Is the Bush claim that Saddam tried to assassinate Poppy another LIE?

[TruthIsAll]

Like the lie about Iraqi babies being thrown out of incubators?
Like the lie that Saddam gassed the Kurds?
Like the lie that Saddam's army was massing on the Saudi border?
Like the lie that Saddam had WMD?
Like the lie that Saddam sought yellowcake uranium from Niger?

BELIEVE NOTHING BUSH SAYS. NOTHING.
BELIEVE THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT HE SAYS.

From Seymour Hersh
http://www.geocities.com/tom_slouck/iraq/bush_assass_attempt_allegation.html

http://www.nevadalabor.com/barbwire/barb04/barb1-25-04.html

Sigmund Fraud & skulduggerous speechifying
by
ANDREW BARBANO

Expanded from the Sunday, 1-25-2004, Daily Sparks, Nev., Tribune
1-29-2004 Comstock Chronicle

Dubya is nothing if not a great motivator. His snake of the union speech last week inspired me to write a line-by-line rebuttal. Dear Abby and Ann Landers long advocated putting one's frustrations on paper and then deciding whether to send the letter or tear it up. Either way, they guaranteed, you'd feel better afterward.

Alas, I didn't and neither should you. As the great guru Lily Tomlin once opined, no matter how cynical you become, it's hard to keep up. I'm so barnacled now that I think most people are too stupid to be allowed to vote. You may construe the following as an invitation to prove me wrong. But first, review the evidence...

PEOPLE VOTE ON URBAN LEGENDS. How many times have you heard that Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in 1988? The U.S. Army War College analyzed photos of the dead and concluded that whatever killed them was not nerve gas. The San Francisco Chronicle printed a lengthy report on it during Bush the First's PR buildup to the 1991 Gulf War, but other media just weren't interested in a story which went against the Pentagon's myth machine.

Last week during the New Hampshire candidates debate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., repeated the falsehood that Saddam tried to assassinate Poppy Bush when he visited Kuwait in 1993. Bill Clinton bombed Iraq over it. The plot was later found to have been non-existent and the revelation was published worldwide. Apparently, Lieberman doesn't let facts get in the way of a convenient story. As the old saying goes, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on. This convenient falsehood provided one of the underpinnings for invading Iraq and continues to serve warmongers well.

NATIONS GO TO WAR ON URBAN LEGENDS. Horror stories to sell war are not a new idea. Remember the doe-eyed teen named Nayirah who testified before Rep. Tom Lanto's, D-Calif., committee in 1990? She said she witnessed Saddam's thugs throwing some 300 infants out of their hospital incubators to die. Her last name was not released, with good reason. Nayirah al Sabah was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family and never saw any such thing. Her story was a fabrication disseminated by the Hill & Knowlton PR firm which had been hired by the Kuwaiti government in exile to gin up support for the war.

One of Hill & Knowlton's founders was Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud and the father of modern public relations. He worked for U.S. Army intelligence in WWI and left convinced that military propaganda techniques could be utilized to further corporate interests. Bernays sold American women on smoking by turning it into a cool, fashionable thing, where it had been viewed as smelly and unladylike. Millions of lung cancer victims can thank Mr. Bernays.


more...

[Another Bill C.]

1. According to Richard Clarke

The story is true. It happened in Kuwait. The vehicle in which the bomb was planted was involved in a traffic accident and the explosives were discovered by the policeman writing the report. The Kuwait government tried to keep it quiet but the word leaked out. The Iraq Intelligence headquarters was bombed on a Saturday night so there would be a minimum loss of life. It was Saddam's last known attempt at such an operation.

[alittlelark]

2. Please provide a direct link to the falsehood of the ass. attempt

otherwise my brain will spin w/ possibilities:crazy:

[TruthIsAll]

5. From Seymour Hersh. Read the last paragraph.

http://www.geocities.com/tom_slouck/iraq/bush_assass_attempt_allegation.html

A Case Not Closed
by Seymour M. Hersh
New Yorker issue of 1993-11-01
Posted 2002-09-27
The confrontation between the United States and Iraq has revived interest in a decade-old charge—that Saddam Hussein ordered the assassination of President George H. W. Bush. This alleged plot has been cited in recent days by the current President Bush as one of the U.S.'s grievances against Hussein. In this article, from 1993, Seymour M. Hersh investigates the assassination story.

On Saturday, June 26, 1993, twenty-three Tomahawk guided missiles, each loaded with a thousand pounds of high explosives, were fired from American Navy warships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea at the headquarters complex of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service, in downtown Baghdad. The attack was in response to an American determination that Iraqi intelligence, under the command of President Saddam Hussein, had plotted to assassinate former President George Bush during Bush's ceremonial visit to Kuwait in mid-April. It was President Bill Clinton's first act of war.



snip

The May 8th Washington Post story inevitably led to congressional pressure on the White House. Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, went on NBC's "Meet the Press" on the morning of Sunday, May 9th, and said that the United States "should retaliate" if the evidence cited by the Post was determined to be valid. "We cannot tolerate that kind of an action against a former President of the United States," Hamilton, a political moderate, said. "It's just outrageous."

