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Wed Oct 6, 2004
Iraq and 9/11
I'm really getting tired of the oft-repeated falsehood that Dick Cheney has suggested Iraqi involvement in 9/11. He never has. John Edwards accused him of it again tonight:
EDWARDS: Mr. Vice President, there is no connection between the attacks of September 11th and Saddam Hussein. The 9/11 Commission has said it. Your own secretary of state has said it. And you've gone around the country suggesting that there is some connection. There is not.
And in fact the CIA is now about to report that the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein is tenuous at best.
And, in fact, the secretary of defense said yesterday that he knows of no hard evidence of the connection.
We need to be straight with the American people.
And in fact the CIA is now about to report that the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein is tenuous at best.
And, in fact, the secretary of defense said yesterday that he knows of no hard evidence of the connection.
We need to be straight with the American people.
Then later on he said:
EDWARDS: Our point in this is not complicated: We were attacked by al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
We went into Afghanistan and very quickly the administration made a decision to divert attention from that and instead began to plan for the invasion of Iraq.
And these connections -- I want the American people to hear this very clearly. Listen carefully to what the vice president is saying. Because there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th -- period.
The 9/11 Commission has said that's true. Colin Powell has said it's true. But the vice president keeps suggesting that there is. There is not. And, in fact, any connection with al Qaeda is tenuous at best.
We went into Afghanistan and very quickly the administration made a decision to divert attention from that and instead began to plan for the invasion of Iraq.
And these connections -- I want the American people to hear this very clearly. Listen carefully to what the vice president is saying. Because there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th -- period.
The 9/11 Commission has said that's true. Colin Powell has said it's true. But the vice president keeps suggesting that there is. There is not. And, in fact, any connection with al Qaeda is tenuous at best.
Cheney's very clear response:
CHENEY: The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.
And the point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years.
And the point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years.
After the debate, every single MSNBC talking head accepted the notion that Dick Cheney was wrong on this issue, and that he had in fact linked Iraq to 9/11. They even had Brian Williams do a small bit about it, with footage of this supposedly damning Meet the Press statement:
VICE PRES. CHENEY: If we’re 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, now 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.
Now, that statement alone is enough to clarify exactly what Dick Cheney meant here. He never said that Iraq perpetrated 9/11, but simply that Iraq constituted part of the geographical base for the terror network (consisting of more than just Al Qaeda) which has been responsible for many acts, including 9/11. But they also omitted the very next question and Dick Cheney's answer, which starts:
MR. RUSSERT: So the resistance in Iraq is coming from those who were responsible for 9/11?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I was careful not to say that. ...
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I was careful not to say that. ...
I really don't get it. As far as I'm concerned, this is a total abdication of responsibility on the part of the news media, worse in my opinion than Rathergate, since, after all, the issue of Iraq's connection to terrorism matters to what's going on today.
Now, in fact, Dick Cheney has said that he believes there to have been links between Iraq and Al Qaeda (but not 9/11). This issue itself is not a closed book, and there's room for reasonable disagreement. Contrary to popular belief, the 9/11 Commission has not said that there were no ties, but rather they have said that to the best they can determine, there were no operational ties in the sense that they actively collaborated on terrorist operations. Even here, though, the media A) conflates ties to Al Qaeda with ties to 9/11, and B) assumes that the issue of Iraqi/Al Qaeda ties is a closed book simply because some prominent New York Times headlines quoted one sentence from the 9/11 Commission Report in a misleading way.
Furthermore, sometimes an administration official will simply claim that Iraq had ties to terrorism (which is undeniable!), and media figures will jump on this as a claim that Iraq had ties to 9/11 and Al Qaeda, as if 9/11 is the only terrorist action and Al Qaeda the only terrorist organization!
It's damned frustrating, I tell you.
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