Thursday, September 18, 2003
Bush: No Iraq link to 9/11 found
President says Saddam had ties to al-Qaida, but apparently not to attacks
By SCOTT SHEPARD
COX NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, having repeatedly linked Saddam Hussein to the terrorist organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said yesterday there is no evidence that the deposed Iraqi leader had a hand in those attacks, in contrast to the belief of most Americans.

The president's comments came in response to a reporter's question about Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press" program that Iraq was the "geographic base" of the terrorists behind the attacks on New York and Washington.

Bush said yesterday there was no attempt by the administration to try to confuse people about any link between Saddam and Sept. 11.

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," Bush said. "What the vice president said was is that he (Saddam) has been involved with al-Qaida.

"And al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaida operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat. ... There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties."

Most of the administration's public assertions have focused on the man Bush mentioned, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior Osama bin Laden associate whom officials have accused of trying to train terrorists in the use of poison for possible attacks in Europe, running a terrorist haven in northern Iraq -- an area outside Saddam's control -- and organizing an attack that killed an American aid executive in Jordan last year.

Security analysts, however, say al-Zarqawi made his way to Iraq, where his leg was amputated. . Unconfirmed reports claim he then visited northern Iraq, where a militant Islamic group affiliated with al-Qaida is encamped not far from the border with Iran.

The group, however, far from being an ally of Saddam, sought to replace his secular government with an Islamic regime.

A senior intelligence official, who asked not to be identified, said the information linking the group, Ansar al Islam, to Saddam comes "almost exclusively from defectors produced by the Iraqi opposition. They are not uniformly credible."

Bush's statement was the latest in a series by administration officials this week that appeared to distance the White House from the widely held public perception that Saddam was a key figure in the attacks.

Publicly, at least, Bush has not explicitly blamed the attacks on Saddam. In speech after speech, however, the president has strongly linked Saddam and al-Qaida, the terrorist organization of bin Laden, the renegade Saudi whose followers hijacked jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania.

In his May 1 declaration of military victory in Iraq from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, Bush said, "We have removed an ally of al-Qaida and cut off a source of terrorist funding." He also said, "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror."

Two months earlier, in a speech aimed at mustering public support for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, Bush said, "The attacks of September 11th, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction."

Critics have said the steady drumbeat of that message has tied Saddam to the attacks in the mind of the public. A recent poll by The Washington Post found that nearly seven Americans out of 10 believe Saddam played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, a notion the administration has done little to tamp down.

But retired NATO commander Wesley Clark, in a little noticed appearance on NBC's "Meet The Press" on June 15, charged that "a concerted effort ... to pin 9/11" on Saddam began in the fall of 2001, and "it came from people around the White House." Clark, who declared his campaign for president yesterday, did not identify anyone by name.

It was just weeks after the terrorist attacks that the first link between Saddam and al-Qaida was alleged by the administration. It came from Cheney, who said it had been "pretty well confirmed" that Mohamed Atta, the man held responsible for masterminding the Sept. 11 hijackings, had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in April 2000, an allegation congressional investigators later dismissed.

Sunday, Cheney began the group of Bush administration officials denying any ties between Saddam and Sept. 11. He said "we don't know" whether Saddam was connected to the attacks, but admitted, "It's not surprising that people make that connection."

The vice president also said: "If we are successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good, representative government in Iraq that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

White House National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, in an interview aired late Tuesday on ABC's "Nightline," said one of the reasons Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged." But she insisted, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."

Her remarks echoed those of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a briefing for reporters at the Pentagon earlier Tuesday. Asked if Saddam was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Rumsfeld replied, "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated to reporters yesterday that the administration never directly linked Saddam to the Sept. 11 strikes.

"If you're talking specifically about the September 11th attacks, we never made that claim," McClellan said. "We do know that there is a long history of Saddam Hussein and his regime and ties to terrorism, including al-Qaida."

