On 9/11, a Telling Seven-Minute Silence
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

Interpreting the President's Image in Crisis

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 19, 2004; Page C01


You're at a photo op, reading a book with schoolchildren and an aide suddenly whispers that a second plane has hit the World Trade Center. "America is under attack."

You're the president of the United States. What do you do?

There have been other moments like this in American history, when the chief executive was suddenly plunged into a crisis, but they weren't caught on videotape. George W. Bush was on camera in an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla. He could see the pagers of reporters and photographers going off, one by one. He was on the spot like few people have ever been.

From two different angles, Americans have new glimpses of that historic moment. One comes from rabble-rousing Michael Moore, whose Bush-eviscerating film "Fahrenheit 9/11" premieres next week, and includes an uninterrupted seven-minute segment showing Bush's reaction after hearing the news of the attack. He doesn't move.

Instead he continues to sit in the classroom, listening to children read aloud. Moore lets the tape roll as the minutes pass painfully by.

And now from a second angle: The staff of the 9/11 Commission this week released a report that summarizes Bush's closed-door testimony about his thoughts as he sat there.

"The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis . . . The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."

This moment will surely be used by the president's political opponents, and with equal fervor defended by his supporters. However it is interpreted, it points out a basic truth about any president: He's both an executive and a symbolic figure. He's the spiritual leader of the nation as well as the head of state. He's monarch and prime minister.

Sometimes he has to decide what role to take.

Presidential historian Robert Dallek of Boston University thinks Bush focused too much on appearances, rather than leaping into action.

"It speaks volumes about the preoccupation these politicians have about manipulating image," Dallek said yesterday. Bush should have immediately excused himself and started figuring out what was happening and what he could do. "The way to project calm and strength is to take care of business."

Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at the University of New Orleans, concurs: "I don't understand how one sits there. I just don't. Minutes are an eternity in that sort of situation. . . . A quick presidential decision may save lives."

snip

Eventually, at the suggestion of an aide, Bush got up and went to a holding room. He spoke briefly to the vice president, his national security adviser, the governor of New York and the head of the FBI, according to the commission report. Then, the report states, Bush spent roughly 15 minutes working on what he'd say to the cameras at the elementary school. He was acting as Communicator in Chief, in a sense. With his senior aides, he worked on his lines.

"As far as we know, no one was in contact with the Pentagon. The focus was on the President's statement to the nation. No decisions were made at this time, other than the decision to return to Washington," the report states. The president was persuaded to fly to Louisiana and then Nebraska before finally returning to the capital.

snip

Bush was conscious on Sept. 11 of the need, for symbolic reasons, to return to Washington, but was persuaded by the Secret Service, Cheney and other aides that the situation was too risky. Some critics, Dallek among them, say Bush should have overruled his aides. The commission report states that all participants agree that Bush argued forcefully for returning.

The commission report portrays a discombobulated government that can't even keep track of the hijacked planes. Fighter planes fly in the wrong direction, pilots have no idea why they're in the air (maybe a cruise missile attack?), orders don't get passed along the chain of command. Everyone's flying blind. The president borrows a cell phone to try to get through to the White House.

Symbolically and substantively, the ship of state was foundering.

They were caught with their pants down - no two ways about it. Then, they spin it to maintain image. What jerks :mad:

Did you read where they later could not get through to Wash. D.C. and the Pres. or someone close to him had to use a cell phone. SCARY!!!!!!

Yes. It's in the article I posted above. :)

Oops - missed that part :eek: But, I knew I had heard it elsewhere - I think it was on Letterman last night!!!! :cool:

This alone makes me cry. He sat there simply for the sake of appearance while our brothers and sisters were being burned alive, jumping out of high rises, and being decapitated by falling rubble. "My Pet Goat" was too absorbing to stop reading, I guess. The funny thing is, though, that he couldn't get a better understanding of what was happening by simply sitting there. That's what pains me the most and makes me madder than hell. Our "president" did nothing. It's going to be quite powerful to watch the full seven minutes when Fahrenheit 9/11 opens.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Then I read this. They make no mention of cell phones that were "broken" or the ridiculous order Cheney gave to shoot down the plane headed for the Pentagon...after it had crashe dinto the Pentagon. :lol: Dont'cha just love how the incompetence of elected officials is just shrugged off by the public? Kinda sad, in all actuality.

