thinkprogress.org — CNN re-aired footage of Richard Perle on CNN five days after 9/11, saying: "Even if we cannot prove to the standard that we enjoy in our own civil society they are involved, we do know, for example, that Saddam Hussein has ties to Osama bin Laden."
Apr 30, 2007 View in Crawl 4
srccMay 1, 2007
Sailor, you're just plain wrong. Go and read Richard Clarke's book. We did go into Afghanistan, but only after Rumsfield and Cheney said that we SHOULD be going into Iraq instead. I personally believe that they needed some time to find a pretext, so they decided to actually fight Al-Queda for a while.We did not depose the government of Iraq. That is what the unnamed official was referring to and you know it.I worked for Congress before the authorization, and read COUNTLESS articles, memos, etc. referencing WMDs as the primary reason for the invasion of Iraq. Your contention that the causation is off is just ridiculous. What about Powell at the UN? What about the longstanding inspection battles? What about the hundreds of interviews that the administraton gave citing weapons of mass destruction? What about the "proof in the form of a mushroom cloud"? What about the countless house and senate floor debates on WMDs? You're just plain wrong.You say that congress voted unanimously to authorize the war. This is also just plain wrong. 25 (as I recall it was 25) members of the Senate voted not to authorize. A portion of the house voted against it as well. You're essentially contending that Dennis Kucinich and Ted Kennedy voted to authorize the war.As to your contention that my professor was lying to me, well, you should know that he is a well known, mostly conservative member of the DC political scene. How else would he have inside White House info? While I can't prove he wasn't lying, I have substantially more reason to think he was telling the truth than not.
feanorMay 1, 2007
@nostoppingus: One meeting with bin Laden once? And the only reason being to air some religious material in the country? I don't think that's enough evidence for 3347 soldiers dead, another 24,314 wounded? Countless Civilians dead and injured? I don't think that one shady link is enough to hold us in this bloody campaign.
whiplash76May 1, 2007
What gets me about people who claim the Bush administration should have known that secular Saddam and religious fanatic Osama hated each other, is that they didn't. Saddam publicly offered Osama sanctuary after he was pushed out of Afghanistan the first time following the embassy bombings. CNN reported on it at the time: <a class="user" href="http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9902/13/afghan.binladen/">http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9902/13/afghan.binladen/</a>
rcronkMay 1, 2007
P.S. <a class="user" href="http://www.floppingaces.net/iraqalqaeda-connection">http://www.floppingaces.net/iraqalqaeda-connection</a> has even more information about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. More than one document. More than one link. Again, we can choose to just sit back and wait to see if they really will combine against us and launch an attack - oh wait, we already tried that and 9/11 happened.I hate war, but sometimes it really is the only way to minimize losses in the long run.
dewheadMay 1, 2007
There were concerns about Saddam and ties to terrorism before 911 and before Bush. If you look at the records from 1998 up to 2001, there was a consesus among alot of congress that this was the case. Its not like Bush just made it all up. Sorry. That is why the democrats are not "impeaching" him because they know that their part in all of this will be exposed as well. The reality is that the US government had a policy of removing Saddam starting in the mid 90's and after 911 it became a more urgent priority.
ichbinladenMay 1, 2007
Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz are some sleazy, murderous, **** s****rs. (And what's Cheney doing with them anyway? He's not even Jewish...)
Closed AccountMay 2, 2007
The Bush administration has said from the very beginning. "It doesn't appear that Saddam had anything to do with the 9/11 attack. However, it does appear the Regime has links with al-Qaida."Oh, but of course, don't let the truth get in the way of your blind (perhaps demonically driven) hatred of Bush.