Quote:Joe--said--
BTW : the committee's point in reviewing those inconsequential contacts was to expose their spareness as opposed to the overblown pronouncements of the current administration.
-LASH replied---------
But, in fact, they expected to find NO evidence of meetings, and yet found plenty of evidence of meetings and offers of cooperation, and stuff that made them calm their hot asses down from all the pontificating rhetoric.
And, I think you take liberties referring to those meetings as inconsequential.
They may have been quite consequential. We don't know.
Lash: How do know what the expectations were of the committee? That they expected to find NO evidence of meetings?? Where did you get that?
The Bush Administration had made several inferences that need to go to war was connected to the attacks on 9-11. Those inferences were false and they knew them to be false, Richard Clarke's reporting of the intelligence was clear and has been shown to be accurate. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and Powell all continued to point a finger at Saddam and say '9-11', and now Rice continues to unabashedly do so. For shame.
And I didn't say the meetings were inconsequential, they did. You quoted them:
Quote: There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response.
Quote:Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.76
To which you made this aside:
{Nor do they have evidence they did not cooperate...}
It's become my favorite double negative.
Now I know you want to take the words NONE ARE REPORTED and make it into WE DON'T KNOW but then you wouldn't be using English. And I know you want to say that WE HAVE SEEN NO EVIDENCE means NOT YET, but it doesn't. It means we have pursued the facts and here they are :
...no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship: Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.76
Please call Dr. Rice on Monday and tell her to stop.
Joe(The one real weapon we have is our honesty)Nation
