The 9/11 Commision Are Liars? Right?

Ok, I will run full steam into this one just to make you happy. Maybe I am not really up on everything, so please provide me info if my memory is incorrect here, but I don't recall anyone saying that Saddam and Bin Laden were working together on the 9/11 attacks. I don't think the admin or anyone has made that claim. Did they? Really, I am not trying to be difficult here, just wanting to get my facts straight.

Bear, there are too many people in this country (and on this site) with too much invested in the world view that Saddam Hussain was an integral part of a world terrorist network to be dissuaded by something so mundane as a congressonal investigation (unless it supports their thesis). McGentrix has posted on another thread a Weekly Standard articles the cites "secret memos and unnamed government sources as proof that the government knows all about the Hussain al Quada link, but can not tell us. It has gone beyond debate and taken up its own reality, independent of fact.

CR, the tactic is known as conflation:

def: a fusing together; merger of two or more things or ideas into one.

In this case, if you say 'terrorism' and 'sadaam' in the same speeches, often enough, you give people the idea that the two are tied together, even though Bush never actually came out and stated that outright.

The current admin are masters of mixing truth and lies together to accomplish their purpose. If it wasn't for the fact that it's screwing things up mightily, I would be pretty impressed.

Cycloptichorn

Okay - Both sides are guilty of mixing truth and lies. It is not only a republican or conservative trait. I could mention one topic where liberals have mixed truth and lies and have put fear in to half of the populous but that is on another thread so I will leave it there.

Saddam and Terrorism - I would like to think (and therefor I will) that the world is a better place with out Saddam in power. Regardless of the reasons for removing him from power it was a job that needed to be done. I have said this back since Desert Sheild/Storm.

Whether He and Bin Laden were lackeys and were playing horse shoes with each other doesn't matter. He was an evil dictator that did more against human rights than the world will ever know for sure. Mustard gas used against people that were citizens of his country, Rape Rooms etc.

Thanks Cy. First off, I think all admin's are good at mixing truth and lies for their own purposes. Whether this one is better than the others, that is probably subjective based on the level of support for this admin.

BPB has inferred that the admin said the two were working together on th 9/11 attacks, and believing that she is not weak minded and easily fooled, I will assume she knows that Bush & Co. never actually said such a thing. So I guess she is simply being confrontational in suggesting that they ever said Saddam and Bin Laden were working together on the 9/11 attacks.

Oh, they never came out and said it, but they sure as hell wanted people to THINK it.

I mean, Bush's speech writers aren't stupid. If you and I can figure this stuff out, so can they. Therefore, do you think they honestly didn't do that on purpose?

Cycloptichorn

And Bill Clinton wanted people to think that he didn't inhale and didn't have sex with Monica Lewinsky and he had no clue about Whitewater.

It is inherent of politicians to think that they are smarter and know more than the average citizen. Unfortunately, in many cases they are right. The average person is uninformed and therefor makes a lowsey voting pool. But hey, that's what we have informed people like the majority of the liberals out there to tell us how to think and make laws so we don't hurt ourselves.

I say take the warning labels off of everything. If you are to stupid to know that using a hair dryer while you are taking a shower is a bad idea, then we need to thin you out of the herd anyway!!! Out of the Gene Pool!!!!

What I know from the Dutch news is that just this week the Bush administration said it believed there was a clear link between Hussein and Al Qaida, while the 9/11 commission said today there seemed to be no proof of this link.



Of course the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. The problem is that you can not just invade a country, remove him, without any good plan or support whatsoever (in a nutshell). The situation in Iraq was and is far too complexed to just simply think you can remove the problems in Iraq by removing Saddam Hussein. Just this week I read an interview in a Dutch newspaper - the Volkskrant (People's News) - with Saddam's doctor. He said that people are ignorant and stupid when they believe that Hussein was a man who worked on his own, and that all the people who worked with him were afraid of him. This doctor met many people who supported Hussein not out of fear, but because they really thought Saddam was a good leader with the good ideology. According to this doctor, the number of Iraqi's really supporting Saddam was in the millions (!).

Just as Hitler had many that supported him. I don't think that we are fighting the war the way it should be, but ever since WWII we haven't fought wars the way they should be. We let other countries put too many restrictions on what is allowed in combat for wars to be fought and won decisively. What we are doing is the best that the world will let us.

As for us going in there, we did have several UN Resolutions that were not upheld, not to mention that Dessert Sheild/Storm was a cease fire. Not a formal ending of the conflict but a temporary end. As long as Saddam held up his end of the bargain, we would hold up ours, he didn't so we made him.

