lap_doek
04-06-2009, 10:18
Former vice president Dick Cheney told a gathering at the National Press Club on Monday that Saddam Hussein had no ties to al Qaeda and no link to the attacks of 11 September 2001. He had previously been a committed proponent of intelligence reports (never published) he claimed demonstrated such a link.
According to a book by Washington Post investigative reporter Barton Gellman, former Republican House leader Dick Armey, who was skeptical of the need to invade Iraq, at the outset, has said he changed his mind when Cheney, then vice president, told him in no uncertain terms "that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had direct personal ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and was making rapid progress toward a suitcase nuclear weapon".
As reported by the Washington Post:
Cheney's assertions, described by former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (Tex.), came in a highly classified one-on-one briefing in Room H-208, the vice president's hideaway office in the Capitol. The threat Cheney described went far beyond public statements that have been criticized for relying on "cherry-picked" intelligence of unknown reliability. There was no intelligence to support the vice president's private assertions, Gellman reports, and they "crossed so far beyond the known universe of fact that they were simply without foundation."
In fact, for several years, Dick Cheney was the most vehement supporter of the theory that Saddam Hussein might have had links to the attacks. While he tended to prefer public statements alleging a "direct link" or "secret meeting in Prague", Cheney was persistent, until long after the invasion of Iraq, about his assertion that Iraq was involved in helping al Qaeda to fund and plan its attacks. In 2004, CNN reported:
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."
"The press, with all due respect, (is) often times lazy, often times simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework."
But now, astonishingly, he says simultanously that "I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11", yet that Bush administration intelligence was never faulty. Cheney has essentially admitted that he lied, for several years, in every forum possible, when he claimed the evidence was "overwhelming".
In 2003, Free Republic reported that Cheney had berated the late host of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, for reporting that no link had been found between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. Cheney said he had seen proof that Saddam Hussein had provided "training" to al Qaeda operatives and all but called Russert a liar, saying he had personally told Russert that significant evidence existed of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda.
Russert, as he was wont to do, was of course reporting the facts available to him, as provided by numerous sources in the government and on the 9/11 Commission. Cheney was reported to have said specifically that he knew "al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved [in 9/11-style hijackings]".
Cheney also alleged that Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center parking garage, allegedly orchestrated by al Qaeda, saying:
We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in '93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of '93. And we've learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.
Cheney also claimed to know of "The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al Qaeda organization", offering no dates, details, individual names, planned targets, nor any rationale for doing so — since al Qaeda had sworn to destroy Saddam Hussein for defiling the holy lands of Islam. Peter Bergen, one of the few journalists to have interviewed Osama Bin Laden personally, also interviewed people close to him or who had known him over the years.
Khaled Batarfi, an "old friend" of Bin Laden's, reportedly told Bergen that Bin Laden never believed Saddam Hussein was a true muslim and that he foresaw Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Batarfi reportedly told Bergen that the al Qaeda leader said in 1990 of Hussein:
We should train our people, our young and increase our army and prepare for the day when eventually we are attacked. This guy [Saddam] can never be trusted.
What Cheney's basis for making those claims was, in 2003, is still not known. He passed the buck to George Tenet, however, then CIA director, for reporting the alleged Iraq-Qaeda links to him in intelligence reports. At the time of the Iraq invasion, in March 2003, there were already numerous conflicting reports emerging from the US "intelligence community", suggesting that reports of Hussein's alleged pursuit of yellow-cake uranium and of ties to al Qaeda were considered to be based on unsubstantiated hearsay.
To date, not one piece of information has ever been provided by Bush-era officials to support their claims of an Iraq-9/11 link. George W. Bush himself has disavowed the Iraq-9/11 claims and said the focus was on preventing Iraq from acquiring or distributing WMD-related technologies. Cheney, of course, is also the main pusher of the "reconstituted nuclear weapons program" claim.
