Bell Curve The Law Talking Guy Raised by Republicans U.S. West
Well, he's kind of had it in for me ever since I accidentally ran over his dog. Actually, replace "accidentally" with "repeatedly," and replace "dog" with "son."

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Iraq and Al Qaida

The bi-partisan 9/11 Commission has now announced that after their review of all the information (both public and classified) there is no credible evidence of any cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaida prior to 9/11.

The Bush administration is continuing to insist that there was a link while at the same time insisting that they never said Iraq's cooperation with Al Qaida was the reason to invade Iraq. My favorite quotation from this story is "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaida, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaida." Uh, right.

Take a look at this old story from 2002 about a statement by Condaleeza Rice (remember her??). In it Rice is quoted as saying that not only was there collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaida but that Iraq trained Al Qaida in chemical warfare. Bush repeated this chemical weapons connection in his statement today - he gets both incorrect assumptions into one sentence that way.

OK, so we've got the 9/11 Commission saying there was no connection. We've got the Bush administration saying basically that the 9/11 Commission got it wrong, that there was a connection. Now, if the Bush administration had evidence supporting the Iraq-Al Qaida link they should have presented it to the Commission. If they didn't one must wonder why not. It is far more likely however that the 9/11 Commission simply didn't believe the evidence the Bush administration has been alluding to for the past two years about this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Check out the last line from this article at CNN:

"Asked if he knows information that the 9/11 commission does not know, Cheney replied, 'Probably.'"

Refresh my memory - why aren't we impeaching these guys?

USWest said...

We don't impeach these guys because 1. only getting in on the West Wing is considered an impeachable offense. 2. Republicans in Congress won't impeach their own. 3. Over half the government would have to be impeached to get rid of the lying. Bush and co. think that repeating the same lie over and over again makes it true. And so far, it seems to be working. That is the part that scares me.

Raised By Republicans said...

US West is right. The big reason Bush isn't being impeached or at least plagued by the kind of investigations that targeted Reagan and Clinton is because the same party controlls the White House and both Houses of Congress. Reagan had to deal with Demcorats in Congress and Clinton had to deal with Republicans. But Bush gets a free ride.

If the Democrats controlled either House of Congress I would expect independent investigations of:

1) Cheney's meetings with Texas based electricity brokers, including Enron, and their price fixing/fraud in the California electricity market resulting in mass black outs, a state wide fiscal crisis and the recall of a Democratic Governor.
2) The White House leaking of the CIA agent's identity
3) Cheney's role in granting no-bid contracts to Halliburton