I’m so disappointed in Dick Cheney. Or at least I was, when I first heard he had caved in to the all-pervasive, "reality"-charged, 24-hour media Beast that had been demanding that he make a personal appearance to share his feelings about shooting his pal Harry Whittington.
Actually, I still am.
I had hoped he’d hold out a few more days, until I could run a Sunday column cheering him on.
But he caved. Of course, he flipped off the whiny, supremely arrogant White House press corps — and the entire MSM — by doing it on Fox News. But that didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel 
worse, really, since it emphasized the partisanship that saturates Washington. I mean, the country is a poorer place when politicians can pick their news outlet according to their expectations of better treatment — and be right about it.
At least he didn’t follow the exact script that the Beast demands, which goes like this:
You sit down face-to-face with somebody like Barbara Walters in some place that looks like somebody’s living room, dressed casually because you just haven’t been able to bring yourself to return to business as usual (sackcloth and ashes would be nice, but the touch might be missed by secularized moderns).
And then what? Well, you break down and cry. Then, if you’re really good at this, you look straight into the camera, bite your quivering lip, give a game "thumbs-up" sign and say. "Hang in there, Harry. I’m with you, pal." And you fall to pieces again.
Well, I knew Dick Cheney wouldn’t do that. Still, even though he submitted his surrender to Brit Hume on ground of his choosing, dressed vice-presidentially and with nary a quiver, he still went on TV and pronounced most of the ritual sentiments demanded by the Beast and its gods: "one of the worst days of my life," etc…. you know, the kind of stuff no guy should have to share except with maybe his wife and his pal Harry — if them.
Sure, he was stoic and took full responsibility and said manly things like "I’m the guy who pulled the trigger," and the Beast will be far from satisfied, and we haven’t heard the end about his supposedly unforgivable arrogance.
But he still caved. Now I’ve got to figure another angle for the column.
And yes, I’m being a little ironic here. But I still liked seeing him frustrate the White House press corps all week up to now. I don’t like those guys — considered as a group, anyway. Oh, and before you liberals get all worked up in their defense, let me tell you I formed my negative impression
of them during the Clinton years, when I sat among them waiting to interview Clinton press secretary and native South Carolinian Mike McCurry. The topic of the day was some small development in the Paula Jones saga, and they were all abusing McCurry for failing to kowtow to them in some way or other. They do that to everybody, you know.
They make all of us look bad, and I think it was great that Mr. Cheney made them get their news from the Corpus Christi paper.
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I knew you were stupid. I knew you were lazy. I knew you were dishonest. I knew you were a hypocrite. I knew you suffer a deep, burning resentment of any journalist who has achieved more than you. (Almost all of them.)
But I never knew until today the depths of depravity to which you could sink.
Cheney SHOT A GUY IN THE HEART. HE WAS DRINKING BEFORE HE DID IT. HE KEPT THE POLICE FROM INTERVIEWING HIM FOR 12 HOURS OR MORE AFTER HE SHOT A GUY. HE INITIALLY TRIED TO BLAME THE VICTIM. HE GOT A WITNESS (Armstrong) TO LIE ABOUT WHAT SHE SAW. (She says that she saw, from her vantage point, in the car, 100 yards away, that Whittington came up on Cheney and the others and didn’t make them aware of his approach. Yeah, right, she saw and heard that from that distance. She also gave a false account of Whittington’s injuries.)
And in the face of all this, you claim that to you, the press’s concern over this story represents “partisanship” and arrogance on the part of the press. No it doesn’t. It represents a concern over the discrepancies in Cheney’s story, and a (late-awakening) willingness to cover for him and make excuses for him.
When you say this:
“caved in to the all-pervasive, reality-charged, 24-hour media Beast that had been demanding that he make a personal appearance to share his feelings about shooting his pal Harry Whittington.”
you’re lying. No one is demanding that Cheney “share his feelings.” What people want are some coherent answers. They want the answers to some questions. Some of the questions that spring to my mind are:
Was 2-time drunk driving arrestee Cheney drunk when he shot Whittington?
Who cooked up the false story Armstrong told? What responsibility did Cheney have for feeding Armstrong the story?
Who was responsible for keeping the police from interviewing Cheney?
What was the range at which Cheney shot Whittington? If it was 30 yards, why did pellets penetrate to Whittington’s liver and to his heart?
Lots of questions like that, none of which have anything to do with Cheney’s feelings. You are simply attempting to trivialize the reporters’ concern, but you have to lie in order to do it. Of course, the reporters’ concern isn’t trivial; it has to do with fundamental questions of public policy, one of the most important of which is, does the Vice President of the United States have the right to shoot someone without subjecting himself to an investigation, and does he have the right to obstruct the processes of the law and to coach witnesses?
You aren’t good enough to be a Washington reporter (even though the standard is extraordinarly low, you don’t come close to meeting it), and instead of looking to yourself, to the laziness and lack of talent that has confined you to the cesspool you inhabit, you find fault with reporters some of whom, for once, are attempting to actually do their jobs without making excuses for the officials on whom they’re supposed to be reporting.