Though Cheney has been vehemently defending himself against allegations of untruth and wrongdoing, his admission that he has "never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11" is essentially a verbal admission that he systematically lied to members of Congress, the American people and the world, for years. The admission is likely to revive calls for an investigation into the underlying intelligence behind Cheney's adamant but false claims about Saddam Hussein's regime and the threat it posed to US security.
http://open.salon.com/blog/je_robertson/2009/06/02/cheney_admits_to_lying_about_iraq-911_connection_sort_of
According to a book by Washington Post investigative reporter Barton Gellman, former Republican House leader Dick Armey, who was skeptical of the need to invade Iraq, at the outset, has said he changed his mind when Cheney, then vice president, told him in no uncertain terms "that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had direct personal ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and was making rapid progress toward a suitcase nuclear weapon".
As reported by the Washington Post:
Cheney's assertions, described by former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (Tex.), came in a highly classified one-on-one briefing in Room H-208, the vice president's hideaway office in the Capitol. The threat Cheney described went far beyond public statements that have been criticized for relying on "cherry-picked" intelligence of unknown reliability. There was no intelligence to support the vice president's private assertions, Gellman reports, and they "crossed so far beyond the known universe of fact that they were simply without foundation."
In fact, for several years, Dick Cheney was the most vehement supporter of the theory that Saddam Hussein might have had links to the attacks. While he tended to prefer public statements alleging a "direct link" or "secret meeting in Prague", Cheney was persistent, until long after the invasion of Iraq, about his assertion that Iraq was involved in helping al Qaeda to fund and plan its attacks. In 2004, CNN reported:
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."
"The press, with all due respect, (is) often times lazy, often times simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework."
But now, astonishingly, he says simultanously that "I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11", yet that Bush administration intelligence was never faulty. Cheney has essentially admitted that he lied, for several years, in every forum possible, when he claimed the evidence was "overwhelming".
In 2003, Free Republic reported that Cheney had berated the late host of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, for reporting that no link had been found between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. Cheney said he had seen proof that Saddam Hussein had provided "training" to al Qaeda operatives and all but called Russert a liar, saying he had personally told Russert that significant evidence existed of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda.
Russert, as he was wont to do, was of course reporting the facts available to him, as provided by numerous sources in the government and on the 9/11 Commission. Cheney was reported to have said specifically that he knew "al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved [in 9/11-style hijackings]".
Cheney also alleged that Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center parking garage, allegedly orchestrated by al Qaeda, saying:
We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in '93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of '93. And we've learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.
Cheney also claimed to know of "The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al Qaeda organization", offering no dates, details, individual names, planned targets, nor any rationale for doing so — since al Qaeda had sworn to destroy Saddam Hussein for defiling the holy lands of Islam. Peter Bergen, one of the few journalists to have interviewed Osama Bin Laden personally, also interviewed people close to him or who had known him over the years.
Khaled Batarfi, an "old friend" of Bin Laden's, reportedly told Bergen that Bin Laden never believed Saddam Hussein was a true muslim and that he foresaw Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Batarfi reportedly told Bergen that the al Qaeda leader said in 1990 of Hussein:
We should train our people, our young and increase our army and prepare for the day when eventually we are attacked. This guy [Saddam] can never be trusted.
What Cheney's basis for making those claims was, in 2003, is still not known. He passed the buck to George Tenet, however, then CIA director, for reporting the alleged Iraq-Qaeda links to him in intelligence reports. At the time of the Iraq invasion, in March 2003, there were already numerous conflicting reports emerging from the US "intelligence community", suggesting that reports of Hussein's alleged pursuit of yellow-cake uranium and of ties to al Qaeda were considered to be based on unsubstantiated hearsay.
To date, not one piece of information has ever been provided by Bush-era officials to support their claims of an Iraq-9/11 link. George W. Bush himself has disavowed the Iraq-9/11 claims and said the focus was on preventing Iraq from acquiring or distributing WMD-related technologies. Cheney, of course, is also the main pusher of the "reconstituted nuclear weapons program" claim.
Though Cheney has been vehemently defending himself against allegations of untruth and wrongdoing, his admission that he has "never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11" is essentially a verbal admission that he systematically lied to members of Congress, the American people and the world, for years. The admission is likely to revive calls for an investigation into the underlying intelligence behind Cheney's adamant but false claims about Saddam Hussein's regime and the threat it posed to US security.
http://open.salon.com/blog/je_robertson/2009/06/02/cheney_admits_to_lying_about_iraq-911_connection_sort_of