I got an email from a member of the "Cabal of Liberal Readers of WMD" requesting that in the interest of fairness to the PDB vs. NIE debate we were having the other day, that I link to this National Journal article about yet another PDB. Fair enough. But let's remember what this debate is really about: Chimpy McHitlerburton LIED! about WMD in Iraq.Of course, this article and the PDB in question has absolutely nothing to do with the argument we were having in the PDB vs. NIE thread, but we'll use it as evidence in that argument anyway... Huh? That was my reaction too. Roll with it...
This is all about 9/11-Saddam connections and Saddam-al Qaeda connections. Let's pull a quote from the story to get at the heart of the matter, shall we?
Although the Senate Intelligence Committee and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly known as the 9/11 commission, pointed to incorrect CIA assessments on the WMD issue, they both also said that, for the most part, the CIA and other agencies did indeed provide policy makers with accurate information regarding the lack of evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq.Let's break this down a bit.
But a comparison of public statements by the president, the vice president, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld show that in the days just before a congressional vote authorizing war, they professed to have been given information from U.S. intelligence assessments showing evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.
"You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," President Bush said on September 25, 2002.
The next day, Rumsfeld said, "We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities."
The most explosive of allegations came from Cheney, who said that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, had met in Prague, in the Czech Republic, with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, five months before the attacks. On December 9, 2001, Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press: "[I]t's pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in [the Czech Republic] last April, several months before the attack."
Cheney continued to make the charge, even after he was briefed, according to government records and officials, that both the CIA and the FBI discounted the possibility of such a meeting.
There were inaccurate WMD assessments provided by the intelligence community. CHECK.
The CIA and other intel agencies accurately reported the lack of significant ties between al Qaeda and Saddam. CHECK. (Does the name Abu Musab Zarqawi mean anything to anybody? Do you know how, why and when Zarqawi got to Iraq and who he was a guest of? Uh-huh...no significant ties to al Qaeda.)
This statement...
"You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," President Bush said on September 25, 2002....is absolutely true. Unless you are one of those who denies that Saddam had ever employed terrorist tactics; had never paid suicide bombers for attacks against Israel; or, supported Hamas and Hezbollah, you absolutely can not distinguish between Saddam and al Qaeda. The president wasn't saying that Saddam planned or financed 9/11...he was saying that this is a War on Terror, not a war of retribution against al Qaeda. I suppose that distinction is too nuanced for some...
The Rumsfeld quote, I can only imagine, is a reference to material covered in Stephen Hayes' The Connection. I'm not going to go in to all of that...go get the book from the library.
Cheney's bit on Atta and Prague. This is still being hotly debated in the intelligence and investigative journalism circles.
Like the JFK assassination, we may never know what happened until the historians get involved and straighten the whole mess out. Is this all evidence of LIES!? Not to my eyes, but we each must make that decision for ourselves...