And quit decrying “partisanship.” Quit claiming to be nonpartisan. You’re a whore for the Republicans, with your primary affinity to the Republican Party being based on your shared racism. If you want to be thought of as nonpartisan, quit calling yourself a nonpartisan. What you call yourself doesn’t matter. If you act and speak like a nonpartisan, people will see you as one; if you don’t (and you, of course, don’t), no amount of calling yourself a nonpartisan will make any difference.
Mary, I share much of your dislike for Brad Warthen, but you’re really foamed up about this whole Vice-President-hunting-accident thing aren’t you? Where were people like you on the left demanding and frothing about the “truth” when Bill Clinton the child molester and rapist was embarassing his country and disgracing the office of the Presidency? Nowhere, that’s where. Your outrage now sure seems contrived to me. Fritz
Fritz, Cheney REALLY DID SHOOT SOMEONE. That happend IN REALITY, not in your fantasy world. It is only in your fantasies that Bill Clinton is a child molester and rapist.
And what specifically did Bill Clinton do that “embarrassed his country” and “disgraced the office of the presidency?” It’s interesting that you can’t actually point to any specific act and let the reader decide for himself whether the act “disgraced the office” or “embarrassed the country;” you have to talk in sweeping terms while concealing what you’re actually talking about.
Why don’t you point to some specific acts by Clinton and explain:
a) what evidence exists that they actually occurred
and
b)
how they embarrassed the country and disgraced the office.
I believe that you, like Warthen, are a shiftless loser who resents people like Clinton, whose initiative led him to a great success, and thus are willing to believe any story that casts him in a negative light, no matter how lacking is the evidence for the truth of the story. So show me that your claims against Clinton are grounded in reality, not in a bitter, jealous fantasy.
I have already explained how Cheney disgraced his office and embarrassed the country. He shot a guy in the heart, blamed the victim, coached a witness to lie, and interfered with efforts of law enforcement to investigate.
Somehow I knew that Mary’s pseudonym would anagramize into something like “Sorry Ham.” Which reminds me, if I may be so crude, of Clinton’s embarrassing affliction of “erectile full-function”. Or so I recall. Didn’t several women claim that the president, or at least part of him, stood at attention at the most inopportune times? Perhaps I’m mistaken. I even forget which group performed his campaign them: Fleetwood Mac or Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels
But I digress.
I realize that a lot of folks who hang around here don’t care much for Cheney, but he and Big Dog are my favorite members of this administration for the simple reason that they represent the epitome of public service. Neither has ambitions for higher office, both could enjoy family and fortunes far away from the limelight, but they choose to serve. Oh, and they are quite manly.
What has this cost Cheney other than the time he devotes to his job as VP? Around $8 million. That’s the value of the stock options he and his wife assigned to an irrevocable Gift Trust Agreement shortly before he was sworn in; they will / can never get the money back. Cheney is by no means poor — In 2002, his total assets were valued at between $19.1 million and $86.4 million — but $8M is more than a lot of us make per year. Even Brad (I think).
Contrast this with Robert Rubin’s deal when he because Treasury Secretary. (I bear no ill will toward the man and in fact believe that he did considerable good even before he joined the administration. I simply want to point out that the opposition party left their swords sheathed when it came to agreeing to Rubin’s conflict of interest arrangement.) As a partner in Goldman Sachs & Co., his fortune was rather illiquid — it could have been liquidated at an unknown, if any, cost — but he was allowed to place it in a blind trust. Huh? He obviously knew what his holdings in the “blind trust” were.
(We do know that after he left Treasury and went to work for Citigroup, Rubin did try to get Treasury employees to pressure the credit-rating agencies not to downgrade Enron. But that was after his public service stint. )
Brad,
Now things are starting to make sense. Obviously, since alcohol was involved, Mr. Cheney’s actions constituted a patent attempt to avoid possible criminal prosecution.
The really are “Two Americas”. Mr. Cheney, who represents privileged, corporate America, has been expecting to once again receive preferential treatment from all involved, yet this time, the press is not cooperating. The corporate press gave Cheney, the Bush Administration, and the Republican congress a free ride for years, but at this point in time, even the toothless Washington Press Corps, which in every sense has a financial obligation to the Republican Party, is being forced to ask tougher questions because the people are demanding answers. As I was listening to the socially conservative hunters at work today complain about the double standard, it became apparent to me that the Republican Party is losing support among ordinary citizens precisely because the constant lies and misrepresentations spewed forth by people of Cheney’s ilk. The people are sick of it.
There is hope however if the people can somehow manage to elect better representatives despite a corporatized campaign finance system that always puts moneyed interests ahead of the interests of the people. A good starting point for real reform may be through the following veterans: Veterans for a Secure America
“Our Values
Our values are American values.
In 2006, Band of Brothers will propose a bold new progressive politic that stresses American values, cuts across partisan lines, and provides a real choice between a country that works for the few and one that creates opportunity for all.
Republicans are vested in a divided America that is currently tipped in their favor because of their successful development and exploitation of a “family values” brand that adheres to traditional prejudices, gun rights, abortion, and same sex marriage. They have also been able to exploit the tragedy of September 11 and parlay it to a position of strength on National Security issues which has allowed them to pursue their irresponsible approach to the war on terror.
We aim to bring middle class and lower income Americans back into the decision making process by promoting candidates that may not otherwise be heard.
