TBogg - Ideologically Illiterate

TBogg insists that Bush & Cheney told us Iraq was involved in 9/11

The Left’s nastiest blogger goes after Hinderaker, on the old question of whether or not the administration claimed Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks. He quotes Hinderaker’s refutation, and then “puts the hammer down.”

Thinking to myself that TPrikk will dredge up a really juicy, damning quote, I read on. For his evidence, The Left’s Ostentatiously Self-Proclaimed Faithful Husband, excerpts this Meet the Press interview (Russert and Cheney). Russert runs through some things potentially linking Iraq and 9/11, then:

RUSSERT: Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?

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.

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.

This is the smoking gun? The slam dunk? The “in-your-face, you miserable Neocons?” This is it? C’mon, TBlove, you can’t do any better than quoting Cheney saying “we simply don’t know at this point. But that’s clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.”

And his commenters lap it up like the flyboys going after Bull Meecham’s puke.

They believe it. They have wrapped themselves up so tightly in the mantle of “Bush lied; he told us Saddam was behind 9/11,” that they really believe it. Even when … even when … the best evidence they can come up with is the Vice President saying on MTP that we should follow up on the reported Prague meeting. Talk about ideological blinders.

Comments

  1. Allah wrote:

    You know what the punchline here is, Steve? If Bush were 1/1000th as corrupt as they think he is, and as hell bent on war with Iraq as Helen Thomas thinks he was, he would have had the FBI identify the 9/11 hijackers as Iraqis right after the attack.

    By the way, whatever happened to the idea that if we didn’t find WMDs, Bush was simply going to have some planted over there? That’s what Hitler would have done, isn’t it?

    Posted 21 Mar 2006 at 9:49 pm

  2. Allah wrote:

    Actually, scratch that. Hitler would have just nuked them and been done with it.

    Posted 21 Mar 2006 at 9:54 pm

  3. Pixy Misa wrote:

    Hitler would have invaded Iraq and blamed it on Helen Thomas.

    Posted 22 Mar 2006 at 2:02 am

  4. BloodSpite wrote:

    Then he would have rounded up his antagonists and put them in a camp, with wire, and mud, and put them to work or gassed them.

    On second thought……

    Posted 22 Mar 2006 at 10:02 am

  5. tbogg wrote:

    RUSSERT: Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?

    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.

    Glad I could help you out.

    Pity your home-schooling didn’t take….

    Posted 22 Mar 2006 at 12:18 pm

  6. commissar wrote:

    Cheney wanted to follow up on the reported Atta meeting in Prague? This is the big deal?

    That’s The Left’s best shot on “Bush tied Saddam to 9/11?”  … Pathetic.

    Posted 22 Mar 2006 at 1:09 pm

  7. dorkafork wrote:

    With that excerpt you’d think that Cheney was the one that brought up the subject of the Prague meeting.

    December 9, 2001:

    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.

    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.

    And this from James Woolsey, former CIA director: “We know that at Salman Pak, in the southern edge of Baghdad, five different eye witnesses–three Iraqi defectors and two American U.N. inspectors–have said, and now there are aerial photographs to show it, a Boeing 707 that was used for training of hijackers, including non-Iraqi hijackers, trained very secretly to take over airplanes with knives.”

    And we have photographs. As you can see that little white speck, and there it is.

    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?

    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.

    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.

    Posted 22 Mar 2006 at 4:23 pm

  8. BloodSpite wrote:

    Heh. Not a big shock.
    The hard left can’t make a connection between Hitler and Bush thats logical, but it doesn’t keep them from screaming it over and over again.

    They can’t make a connection with Cheney and the entire length of an article either it seems.

    I knew they were desperate and grasping at straws. But circular arguments and one statement out of a entire article really pushes it.

    I wonder if we can bottle what they drink over there. There has to be some sort of world use for mindless following of rhetoric and bad information somewhere in the world.

    Posted 22 Mar 2006 at 6:20 pm

  9. h0mi wrote:

    It’s been over 4 1/2 years since 9/11, and in the 1600 or so days since then, how many statements can be found by the admin linking Saddam to 9/11?

    Posted 23 Mar 2006 at 6:15 pm

  10. The Unabrewer wrote:

    Wow. Just…wow.

    Posted 23 Mar 2006 at 11:28 pm

  11. tas wrote:

    Did some googling for 10-15 minutes and found a few interesting things.

    From Bush’s Cincinnati speech in 2002:

    And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein’s links to international terrorist groups.

    [snip]

    We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq.

    These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We have learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb making, poisons, and deadly gases.

    And we know that after September 11, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.

    Alliances with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

    Sounds to me like Bush was trying to make an al-Qa’ida/Iraq link there.

    And in 2004, Cheney outright claimed there was a link:

    WASHINGTON (CNN) — Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, and he said media reports suggesting that the 9/11 commission has reached a contradictory conclusion were “irresponsible.”

    “There clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming,” Cheney said in an interview with CNBC’s “Capitol Report.”

    “It goes back to the early ’90s. It involves a whole series of contacts, high-level contacts with Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials.”

    Cheney then accused the press of “being lazy” for reporting otherwise.