That's why I read the Guardian UK and to a certain degreee Reuters. Did you watch the CHUM clip I posted? Our media has been seemingly unable to ask a follow up question since 2000. CBS has been doing a good job lately I will admit. The New York Times has become a joke. It's hard for me to read anymore. The WaPo still has it's moments but then they also have their whore pieces as well. Gotta go along to get along, I guess.

Michael Moore told off Matt Lauer on Dateline the other day and said that if the media did their jobs and asked real questions instead of cheerleading this administration, the American people probably wouldn't have supported ChimpCo's every move. Then he called Lauer out personally and said that he should've grilled the Iraq war ringleaders just as hard as he was grilling Moore. Of course, Matt Lauer had no real response other than to say that F9/11 was full of lies. He read from the 9/11 commissions findings and then Moore excoriated him for only reading a little snippet that supported what Lauer was saying, then went on to quote the report that Lauer didn't read. :laugh:

Lauer isn't even a journalist. He's an entertainer. He's also a terrible interviewer. Remember when he interviewed Stevie and kept asking her questions about Coke? Guess why? He's a former cokehead?

:lol:

It's almost as funny as when Couric peers over and asks the hard questions:

"So, what did it feel like to say goodbye after so many years?" as Jennifer Aniston goes through her 569th tissue.

:laugh:

I think the media IS asking hard questions....but that doesn't mean they get answered...I've witnessed this first hand....you can ask anything, they don't have to answer...in fact....the administration is very talented at answering different questions the exact same way....it's amazing.

I agree, most of the hard questions got asked. The administration answered most of them. They just did not answer them clearly. AND - this brings me back to my point about the WMD - the administration had years of UN resolutions and R and D support for claiming their existence. I mean when W gave that recent WH interview. He was asked hard questions and he responded with political spin, which they all do. So, until we can figure out a way to make someone answer a question with the truth . . .

I find it very difficult to understand how ANYONE could vote for the incumbent POTUS in his re-election bid. He's incompetent, his administration is incompetent...we here in California had a (supposedly) incompetent Governor and we voted him out of office...mid-term. Not that we got anyone BETTER (that is yet to be seen, but it is not promising, I'll tell ya). Let's rid ourselves of incompetent elected officials across the board.

No, I'm not calling for anarchy, just INTELLIGENT voting habits.

Do we watch the same press briefings? :shrug:

The media is the biggest cheerleader for this administration. They believe everything they're told, print it as gospel, and then distort everything they're told. No offense to anyone who works in the media, but the media in general these days is just one big collective whore for this administration.

That's funny, I thought that was what we currently have in our government.

Amen to that...
 

statement, That's what we (My Democratic wife & my Independent self) do when it comes election time...

Again, I think they asked the questions. I mean W and his admin. have been asked why there were no WMD after all, he has been asked about the false linking of AL-Q and SH, he has been asked about the rush to war, he has ben confronted about the war for oil. His answers to those have been discussed in the media. I did not agree with some of his answers, but he was asked the questins. What else do you want the media to ask him or his administration? Moreover, the media cannot attack the Pres. on the WMD issue because the world supported him on it. I mean W has the winning hand there.

Moreover, the media sword cuts both ways. I mean they took the no linkage of SH and 9/11 recent conclusion and printed headlines that said no link between SH and Al-Q which just was not true. There have been links in the past. So, the admin. is correct there. The correct headline should have been no link beween SH and 9/11. Yet, the media spun it.

This is a good time for me to interject with my benevolent dictator proposal. There is no real democracy in this country, or even a decent republic, Jason (!) so let's stop kidding ourselves. Put a benevolent dictator in there (I'm available) and let's end this charade.

:rolleyes:

I don't give a rats ass what they're asking him now. They didn't do their jobs when all this **** started to go down, and that's unforgivable. They didn't ask hard questions when all this Iraq business started, Judith Miller's articles just put the final nail into the media's coffin. He was not asked hard questions, or even good questions, none of them were. If the right questions had been asked, we wouldn't be in the middle of this cruel joke.

To say that they did their jobs and asked him questions about Iraq is patently absurd and quite laughable, to be frank.

What bull**** and you know it. Stop watching Faux News and cruising the freeper sites, they're started to affect you.

I can't even believe I'm dignifying your edit with a response.

