Fuck Shrub/Cheney

[natty dread]

No wonder these fuckers lobbied against a 9/11 commission for all of 2002 and then after it became politically untenable for them to be against it, they stonewalled the commission again and again when info was requested. How blind can people be to believe these liars? A bipartisan commission reports that was no substantive link between Al Quaeda and Iraq. In response: Cheney-- "There were longstanding ties." shrub: "The reason I said there were ties between Iraq and al quaeda is because there were ties between Iraq and al quaeda." (The logic of a fuckin 4 year old or a "because I said so" mother.) Their denial and deceit knows no bounds.

From the NYT:

Show Us the Proof

June 19, 2004

When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks
refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection
between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested
that President Bush apologize for using these claims to
help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We
did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised
by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity
for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney
have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and
questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to
rewrite history.

Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his
contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al
Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected
Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.

Before the war, Mr. Bush spoke of far more than vague
"ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said Iraq had provided
Al Qaeda with weapons training, bomb-making expertise and a
base in Iraq. On Feb. 8, 2003, Mr. Bush said that "an Al
Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late
1990's for help in acquiring poisons and gases." The 9/11
panel's report, as well as news articles, indicate that
these things never happened.

Mr. Cheney said yesterday that the "evidence is
overwhelming" of an Iraq-Qaeda axis and that there had been
a "whole series of high-level contacts" between them. The
9/11 panel said a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made
three visits to Sudan in the early 1990's, meeting with
Osama bin Laden once in 1994. It said Osama bin Laden had
asked for "space to establish training camps, as well as
assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never
responded." The panel cited reports of further contacts
after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, but
said there was no working relationship. As far as the
public record is concerned, then, Mr. Cheney's
"longstanding ties" amount to one confirmed meeting, after
which the Iraq government did not help Al Qaeda. By those
standards, the United States has longstanding ties to North
Korea.

Mr. Bush has also used a terrorist named Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi as evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Mr. Bush used to refer to Mr. Zarqawi as a "senior Al Qaeda
terrorist planner" who was in Baghdad working with the
Iraqi government. But the director of central intelligence,
George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr.
Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime, nor under the
direction of Al Qaeda.

When it comes to 9/11, someone in the Bush administration
has indeed drawn the connection to Iraq: the vice
president. Mr. Cheney has repeatedly referred to reports
that Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi
intelligence agent. He told Tim Russert of NBC on Dec. 9,
2001, that this report has "been pretty well confirmed." If
so, no one seems to have informed the C.I.A., the Czech
government or the 9/11 commission, which said it did not
appear to be true. Yet Mr. Cheney cited it, again, on
Thursday night on CNBC.

Mr. Cheney said he had lots of documents to prove his
claims. We have heard that before, but Mr. Cheney always
seems too pressed for time or too concerned about secrets
to share them. Last September, Mr. Cheney's adviser, Mary
Matalin, explained to The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney
had access to lots of secret stuff. She said he had to
"tiptoe through the land mines of what's sayable and not
sayable" to the public, but that "his job is to connect the
dots."

The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes
to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared
to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent
arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust
him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far,
when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration
has been a losing strategy.

[Game Over]

This is getting beyond scary.

[mr_gyptian]

Steep, Natty. The commission is saying that Saddam/Iraq and Al Qaeda did not cooperate on the 9/11 attacks. However, the majority of the administration's case regarding the cooperation is that they did cooperate at times. whether or not Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on the 9/11 attacks is not the case.

read the report. CBS and the NYTimes are conveniently concentrating on one sentence that supports their view among 15 paragraphs of the report that inconveintly do not.

Also, regarding this commission I have another question. Do you think the United States should have spent 1942 examining the faults of the Roosevelt administration's absolute failure regarding the Pearl Harbor attack? just asking.

below is a blogger's parsing of the media's selective reporting of the 9/11 commission's report.


