Pentagon: No Saddam-Al Qaeda Link
Meanwhile, Cheney Repeats Assertions Of Terror Group's Ties In Iraq
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Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his assertions of al Qaeda links to Saddam's Iraq, contending that the terrorist group was operating in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda. Others in al Qaeda planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview Thursday. "As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."
However, a declassified Pentagon report released Thursday said that interrogations of Saddam and two of his former aides as well as seized Iraqi documents confirmed that the terrorist organization and the Saddam government were not working together before the invasion.
The Sept. 11 Commission's 2004 report also found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network during that period.
Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had requested that the Pentagon declassify the report prepared by acting Defense Department Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble. In a statement Thursday, Levin said the declassified document showed why a Defense Department investigation had concluded that some Pentagon prewar intelligence work was inappropriate.
The report, which had been released in summary form in February, said that former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith had acted inappropriately but not illegally in reviewing prewar intelligence. Levin has claimed that Feith's intelligence assessment was wrong and distorted but nevertheless formed part of the basis on which President George W. Bush took the country to war.
Although Feith's assessment in mid-2002 offered several examples of cooperation between Saddam's government and al Qaeda, the report said, the CIA had concluded months earlier that no evidence supported the existence of significant or long-term relationships.
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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See all 142 CommentsEverytime he opens his mouth, he says something stupid, spouts a lie, or shows how little touch he has with reality.
I mean, come on already! It has been proven that there was no al-Quida Suddam link. There were enemies for Christ sake! And still this jerk talks about how there was a link. And what is even worse, there are still a small minority that actually believe him.
Why, I cannot imagine because he has been proven a liar, over and over again.
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections
15. Vigorous DENIAL of all of the above!
Time for Cheney to go back to his Wyoming ranch where doubtless he has his cows trained to back up to the stumps.
He knows that most of America has stopped listening to him. But the base needs to believe that eveyrthing he and GW did was right. Regardless of facts.
So he feeds them this garbage. And they eat it up.
Would it be OK for Nancy Pelosi to go have lunch with Michael Moore ?
Cheney is going out of his way to polarize this nation.
Because to say otherwise would require D*ick Cheney to admit just how corrupt he really is.
After the public beating Cheney received from Tim Russert on national television last time, the cowardly rat runs for cover in the extremist right wing media.
Imagine that one read that an outbreak of mad cow disease was discovered in Nebraska. No doubt many ostensibly rational Americans would stop eating beef, even though the actual risk of being infected with mad cow disease would be astonishingly low. Similarly, we all know people who have cancelled travel plans after a terrorist incident in London, Madrid, or Jerusalem, even though risk of one's personally being at peril is quite low (probably less than the risk one takes in driving on non-divided highways for any apprciable distance).
So why do we put up with the risk that *** Cheney could become President of the United States should anything happen to George W. Bush? Forget about Bush bashing for the moment. Can anyone seriously doubt that *** Cheney has at once been the most important and most catastrophic Vice President in American history? Can anyone seriously doubt that his ascension to the presidency would provoke a world-wide political crisis?
Common sense also says that Saddam would never have let Al Queda into Iraq in a major force. The reason is that Saddam and family loved the high living life they had. Had Osama Ben Laden been let into the country, OBL would have been at odds with Saddam over his life style. Saddam was no fool in this.
Also, Saddam recognized that if he had let Al Queda take refuge in Iraq, the USA/UK would have come in that much quicker. He did not want that.
Some have nominated Hugo Chavez. Some want Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while others think Korean Leader Kim Jong II. Although these foreign leader may be worthy, none can compare to the illustrious George W Bush.
As Bush seeks to control the world, these other nominees mainly talk of what they have. As Bush looks to begin yet another unworthy war, these other nominees are becoming allies.
George W Bush is responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children in Iraq. George W Bush is responsible for the dismemberment of thousands more.
Bush is also responsible for the deaths and dismemberment of thousands of Americans, as well as the destruction of their families very livelihood.
Congratulations to George W Bush - Madman of the Year!