Band of Brothers 2006 is premised on the basic idea that all Americans should be given the same opportunities to succeed. We support policies that promote American Values:
· Basic health care coverage for all Americans
· Expanded education opportunity
· Responsible use of our Military
· A foreign policy that promotes US leadership with NATO, the UN, and our allies in the war on terror
· Overhaul, reform, and simplify the tax system
The Band of Brothers 2006 campaign will focus on exposing neo-conservative agendas and policies that are in conflict with great American traditions.
· Values and Patriotism – Clarity on which values are to be honored and which values are under siege.
· Corporate Responsibility – Reinforce the sensibilities of the middle class while illustrating how neo-conservative agendas encourage corruption and greed in big corporations.
· Exposing Bush – Put the spotlight on policies that benefit the 1%, on Republican base strategy, payoffs, and cronyism.
· Foreign Policy – Not contesting the need to fight the war on terror, but illustrating that the Bush foreign policy makes it more difficult and costly.
· The Economy – Serious discussion on low income growth, increasing inequality, rising health care cost, cuts in public services, and a deepening middle class squeeze.
I’ll bet that on Fritz’ planet the WMDs were moved out of Iraq to Syria. Plus, Atta met with an Iraqi intel officer in Prague. And, of course, one of the original WTC bombers was actually an Iraqi intel officer.
Poor, poor, gullible, and deluded Fritz.
Put down the Kool-Aid, Fritz.
MikeC,
Who the heck is “Big Dog?”
How can you say that Cheney didn’t/doesn’t aspire to “higher office?” Cheney selected himself as VP and pretty obviously does what he wants in secret. Naturally, he didn’t feel the need to call his boss and explain the shooting for more than 24 hours. First of all, why would he call himself? You can almost see the puppet strings controlling our “unitary executive” Incurious George.
Cheney doesn’t aspire to advance? Why should he? He apparently has the power and perks of the only higher office without the pesky minimal demands of transparency that Bush attempts to evade.
If you missed Cheney’s self-serving Faux News interview he’s also acquired the authorization to declassify (and selectively leak) documents favorable to the administration.
The five-time deferred hawk is a model public servant only if you think public servants should lie skillfully, blatantly, repeatedly, aggressively and artfully to scare the bejesus out of the silly rube voters in order to take the nation to war on false pretenses. Do exemplary public servants pressure non-partisan, professional intel analysts to cherry pick data in order to support the public servant’s personal obsession with invading a country which doesn’t threaten the U.S.?
Face it: the man is an autocrat who, like Bush, thinks that running the country would be a whole lot easier as a dictatorship— as long as he’s the man behind the curtain.
Brad,
You won’t find this liberal defending the WH press corps.
After letting the Bushies skate on such major scandals as fraudulently leading the country to war and “outing” a CIA WMD operative for partisan political retribution, they suddenly find their voice over a hunting accident?
Watching their transparently biased coverage of the election in 2000 was stomach turning. Bush treated them like sevile curs and they ate it up! He restrained his contempt (barely) and rewarded them with derisive frat boy nicknames. Meanwhile, they gleefully screwed the remote, egotistical and wonkish Gore at every turn.
For the eight Clinton years they never met a rightwing canard that wasn’t worthy of publishing/airing uncritically and repeatedly.
Every one of them should have been fired a long time ago.
Geez Brad, I bet you’re sorry you opened this can of partisan worms. Or maybe you’re scrolling through all these inane postings and laughing your tail off.
Every one of you that has posted so far is part of what’s wrong with America today. Your lives are all so comfortable and detached from reality that you can afford the luxury of irrational, spazmodic pseudo-debate regarding a non-fatal hunting accident 1,000 miles from South Carolina that happened to involve an elected official.
All of you, quit your blathering, put down your lattes and go down to Mississippi and help someone rebuild their home. And I don’t want to hear you whine about FEMA or Ray Nagin while you’re doing it.
As for you, Brad, I guess I’m the only one who read your blog and isn’t drinking some type of partisan Kool-Aid. As a journalist, I actually got your point about the arrogance of the major media outlets and counter-arrogance demonstrated by politicians in dealing with them.
After seeing the inaccurate coverage of the West Virginia mine disaster, why would Cheney, or anyone else, want the hordes descending on their friends under the guise of covering a ‘breaking’ story?
Cheney’s a bastard, and so are Clinton, Gingrich, Kennedy and a lot more. And so are the MSM hordes desperate to outdo each other by any means necessary. They all deserve each other.
By the way, for the sake of full disclosure, I had two beers Sunday, so I guess some Kool-Aider might be able to say I was drinking before I wrote this, too. Technically, it’s true.
I’ve got an idea for a column for you Brad. Why don’t you talk about the comments that your paper ignored from Al Gore this past weekend? That is something that actually makes a difference in this country. This Cheney thing is just the press trying to “get” the Bush administration. It is sad. Too bad they are covering up real news with the story.
More connections between Iraq and terrorism.
A Jordanian court convicted in absentia the terrorist Zarqawi, who has been living in Iraq since the mid-1990s, for his plot to use Iraqi nerve gas in attacks on Jordan.