This is clear -- if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" -- from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did cooperate -- far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."
[...]al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization -- it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting -- you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

[Game Over]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
Steep
Also, regarding this commission I have another question. Do you think the United States should have spent 1942 examining the faults of the Roosevelt administration's absolute failure regarding the Pearl Harbor attack?

Big red suns on the sides of planes that are bombing the shit out of your Pacific fleet, and one letter sent to Saddam (who never replyed) by a operative are WAY different.

Roosevelt also had a overwhelming amount of evidence during and after the war that fully justified it, what does Bush have to justify Iraq?

where are the WMD? Where were the chem. attacks? where were the thrones of people greeting us as liberators?

I often wonder if people like you actually beleave the shit you spew, or if you are just too stuborn to admit fault.

[mr_gyptian]

As opposed to our own corporate logo's on the side of the planes?

I thought the 9/11 commission was mainly dealing with the inteligence failure leading up to 9/11 attacks. I'm just basing that upon what the report states. In lieu of that my question about Roosevelt is right on target.


Mistakenly the Bush Administration put too many eggs in the WMD basket. I guess we've learned how hard it is to get international or UN support for messy things such as stopping genocide. again, read WWII. more recently I guess Yugoslavia or Rwanda will do.


regarding the shit spewing. what the fuck is a "throne of people"?

[shamrockpow]

Saddam and Al Qaeda had ties like the Road Runner had ties to Wile E. Coyote.

COME ON GEORGE! WAKE UP! You got away with invading Iraq whatever your motives were and there's no going back. So stop deluding yourself and lying to the American people for all our sakes. This is getting out of hand. If what Saddam did qualifies as supporting terrorist orginizations bent on the destruction of the US, then we now have justification to invade the following countries:
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Sudan
Iran
Pakistan
Syria
Libya

Let's go boys! Cowboy up! yEEEEHAAAAW

[shamrockpow]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
As opposed to our own corporate logo's on the side of the planes?

I thought the 9/11 commission was mainly dealing with the inteligence failure leading up to 9/11 attacks. I'm just basing that upon what the report states. In lieu of that my question about Roosevelt is right on target.


Mistakenly the Bush Administration put too many eggs in the WMD basket. I guess we've learned how hard it is to get international or UN support for messy things such as stopping genocide. again, read WWII. more recently I guess Yugoslavia or Rwanda will do.


regarding the shit spewing. what the fuck is a "throne of people"?

So you'll support a UN or NATO peacekeeping mission to the Sudan???

Isn't that the same shit that 95% of the Republicans were bitching and moaning about Clinton's foreign policy?

[mr_gyptian]

laght, I thought I had prefaced my post saying it was a weblogger's parsing of the NYTimes coverage regarding the 9/11 comission's report.

apparently not.

how's that revolution coming. bombing of innocent's not coming around??? weird. Or did your Boston, NYC $$$$ pipeling dry up?


shamrock I don't want to be a hardass about grammar, but it's "Clinton's Foreign Policy" not Clinton's Foreign Policy.

Ummh, regarding Sudan. This is a joke that writes itself, but unfortunately does not type itself. Sudan is on the UN Human Rights Commission.

PM me for permission to post regarding this issue.

[Game Over]

I miss read what you, Mr. Gyptian, wrote...I thought you meant investigate how Rosevelt used Pearl Harbor for justification of war. That is the big thing here. In theory we commited war crimes--just as Vladimir Putin stated yesterday.

Thrones..Hmmm, they (the Bush Admin.) used the term lots... "we will be greeted on the streets as liberators by thrones of people." I havent looked it up, but I think thrones means crowds.

[mr_gyptian]

fair enough.


google Cheney's Russert interview. It's throngs. or try googling Wolfowitz. if that doesn't work, the current upper east side jew hating socialite pronunciation is "volfovitz". Oh, and Hollywood likes that pronunciation too.