The official White House view was articulated by Thomas S. Foley, the Democratic Speaker of the House, also on "Face the Nation." Foley urged restraint and caution until there was clear evidence that an assassination attempt had taken place and had been sponsored by Iraq. "It isn't, at least in the public sphere, clear that the evidence is overwhelming or without any ambiguity," he said.

snip

The President was not alone in his caution. Janet Reno, the Attorney General, also had her doubts. "The A.G. remains skeptical of certain aspects of the case," a senior Justice Department official told me in late July, a month after the bombs were dropped on Baghdad. Ms. Reno had, however, approved the F.B.I. report sent to the White House on June 24th.


On June 10th, the Post returned anew to the alleged Iraqi plot, reporting once again that "the Clinton Administration has found evidence implicating the Iraqi government in a plot to assassinate former President George Bush." The Post further quoted its sources, described as American officials and senior intelligence analysts, as saying that, despite the consensus on Iraqi involvement, no final judgment would be issued by the government until after the trial of the alleged assassination plotters, which had begun on June 5th in Kuwait.

In a televised speech to the nation on Saturday night, Clinton explained that he had been presented with "compelling evidence that there was in fact a plot to assassinate former President Bush. And that this plot . . . was directed and pursued by the Iraqi intelligence service." The President strongly suggested that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible: "Saddam has repeatedly violated the will and conscience of the international community, but this attempt at revenge by a tyrant against the leader of the world coalition that defeated him in war is particularly loathsome and cowardly. . . . The Iraqi attack against President Bush was an attack against our country and against all Americans."

snip

However, other knowledgeable officials in the Clinton Administration, as well as current and former members of the intelligence community, had provided me with information that challenged the official's confident assessment. My examination of what is known about the recovered car bombs and of the F.B.I.'s interviews with the alleged assassins in Kuwait raises fundamental questions concerning the validity of the government's evidence, how prudently and objectively it was handled, and how the President and the men around him—experienced as many of them were in making legal judgments—reached their standard of "reasonable doubt."

more..

[bearfartinthewoods]

11. why not ask clinton

if it's a lie, his administration is the author.
:crazy:

[dArKeR]

3. I think so but then what do I know? I think aWol never flew solo.

I think 'repuke type' forces assassinated JFK, RFK, MLK and attempted on Wallace. I'll go out on a limb and say I think it's suspicious that Asscroft opposition was Carnahan who was assassinated to put Asscroft in the Senate but when that failed and aWol Couped the WH Ass turned out to be the perfect choice. Boy, you sure have to be connected to get the AG. Out on a limb that Wellstone was assassinated because he was the most vocal leader against aWol's Butchering in Iraq.

Yes, I never believed the story about the Bush Sr. assassination. It holds as much weight as the media/gov. spread on Lee Wun Ho, Chaplin Yee. Were is the proof? Beside the lying CIA memos here and there.

[Ksec]

4. Just like the urban myth of Clinton turning down a chance at Bin Laden

I heard that was just hot air propaganda also.

[maggrwaggr]

6. wow, I never assumed it wasn't true, but now that you mention it ...

ya see, that's the trouble with breaking somebody's trust. They don't believe a THING you say later, even if it's true.

Nor do they believe anything you told them before you got caught.

Your entire existence is a sham at that point.

[Old and In the Way]

7. That's the problem with crooks.....they get greedy.

The BFEE should have quit while they were ahead. Now, the entire past is subject to review. People are writing books. CW is revisited Like-

The Bush assissination attempt
Causus Bellum for DS1
GWB's Harken and TANG records
Wallace assination attempt(Bremer's brother was tied to RFK's assassination, too)

Hell, we could go all the way back to the late 50s and revisit American history in the prism of what this family has done.

[ProudDad]

8. I never thought it wasn't a lie.

That's all they know how to do...

[JCMach1]

9. I researched this as well... from what I could determine

I believe that there was SOME sort of attempt.

In the litany of lies, this one may actually be true.

The questionable part is the SADDAM part.

[tkmorris]

10. Exactly

See, I don't think most of us out here in the real world truly grasp how these people think. If an attempt was actually made in Kuwait, and it smells like one was, these people don't just tell the world what happened.

They find out who really did it and deal with that quietly. Publicly, they blame whoever they want to pin something on this week. It sometimes turns out to be the same person or group but more often it isn't. The most blatant example of this is of course our war in Iraq but I have to wonder if the Afghanistan war wasn't done for similar reasons. We needed to attack them, and found a handy excuse to do so. I know this isn't popular opinion, even around here, but some of the "Al Qaeda" evidence is so trumped up as to be ridiculous. The question on that is really whether they manufactured the whole case or merely felt the need to make the case stronger to the public to justify their actions. But I digress.

I looked at the "evidence" that Saddam was behind that aborted attack many years ago and about all I can recall is that there was no way to know if it was true or not. It seemed to be a matter of faith; if you believe what they said than it was convincing, but if you believed only what was verifiable than no one really knew. I wish I could remember the details but I can't. It's too late for another research project, does anyone have the scoop on the case made at the time?