    Maybe TBogg didn’t find the smoking guy, Comissar, but those links I just found look pretty damning to me. Even people who will claim that it was reported in the “liberal media” can’t deny the fact that these are direct quotes straight from the mouths of the President and Vice President. It’s what they said, and they said there was a Saddam/Osama link.

    Posted 26 Mar 2006 at 1:57 am

  12. commissar wrote:

    Of course, Saddam supported international terrorism AND did have links to al Qaeda. As the 9/11 Commission put it, Saddam had no “operational” connection to 9/11. Your links are consistent with this.
    Let me know when you find ANY instance of the administration saying that Saddam/Iraq was involved in 9/11 (directly, operationally, etc.).

    Posted 26 Mar 2006 at 2:33 am

  13. tas wrote:

    Had I the time to put an hour or two’s worth of research into this right now, I’m pretty sure I could give you a couple links. I’ll see what I can do when I get home from work tonight.

    I have one correction to your comment, though: the article I linked to about Cheney was him responding to the findings of the 9/11 Comission’s report. Cheney thought that the findings didn’t go far enough, and that’s what caused his public outburst.

    So if Cheney thought that Saddam and al-Qa’ida had a larger connection, how large is this connection supposed to be? If Cheney refutes the 9/11 Commission’s findings on Iraq not having any involvement with al-Qa’ida, then what is Cheney instigating? What other options are there to think about?

    There’s definitely framing of issues at work here. This framing is one explaination as to why much of the general public still believes that Iraq had a connection to the attacks on 9/11. Mass beliefs like this don’t pop up out of thin air, they have to have enforcement from somewhere.

    That “somewhere” isn’t necessarily a direct quote from the Bush administration, but the actions of the administration can help foster the belief. There are many instances of Republican blogs and magazines making connections between Iraq and 9/11 during the run up to the war. I didn’t see the Bush administration denouncing any of these theories.

    Personally, I think that says something.

    Posted 26 Mar 2006 at 11:13 am

  14. commissar wrote:

    tas,

    You rephrase things thus:

    “Cheney thought that the [Commission] findings didn’t go far enough.”

    Now re-read what you just re-phrased:

    “he said media reports suggesting that the 9/11 commission has reached a contradictory conclusion [i.e. No relationship] were “irresponsible.””

    The media and most of the Left, and you right now, ceaselessly harp on the Commission’s “no operational involvement,” and try to twist that into “no relationship at all.”

    I’ll give you an analogy. A few years ago, my neighbor had a son. I assure you that I had no “operational involvement” in the conception or delivery of that child. But I surely do have some “linkage,” even a close “relationship” with my neighbors.

    Thus Saddam and al Qaeda, and Abu Sayyaf, and Palestinian terrorists, etc. etc.

    Posted 26 Mar 2006 at 11:28 am

  15. tas wrote:

    There’s multiple ways I could reply to this. One being that I’ll admit that I don’t know enough about the Iraq/al-Qa’ida links, so I won’t comment on the details of them. For the sake of this comment thread, I will accept that there were high level links between Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

    In turn, I will also point out that there were high level links between Pakistan and al-Qa’ida. There were probably high level links with al-Qa’ida and Sudan, too. I don’t see these links being used by the Bush administration as a reason to wage war with those two countries, so what makes Iraq the exception?

    Secondly, as I mentioned before, there’s also the framing of this issue that was orchestrated by the Bush administration. Bush’s Cincinnati speech displays one of the many times that Bush said there were links between Saddam and Osama, then mentioned 9/11 immediately afterwards. 9/11 itself, regardless of the rhetoric surrounding it, was used as a reason for going to war with Iraq. And since the Bush adminitration made no attempts to discredit any conservative media sources which suggested deeper Iraq/al-Qa’ida connections, that lends to a situation where one thing leads to another. People hear “Saddam, al-Qa’ida, 9/11″ enough and the seeds are planted.

    Posted 26 Mar 2006 at 11:15 pm

  16. commissar wrote:

    tas,

    You can go anywhere you want with this.

    The topic of the post (and TBoggs’) was whether or not Bush/Cheney ever claimed Saddam was involved in 9/11.

    Cheney wanted to follow up on the alleged Atta Prague meeting. Big deal. And, of course, Bush mentioned 9/11 when discussing the war on terror. Big deal.

    The admin did not “discredit any conservative media sources which suggested deeper Iraq/al-Qa’ida connections.” Of course not. By comparison Kerry, Dean, Gore, etc. have NEVER discredited liberal media sources that claimed that Bush had advance knowledge of 9/11. (Dean even repeated it on air once.) To be clear, the Dems are under no obligation to run around discrediting every liberal media source that says something that goes beyond what they would say themselves. Nor does Bush.

    You’re reaching so hard, with “framing” and alluding to media surrogates. Look, Bush accused Saddam, explicitly and directly of lots of stuff: violating UN resolutions, having WMDs, using WMDs, committing mass murder, etc. He said all that stuff; you can find the quotes. If he wanted to accuse him of being involved in 9/11, he would have said so.

    Posted 27 Mar 2006 at 9:12 am

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