[Mott the Hoople]

The New York Times has successfully turned itself into a left wing propaganda tool. It's spin, bias, and outright lies (Jason Blair) have been on display for a no. of years. Wise up. Friday, June 18, 2004 9:21 a.m. EDT
9/11 Chair Hamilton Slams Media Distortions

Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton blasted the mainstream press yesterday for distorting the Commission's findings on links between Iraq and al-Qaida, saying those findings actually support Bush administration contentions.

"The sharp differences that the press has drawn [between the White House and the Commission] are not that apparent to me," Hamilton told the Associated Press, a day after insisting that his probe uncovered "all kinds" of connections between Osama bin Laden's terror network and Iraq. Hamilton's comments followed a deluge of mainstream reports falsely claiming that the 9/11 Commission had discredited the Bush administration's claim of longstanding links between Baghdad and bin Laden.

But the Indiana Democrat said the press accounts were flat-out wrong.

"There are all kinds of ties," he told PBS's "The News Hour" late Wednesday, in comments that establishment journalists have refused to report.

"There are all kinds of connections. And it may very well have been that Osama bin Laden or some of his lieutenants met at some time with Saddam Hussein's lieutenants."

Hamilton said that while his probe had failed to uncover any direct operational link between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terror network in attacks on the U.S., there's no question that "they had contacts."

[natty dread]

Get real--Cheney and his sidekick shrub repeatedly spoke of al quaeda, Iraq and 9/11 in practically the same breath in attempting to justify the invasion, when the connection has since proven to be a tangental one. And their BS propaganda has worked, as many americans now truly believe that Iraq played a role in 9/11. It is now very clear why shrub didn't want a 9/11 commission, even when the FAMILIES OF THOSE WHO DIED IN 9/11 pleaded repeatedly for this administration to support its formation. Shrub's opposition to the commission is in itself is an outrage.

[Dexter Rutecki]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
Mistakenly the Bush Administration put too many eggs in the WMD basket.

Sorry, apologist, but that's not going to do it.
Not when nearly 1000 U.S. soldiers have been killed in this lie of a war, and when tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have died. Not to mention all the people on both sides permanently injured--paralyzed, no legs, arms, you name it.
I was all for getting rid of Saddam, but the sham packaging job and idiocy of having no plan and too few troops for occupation are a true scandal, not just a pretend Clinton-style scandal.

Those fuckers lied and intentionally misled us, and Bush should be impeached. If a BJ did it for Clinton, lying about war should do it for Bush (not to mention all the lies they've told about energy, the environment, 9/11, etc.).

[Dexter Rutecki]

Originally posted by Mott the Hoople
The New York Times has successfully turned itself into a left wing propaganda tool.

Just because it tells the truth about Bush and his cronies doesn't mean it's a propaganda tool. It's not lunatic right wing, like the WSJ, but it's hardly left.
Moderately conservative is a more apt description of the Times.

[TJ.Brk]

Just alittle funny side note here. Now Russia was the major supplier of arms and materials to Iraq for most of Saddams reign. Now Russia didn't like us going into Iraq because they wouldn't get paid, since Saddam owed them millions. Now since it looks like Russia will get paid since the UN is coming in, so they will get funds from Iraq oil revenues they tell the world that they had very credible evidence that Saddam had terroristic plans to strike the USA.

And since France. Iraqs other weapons supplier is going to be paid as well they are backing it. And for you left wingers out there. This was reported on CNN by Wolfe himself.

And to be honest these days it seems that all the networks, newspapers, mags wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. And that goes for all of them from the left and right.

[Oopsie Daisy]

Originally posted by Mott the Hoople

Hamilton said that while his probe had failed to uncover any direct operational link between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terror network in attacks on the U.S., there's no question that "they had contacts."

"No question that they had contacts"? Ok, fine. Let's see the proof, if it's unimpeachable. And please define "contacts." How fucking vague can you get?!

P.S. What's so bad about a journal being left-leaning, or right-leaning, as long as they post factual info?

