Leaders of 9/11 Panel Ask Cheney for Reports That Would Support Iraq-Qaeda

[UpInArms]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/politics/19CAMP.html?ex=1088222400&?en=4ab833af61f5767d&?ei=5062&?partner=GOOGLE

ASHINGTON, June 18 — The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission called on Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know.

"Probably," Mr. Cheney replied.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said that, in particular, they wanted any information available to back Mr. Cheney's suggestion that one of the hijackers might have met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent, a meeting that the panel's staff believes did not take place. Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the administration had never been able to prove the meeting took place but was not able to disprove it either.

"We just don't know," Mr. Cheney said.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton made the requests in separate interviews with The New York Times as the White House continued to question the findings of a staff report the commission released on Wednesday and to take exception to the way the report was characterized in news accounts. The report found that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and the terrorist network.

...more...

check

[neverforget]

1. Cheney: "My word is good enough so stick it up your butt"

[Stephanie]

2. Thank you Messrs. Kean & Hamilton

I think everyone had had enough of pretending. Tell the truth, or pay the consequences. Tell the truth.

[madaboutharry]

3. Maybe Cheney can find the guy

who made up the phoney Niger yellow cake documents and get him to cook something up!

[Sinistrous]

4. Spine! And from an unexpected source!

Bravo Mr. Keane and Mr. Hamilton.

What was the last time anybody called that old bastard's bluff?

[Insider]

5. just do it, dick.

just show them, and that will settle the issue. too easy.

[hlthe2b]

6. LOL! Yeah, Dick: Put UP or SHUT UP!

Me thinks the 911 Chair and Co-Chair are PISSED!

[Elidor]

7. Time to put up or shut up, Dick

He's starting to resemble Jim Angleton, deliberately letting people believe he knows things he can't reveal, when in fact he has nothing. He'll sooner pull WMDs out of his ass than any substantive proof of a working relationship.

[Disturbed]

9. No evidence of real proof.

Chainsaw won't provide anything and this little issue will pop down the memory hole by next week.

[UpInArms]

12. NYT has a related article: Show Us the Proof

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/opinion/19SAT1.html?ex=1088222400&?en=22ba731e1d686bd1&?ei=5062&?partner=GOOGLE

When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history.

Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.

Before the war, Mr. Bush spoke of far more than vague "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said Iraq had provided Al Qaeda with weapons training, bomb-making expertise and a base in Iraq. On Feb. 8, 2003, Mr. Bush said that "an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990's for help in acquiring poisons and gases." The 9/11 panel's report, as well as news articles, indicate that these things never happened.

Mr. Cheney said yesterday that the "evidence is overwhelming" of an Iraq-Qaeda axis and that there had been a "whole series of high-level contacts" between them. The 9/11 panel said a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan in the early 1990's, meeting with Osama bin Laden once in 1994. It said Osama bin Laden had asked for "space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The panel cited reports of further contacts after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, but said there was no working relationship. As far as the public record is concerned, then, Mr. Cheney's "longstanding ties" amount to one confirmed meeting, after which the Iraq government did not help Al Qaeda. By those standards, the United States has longstanding ties to North Korea.

Mr. Bush has also used a terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Mr. Bush used to refer to Mr. Zarqawi as a "senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner" who was in Baghdad working with the Iraqi government. But the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime, nor under the direction of Al Qaeda.

...more...

[hlthe2b]

15. Their accompanying editorial: last paragraph (NYT is really pissed):

The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy.



Cheney may really have done it now... This story will not go away. I just pray that editorials throughout the country echo this one by the Old Gray Lady--who, (it is about time), has finally decided to question the Bushistas*

[librechik]

8. check

mate in three

[UpInArms]

10. do you think the question in the last paragraph

is rhetorical?

"They feel it's important to their long-term credibility on the issue of the decision to go to war," the adviser said. "It's important because it's part of the overall view that Iraq is part of the war on terror. If you discount the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, then you discount the proposition that it's part of the war on terror. If it's not part of the war on terror, then what is it — some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush?"

[fabius]

11. I'll call your "probably" and raise, Dick...

:evilgrin:

This is getting cool. High stakes poker.

[wroberts189]

13. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave,

when first we practice to deceive."


Sir Walter Scott

[venus]

14. This is pitiful. Can't prove it happened

and can't prove it didn't happen. How stupid do they think we are. It would be funny if it wasn't so serious. He needs to get a grip.

[pansypoo53219]

16. cheney knows of

57 flavo....57 commies.....
Joe McCarthy and his 57 flavors of commies. bullshit to that last drop.

[daleo]

22. Exactly what I was thinking

"I have here in my hand a list..."

Eventually they called McCarthy on this too, although after a shamefully long time and many ruined lives, just like now.

Only now is much worse.

[jobycom]

17. See what's happening? No one wants to be called a liar by a half-wit

Even the Republicans are starting to turn on Bush and Cheney because these two keep challenging everyone.

The Repubs on the 9-11 panel went way out for Bush by not dumping blame on him, and he and Cheney repay them by questioning them-- either their intelligence, their honesty or their integrity.

Suddenly, Kean and the others are starting to see what the Democrats have been facing. Up until recently, Repubs just assumed Bush was being honest and the Dems were playing politics by accusing him of lying. Now, he's lying about his own party, and not about traitors to his own party, but about a group that just went out on a limb to protect him. Now they see that Bush will say or do anything to save himself.

That won't fly well.

[0007]

18. cheney knows its over, he just enjoys being a prick.