Spin and you know it. They did ask. The admin. sent Powell, Rice, and Cheney on countless shows to explain what was going on. They were asked point blank questions and they answered them. Again, I did not like some of the answers, but they were asked. What more could they have done?

Prove me wrong. You cannot and you know it. But, I'll be waiting for your proof anyway :cool: Again, when I am correct, all you can do is attack in general and nover support your rebuttal with facts :rolleyes:

Here is my proof:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...tm?POE=NEWISVA

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5223932/

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...11.commission/

_____________________________________

Again, SH and Al-Q were not friends and they did not work together on 9/11, but they did have a history, no matter how comparatively slight, and that cannot be denied.

I'm laughing so hard that snot is running from my nostrils.

I have tons of those shows on videotape and I can assure you they were not asked hard questions. Maybe I should make some copies and them to you. ;)

One of the hardest questions I remember being asked was "What if Saddam goes underground?" :laugh:

Again, the mainstream media did not ask about the inspections and the results of those inspections. They didn't ask why after disclosing where the WMDs were to UN inspectors, they came back and said there wasn't a thing. Yet this adminiistration continued to insist they were in thsoe exact places. Gimme a f*cking break, man. They're lazy and have been for over a decade. They rely on sound bytes and sensational headlines, they don't deal in truth or substantial information.

Iraq and al-Qaeda never had a "relationship." If you want to insist that they did, I just might have to say that by the same token, the US had a relationship with al-Qaeda because they harbored the terrorists, too. :rolleyes:

Hmmm - I remember David Kay, Hans Blix, and many others being interviewed numerous times. Again, I am unsure what else the media could have done.

Ummm...do some fact-checking?

And we all know how this "link" panned out :rolleyes: :

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/09/25/us.iraq.alqaeda/

Rice: Iraq trained al Qaeda in chemical weapons
Thursday, September 26, 2002 Posted: 1:28 PM EDT (1728 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's national security adviser Wednesday said Saddam Hussein has sheltered al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad and helped train some in chemical weapons development -- information she said has been gleaned from captives in the ongoing war on terrorism.

The comments by Condoleezza Rice were the strongest and most specific to date on the White House's accusations linking al Qaeda and Iraq.

The accusations followed those made by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who earlier in the day said the United States has evidence linking Iraq and al Qaeda, but they did not elaborate. And the charges came as the White House sought to dispel accusations by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who blasted the administration for an "outrageous" effort to seek political gain from the Iraq debate.

Meanwhile, President Bush will meet with House Democrats and Republicans this morning at the White House to specifically discuss Iraq. Bush is expected to speak in the Rose Garden immediately following the meeting.

In an interview with PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," Rice said the U.S. government clearly knows "that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time."

"We know too that several of the detainees, in particular some high-ranking detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to al Qaeda in chemical weapons development," Rice said.

"So, yes, there are contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. We know that Saddam Hussein has a long history with terrorism in general. And there are some al Qaeda personnel who found refuge in Baghdad," she said. "There clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented."

At the same time, she cautioned that "no one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on September 11th, so we don't want to push this too far."

Rice added: "This is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clear, and we're learning more. ... When the picture is clear, we'll make full disclosure about it."

"There clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented," Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday in a PBS interview.

With the administration trying to build support at the United Nations and in Congress for possible military action against Iraq, the White House in recent days has sought to place its push to depose Saddam in the context of the war on terrorism, warning that Iraq could give nuclear, biological or chemical weapons to terrorist groups like al Qaeda -- the group responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans in four attacks September 11, 2001.

Bush Wednesday warned that al Qaeda could become "an extension of Saddam's madness."

"Both of them need to be dealt with," Bush told reporters at the White House. "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."

Seeking to fend off criticism from Democrats, he called the Iraq issue "a legitimate national security concern."

"I view it as my main obligation -- that is to protect the American people," he said.

Speaking in Poland, Rumsfeld said U.S. officials shared information linking Iraq and al Qaeda with NATO defense ministers meeting in Warsaw.

"The deputy director of central intelligence briefed on that subject. I have no desire to go beyond saying the answer is yes," Rumsfeld told reporters.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looks like the WH abandoned this after it didn't pan out.

What about Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi getting treament in Iraq after being injured in Afganistan?

Again, I am not saying SH and Al-Q were bosom buddies or even friendly. I am just saying the media's headlines were misleading in that they say there was no link whatsoever and there was. That is all I am saying.