[Oopsie Daisy]

Gotta love how now people feel comfortable questioning, and attacking, our country's response to the planes crashing into the buildings. Back then, to do so was viewed as treason.

Bush makes me nostalgic for Ronnie.

[Dexter Rutecki]

Originally posted by TJ.Brk
Just alittle funny side note here. Now Russia was the major supplier of arms and materials to Iraq for most of Saddams reign. Now Russia didn't like us going into Iraq because they wouldn't get paid, since Saddam owed them millions. Now since it looks like Russia will get paid since the UN is coming in, so they will get funds from Iraq oil revenues they tell the world that they had very credible evidence that Saddam had terroristic plans to strike the USA.

Would this evidence be more or less credible than our stellar intelligence about WMDs, and mobile weapons labs, and al-Qaeda ties? If our own CIA can't be trusted, why do you suddenly have such faith in the intelligence of foreign governments? Think maybe that the Russians and French are just going along with whoever currently controls the purse strings (Saddam before the war, us now)?

And since France. Iraqs other weapons supplier is going to be paid as well they are backing it. And for you left wingers out there. This was reported on CNN by Wolfe himself.

And to be honest these days it seems that all the networks, newspapers, mags wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. And that goes for all of them from the left and right.

It's a cop-out to just dismiss all sources of information because some of them are slanted/sloppy. I also find it ironic that the right is trying to paint the NYT/CNN as left leaning when they both acted essentially as mouthpieces for the administration war machine before and during the war. This is a failing that the NYT has addressed and apologized for (sort of), but I'm not aware of CNN doing anything similar.
Liberal media--what a crock of shit.

[TJ.Brk]

Originally posted by Dexter Rutecki
Would this evidence be more or less credible than our stellar intelligence about WMDs, and mobile weapons labs, and al-Qaeda ties? If our own CIA can't be trusted, why do you suddenly have such faith in the intelligence of foreign governments? Think maybe that the Russians and French are just going along with whoever currently controls the purse strings (Saddam before the war, us now)?



It's a cop-out to just dismiss all sources of information because some of them are slanted/sloppy. I also find it ironic that the right is trying to paint the NYT/CNN as left leaning when they both acted essentially as mouthpieces for the administration war machine before and during the war. This is a failing that the NYT has addressed and apologized for (sort of), but I'm not aware of CNN doing anything similar.
Liberal media--what a crock of shit.

Dex the post was meant in a sarcastic tone. And yes from what I've seen the media does have a liberal bias. Well execpt for fox which has a concervative bias. Come on now Dex. My IQ is higher than yours remember;p

Vote Nader 04

[Will]

Originally posted by TJ.Brk
And yes from what I've seen the media does have a liberal bias. Well execpt for fox which has a concervative bias.

Truthfully, the press is more stupid than biased.

[poonjabber]

9/11 is much like Pearl Habor.
Both events happened because our govenments let them happen.

It is a fact that we let the Japs bomb us so we could gain the support of the world in going to war. We needed a good "in" to WWII and Pearl Habor was it.

It is also true that Bush knew that 9/11 was going to happen and let it.

Bush and his cronies have such a vision, a big scary vision, for the future and they needed an event like 9/11 to get it rolling. Their vision is ...

Allow 9/11 to happen, create fear in the public, come up with a "war on terrorism" so they can justify establishing military bases all over the middle east so they can build the pipeline that will take all of the oil. It is also convenient for Bush to go to war because of Cheney's Halliburton Company that recieved billions to rebuild Iraq. Then there is also the Carlyle Group who makes lots of bombs and other war tools and has the Bush family as a major investor. So...the president and his thugs makes billions of dollars by bombing, and more billions by rebuilding Iraq, all the while they are positioning themselves to take all the oil.

Other questions to consider about 9/11...
Why were normal operating procedures regarding hijacked airliners not followed on 9/11? Scrambling of jets etc.? There was so much time to intercept the planes, esp. the 2 and 3 planes.