Now that he's being called, the next move is to tear up the cards.

Or if the prick is being checked as in a chess game, he'll scramble the pieces on the board and tell 'ya why he should of won and that you played a stupid game.

dick is finished, his creditability is zero.

[Jack Rabbit]

19. Proving a negative

Cheney is playing the same game with the Commission over Saddam's al Qaida links that the junta played with Saddam over his weapons before the invision: you say it doesn't exist; well, you can't prove it doesn't exist. Unfortunately, like the other time, Cheney and other members of the junta also said it did exist.

I'm glad Kean has given him a put up or shut up. The fact is that the senior members of the junta are liars and war criminals.

[Kagemusha]

20. Cheney has every right to refuse 'cause of the testimony deal.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the commission sign away any right to get more info out of him?

[Spazito]

21. If Cheney doesn't come up with the proof, that only shows he is the liar

everyone knows he is. If he refuses, it only proves he has no proof.

[Just Me]

24. From my perspective, he is worse than merely a liar,...

,...because he intentionally wields fabrications in order to manipulate others into engaging in actions harmful to both themselves and others but which benefit him and his cronies.

He is guilty of betrayal. He is a traitor.

[UpInArms]

23. kick

:kick: for the weekend readers

[leftchick]

25. I wonder if dick will play the DoD card again....

This mis-administration always falls back on previous lies and distortions, so it would not surprise me in the least....


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0123-02.htm

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

CHENEY CLAIM: "You ought to go look at an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago, that goes through and lays out in some detail, based on an assessment that was done by the Department of Defense and forwarded to the Senate Intelligence Committee some weeks ago. That's your best source of information” to justify the Saddam-Al Qaeda claim. – Vice President Cheney, 1/9/04

FACT: “Reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate. Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal.”

[UpInArms]

27. the "ultra-secret double-hidden"

compelling evidence is that crazy PNAC AEI twit called Laurie Mylroie

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/mylroie.html

Is your opinion that bin Laden basically was the front man for Saddam Hussein?

Bin Laden and Saddam are working together; they're both in it together. But between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda, the far more important party is Iraqi intelligence. Bin Laden also worked with Sudanese intelligence. That came out in the trial for the 1998 embassy bombing. Bin Laden works with the Taliban. He's not as important as we think. He does not work independently of a state, of a government. But because we have not seen the links, or perhaps not wanted to see the links between Osama bin Laden and various governments, we ourselves have attributed to him capabilities that he alone does not possess.

http://www.latefinal.com/archives/000469.html

And perhaps the most persistent advocate of the Saddam-9/11 connection is author Laurie Mylroie, whose book, Study of Revenge, examines Iraq's role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Mylroie and others have also pointed to connections between Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, al Qaeda, and Iraq. Yousef, for example, entered the U.S. with an Iraqi passport, had spent time in safe houses provided by bin Laden, and had a member of his cell make almost 50 calls to an Iraqi government worker in the month before the '93 bombing. Mylroie also says Yousef was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent himself, and others have reported that Yousef's uncle is Khalid Sheike Mohammed, bin Laden's chief of operations who was captured in March.

[leftchick]

29. Richard Clarke totaly discredited Laurie Mylroie's fictions in his book...

unfortunately the media including c-span give this bloodthirsty scum airtime and "credibility"... :puke:

[pinniped]

26. Good luck trying to get the sorry POS to produce any of that.

If the a$$wipe doesn't have to show energy papers it sure as hell won't show us serfs any of this.

[goforit]

28. Call Putin!!!............He'll bring all the phoney evidence ya want Dick.

This is such a crock of SH*T!!!

[warrior1]

30. 9/11 group call cheney's bluff

'bout damn time. Let's see what's up he sleeve's.

[UpInArms]

31. really stupid and sinister op-ed piece

in the Charleston NC newspaper today with the final paragraph reading:

Most important of all, we know that Saddam would not have had any scruples about linking up with al-Qaida to strike against the United States. That may well be what President Putin was hinting at. What is most important is that all U.S. allies, regardless of their differences about the war in Iraq or other issues, see eye to eye on fighting the world's common enemy, the fanatical terrorism espoused by Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.

http://www.charleston.net/stories/061904/edi_19edit2.shtml

[Q]

32. Are they making this request knowing they won't get it?

- Sometimes I wonder if this 'commission' is just going through the motiions.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

33. Wonder no further.

It's a whitewash. Anything damaging will come from the outside, not the 9-11 Commission. These probing maneuvers are simply designed to instill a sense of credibility to the Commission. There will be a pretty bow on the report when it's released.

[gatlingforme]

34. Cheney - "I know something you don't know - na na "

I am glad they are calling his bluff. what a great idea... I wonder what Cheney will respond with ................. he will probably go into hiding again. He only seems to come out when he must "set the record straight. " I wonder where his hole is???? and what the rock looks like covering the hole?

[flamingpie2500]

35. Cheney can lie, lie, lie. He didn't testify under oath--how convenient.

Now the commission is stuck playing THEIR game.

[Hotler]

36. I don't know how anybody could ride in

the same elevator with that man and not come out wanting to take a shower. I bet that mans aura is as black as the ace of spades.

[Malva Zebrina]

37. getting real desperate and know the American people are too dumb to

parse it

We have never been able to prove it and then

incredibly he says

Have not been able to disprove it either

Jesus--

[leesa]

38. The best thing that could have happened was the ham-handed

attack on the commission's credibility by the Republicans. They may be mad enough to be credible now, in which case the Bush team's going to jail.