SteveK, yourself and the Bush Admin are splitting hairs and spinning the truth. The Bush-Cheney propaganda machine did not talk about Saddam and Iraq in the same tone they find themselves talking about Saddam's connection to Alqueda now.

We only need to go back and listen to Bush's SOTU speech prior to invading Iraq and his rehtoric during the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Bush led this nation and the entire world to believe that Saddam and his phantom WMD was an immenient threat to AMERICA!!!!

Americans not care Saddam was a threat the M.E. REGION!!! Bush led America to believe Saddam was coming for us! and the American citizenry were scared after 9/11, Bush knew this and took advantage of it.

Simply put, The Bush Admin. had to use FEARMONGERING and sell a great lie(s) inorder to convince the American public to invade-overthrow Saddam and to eventually occupy Iraq.

When you add in cable news media complicity with selling the war and cable and local news media both on the radio, newspapers silencing and not reporting differences of opinions, you can see how Bush got his war and how the American people were duped into believing the Bush Admin. lies to go to war in Iraq.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence

6/20/03

Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday often make news for days afterward. Since prominent government officials dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual for the Monday editions of major newspapers to report on interviews done by the Sunday chat shows.

But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.

Here is a transcript of the exchange:

CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."

RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"

CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."



Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response "go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not."

Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the flawed intelligence-- and therefore the war-- may have been a result of deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The public deserves a fuller accounting of this story.

If you'd like to encourage media outlets to investigate this story, please see FAIR's Media Contact List.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Wednesday, June 29th, 2005
Fmr. Pentagon Insider Blasts Bush's Iraq Speech and Repeated References to 9/11

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In a primetime address to the nation, President Bush defended the war in Iraq and rejected calls to set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops. In his speech, Bush repeatedly tried to connect the war in Iraq to September 11 even though Iraq had no role in the attacks. We speak with former Pentagon insider, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski. [includes rush transcript]
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In a primetime address to the nation, President Bush defended the war in Iraq and rejected calls to set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops.
Bush repeatedly tried to connect the war in Iraq to September 11 even though Iraq had no role in the attacks. The White House had titled his remarks a discussion on "the War on Terror," not Iraq. The President used much of his speech to portray the resistance in Iraq and the perpetrators of 9/11 as the same. While there was no mention of the original rationale for the invasion: the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, Bush mentioned September 11th five times in his address and used the word "terror" or "terrorism" 34 times. The President also made a rare reference to Osama bin Laden, quoting him as a reason for staying the course.

Bush acknowledged no flaw in the administration's Iraq policy. He refused to set a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq despite repeated calls by lawmakers, including an increasing number of Republicans, for the president to do so. He also argued against sending more troops saying it would undermine US strategy. Over 1,700 US troops have been killed so in Iraq and many thousands more wounded.

Bush's speech came 25 months after the invasion began and at a time that domestic support for the war has reached an all time low. The Washington Post writes, "increasingly restive White House advisers concluded a couple of weeks ago that Bush needed to use his bully pulpit to reclaim control of the political debate over Iraq."

In the past few weeks, the Bush administration has given mixed messages on Iraq. Vice-President Dick Cheney has said the insurgency is in its "last throes". But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that it could last up to 12 years.

After some initial reluctance, all three major networks broadcast the speech, which the White House scheduled to mark the first anniversary of the so-called handover of sovereignty in Iraq. Since then, 948 U.S. soldiers have died; thousands of Iraqis have been killed; a total of fifty-two senior Iraqi government or religious figures have been assassinated; and the number of Iraqi military and police being killed each month has jumped by fifty percent.

Bush delivered the speech from Fort Bragg before hundred of US troops. They stood at attention without applauding as Bush entered, and refrained from clapping during most of the address. There was one round of applause in the middle of the speech, which was apparently sparked by a White House aide - this according to the Los Angeles Times.