More tapes were aired on ABC, of Saddam discussing the use of WMD in attacks on the US. These fit right in with the videotapes of his speech to the hijacker training camp which urged the Al Qaeda trainees to, “Kill the Jews, but attack America first.”
Gosh, Lee, you leave out the little details that really torpedo your entire argument. I wonder why.
For instance, Zarqawi was based in the Kurdish part of Iraq that Saddam didn’t control— especially after allied air forces enforced the no fly zone. Look it up.
Another inconvenient fact that the warmongers ignored in the misleading of American public opinion before the invasion: both al-Zarqawi and OBL were fanatical Islamists who represented a very real domestic threat to the secular dictator Saddam.
Saddam says in the tapes that the terrorist attacks on the U.S. won’t come from Iraq. Do you think that he was cunningly envisioning Americans listening to his private tapes when he said that?
From ABC News:
“In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?” But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. “This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq.”
Also at the meeting was Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who said Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. “Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It’s so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it.”
According to the BBC:
He[al-Zarqawi] is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after a US missile strike on his Afghan base, though the report that he lost a leg in the attack has not been verified.
US officials argue that it was at al-Qaeda’s behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar al-Islam – a group of Kurdish Islamists from the north of the country.
He is thought to have remained with them for a while – feeling at home in mountainous northern Iraq.
————-
So al-Zarqawi is friendly enough with the Kurds, who historically have resisted Saddam fiercely, to establish bases there. AND, he’s an Islamist terrorist with poison gas training.
But you expect us to believe that the ultra-security concious, secular, Stalinist dictator Saddam would hook up
with al-Zarqawi?
Did I mention that I’ve got ocean front property for sale in Nevada?
No one EXPECTS any of the seditious haters of America to believe Saddam was involved with terrorism, in spite of the facts:
* al-Zarqawi and other members of Al Qaeda lived in Bagdad since 1995.
* Iraq ran two hijacker training camps
* Saddam’s top henchmen and his two sons me with Al Qaeda members involved in the 9/11 attacks.
* Bill and Hillary Clinton, and 45 Democrat Senators signed a resolution calling for the ouster of Hussein, in order to stop his terrorism and the threat of a WMD attack on the U.S.
CORRECTION!
Everybody, please note: I just went back into this piece and corrected something. I said I had interviewed Mike McCurry when he was dealing with something having to do with Monica Lewinsky. But that was wrong. It was actually Paula Jones. (Hey, who can keep all these eruptions straight?) How did that happen? I was writing the post at home, and didn’t have access to my database, so I couldn’t look up the column I wrote at the time. Anyway, in addition to having corrected the error, I’ve also provided a link to that column — or rather, to a Word file containing the column.
My bad. Of course, the error was a bit technical, since one of these scandals led directly to the other one. In a sense, this was the Monica Lewinsky scandal; it just hadn’t gotten to the point that we called it by that name. But I still got it wrong.
ATTY. WHITINGTON IS WHAT I CONSIDER TO BE A LIBERAL AND HE HAS BEEN VERY MUCH AN INTERESTING AND CONTROVERSIAL VOICE IN OUR CITY FOR OVER 40 YEARS OR THERE ABOUTS. AS FAR AGO AS I CAN RECALL. HE HAS BEEN AN ENVIRONMENTALIST WHICH IS NOT SHOCKING IN TEXAS WHERE WE VALUE OUR SUBLIME LANDSCAPE WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE MOST BEAUTIFUL IN THE USA BY MOST, BUT AS WE ARE THE BIGGEST STATE WE ALSO HAVE THE ADVANTAGE OF SO MUCH VARIETY. BUT HE ALSO SUPPORTED CIVIL RIGHTS AND HAS SUPPORTED SO MANY OF THE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS. HE HAS DEFENDED PRO BONO SOME CASES AGAINST MEXICANS ILLEGALLY IN TEXAS, THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY. FINALLY, HE HAS SUPPORTED SOME FIFTH RIGHT ISSUES WHICH HAVE CAUSED OUR SCHOOLS TO BECOME MORE TOLERANT OF IMORAL BEHAVIOR.
FINALLY, I CAN SIMPLY NOT UNDERSTAND WHY OUR VICE PRESIDENT WAS WITH A MAN WHO OPENLY, OPENLY WITH A LETTER TO THE EDITOR WAS THE BEACON FOR PERSONS WHO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE AND WOMEN’S MARRIAGES TOGETHER AND JUSTICE FOR HOMOSEXUALS. WHY WAS CHENEY WITH HIM? I BELIEVE THAT THIS IS THE REAL REASON CHENEY WAS NERVOUS BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS THIS RICH LAWYER IS SLIGHTLY PINK AND SUPPORTS JUSTICE FOR HOMOSEXUALS. I WISH HIM WELL, BUT I THINK HE ALSO OWES CHENEY AN APOLOGY BECAUSE THIS HAS HURT THE HEALTH OF THE BEST VICE PRESIDENT OF THE CENTURY AFTER RICHARD NIXON AND DAN QUAYLE. THIS IS THE WAY PEOPLE HEAR THINK OF THE MEDIA HYPED GUTTERSNIPE LIBERAL PRESS ATTACK.