The chances of....
 

finding the truth about those darned WMD's are the same chances as Mick losing the vest during his drum solo and Stevie wearing no black whatsoever during a show.

Ain't holdin' my breathe...:laugh:

Brian "Keeper of the WMD's" j.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2709233.stm

Iraq and al-Qaeda: What's the evidence?

Arguing for war: US tries to link Saddam and al-Qaeda

The US and UK Governments are once again linking Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network as they try to make their case for a war in Iraq. BBC News Online looks at the strength of the evidence for links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

Towards the end of last year US National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed that there were top-level contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq going back a decade.

Ms Rice added that prisoners in US custody have said that Iraq had provided "some training to al-Qaeda in chemical weapons development".

No hard evidence was provided for these claims.

In his State of the Union address in late January, President George Bush said: "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody, reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists including members of al-Qaeda."

Again, no concrete evidence was forthcoming.

Establishing this link would go a long way towards persuading sceptical public opinion in the US, Britain and across the world that Iraq represents a clear and imminent security threat to the US and its allies - thereby justifying a war on Iraq.

"Al-Qaeda man seeks medical treatment in Baghdad":
American claims of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda rest heavily on reports that a Jordanian member of al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, sought and received medical treatment in Baghdad after being injured in the fighting in Afghanistan.


There were claims that 11 September attacker Mohamed Atta met Iraqi agents.

According to the claims, Mr Zarqawi was refused treatment in Iran. It is reported that communications between Mr Zarqawi and his family in Jordan were intercepted.

There is not any evidence, nor is it claimed, that Mr Zarqawi received anything other than medical treatment in Iraq.

"Al-Qaeda in northern Iraq":
There have been widespread reports that al-Qaeda members have found refuge in northern Iraq. These relate to a group called Ansar al-Islam (Partisans of Islam) which has taken over a small area near the Iranian border.

This part of Iraq, however, is in Kurdish hands and outside the direct control of the Iraqi Government.

Iraq is said by defectors linked to Iraqi opposition groups to have had contacts with the group.

"Al-Qaeda interrogations":
US officials have said that al-Qaeda members held by the US authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Diego Garcia and other locations have told their interrogators that Baghdad was attempting to train al-Qaeda in the use of chemical weapons.

There is not independent verification of this. It has also been pointed out that al-Qaeda may be seeking to provoke a US war on Iraq.

"Mohamed Atta in Prague":
For a long time it was claimed that the leader of the 11 September hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had met an Iraqi agent in Prague in April, 2001.

This originated from a report by the Czech authorities.

After an investigation, the Czech President Vaclav Havel concluded that the report could not be substantiated.

First World Trade Centre attack:
There have been claims that Ramzi Yousef, convicted of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, escaped from New York on a false passport provided by Iraqi intelligence. By its nature, this claim is impossible to prove, or disprove.

Where's the proof that he got anyhting else but medical treatment? Where is it?

There is none. :wavey:

But, he got medical treatment. That is enough. They knew who he was. They helped him. And then set him free if not gave him assistance slipping into the night. If that is not aiding and abetting I do not know what is :laugh:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...-alqaeda_x.htm

Bush overstated Iraq links to al-Qaeda, former intelligence officials say

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Bush works to quiet a controversy over his discredited claim of Iraqi uranium shopping in Africa, another of his prewar assertions is coming under fire: the alleged link between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda.
Before the war, Bush and members of his cabinet said Saddam was harboring top al-Qaeda operatives and suggested Iraq could slip the terrorist network chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons.

Critics attacked those assertions from the beginning for being counter to the ideologies of Saddam and al-Qaeda and short on corroborating evidence. Now, two former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking Saddam to the group responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was never more than sketchy at best.

"There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist operation," former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann said this week.

Intelligence agencies agreed on the "lack of a meaningful connection to al-Qaeda" and said so to the White House and Congress, said Thielmann, who left State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research last September.

Another former Bush administration intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed there was no clear link between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

"The relationships that were plotted were episodic, not continuous," the former official said.

A United Nations terrorism committee says it has no evidence — other than Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertions in his Feb. 5 U.N. speech — of any ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

And U.S. officials say American forces searching in Iraq have found no significant evidence tying Saddam's regime with Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

"One of the things that concerns me is the continued reference to the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. There's not much evidence to support that linkage," said Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a presidential candidate.

In the weeks and months before the war, Bush and administration officials repeatedly said Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups which could provide a pathway for weapons of mass destruction to find their way to terrorists. U.S. forces have not found any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq so far.

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda," Bush said in his January State of the Union speech.

"Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own," Bush said.

At the time, many terrorism experts criticized the claim. They noted that Saddam's secular regime was just the kind of Arab government bin Laden's Islamic extremists want to replace. Critics also pointed out the lack of hard evidence of links between Saddam and bin Laden.

The administration's case apparently was persuasive. In a poll conducted last month by Knowledge Networks, 52% of those questioned said they thought the United States found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam was working closely with al-Qaeda — although no such evidence has been found.

"You see the polls — lots of Americans believe that there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda despite the lack of intelligence evidence on that score," said Gregory Treverton, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council under President Clinton.

The administration's key evidence of a link was an operative named Abu Musab Zarqawi, who got medical care in Baghdad in May 2002 after being wounded in Afghanistan. In his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, Powell called Zarqawi "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants."

Current and former intelligence officials now say Zarqawi's links to al-Qaeda are more tenuous — the CIA now says Zarqawi considers himself independent of al-Qaeda, for example. And while Zarqawi spent time in Iraq, it's unclear whether Saddam's regime simply allowed him to be there or actively tried to work with him.

"There was scant evidence there had been any other contacts between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden," Graham said in an interview Friday.

U.S. officials say a handful of suspected al-Qaeda members have been captured in Iraq, but most are probably low-level operatives. The biggest catch was a man described as a midlevel terrorist operative who worked for Zarqawi, who was nabbed in April near Baghdad.

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said last week it's still unclear how much support Zarqawi and his followers got from Saddam.

"That he (Saddam) was promoting al-Qaeda is absurd," Cannistraro said. "That there was a tolerance for a Zarqawi network in Iraq seems clear."

High-level captives from both al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime also have denied any links between the two, U.S. officials say. They say al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubayda denied their network worked with the former Iraqi government.

Farouk Hijazi, a former Iraqi intelligence operative who U.S. officials allege met with al-Qaeda operatives and perhaps bin Laden himself in the 1990s, also has denied any Iraq-al-Qaeda ties, officials say.

This last article supports my position, not your position. It specifically notes there were episodic links and that is what the media chose to ignore when it posted those headlines.

http://www.truthout.com/docs_03/092103J.shtml

Was There an Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection?
By Tom Regan
Christian Science Monitor

Friday 19 September 2003

Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times writes that almost all these "allegations," such as the connection between bin Laden lieutenant Abu Musab Zarqawi and Iraq, are typical of the way the Bush administration has dealt with Iraq and Al Qaeda from the beginning; "Say what you want people to believe for the front page and on TV, then whisper a halfhearted correction or apology that slips under the radar."

After US President George Bush admitted that his administration had seen "no evidence" of a connection between former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, new questions have arisen about the administration?s claims of a pre-war connection between Mr. Hussein and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

Agence-France Presse reports that earlier this month, the counter-espionage service of US ally Spain told a Spanish parliamentary committee there is no link between Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The head of the National Intelligence Centre, Jorge Dezcaller, added that Al Qaeda had even accused Saddam of not respecting the principles of Islam, the media said. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a fervent supporter of the US-led war on Iraq, on several occasions claimed there were links between the former Iraqi president and the network of Osama bin Laden, most notably in a speech to the Madrid parliament on February 5. Mr. Dezcaller said there was no evidence to support Aznar's claim but there was reason to believe Saddam's regime had actively supported militant Palestinian groups.

The Spanish report follows similar reports from British, French, and Russian intelligence that found no evidence of a link between the two. And a classified US national intelligence report leaked earlier this summer to The Washington Post also called into question the existence of any ties.

Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times writes that almost all these "allegations," such as the connection between bin Laden lieutenant Abu Musab Zarqawi and Iraq, are typical of the way the Bush administration has dealt with Iraq and Al Qaeda from the beginning; "Say what you want people to believe for the front page and on TV, then whisper a halfhearted correction or apology that slips under the radar."

The Zarqawi connection has been a red herring since Colin Powell emphasized it in his prewar presentation to the United Nations Security Council, telling the world how Zarqawi was running a chemical weapons lab. Problem was, the site was not in Iraqi control but was in the US-patrolled no-fly zone, and when reporters visited it in the days immediately after Powell's speech they found nothing that indicated anything like a chemical weapons lab ... Nor has any evidence of connections between Ansar al Islam and Saddam's regime surfaced since the US invasion, as Wolfowitz conceded in congressional testimony last Tuesday [Sept. 9].

Some experts (like Vincent Cannistraro, the former director of counterterrorism operations and analysis at the CIA under President Ronald Reagan) believe the war with Iraq has created the conditions for more, not less terrorism. "There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war," Mr. Cannistrato said "Now we've created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans."

Interestingly, the BBC reports that one reason Bush has managed to escape the backlash over intelligence reports that has given his friend, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair so much trouble, is that unlike Britain (where all the reports from different agencies are assembled into one report, each agency in the US issues their own prognosis. This means US administrations can "cherry pick" the reports they like, and ignore the ones they don't).

If you think those "links" are of any significance, I'm amazed that you have the courage to say so. Those "links" are not enough to make the sort of case this administration is making about al-Qaeda/Iraq.

But, I do not think the links are that significant, with the exception of the medical treatment of that guy and then allowing him to go free. I mean that is the same as if some country treated OBL and then set him free. All I am arguing is the headlines the media used were incorrect. There were some, as I mentioned before, slight links and one big one. So, the headlines are just wrong and misleading. Yet, the media is praised for that by the far left and then then they scream when the media does the same thing on a point they do not agree with.

Note: I am in no way saying the links justified the invasion of Iraq, which I think you are suggesting.

Also, don't let the title of this thread mislead you: Bush sat and read for longer than seven minutes after being told what was happening. Michael Moore simply shows seven minutes of footage in his film. ;) In reality, he sat there reading for 17 minutes.

and right or wrong, most of America apparently could give a rat's a$$ :cool:

You supported this abomination, so does it matter? :shrug: ;)

I'm still unconvinced that the Zarqawi link is a big one, but believe what you will. The headlines were not misleading (for once) because all of the "links," when put together, still add up to a whole lot of nothing. No proof that they were in cahoots together, nothing.

They will on June 25, 2004. At a theater near you. ;)

(And maybe all this F9/11 publicity is opening peoples eyes, because Dumbya has gone down in the polls and Kerry's gone up three points.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

Report Cast Doubt on Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 22, 2003; Page A01


In a nationally televised address last October in which he sought to rally congressional support for a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, President Bush declared that the government of Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States by outlining what he said was evidence pointing to its ongoing ties with al Qaeda.

A still-classified national intelligence report circulating within the Bush administration at the time, however, portrayed a far less clear picture about the link between Iraq and al Qaeda than the one presented by the president, according to U.S. intelligence analysts and congressional sources who have read the report.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which represented the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community, contained cautionary language about Iraq's connections with al Qaeda and warnings about the reliability of conflicting reports by Iraqi defectors and captured al Qaeda members about the ties, the sources said.

"There has always been an internal argument within the intelligence community about the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda," said a senior intelligence official, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. "The NIE had alternative views."

Similar questions have been raised about Bush's statement in his State of the Union address last January that the British had reported Iraq was attempting to buy uranium in Africa, which the president used to back up his assertion that Iraq had a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. In that case, senior U.S. officials said, the CIA 10 months earlier sent a former senior American diplomat to visit Niger who reported that country's officials said they had not made any agreement to aid the sale of uranium to Iraq and indicated documents alleging that were forged. Details of that CIA Niger inquiry were not shared with the White House, although the agency succeeded in deleting that allegation from other administration statements.

Bush, in his speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, made his case that Iraq had ties with al Qaeda, by mentioning several items such as high-level contacts that "go back a decade." He said "we've learned" that Iraq trained al Qaeda members "in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." Although the president offered essentially circumstantial evidence, his remarks contained none of the caveats about the reliability of this information as contained in the national intelligence document, sources said.

The presidential address crystallized the assertion that had been made by senior administration officials for months that the combination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and a terrorist organization, such as al Qaeda, committed to attacking the United States posed a grave and imminent threat. Within four days, the House and Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution granting the president authority to go to war.

