"Bush always suspected Saddam was behind 9/11"-UK Telegraph 4/27/03

[finecraft]

<snip> "The issue of Saddam's involvement has been a long-standing source of contention between London and Washington. In the days immediately following the attacks, President George W Bush confided to colleagues that he believed that Saddam was directly involved in the attacks. "He probably was behind this in the end," he said."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/27/walq327.xml


This is the "smoking gun" we need. If we can track down when he said this, and whom he said it to, we'll be able to nail him. All the other threads I have seen today on this topic show that he tried to tie Saddam and Al Qaeda together, but did not state point blank that Saddam was involved in 9/11. This Bush quote, if in fact he did make it, does just that.

[Cha]

1. bush's gut is full of shit!

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. Has the Torygraph begun backpedaling? n/t

[unblock]

3. saddam does bad things! 9/11 was a bad thing! guilty!

by that logic, maybe charles manson did it....

don't worry, he gave saddam a thorough 15-minute review before ordering his execution, and whatever brown people happen to be in the way. and if it cost us a few hundred of our strongest and bravest young men and women who thought they would be risking their lives to protect us rather than to settle petty grievances of powerful people in a big messy way, well, that's just the price we must pay for all that oil.

[Styles]

5. nah... it was attempt to get Papa Bush...

Or the fuel in the planes came from Iraq... oh... that's even better... it explains why we had to relieve those terrorists of their oil fields...

G.W. Pussy... lying takes some brains... no point in you trying it.

[Booberdawg]

4. What "smoking gun"? Nail him with what?

Being an idiot?

In the days immediately following the attacks, President George W Bush confided to colleagues that he believed that Saddam was directly involved in the attacks. "He probably was behind this in the end," he said."

All that proves is that he was led to believe this or is just a moron and pulled it outta his ass. There's nothing new here or anything to "nail him" with.

[punpirate]

6. It's not enough to get the Repugs...

... to begin impeachment proceedings, but it does suggest a few possibilities. First, Bush has expressed, publicly, tremendous personal animosity toward Hussein (remember "he tried to kill my Dad" ???), so there is considerable likelihood that Bush engaged in some notable projection (far be it to remind him that his Dad probably suckered Hussein into invading Kuwait, for which Hussein might have been a tad annoyed, and as Seymour Hersh wrote almost a decade ago, the "assassination attempt" on his father sounded more like an informal comedy of errors than an actual plan ordered by Hussein).

Second, it certainly confirms that the Republicans have been wanting Hussein gone for a long time, and Dubya's "gut feelings" pushed that view into prominence in the White House.

Last, it gives some solidity to the view that 9/11 was a convenient excuse to mount a campaign against Hussein and Iraq (given Rumsfeld's remarks on 9/11 to "go massive... sweep it all up" with regard to any charge whatsoever that Iraq was involved), and that Bush certainly endorsed those attempts.

Having a decidedly angry, sociopathic personality, capable of holding grudges against even minor slights for decades, in the Presidency made a lot of what's happened possible. The quote merely confirms that Bush would never have accepted any evidence that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, because of his own biases.

Cheers.

[finecraft]

8. Denied explicitly tying Iraq to 9/11

"We said that we don't have any evidence to suggest a connection," said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan, who told reporters he knew of no instance in which the US leader explicitly tied Iraq to al-Qaeda's devastating suicide strikes.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030917/pl_afp/us_iraq_whouse&cid=1521&ncid=1473

If Bush made this qoute, it shows that he "explicitly tied Iraq" to 9/11. All the other threads on this topic show that he always mentioned al-Qaeda, Iraq, 9/11, supporting terrorists, etc. in the same breath, but never actually said that "Sadam was behind 9/11". We all knew that he was trying to make a connection, but he never came out and said it. This is the only reference I can come up with where he does. And yes, I believe he is a moron.

[Booberdawg]

9. If you are referring to the his quote from telegraph in your original post

I still don't see how that really pins him with anything. All it says is that bush* "confided to other colleagues that he believed that Saddam was directly involved", which is a third person account and not a direct quote btw, but that's not the same as announcing it in public to the American people. It's simply something he said behind closed doors to other colleagues.

I agree with you that his words were always carefully and deliberatly chosen to imply a connection between 911 and saddam, and repeatedly, as well as other members of this administration. But again I think what he says privately to colleagues only proves he's a moron or a puppet, and not something that could "nail him" as in lying.

What's more important, though, is that I think the American People believed there was a connection, and they know they got that impression from HIM. They already know he lied about WMD's and nukes, now they (at least 70% of Americans) have to reconcile this new information there never was a connection, and he ALWAYS knew there was no saddam connection. So it cuts both ways, even though we can see he weasel worded his statements and never actually came out and said it, the general public has not parsed it as carefully as we have. They think he LIED. (hehe)

Welcome to DU, btw. :hi:

[9215]

7. A better quote from the above article

In his State of Union speech in January, Mr Bush made the case for confronting Iraq, saying: "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qa'eda."

This belief has been the driving force behind Washington's determination to seek "regime change" in Baghdad, particularly after Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, indicated in February that he had received intelligence reports that al-Qa'eda operatives had approached Iraq about co-operating on chemical and biological weapons.

This is in direct contradiction to what he is now saying.

[Old and In the Way]

10. So why did he accuse OBL right after 9/11?

And since they solved the case in 24 hours, it all pointed to Saudi Arabian terrorists.....how did his gut misread that? Of course, Rumsfield was convinced. And Dick knew that oil was a WMD....

[cthrumatrix]

11. Shrub is a "puppet" for the corporations that create our policies and

have benefited from this war.

Please tell me how this war has benefited America..?

[imax2268]

12. it hasn't