YOU GOTTA SEE THE PICTURE... IT'S GREAT!!
http://whitenoiseinsanity.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/madman-of-the-year/
Ten bucks they blame Clinton somehow.
Or the appeasers in the Defense Department who hate freedom.
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I think I'll also pre-emptively post a bit from TPM, who unbundles the lies in Cheney's statement:
Now, as with nearly every Cheney statement, this is about three distortions rolled into one big lie. The three distortions: Zarqawi did not organize operations for Al Qaeda prior to the invasion, in fact, he did not affiliate himself with al Qaeda until 2004; prior to the 2003 invasion, he was in the northern Kurdish portion of Iraq, outside of Saddam Hussein's control, not Baghdad; and there's no evidence of collusion between Zarqawi and Hussein. (A bonus fourth distortion might be the fact that the U.S. reportedly had a prime chance to kill Zarqawi before the invasion, but chose not to -- some say because his presence in Iraq provided justification for the war.) But the big lie is that Iraq and Al Qaeda were allies and co-conspirators.
If anyone would support Cheney in his on-going battles against facts and logic, it would be Rush Limbaugh, who uses his national airtime to perpetuate the lies and misreprentations of this administration across America.
Limbaugh has more damage to the unity and solidarity of this country than Bush or Cheney. His show is nothing more than one-sided personal opinion that promotes hating one political group to the advantage of the other.
I believe in free speech. However, folks don't have to swallow as gospel what this man says just because he has a job at a radio station. If he played music, he'd be a disk jockey. But instead he talks, so that makes him some kind of expert on running this country?
As long as Americans continue to think that Limbaugh's opinion have more validity than than anyone else's opinion, American will be continue to be divided.
Was there a terrorist organization in Iraq prior to the invasion? Yes, Ansar al-Islam which began operating there in December 2001. However, they didn't like Saddam and Saddam didn't like them. And they were driven out of the country at the beginning of the 2003 invasion but have since come back.
And they asked Saddam ? And trusted his answers ? The very same people who say the Petagon is imcompetent all of a sudden think they are now brilliant.
The fact remains, there were training camps for terrorists in Iraq, Mr. Atta went there (by bus !) just before heading to the USA, money and payoffs have been documented, and even President Clinton during his time recognised this connection. The congressional report of 2003 listed 50 separate proven contacts. Were they wrong then ? I doubt it. It is all political backstabbing.
The fact is, no terrorist attack on US soil since 2001. Our President's policy has worked.
We have learned that "all cultures are not equal." Ours is better. We do no car bomb children, or cut off the heads of innocent reporters. That is what we have learned.
Joseph "***" Goebbels
If ANYONE has any question as to how we ended up in the messes we're in look to the morons that voted this lot in -- they'll be hard to spot today as they're busy at night scrapping off the I WUV GEORGIE stickers off their trucks!!
Option no1 then ...
"And they asked Saddam ? And trusted his answers ? The very same people who say the Petagon is imcompetent all of a sudden think they are now brilliant."
But let's look at the bigger picture-had America did nothing after 9/11, the radical muslims would've seen that as weakness and that terrorism was effective. They would continue with their attacks, with the end goal of forcing us to surrender and Islamify the West.
In fact now we know 6yrs later that is their very intention. So speaking for half the US population that wants the West to win the War on Terror, I'm glad we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, because this war is not after one person or group-it is against a dark ages savage ideology that is bent on ruling the world. Our cause in self-defense is just-even if mistakes are made along the way. And if millions are wiped out-then so be it-either the enemy dies or we die at their hands, its that simple. I know what I'd rather choose and freedom against islamic tyranny is the most noble and worthy cause of our time.
No matter what the facts say, we are apparently going to have these idiots like trueprogress continuting to say it is not so. Well guess what, Cheney is lying. That IS a proven fact. It is not too difficult for the rest of us to believe that W also lies. It is nutjobs like trueprogress that give W any credence in terms of believability. Even though W's own Defense Dept says that Cheney is recounting the story incorrectly. To believe trueprogress, one would have to believe that the Defense Dept did not check up on anything Saddam or his cronies said. trueprogress requires us to suspend our own brains for far too long to make any sense out of his position.