9/11 Panel Disputes Iraq Link to Attacks


By CURT ANDERSON

(AP) Witnesses are sworn in before the start of the last two-day public hearing of the 9-11 Commission...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Rebuffing Bush administration claims, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said Wednesday no evidence exists that al-Qaida had strong ties to Saddam Hussein. In hair-raising detail, the commission said the terror network had envisioned a much larger attack and is working hard to strike again.

Although Osama bin Laden asked for help from Iraq in the mid-1990s, Saddam's government never responded, according to a report by the commission staff based on interviews with government intelligence and law enforcement officials. The report asserted "no credible evidence" has emerged that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 strikes.

Al-Qaida is actively trying to replicate the destruction of that day, the report said, though the terrorist network has been weakened by losing its sanctuary in Afghanistan and many leaders to U.S. strikes and arrests. The terror organization also is trying to obtain a nuclear weapon and is "extremely interested" in chemical, radiological and biological attacks, including the use of anthrax, it said.

"The trend toward attacks intended to cause ever-higher casualties will continue," the report said.

(AP) Commissioner Timothy Roemer of the 9-11 Commission gestures during the last two-day public hearing...
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The commission staff said that Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed initially outlined an attack involving 10 aircraft targeting both U.S. coasts. Mohammed proposed that he pilot one of the planes, kill all the male passengers, land the plane at a U.S. airport and make a "speech denouncing U.S. policies in the Middle East before releasing all the women and children," the report said.

Bin Laden rejected that plan as too complex, deciding instead on four aircraft piloted by handpicked suicide operatives. The report said the targets were chosen based on symbolism: the Pentagon, which represented the U.S. military; the World Trade Center, a symbol of American economic strength; the Capitol, the perceived source of U.S. support for Israel, and the White House. Training for the attacks began in 1999.

The attacks were planned for as early as May 2001, but they were pushed back to September, partly because al-Qaida sought to strike when Congress would be at the Capitol. A second wave of hijackings never materialized because Mohammed was too busy planning the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the report.

Under questioning, John Pistole, the FBI's top counterterrorism official, told the commission that the government "has probably prevented a few aviation attacks" in the United States since Sept. 11 but that some operatives in those plots are still at large.

The findings were released as the commission began its final two days of hearings on the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The second day will focus on the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. air defenses. The commission's final report is due July 26.

(AP) CIA official Rudolph Rousseau pauses during the last two- day 9-11 Commission public hearing on...
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The first day lacked the electricity of past sessions featuring appearances by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other top officials. Like previous hearings, the audience included family members of people killed in the attacks, many bearing photographs of lost loved ones.

Commission member Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska, expressed exasperation that the government did not act with greater urgency against bin Laden, given what was known about al-Qaida before 2001.

"I believe that we missed a tremendous opportunity very early in this game to inform the Congress, inform the American people who bin Laden was, what he was doing, what he had done and as a consequence I think we simply didn't rally until it was too late," Kerrey said.

The conclusions that al-Qaida and Iraq had no cooperative relationship run counter to repeated assertions by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials. The claims that bin Laden and Saddam were in league were central to the administration's justification for going to war in Iraq.

As recently as Monday, Cheney said in a speech that the Iraqi president "had long-established ties with al-Qaida." And last fall he cited what he called a credible but unconfirmed intelligence report that Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, met in Prague, Czech Republic, with a senior Iraqi intelligence official before the attacks.

(AP) Rudolph Rousseau of the Central Intelligence Agency testifies before the National Commission on...
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The commission concluded no such meeting occurred.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said the report's findings were evidence the "administration misled America and the administration reached too far."

"They did not tell the truth to Americans about what was happening or their own intentions." he said on Detroit radio station WDET.

Ken Mehlman, manager of Bush's re-election campaign, said Saddam's "association with al-Qaida has been documented before" and Cheney stands by his statement.

The commission report said that bin Laden, then in Sudan, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in 1994 to request space for al-Qaida training camps and assistance in obtaining weapons, "but Iraq apparently never responded." The meeting occurred even though bin Laden opposed Saddam's secular government and had sponsored anti-Saddam operatives in Iraq's Kurdish region.

(AP) FBI Special Agent Jacqueline Maguire testifies before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks...
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The camps that were established in Afghanistan after bin Laden moved there in 1996 produced as many as 20,000 al-Qaida operatives and encouraged trainees to "think creatively about ways to commit mass murder," the report said.