I HAVE HOPE IN AMERICA WHEN I READ YOUR PAGE BECAUSE WE WILL ONLY SURVIVE BECAUSE OF PEOPLE SUCH AS YOURSELF YOUNG ENOUGH TO STOP THE MARCH OF FREEDOM FOR PERSONS WHO ARE A PRISONER OF THEIR OWN PRISON’S PRISONER.
There is the feeling that there is a connection between the attack AGAINST Richard Cheney and the attack against W’s beautiful and womanly wife who is a breath of fresh air after Hillary left the White House in a dress but with her jock strap under it.
It is just the dirtiness of our liberal establishment reporters who drew the connection between the accident over the weekend and Mrs. Bush having killed her boyfriend in High School in a tragic accident. She was not even drinking but Cheney is old enough to drink. Why is this an issue? It is not illegal and most of us who hunt here in Minnesota drink and drink to ice fish too. Drinking and hunting is like salt and pepper that go together.
But doesn’t anyone out there find it weird that Richard Cheney shot barely shot his buddy who also was the uncle of the mother of the guy First Lady Bush killed?
Am I going paranoid? There are too many similarities. Texas. They couldn’t get close to Bush but to Ambassador Anne Armstrong-Jones ranch bigger than Rhode Island, how can they completely ever keep anybody safe from harm. And not even harm for himself but public relations. You get the drift!
I think that this incident Should be investigated not to convict Cheney and torment him but to see if he is the one who shot his friend anyway. Mrs. bush is said to be disappearing practically because it has brought back memories of her killing her prom date and how bad can it be. That was a clean job. Nobody is responsible for it.
But could it be that somebody shot Richard Cheney’s best friend and then Cheney thought he did it. They was just waiting for Cheney to lift his gun to shoot his friend knowing he was elderly and might die. They also shot him in the chest knowing that bird pellet in the heart cannot be dug out and left itside it causes a rhytem men and heart attack. And what does the liberal establishment reporters watch on Saturday night they watch actors making fun of VP having heart attacks every five minutes. They knew that if Cheney’s friend got shot in the right place he would have a heart attack. This is common knowlege because quail pellet is made of a metal which attracts electricity and what runs the heart? Electricity. How can Cheney bare this terrible thought of giving someone a heart attack and what will it do to his heart which is going to dim and shut down any day or month. The man is living on borrowed time. So they broke Mrs. Bush’s heart and rebroke it I should say and driving Mr. Cheney to an early grave so that w. will have not a legacy just like Bill Clinton. That is how mean they are. And I think it is high time to stop the pay back on Texas for John Kennedy’s assasination. The real assasins were the democrat New Jersey gangsters who killed Mr. Kennedy to begin with not Oswald who was from Arizona originally. Thank you for getting this.
but now, start the investigation rolling.
Big Dog = Rumsfeld.
Latte does not touch my lips. I am on record as a daily homemade espresso drinker. But I digress.
Those of you who are drinkin’, please stop, see a professional.
Those of you who’ve not been drinkin’ and are of age, please start. See a professional bartender and start off with something green, then blue, then red.
Those of you who are under a physician’s care and are supposed to be taking drugs that assist in relieving mood swings, please resume your medications and refrain from informing us of the particulars of your physiological functions and any interventions you may take to regularize them.
When you are of sober mind, consider spending some time with my friend Bill; he has a razor that just about guarantees a clean shave: Numquam ponenda est pluritas sine necessitate.. You can translate this as “Multiples should never be used if not necessary,” or “Shave off (omit) unnecessary entities in explanations.” The best translation of its spirit is this: The simplest explanation is the most likely.
The conspiracies of this world are usually discovered because they are quite transparent and affect too many folks, or remain undiscovered because they are ineffective. Those who plotted the communist revolution in Russia were in the first group, while the latter includes those related to the former who have tried to keep us poor and stupid.
Today’s problems lie not with conspiracies, but with conspiracy theorists — those who seek to discover and explain conspiracies without benefit of evidence, common sense, or even a workable hypothesis. One may devote one’s life to the discovery and explication of conspiracies, but even if one is a prosecutor with the benefits afforded that office — a grand jury, investigators, a generous budget, and frequent press conferences — chances of success are slim unless there really was a conspiracy. I fear we will see this play out with the current Enron trial: Ken Lay was not part of a conspiracy, he was, shall we say, ill-suited to man the helm of a great enterprise and not able, because he did not realize their importance, to install the controls that any organization must have to achieve its objectives. He believed in magic, when in fact his firm operated in the real world. Some of his underlings were criminals, but he had neither the ability nor interest in discovering their machinations.
The sad fact is that we’ve relaxed standards of responsible behavior and now permit anyone to claim anything without fear of denigration, ridicule, or even raised eyebrows. We allow this irresponsible, if not malevolent, behavior not only in everyday situations, but in our courts, our churches, our media, and, sad to say, our sports.
Oh, woe is us!
Ooops! It’s espresso time!
OK, I finally had to do it. I finally had to delete a comment. Oh, well, my noncensorship streak was bound to end.
You want to know what I deleted? Can’t tell you. If I did, it wouldn’t be censorship, would it?
But it was pretty vile. I want to apologize to anyone who read it before I got rid of it.
You know what, Mike? For an atheist, you sure preach a good sermon. I’d almost like to put you in some evangelical pulpits. Who knows, some folks might just put down their Left Behind novels long enough and start doing some serious thinking — and practice it as well.
Which reminds me; I’m still working on the tutoring thing. I’ve got a number of folks who are interested, but I still have to find the key people to get together. I’ve also got to find the right person to do it in the end, because I certainly can’t. It takes a long time though to find the right people and get together with them and talk about the “vision.” I’ve quoted you on several occasions. Hope you don’t mind.
There are one or two different scenarios that I could see developing, one with just evangelicals, and the other with partner churches, regardless of stripe. But more about that later. As our aid people in Africa say, never count on anybody actually arriving until you see the whites of their eyes (they work in heat of up to 130 degrees, so would-be-workers often chicken out).
Oh, I forgot. If you ever do preach in an evangelical church, you’ll have to leave the “starting drinking” part out. But you probably already realized that . . . .
The church coffee is usually pretty bad, too.
Brad – I saw the vile comments, they prompted my remarks about medication and mood swings.
Herb – thanks, I think. I did attend this seminary for several years. As you know, preaching is not high on the list of skills for Papists, but the school did offer rhetoric, debate, and other tools useful in converting the heathen.
I think the kitchen had better coffee for monsignors and above, and, of course, alcohol is mandatory.
Lee,
Can you provide any support from a reasonably sober, non-partisan, unbiased source for your statements about the links between Saddam and Al Quaeda?
If there was the slightest support of it then the Bush Administration would have been trumpeting it from the rooftops.
Please ignore the voices in your head that stop when you take off your tinfoil hat or when you resume your meds. Don’t waste our time with rightwing radio talkers, either.
I consider the BBC to be a pretty good source but there’s that whole Lyndon LaRouche issue about the Queen of England being a drug kingpin, right?
If you’re looking for “seditious haters of America” then look in the mirror.
Brad–
Jay Rosen has a great analysis of the larger implications on his “PressThink” blog.
Ready to Hurl needs to read the 9/11 Commission report, and the minority report, which discuss some of the connections of Iraq to the hijackers.
Study the highjacker training camps like the one at Salmam Pak, Iraq.
Review Hillary Clinton’s proclamation that Sandy Berger and other advisors of her ersatz husband had proven to her that Saddam had WMD and was connected to the highjackers.
Review John Kerry, member of the Senate Intelligence Committee (though he missed 78% of meetings), saying how he had “seen the evidence” linking Al Qaeda and Saddam – evidence gathered during the Clinton administration.
Ready to Hurl – After you and all the rest of us hear the new tapes of Saddam speaking personally about terrorism using WMD and America as the target, there will be a lot of crow eaten.. How do you like yours? Rare, medium, or well done?
Seriously, Saddam was and is an evil thug. He and his progeny commonly raped young girls at their leisure. He will be convicted of gassing the ethnic Kurds, women and babies included. What really does it take to open the eyes of a bleeding heart liberal to real human tragedy. On that subject, the Dick Cheney accidental plinking of a colleague is a GREAT BIG SO WHAT!!!! This country was founded on the power of guns and bullets. The limp wristed Washington media goes ballistic when they hear the word gun. What a bunch of loser wusses.
Ready to Hurl –
There’s this:
And there’s this seven-year-old report:
There’s a lot more, but these two seem to meet your challenge rather nicely, no?
Uhm, Lee, here’s what I find in the 9/11 Commission Report:
Responding to a presidential tasking, Clarke’s office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, title “Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks.” Rice’s chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda. The memo found no “compelling case” that Iraq had either planned or perpetuated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign intelligence reports, including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to guage crowd reaction to an unspecified event. Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons.
==========================================
Atta’s Alleged Trip to Prague
…The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting.
============================================
I don’t have the Minority Report at hand but I’ll take a look.
Maybe you would be so kind as to point me to a source for the other citations since it’s your burden to prove it.
The Bush Administration hasn’t been able to prove it during the three years of absolute control of Iraq.
Long story, short: Stephen Hayes is a neo-con hack writing for a money losing propaganda organ kept afloat by rightwing Aussie media mogul (and Faux News owner) Rupert Murdoch.
This is the epitome of biased sourcing.
Here are some snippets from a Media Matters article debunking Hayes.
===================
Questions surrounding Hayes’s journalistic credibility have been documented by Media Matters for America. His book, which largely relies on the leaking of a discredited Defense Department intelligence memo, was released by the Murdoch-owned HarperCollins and has been vigorously promoted by Hayes in the pages of the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. On February 17, the British daily newspaper The Guardian published a report of Murdoch’s support for the Iraq war and the resulting bias in Murdoch-owned media outlets.
[…]
A June 2 Washington Post review by professor and former FBI counterterrorism analyst Matthew A. Levitt took a different tack: “A constellation of suggestions, however, still is not a convincing argument. ‘The Connection’ raises several important questions, but it left me unconvinced.”
[…]
One of these goes by the name of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir and is the subject of Mr. Hayes’s first chapter.
Coincidentally, a June 21 article by Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder Newspapers and a June 22 article by Washington Post staff writers Walter Pincus and Dan Eggen have called into question this very claim. The first chapter of Hayes’s book, as well as an entire Weekly Standard article by Hayes that is adapted from his book, tells the story of how Christopher Carney, deputy to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, discovered that the name (Ahmed Hikmat Shakir) of an airport greeter for Al Qaeda in Malaysia is the same as that of one of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen personal militia officers. Hayes wrote, “The Shakir story is perhaps the government’s strongest indication that Saddam and al Qaeda may have worked together on September 11.” But Landay, as well as Pincus and Eggen, reported that, according to a senior administration official, the story was most likely the result of “confusion over names.”
Hayes’s first extensive foray into the topic of “the connection” was a cover story in the November 24, 2003, issue of The Weekly Standard titled “Case Closed,” which was based on the leak of a classified Defense Department intelligence written by Feith. The memo outlined numerous data points in support of the possible theory that Saddam Hussein had a working relationship with Al Qaeda. Hayes wrote:
Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda–perhaps even for Mohamed Atta–according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.
The Department of Defense subsequently issued a press release downplaying the memo’s significance and undermining the conclusion reached by Hayes: “The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions.”
On November 18, 2003, The Washington Post’s Pincus reported criticisms of Hayes’s article and of the memo itself:
W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], said yesterday that the Standard article “is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?”
Another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather “data points … among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true.”
The most vigorous critique of Hayes’s article came from a November 19, 2003, Newsweek article titled “Case Decidedly Not Closed: The Defense Dept. memo allegedly proving a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam does nothing of the sort,” in which Investigative Correspondents Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball wrote that Hayes’s article was “mostly based on unverified claims that were first advanced by some top Bush administration officials more than a year ago — and were largely discounted at the time by the U.S. intelligence community, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.” Isikoff and Hosenball discredited the memo upon which Hayes based his argument:
In fact, the tangled tale of the memo suggests that the case of whether there has been Iraqi-Al Qaeda complicity is far from closed…
With a few, inconclusive exceptions, the memo doesn’t actually contain much “new” intelligence at all. Instead, it mostly recycles shards of old, raw data that were first assembled last year by a tiny team of floating Pentagon analysts (led by a Pennsylvania State University professor and U.S. Navy analyst Christopher Carney) whom [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J.] Feith asked to find evidence of an Iraqi-Al Qaeda “connection” in order to better justify a U.S. invasion.
In December 2003, Daniel A. Benjamin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff, criticized the so-called “Feith memo” in Slate.com: “[I]n any serious intelligence review, much of the material presented would quickly be discarded.”
These criticisms did not stop Vice President Dick Cheney, however, from telling the Rocky Mountain News on January 24 that The Weekly Standard article was the “best source of information” on collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
Hayes’s book, like his 2003 “Case Closed” article, largely relies on the Feith memo, as well as on what Hayes describes as “open sources”: unclassified government reports, court documents, and news reports.
[..]
Hayes’s appearances continued unchallenged, despite the questions surrounding his assertions and despite, perhaps more notably, the release on June 16 of the 9-11 Commission’s “Staff Statement 15PDF,” finding that there was “no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.” Media Matters for America has documented other distortions of the commission statement here and here.
[…]
Since the June 16 release of the 9-11 Commission Staff Statement No. 15PDF, The Weekly Standard has published no fewer than six articles by Hayes challenging the commission’s findings.
Ready to Hurl, pretty good. I would have said simply that anyone who cites the Weekly Standard as evidence of anything has pretty much admitted that they’ve lost the argument. But for people who don’t understand what the Weekly Standard is, or who or what Stephen Hayes is, the analysis you posted is quite useful.
Looks like you need to read all the news you missed before you try to discuss the subject. That way, you won’t be limited to regurgitating character assassinations against Steven Hayes and every other messenger who delivers facts which topple your defense of Saddam Hussein.
CNN today has translated more audio tapes of Saddam discussing the nuclear weapons he has completed, and the SCUD missiles that he still has, with his top scientists and cabinet.
The 9/11 Commission noted the evidence that after Atta’s “alleged” trip to Prague (where he was tailed and photographed meeting with Iraqi agents), he deposited $50,000 cash into the Florida bank account shared with other hijackers.
Thats’ just another “coincidence” to Saddam apologists.
Sheesh! You cite Media Matters in support of your critique? At least Brock and crew have never received funding directly from George Soros.
Does Ansar al-Islam: Iraq’s al-Qaeda Connection count? How about this:
BTW, on a totally different topic, have you seen the al Qaeda personnel manual? I kid you not, it has a mission statement, lists vacation benefits, medical care (HilaryCare!), salaries (married man receives 6,500 rupees with 700 rupees for each additional wife — there are provisions for cost of living adjustments). It is on the West Point website, so it may not be left-wing enough for you. You can download the English translation of the by-laws in PDF form here. This is the main website’s page for Exploiting Al-Qa’ida’s Organizational Vulnerabilities. You really should take a gander at the main document list to get a feel for their bureaucratic approach.
Lee,
As a reader of the Weekly Standard you should be familiar with character assassination. However, what I posted was simply a compilation of MSM “professional journalists” and security analysts who don’t have an ideological axe to grind.