If you follow the money trail you will find that most of those elected officials who support the war in Iraq are under the influence of AIPAC.
http://www.aipac.org/forms/join_aipacClubs.htm
Bush administration said she is undermining the situation in Lebanon what a hypocrite!
Now here is the real kicker! President Bush is funding Al Qaeda in Lebanon with funds from Iraq! This is Impeachment and Treason! Here is the proof Read it!
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070305fa_fact_hersh
50 years of American involvement in the Middle East is enough. If these animals do not want to play in the sand box together it is not in Americas interest to make them. We Should get out of the entire Middle East! They have nothing worth one more American Life anywhere in the Middle East!
If you think Americas sacrifice is worth it contact your ELECTED OFFICIAL and tell them http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
The House Speakers email address: AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
info@gop.com Here is the Republican Party email address too!
democraticparty@democrats.org Here is the Democratic Party email address also!
Read Stephen Hayes - or Bodansky. Or open up what is left of your Neo-Fascist brain cells and learn something about a place called Salman Pak.
Of course surrender monkeys and dishonorably discharged clowns like you don't wish to be confused by the facts.
Remember too, this is now Gates' Defense Department. He was a protege of both Brent Scowcroft and James Oil Boy Baker aka F The Jooz. Like Baker's whitewash of Assad (Ho Pelosi obviously took pointers) after Lockerbie, Gates is going to tow the Country Club Republican line. Not those who voted in Ronald Reagan.
This is EXACTLY what all the political screaming is about. Our democracy, our political two-pary system, our voting way of life is being undermined by greedy power-hungry people who honestly believe that their party should stay in power at all costs.
Bush is only the latest of a line of Republicans working to take power away from Congress and isolate it in the Executive Branch. The more the legislative side of our government is weakened, the more imbalanced the two-party system in this country is getting.
The Republicans have worked for decades to centralize power within the control of the GOP. Anyone who bothers to research can find this out. America is edging dangerously close to being a one-party dominated system, as Democrats are weakened by unfair labels of traitor and facist by media mouthpieces like Limbaugh and Hannity and Savage and Coulter and O'Reilly and on and on. These people do not believe that Dems should be in power and work on American minds to label them as too destructive and liberal to run this country. But given the overblown power-hungry mindset of a once-great party, the Republicans are just as destructive in what they are doing.
A one-party system is a dictatorship and if anyone can point out a working happy dictatorship on this globe somewhere, I would listen.
Last year, western oil compagnies got great and unprecedented deals for iraqi oil. Troops are there to protect the investments. Of course, you don't want a new iraqi governement to re-nationalize oil fields.
That is also enough to explain operation northwoods (oups) I mistyped 911.
"Listening to what the bad guys are saying Iraq has become a front on the terror war."
I think that everybody here agrees with that.
Just a little detail which might have escaped your attention: the bad guys are Cheney, Bush, Gonzo ...
Don't kid yourself-WW3 had begun with 9/11 and it matters little which islamic country we democratized first. Don't forget their chants of 'death to america' across the mideast-remember their hysterical reaction over the denmark cartoons-this is not the behaviour of civilized people-its the way of savages. People that will kill you over cartoons or 'insulting' their death cult islam (which has killed millions) are not well and in fact are extremely dangerous.
With over 1 billion muslims and scholars saying 10-20% are radical and want to destroy/islamify the West, we are facing a far great foe (100 million wackos) than Nazism. At some point when enough people wake up, we'll realize the only effective solution to safeguard our freedom (which worked in the past by the Crusaders) is nothing less than the total annihilation of our enemy. This war has progressed far beyond just placing blame for the iraq invasion, it is now about the survival of our way of life and all the freedoms and values we hold dear. All of which can be replaced by a monstrous ideology which feeds on hate, violence and chaos and where rape, torture, executions, injustices happen on an industrial scale-we cannot let Islam take over the West.
Please ignore them and anything they post.