Today, we spend the hour going through President Bush's speech. We host a roundtable discussion with a former Pentagon official, a veteran Middle East journalist and a mother who lost her son in Iraq. First let's go to President Bush's opening remarks last night.


Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (Ret.), retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq. Her articles can be found at LewRockwell.com.

Continued........

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

CONTINUED........

AMY GOODMAN: We host a roundtable discussion with a former Pentagon insider, a veteran Middle East journalist and a mother who lost her son in Iraq. But first we go to President Bush's opening remarks last night.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001. The terrorists who attack us and the terrorists we face murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance and despises all dissent. Their aim is to remake the Middle East in their own grim image of tyranny and oppression by toppling governments, by driving us out of the region and by exporting terror. To achieve these aims, they have continued to kill: in Madrid, Istanbul, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Bali and elsewhere. The terrorists believe that free societies are essentially corrupt and decadent and, with a few hard blows, they can force us to retreat. They are mistaken.

After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy. Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania.

There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home. The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq, who is also senior commander at this base, General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."

Our mission in Iraq is clear: We're hunting down the terrorists. We're helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror. We're advancing freedom in the broader Middle East. We are removing a source of violence and instability and laying the foundation of peace for our children and our grandchildren.

The work in Iraq is difficult, and it is dangerous. Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Every picture is horrifying, and the suffering is real. Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it. And it is vital to the future security of our country. And tonight I will explain the reasons why.

Some of the violence you see in Iraq is being carried out by ruthless killers who are converging on Iraq to fight the advance of peace and freedom. Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others. They are making common cause with criminal elements, Iraqi insurgents and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime who want to restore the old order. They fight because they know that the survival of their hateful ideology is at stake. They know that as freedom takes root in Iraq, it will inspire millions across the Middle East to claim their liberty, as well.

And when the Middle East grows in democracy and prosperity and hope, the terrorists will lose their sponsors, lose their recruits and lose their hopes for turning that region into a base for attacks on America and our allies around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Bush speaking at Fort Bragg yesterday. We're joined now on the telephone by Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. I recently met her in West Virginia, her home state. We talked about her time in the Pentagon, where she served in the Near East and South Asia unit the year before the invasion of Iraq. She served in the parent office of the Office of Special Plans under one of the chief neo-conservatives, Douglas Feith. She joins us on the phone right now from her home in West Virginia. Welcome to Democracy Now! Hi. Thanks.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. Can you talk about first your reaction to President Bush's address last night at Fort Bragg?

LT. COL. KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well, a very frightening speech. Very frightening if any of it had been true. So I was actually curious as to who he was addressing this speech to. I mean, there were so many things in there that just don't match with reality, whether it's the American strategy, why we're in Iraq, which was supposedly why he gave this address, to explain to the American people why this is worth it, and yet he didn't speak about any of those reasons.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk from your own experience in the Pentagon in one of the -- and talk about the office you worked in about how 9/11 was connected to the invasion of Iraq, how they linked it?

LT. COL. KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well, in real terms, in truthful, honest terms, there was no connection, and that was well known by the intelligence community, and the administration was advised repeatedly that there was no connection between 9/11 and anything that Saddam Hussein was doing and anything the people in Iraq were doing. So when I worked in the Pentagon, of course, and what the American people saw was repeated attempts by the administration and several of the media outlets that the administration favors and uses. Mainstream media, unfortunately, promulgated this idea prior to the invasion that 9/11 was somehow connected to Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people.

