included. Your points could have been made with about 3 links where you used more than a dozen. I'm assuming you provide such voluminous documentation because you want us to read it... That would be both more likely and more rewarding if these links were chosen more selectively. I know I'd appreciate it if you'd just think about this.

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Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

smooth

ubertuber, I'm curious if we could work through the following problem inductively: what is the explanation for the direct correlation between the rise in the population's belief of an Iraq-Sept. 11th link and the claims about justifications for the Iraq war?

A direct correlation, in this context, means that as claims for the war increased, so did belief in a link between the two concepts.

Linkage, in this context, is not necessarily physical collaboration between two entities. Links can also refer to mental association between two things. The language used by the administration when referring to Iraq or 9-11 seems intended to elicit mental linkages between the two concepts.

Let's deconstruct some portions of the discursive tactics the administration utilized:
I notice that Iraq is a Nation-State, while Sept 11th is a time.
Do you agree with me that when Iraq and Sept 11th are spoken of, the former is referred to as an agent while the latter is referred to as a time or event?

Referring to an attack as a time, rather than who is responsible for it, cues the listener to listen for, or think about, the action and fill in the actors responsible for it. In this case, according to polls over time, the actors became Iraqis andSaddam Hussein in the minds of a large majority of the population (whas it somewhere between 60 and 70%?).

I don't have direct quotes of explicit links between Iraq and the attack on Sept 11th. I would have been surprised if they had made some given that the hypothesis I'm working with is that the administration was unaware of or knew of no physical link between the two concepts but wanted to create a mental one regardless. If that is true, I would doubt they would use direct links that could, in the future, be disproven (thereby making them susceptable to charges that they actually/explicitly lied to the public).

I remember, however, that during the run-up to the war that I was constantly discussing with a handful of people during which I was correcting them about the lack of a physical link between Iraq and Sept 11th.

I'm not claiming that only leftists recognized their was no physical link between the two. If I'm remembering the polls correctly, 30-40% did not believe Iraq was responsible for the attack on 9-11. It stands to reason that you, as I, did not make that logical coupling. But the empirical evidence is that we are in the minority of the population.

As much as I dislike the use of an implicit concept to steer public opinion to support a war, I recognize another link that is far more problematic. Intentionally or not, the administration is creating a frame of reference to understand these contemporary events. This is one link you recognized and reiterated: a sense of fear.

The threats these events create to our nation's security create a ready-made perspective on other events. This frame gives us a set of linguistic tools to apply to new problems and constrains our thoughts in accordance with the language in play.

We could examine how this new frame (terrorism; national security) is being applied to drug offenders and illegal immigrants, for example. My main concern is that as this military action way of looking at and responding to our foreign threats is applied to domestic threats, we will see an increase in para-military reactions domestically. That is, I don't think it's an unreasonable concern that we might see an increase in centralization of police power and subsequent use of that force domestically.

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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman