Rumsfeld Sees No Link Between Iraq, 9/11

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030916/ap_on_re_mi_ea/rumsfeld_iraq&cid=540&ncid=1480

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday he had no reason to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld was asked about a poll that indicated nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved.

"I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that," Rumsfeld said. snip

The Bush administration has asserted that Saddam's government had links to al-Qaida, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden that masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks. And in various public statements over the past year or so administration officials have suggested close links.

more

[trumad]

1. He might want to talk to his PNAC master...

DC has different thoughts....

[TrogL]

2. Lemme guess - nobody will notice

that this administration has been one huge lie from the beginning.

Wish Gore would run. Here's a perfect slogun.

Bush lied. Gore told the truth.

[DS1]

3. so how exactly does this help in the war on terra?

/would be totally confused if he believed everything the gov't said

[Lindsay]

4. There are lies,

damn lies, and then there's Bushco lying about what they lied about.

Yeesh.

[UpInArms]

32. it is truly one of the bizarro twists that

this maladministration has pulled.

just looked back and found this jewel:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/10/1031608245289.html

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last month tried to draw attention to what he said was "al Qaeda in a number of locations in Iraq".

He was referring to Ansar al Islam, a group of about 150 Arabs who fled Afghanistan and came to northern Iraq after the US military campaign in Afghanistan. The Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, an anti-Saddam group in northern Iraq, says it has jailed up to 20 al Qaeda members and was surprised that no one from the US Government had interrogated them.

[MaineDem]

5. Ummmm, but didn't Cheney say...

I swear he inferred there was a connection.

Talk about the gang that couldn't shoot straight!

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. 'infer' means 'deduce'

It was 70% of the US public that did the inferring - Cheney etc. just implied, suggested, led up the garden path, etc. ad nauseam.

Since all the intelligence experts said there was no way there was a connection, they knew they had to tread carefully, so they never stated it straight out; they just put Saddam and 9/11 in the same sentence all the time.
Contrast this with WMD; they probably did think he had some (hell, they knew he used to, and he always was a slimy, homocidal turd), so with that, they said things like "we know where they are".

[MaineDem]

10. "To hint; imply. "

That was the definition I had in mind.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. I do apologise

My dictionary has, lower down, "to imply - a use now often condemned, but generally accepted for over four centuries". I should obviously condemn less.

[thebigidea]

6. stay on the same page, you two!

[Dover]

8. Cheney says there IS a link, Rumsfeld says there's NOT

Dubya trys to cover both, and turns into a KNOT.

This reminds me of the final scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid where they are trapped in a building and surrounded. In desperation they decide to just run out shooting in every direction, in the hopes of creating enough gunfire to give themselves a path of escape. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. seem to be firing lies in every direction. But they are surrounded and outnumbered.

Hasta la vista babies.

[DinahMoeHum]

16. Sheesh, are those bastards coming or going???

If it's Tuesday, it must be the link between Iraq and the al Qaeda.
If it's Wednesday, it must be Iraq having WMDs.

:evilfrown:

[pw]

9. What a weasel

For a man who supposedly doesn't mince his words, "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that" is pretty information-free.

[snippy]

15. I will call him Weasel Ass. One of the minions of Whistle Ass.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jacobin]

13. Yes. That's how they do that.

Evil bastards, are they not?

[UpInArms]

12. you know how to tell if Rumsfeld is lying?

his lips are moving

see: http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,472023,00.html

Clark's account squares with a CBS report last fall suggesting that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had urged his aides to begin making the case for striking Saddam as well as bin Laden within hours of the attacks. And media reports from the time suggested that by late September of 2001 Administration hawks were pressing for an attack on Iraq, while doves led by Secretary of State Powell were narrowing the focus to bin Laden and Afghanistan.

One reason so many hawks seemed ready to make the case for retaliating against Saddam as well as bin Laden may have been the influence of Laurie Mylroie, a conservative scholar who had convinced herself — and a number of influential conservatives, although not the U.S. intelligence community — that Iraq had been behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and was very likely behind 9/11, too. But as eccentric as her argument was to the U.S. intelligence community, it was hailed by Wolfowitz, who wrote in a blurb to her book that it "argues powerfully that the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was actually an agent of Iraqi intelligence." And invade-Iraq cheerleader Richard Perle, formerly head of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, wrote in his own blurb: "Laurie Myroie has amassed convincing evidence of Saddam Hussein's involvement in the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center. If she is right — and there are simple ways to test her hypothesis — we would be justified in concluding that Saddam was probably involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks as well."

...more...

must go to the original link to see the great information in the embedded links

edited to add: If something stinks here, it is because Rumsfeld is the one that farted.

[damnraddem]

14. Hey, Rummy, don't tell us ...

clear it with your boss.

You lying scum, you.

[Beetwasher]

17. Wha wha whaaaat?

Better speak with the Dick...

[Cappurr]

20. Well one thing we could do is start talking about about this a liile more.

Contact the medie. Contact your representatives. Let them know that you know what this is all about. Ask for specific legislation that requires Harkin or any other American Corporation working in Iran to pay fifty percent of profits back to the US treasury. It is a time of war.
All should sacrifice.

And demand that we have a line by line accounting of ervery dollor or dinar spent over there. Every fucking dollor. And What about the oil that was shipped out of Iraq? Where are those profits?

[donotpassgo]

23. nary a peep at FR

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/983813/posts...yes...if we ignore it than it isn't true

[Carmerian]

18. Could something else be going on here?

We've heard rumors recently that someone like Rummy might be made to walk the plank for the administration on Iraq. Could this be his way of telling them to back off? This is such a bizarre statement by him (and one that will surely come back to haunt this administration during the campaign) that I'm straining to understand why he said it.

[lindashaw]

26. I agree that something is certainly going on, but I can't ...

get my mind around this one. This is the Twilight Zone.

[kysrsoze]

29. I hear it's because we're now going to go after Syria. Hello, WWIII...

one country at a time. Doesn't anybody notice how many lies these assholes tell? Between Big Dick, Cunty and Rumsfelch, you'd think it was a support group for pathological liars.

[havocmom]

30. maybe this is Rummy's idea of an exit strategy?

They aren't having much luck suckering the UN and/or any coalition of the stupid into going into Iraq and cleaning up their mess.

'So maybe the whole thing was just some whacky misunderstanding on the part of the American people. Yeah, that's the ticket! The public made us do it. Silly ol US, invading an innocent country just cuz some Amerikans wanted to have a knee jerk ejaculation about terrorists! Guess the DOD should just fold up the tents and boogie on outta there. No harm, no foul.'

Uh huh... sure, Rummy, we trust what you say///extreme sacrasm off///

on edit: plague of the typo queen

[The Sushi Bandit]

19. He deserves to be Tomoto'ed

Frickin JERK that he is!

Next he will claim that there is no connection between sex and pregnancy

[BuckeFushe]

21. What a maroon

[rocktivity]

22. Dudes! Get your stories STRAIGHT!

Then again, Rumsfeld knows Saddam as well as anybody in the Bush White House...




rocknation

[snippy]

24. Another minion of Whistle Ass chimes in. Lying about their lying.

U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said on Tuesday the Bush administration had never accused Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) of directing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Her statement, made in an interview recorded for broadcast on ABC's "Nightline" program, came despite long-standing administration charges the ousted Iraqi leader was linked to the al Qaeda network accused of the Sept. 11 attacks. Those charges helped fuel a widespread U.S. public belief that Saddam had a role in the attacks.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030917/pl_nm/iraq_usa_rice_dc&cid=615&ncid=1480

[Wickerman]

25. This (mis)administration makes my head spin

Tell enough lies to disassociate yourself from anything close to the truth and no one can pin you down to anything dmaging. Oh, we never said there was an Al Queda connection with Saddam - see, here Rummy denies it. Never mind that the money boy, the Pres, has all but made the case... Of course, his language is so fractured that you can never actually pin him down on what the hell he is saying. Brilliant.

[Kool Kitty]

27. His press conference today was a hoot, no doubt about it.

Jamie McIntyre asked him about the cost of the war, etc., and said, after Rummy gave him the usual song and dance, "So you're saying that the taxpayers of this country have very little chance to get their money back on this?" Rummy says, "The people of this country lost BILLIONS of dollars on September 11, they can"t afford to have it happen again." (Not that they are trying to link Hussein to September 11, or anything, you understand...)

Then another reporter had the temerity to ask, "A year ago, you said that their were TONS of biological and chemical weapons. We have not found ANY yet..." At which point, Lord Rumsfeld said, "First of all, you're wrong. You say, 'one year ago', and people think that we have been in Iraq for a year, when you know that we have only been there four months. And you know it. And we have THOUSANDS of people looking through the country, which is the size of California. (Oh, no-you don't think he's trying to subliminally link Iraq WMDs to Gray Davis, do you?) They had planes buried in the desert! They built planes under the desert! How were we to know about them, they were buried! I have every faith that we will find them. We have good people there! We have people there looking!"

If you find the replay of it, pay particular attention to the end of the session. This man is insane. And a fucking liar.

[lindashaw]

28. You know, the headlines about Rice and Rumsfeld aren't anywhere...

on my Yahoo. Does anyone see them them they pull up their current news?

[Beetwasher]

31. They're there! Go to highest rated!

n/t

[MaineDem]

35. "...when you know that we have only been there four months..."

Umm, wasn't the invasion in March? That makes it 6 months.

Just a small point but he can't even get that right.

[Unknown Known]

33. Rummy has jumped the shark!

Bye-Bye!!

[Atreides73]

36. Yeah, right.

I think you can summarize their statement to:
'We never said that there was a link between 9-11 and Iraq. The media and the people just misunderstood us.'

Sure, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld are just some poor, misunderstood felons uhm fellows.

[newyawker99]

39. Hi Atreides73!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[soup]

37. Transcript

At the press briefing yesterday, he made the usual 'well, we either fight them there or here' remark, and slid in a reference to 9/11.

When I saw the 'No Link' headlines, I thought maybe I'd heard it wrong, and had to go find the transcript:
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030916-secdef0682.html
(for those who can stomach it)

Earlier in the briefing:
>snip<
"Coalition forces are continuing to root out dead-enders and criminal gangs and foreign terrorists that are in Iraq. It is, in my view, better to be dealing with terrorists in Iraq than in the United States."

and

"Without doubt, the work in Iraq is difficult; it's going to take time, it's going to take patience, and it's going to take sacrifice. And there's no question but that there will be setbacks. But success is critical to the security of the American people. If we fail, or as our enemies hope, we withdraw, the next battle in the global war on terror could well take place here, as happened on September 11th, and next time the toll could be higher."


So, they throw out these kind of comments - imply there's a connection, continue to imply there's a connection, get it set into people's minds - then turn around and say there's no link.

Is it any wonder so many people think there is a connection?

If I wasn't already crazy, this could make me nuts.

[cliss]

38. Like Huey, Louie and Dewey,

they're all saying the same thing.....something's up, and someone's out.

Who?