Some of the ideas included taking over a missile launcher and forcing Russians to fire a nuclear device at the United States, mounting mustard gas or cyanide attacks against Jewish areas in Iran, releasing poison gas into a building ventilation system - and "last, but not least, hijacking an aircraft and crashing it into an airport or nearby city."

The Sept. 11 plot gradually evolved from Mohammed's original vision but was hardly a seamless operation, the commission report said. Mohammed, who is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed overseas location, wanted up to 26 operatives for the four-plane plot, but at least 10 were prevented from entering the United States because of visa problems, family objections and other reasons.

There was disagreement between Mohammed, bin Laden and Atta about whether the Capitol or White House should be targeted, a question the report says apparently never was resolved. Bin Laden also had to overcome objections to attacking the United States from Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who was under pressure from his Pakistani supporters to contain al-Qaida.

Omar, like bin Laden, has eluded U.S. capture since the attacks.

Maybe there are liars.....

Indeed. And that also meant a hard time for postwar-Germany. Personally I do think that the US has fought a little bit too many wars. What did the US gain from the Vietnam war, to give an example (always this example by the way)? It seems to me you look at wars as "first start them, and only then decide how it's gonna be". Personally I wouldn't even start a war, only when there's a real threat to us (to begin with). Besides that, it does depend on the situation. Every conflict is a unique one.

A rather egocentric attitude for a liberal, don't you think?

What about other people who can't defend themselves from the tyranny of others? Isn't that why we were in Vietnam? To keep people like Pol pot from power and to halt the spread of communism? There are for more reasons to wage war than to merely be defensive.

osama is waging a war against the US. Why is that?

Personally - we shouldn't have been in Vietnam - we were asked to go over and help and then our hands were tied as to what we could do to win the objective. Bad way to do business, bad way to fight wars. I don't look at wars as first start them and then figure it out. I look at war as First End it. Personally I would like to see the leaders of these countries (or their seconds) placed in a boxing ring to do the physical battle, and then at a chess table to do the mental battle. Best 2 out of 3 in each event is the winner. In case of a draw, each country returns to its home land and leaves the other one alone for a period of not less than 4 years. That way the ones with the real problem are the ones doing the "fighting" but hey, I ain't the dictator so I can't make it happen.

It is obvious to me that the current administration deliberately misled people into believing that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. And it worked, for the most part. Stretching the truth is the American Way though. If you ever saw ANY advertisement for practically any product, you can easily see that bending the truth until it becomes what you want it to be is not only okay, but it is an all-American virtue. It's what we in America do. We bullshit each other constantly in our own self-interests. It's nice to see this marketing strategy trickling up into the top levels of goverment, isn't it? It really makes one proud to be an American.

You call it egocentric. I see it another way. My point is that helping these oppressed people should not always be throughout a military conflict. And you tend to forget in the Vietnam war that a lot of Vietnamese people lost their lives because of the US involvement, a war which was eventually lost.

And Pol Pot was in Cambodia, not Vietnam, first. I do know the US military did some operations in Cambodia, as did it support the ruling king (if I am not mistaken) in Cambodia at that time, but the Vietnam war did not have the real intention to bring down Pol Pot. In my eyes, the Vietnam war was indeed a war against Communism. Point is however, that the US government at that time didn't seem to be interested in the lives of the Vietnamese people; it was more interested in the political point of view.

I do not know Osama personally. What I know is that he is waging this war against Western culture and values because he feels that Islam is threatened by it.

Though I do think Osama doesn't think about this ideology while murdering so many innocents.

I was just stirring the pot. no bush supporter will ever do anything but defend his actions to the end because most bush supporters are just like him. They're glad we invaded Iraq because bush wanted to and excuses are built around the action, not the opposite. End of story.

Bi-Polar Bear - isn't that just like every supporter supporting Clinton, or Reagan, or Carter? Supporters support their guy, that is the way of the world.

Again, I don't think we needed any other reason to enter in to Iraq other than the lack of upholding the UN Resolutions that were placed against him. Saddam had no right to dictate when the investigators could come in or where they could look. That would be like me telling police that had a warrant that they could only come in my home at 3:00 on Friday and they can only look in my kitchen. You are under investigation, you loose your right to choose the terms.

Not end of story. Again, you don't get to decide what is right and wrong here. Unless you are a moderator and can close topics.

But eventually even a supporter should be critical right? I do not support everything socialists - or better, some socialists - in the Netherlands say. Although I am a big supporter of them, there are times I say to myself "Stupids".