So if a media outlet publishes an article that feels a little anti-Bush to you, it is a leftwing outlet and therefore not useful for your rightwing ideologies, so you invalidate it?
Please, provide us all with links to these other various media outlets that you say provide more truth than CBS (Republican truth). And if the links you provide ever side with a liberal, I will be sure to let you know so that you can write them off as leftwind bias.
Lies need to be covered by more lies. Facts can stand alone, like the Democrats have stood alone for 6 years.
Lets have all those various media links.
AIPAC, huh?
Well guess what, little girl with half a brain (if any).
ALL OF THE CURRENT DEMOCRATS ELECTED IN CONGRESS WERE PAID OFF WITH MOVEON.ORG MONEY.
MoveOn.org being the Hitlerite and Blame America wing of the Democratic Party, funded by Nazi collaborator and self-loather George KAPO Soros.
Oh, yeah, Abbe, I wouldn't be surprised if your heroine, Botox-addled 'Ho Pelosi was also paid off handsomely by CAIR, Hamas' reps in the USA. After all, what person in their right mind would go grovelling to a country that slaughtered our Marines in the Beirut barracks, tortured (along with their Iranian allies) CIA station chief Buckley till he died; was really responsible for the air slaughter over Lockerbie, and then were rewarded by Bush I and F The Jooz Baker with the slaughter of the Lebanese Christian Resistance?
Only a Saudi-paid wh_ore would. Someone like Nancy Pelosi.
Traitors like her, Murtha, Webb, Kerry and Jimmy Carter should rot in jail - not receive taxpayer dollars.
And they are so clumsy in doing so, they cannot read quotes as quotes and reply to the wrong poster. Hilarious ...
Please ignore them and anything they post.
Superpat898 has been thrown off these blogs before for abuse. He just signs on again with a different name and keeps on abusing.
I have asked him for specifics about what his beloved Bush has done for the people of this country and he never answers. He is only here to unload his self-loathing and hate-filled mind on anyone he can find.
There are too many folks these days who are in accordance with each other, that we are being run into the ground, not only by Bush and Cheney, but by their followers who contribute nothing to American society but hate and pro-war slogans.
:)
1.. Refering to the left as nazi's --- This war was started on a presumed wrong threat that never existed -- Hitler did that
2.. The Crusaders, didn't safe guard your freedoms -- They killed, robbed & raped Muslim's, Christians & Jews -- Each Crusade resulted in pullout & redeployment of troops
Prove it-put up or shut up.
sdb101 is just a blindly faithful, willfully ignorant neo-con zombie with only unsupported opinons culled from party line diatribe and no factual information. His side is losing so he is very angry and wants to vent
Please ignore them and anything they post.
My comments must finally be hitting home.
Yesterday you were beginning to talk rationally and make some sense. But today, its back to AIPAC as the sole blame for the USA being involved in the ME.
When you have the intellectual courage to equate CAIR, the Islamofascist Hamas PR firm that applauds suicide bombings, whether it be of Israelis - or AMERICANS - and blast them, you talk to me. Until then, all of your cries (justly I might add) about Lindh hold no water.
Because you Jew-bait and put our allies on an equal footing with our enemies.
Try blasting Pelosi and Carter for taking money from Moveon.Org, CAIR, and yes, the Saudis.
And surprise, Bluebigot, I don't care for AIPAC either...from their ranks came Ross, Danny Kurtzer, Indyk, Aaron Miller and Dicky Haass, all Peace Now - or peace of the grave Jews who during Bush I and Cliton advocated Israeli concessions to Fatah and Hamas killers. For Ross, the blinders fell off when Arafat chose to kill women and children instead of accepting peace - but for the rest, they still lie. But hey, your average Democratic TRAITOR loves them.
1. I said Islam is worse than Nazism, not the left.
2. Muslims like you despise the Crusaders since they sent your hordes back to their camels in the desert where you belonged.
I'm proud of what they did and I look forward to having ALL muslims expelled from the West.
3. Your lies and deceptions might work on the pea-brains in the left, but more than half the US population has few illusion about Islam and in due time we will defeat you.
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