Think about this. The WTC collapsed because of intense heatfrom the fire right? BULLSHIT. There has never been a steel framed building to collapse from a fire. The majority of the jet fuel burned on impact, and the resulting fires were nearly out ( a bunch of black smoke was pouring out of the buildings at the time of collapse which shows the fires were suffacating and not that hot.) But, lets say that the fires did cause the building to collapse. HOW IN THE HELL CAN THE TOWERS DISTINGRATE IN 10 SECONDS FLAT??? If the top floor collapsed and landed on the floor below it, and then that floor collapses and lands on the floor below that, and so on, as Bush says, well then how can the whole thing fall in 10 seconds? You would think that if the floors collapsing on each other caused the WTC to fall, there would be at least a half a second per floor. That would make the WTC to fall in about 50 seconds, but instead it fell totally unimpeded, in 10 seconds flat. Basically the top floor freefell THROUGH the bottom 109 floors. Same as the other one. The WTC was DEMOLISHED as explosives were placed all throughout the building at every hinge joint. Even larger explosives were in the basement levels.

Dont worry we can vote Bush out of office right? Wrong. The election will be fixed as many states have the touchscreeen voting that has no way of honestly tracking votes. That is left entirely up to the 3 companies that have made this technology and they are very secretive about their voting machines so expect Bush to STEAL ANOTHER ELECTION and carry on with his greedy plan.
There is so much info out there that the press never touches on and the brainwashed American public is too afraid to believe. It is time to wake up America, and investigate 9/11, Bush, his master plan, all of the inconsistencies in his story, his business dealings and everything else that makes you wonder about him. It is summer now so what else are you going to do? This is exciting stuff, as the next 50 years we will see a lot of crazy shit go down that all relates to these current events.

[iceman]

[/x-files theme music]

Actually I am concerned about the touch-screen voting, that shit is far too easily rigged.

[mr_gyptian]

Originally posted by Dexter Rutecki
Just because it tells the truth about Bush and his cronies doesn't mean it's a propaganda tool. It's not lunatic right wing, like the WSJ, but it's hardly left.
Moderately conservative is a more apt description of the Times.

Moderately conservative!!?? compared to what? The Nation? seriously, they had to fire their executive editor just to get David Brooks on the Ed page. The paper of record has two writers on it's op-ed page that conservative bylines? come on dex.

WSJ lunatic right wing? read Al Hunt sometime. The WSJ is a conservative paper, I admit that. However, the WSJ doesn't claim to be the "Paper of Record" or print "All the News Fit to Print". There is a difference.

[splat]

As time goes on, we will see many instances where the civil right infringements the administration has brought upon the country - and the use of Patriot Act tactics - actually bring true criminals to justice - such as the following case:

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- A teacher's aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge, accused of failing to pay the year-old fine.

Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge Friday she was rousted at 6:30 a.m. by federal agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. She insisted that she had paid the $50 fine before she left Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human food.

Customs agents meet all cruise ships arriving from foreign ports and run random checks of passenger lists, and a warrant claiming Clarke had not paid the fine was found in the federal law enforcement database.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Outerbridge conceded there were some "discrepancies," but suggested to the judge that Clarke appear in court again to clear up the warrant.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John O'Sullivan, who had a copy of a citation indicating the fine had been paid, apologized to Clarke, who spent nearly nine hours in detention, and demanded that the U.S. attorney's office determine what went wrong.

Zach Mann, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called the arrest "an unfortunate set of circumstances." He added, "We were acting on what we believed was accurate information."

[Cosmic Bandito]

Transcript, CNBC’s “Capital Report,” June 17, 2004

Gloria Borger: “Well, let’s get to Mohammed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was quote, “pretty well confirmed.”

Vice President Cheney: No, I never said that.

BORGER: OK.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Never said that.

BORGER: I think that is...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Absolutely not.


Transcript, NBC’s “Meet the Press,” December 9, 2001.

Vice-President Cheney: “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April.”