Later, after we invaded after we searched for weapons of mass destruction, after we did all these other things and searched for terrorists, we searched for bin Laden's people, there weren’t any in Iraq until after we got there, after we destroyed the security infrastructure and took down the Baath Party system. Then you do have terrorists in Iraq, but only afterwards. So it was very disingenuous for George Bush to, at this late date after so much is known, to make this connection to suggest this 9/11 connection and to suggest that this is about American homeland security. This thing in Iraq has nothing to do with homeland security, unless it's to make it worse.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, worked in the Pentagon under Douglas Feith. We're going to break and when we come back, we'll continue our discussion. We'll also be joined by Patrick Cockburn of the Independent, just came out of Iraq and we'll be speaking with Cindy Sheehan, who is the mother of a U.S. soldier who was killed in Iraq.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

You really do need to look at the speech and compute what was said Steve, at this point you would be making excuses for him. That speech was written so to supply a declarative statement and make the link so to invade Iraq. In a speech/address there are no "but, what I really meant was...", we might as well be talking about "I did not have sex with that woman" which was a lie too (but no one got killed). After that Bush speech it is a mea culpa at best/very least...it is a lie. I supplied the direct quote from the address to Congress and the American people...I have also supplied the unrefutable 9/11 government commissioned report, the specific page (go read). And, you can trace him 'manilupating the truth' back to when he was running against Ann Richards in Texas for the governorship (more lies if needed).

This is unquestionably a lie.

Lies presented. Lies then were challenged and the challenges were knocked down one by one. The lies are still there unrefuted.

Now, prove where he actually tells the truth...I have a new thread for you now that yours has been closed down for good.

You know...you've just proved yourself a complete asshole!
READ THE LINK YOU PROVIDED CATHEAD....READ THE LINK WITHIN THIS LINK...
YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE THIS GRANT WAS RELEASED AND EXCEEDED ANOTHER BILL CONTAINED IN A SPENDING BILL PASSED BY THE HOUSE EARLIER THIS WEEK...An existing bill since 2004 that was PASSED during 2007!
You are a dunce.
Your democarp house is NOT interested in grants dahling...they are interested in CUTTING SPENDING, RAISING TAXES AND CUTTING MILITARY FUNDING.
Anyone can literally prove my statements by researching the facts.
Even an idiot like yourself.
Cathead you can continue to deceive yourself, prevaricating factual events and revel in your own misinformed calculations and evaluations.
Doesn't mean cathead is going to convince anyone else.
You are an elitist bango player, you are a buckethead.
Your comprehension is a disgrace and your equivocal nature is pig vomit.
YOU.

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for" Ernest Hemingway

"The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many" Spartan King Leonidas

Forwarded or Passed by the House...not George Bush. You are not even staying on track with the thread.

Actually, what you brought up even furthers my point. A Rep controled House let a Pell grant bill sit since 2004 and it took the Dems getting elected to make this happen after 2006...that is what you just said, huh?

A. thanks for the name calling (your only vehicle of debate now).
B. thanks for re-enforcing my point

Bush's lie on this stands as presented, you refuted nothing.

You did not provide facts cathead, you provided presumptious opinionated conclusions.
YOUR HOUSE voted yea dickhead.
There was no gun pointed at their heads when they voted, they all agreed attacking afganistan and eliminating hussein was the goal.
Your statement here is a prevaricated conclusion and I still ask you to provide FACTS, documentation that backs up your little conspiracy here.
Hussein was a dictator who was being magnificiently funded to feed his people...he broke this clinton idiotic doctrine, sadam urinated on EVERY attempt to cooperate with UN doctrines, billions of dollars were bilked and cheated from the USA by hussein AND the UN!
Clinton consistently warned hussein of the consequences of such extortion and a reniging of weapon inspections.
Hussein was given time beyond normal circumstances and flipped the US the bird and the US took him and his paladins OUT..
Mission Accomplished...yeah!
At the time clinton was dead silent. hmmm.
It wasn't such an outrage until president Bush wanted to celebrate the effort.
All the demogagas' were repulsed at such arrogance..ugh..celebrating taking out a dictator clinton paid vig to! WHAT ARROGANCE...
UGH! Celebrating taking out a dictator clinton merely sucker punched..yeah!

Prove bush lied asshole and prove it with evidence!

__________________

"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for" Ernest Hemingway

"The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many" Spartan King Leonidas