The handling of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda has come under increased scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with some leading Democrats charging that the administration exaggerated the case against Hussein by publicizing intelligence that supported its policy and keeping contradictory information under wraps. The House intelligence committee opened a closed-door review into the matter last week; its Senate counterpart is planning similar hearings. The Senate Armed Services Committee is also investigating the issue.

Bush has defended his handling of intelligence before the war, calling his critics "revisionist historians."

"The intelligence services of many nations concluded that he had illegal weapons, and the regime refused to provide evidence they had been destroyed," Bush said in his weekly radio address yesterday. He vowed to search for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes."

Questions about the reliability of the intelligence that Bush cited in his Cincinnati address were raised shortly after the speech by ranking Democrats on the Senate intelligence and armed services panel. They pressed the CIA to declassify more of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate than a 28-page "white paper" on Iraq distributed on Capitol Hill on Oct. 4.

In one of the more notable statements made by the president, Bush said that "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," and added: "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."

Bush did not indicate that the consensus of U.S. intelligence analysts was that Hussein would launch a terrorist attack against the United States only if he thought he could not stop the United States from invading Iraq. The intelligence report had said that the Iraqi president might decide to give chemical or biological agents to terrorists, such as al Qaeda, for use against the United States only as a "last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." And it said this would be an "extreme step" by Hussein.

These conclusions in the report were contained in a letter CIA Director George J. Tenet sent to Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then the chairman of the Senate intelligence panel, the day of Bush's speech.

While Bush also spoke of Iraq and al Qaeda having had "high-level contacts that go back a decade," the president did not say -- as the classified intelligence report asserted -- that the contacts occurred in the early 1990s, when Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, was living in Sudan and his organization was in its infancy. At the time, the report said, bin Laden and Hussein were united primarily by their common hostility to the Saudi Arabian monarchy, according to sources. Bush also did not refer to the report's conclusion that those early contacts had not led to any known continuing high-level relationships between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda, the sources said.

The president said some al Qaeda leaders had fled Afghanistan to Iraq and referred to one "very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." It was a reference to Abu Mussab Zarqawi, a Jordanian. U.S. intelligence already had concluded that Zarqawi was not an al Qaeda member but the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al Qaeda adherents, the sources said.

As for Bush's claim that Iraq had trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and use of poisons and deadly gases, sources with knowledge of the classified intelligence estimate said the report's conclusion was that this had not been satisfactorily confirmed.

"We've learned," Bush said in his speech, "that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." But the president did not mention that when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had referred the previous month to such training, she had said the source was al Qaeda captives.

The CIA briefed congressional committees about the National Intelligence Estimate but did not deliver the classified version until the evening of Oct. 1, just before a Senate intelligence committee hearing the next day, congressional sources said. At that closed-door session, several senators raised questions about qualifying statements made in the report, which was circulated only among senior national security officials.

On Oct. 4, three days before the president's speech, at the urging of members of Congress, the CIA released its declassified excerpts from the intelligence report as a "white paper" on Iraq's weapons programs and al Qaeda links. The members wanted a public document to which they could refer during floor debates on the Iraq war resolution.

The white paper did contain passages that hinted at the intelligence community's lack of certitude about Iraq's weapons programs and al Qaeda ties, but it omitted some qualifiers contained in the classified version. It also did not include qualifiers made at the Oct. 2 hearing by an unidentified senior intelligence official who, during his testimony, challenged some of the administration's public statements on Iraq.

"Senator Graham felt that they declassified only things that supported their position and left classified what did not support that policy," said Bob Filippone, Graham's deputy chief of staff. Graham, now a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, opposed the war resolution.

When the white paper appeared, Graham and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence panel member and at that time chairman of the Armed Services Committee, asked to have additional portions of the intelligence estimate as well as portions of the testimony at the Oct. 2 hearing made public.

On the day of Bush's speech, Tenet sent a letter to Graham with some of the additional information. The letter drew attention because it seemed to contradict Bush's statements that Hussein would give weapons to al Qaeda.

Tenet released a statement on Oct. 8 that said, "There is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam's growing threat and the view as expressed by the president in his speech." He went on to say, however, that the chance that the Iraqi leader would turn weapons over to al Qaeda was "low, in part because it would constitute an admission that he possesses" weapons of mass destruction.

On Oct. 9, the CIA sent a letter to Graham and Levin informing them that no additional portions of the intelligence report would be made public.