Shall I recap? Here’s the line-up of professionals that have debunked Hayes “work:”
+ professor and former FBI counterterrorism analyst Matthew A. Levitt;
+ Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder Newspapers and … Washington Post staff writers Walter Pincus and Dan Eggen;
+ Department of Defense memo;
+ W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency];
+ Daniel A. Benjamin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff;
On your side, let’s see:
– Stephen Hayes, media hack;
– Doug Feith, true believer neo-con ideologue and intel cherry picker;
– Dick “Dead Eye” Cheney, VP from Halliburton; and,
– Rupert Murdoch, world-wide media mogul willing to subvert democratic societies with war mongering propanda outlets but eager to cozy up with Chinese Communists for a big payday.
Looks like you’re choosing to believe corrupt liars.
Too bad.
Lee,
Nice try to conflate Saddam’s weapons and 9/11. Are you just intellectually incapable of differentiating between the two questions or has this administration’s propaganda deceits become so ingrained that you can’t help it?
I could (and probably will, sooner or later) debate the bogus WMD casa belli for Iraq but right now I’m still awaiting your proof of the Iraq connection to 9/11.
Using that deception is what made the Bushies fearmongering effective.
Saddam was a blood-thirsty bastard, no doubt. Just like at least a dozen others in the world.
Americans wouldn’t have sacrificed a single soldier’s life if they hadn’t been convinced that Iraq was behind 9/11.
Lee,
Where exactly does the 911 Commission state the following: “evidence that after Atta’s “alleged” trip to Prague (where he was tailed and photographed meeting with Iraqi agents)?”
I posted what I’ve read in the 911 report. I’ll be happy to give you page numbers. So far you just make unsupported statements.
Where is your proof? The statements in the 9/11 report that I posted don’t leave room to accept the two versions or the conflicting conclusions.
MikeC,
I have no idea whether Soros funds Media Matters. If he does, bully for him. What’s your problem with it? Soros’ philosophy is compatible to mine so far as I’m familiar with it.
I worked for a group funded by Soros in the last election as a desperate effort to derail this administration’s continued destruction of our democratic republic and our reputation in the world. Too bad that it didn’t succeed. We would have been far better off.
Your side has a 40 year history of being funded by reactionary rightwing millionares. I’ve mentioned the media empire of Rupert Murdoch that faithfully trumpets the rightwing narrative and attacks on progressives and Democrats. How about the think tanks and media vehicles underwritten by the Koch brothers, the infamous Richard Scaife and his wife, plus others?
Gimme a break from your faux outrage.
MikeC,
I’ve never disputed the fact that AQ and Ansar al-Salam are connected.
What’s your point?
There may have been some tenuous or limited connections between Saddam and Ansar al-Salam. The 911 Commission says as much:
pg. 61
Bin Ladin was also willing to explore the possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda […] Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Sadam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic Army.
[Sudan] reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad’s control. In the late 1990’s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help the re-formed into an organization called Ansar al-Islam. there are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al-Islam against the common Kurdish emeny.
======================
So Saddam may have helped Ansar al-Islam in an internecine struggle. That’s a long shot from giving them or AQ any of his imaginary WMD.
=====
BTW, here’s CNN’s lead paragraph on the tapes story Saturday:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein told his Cabinet in the mid-1990s that the U.S. would fall victim to terrorists possessing weapons of mass destruction but that Iraq would not be involved, tapes released Saturday at an intelligence summit reveal.
=============
Certainly he could have been lying. Or, he could have been simply stating a self-evident truth: with AQ on the loose and Bush on watch, we would likely be hit. Saddam liked to hear himself talk and apparently fancies himself quite an analyst. He had a (literally) captive audience. He, like Castro in his speeches, gives them the benefit of his “brilliance.”
My bad.
Dubya wasn’t “on watch” when Saddam made the statement to his cabinet.
AQ had to wait until we had the misfortune to elect someone who’s administration was more concerned with corporate welfare for the military-industrial conplex via the Star Wars project than deterring Islamist terrorists.
RTH – When you posted – “Saddam liked to hear himself talk and apparently fancies himself quite an analyst.” — I thought you were referring to Al-gore.
As for all of this Saddam and AQ linkage or no linkage, what difference does it make now? We are in Iraq, it will be ruled under a form of democracy, all of their citizens are better off for it, the US is better off for it, and the whole world, other than the Muslim fanatics, are better off for it. And, a handful of Democrats would have preferred to have the brutal criminal dictator in power to the detriment of the USA. Even Hillary supported the war effort. The next presidential election will be between two candidates that support the War on Terror. That is a comforting thought.
From Foreign Affairs
Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community’s former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community’s expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.
PAUL R. PILLAR is on the faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Concluding a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency, he served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.
A DYSFUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIP
[…]In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized. As the national intelligence officer responsible for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, I witnessed all of these disturbing developments.
[…]
At the same time, an acrimonious and highly partisan debate broke out over whether the Bush administration manipulated and misused intelligence in making its case for war. The administration defended itself by pointing out that it was not alone in its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and active weapons programs, however mistaken that view may have been.
In this regard, the Bush administration was quite right: its perception of Saddam’s weapons capacities was shared by the Clinton administration, congressional Democrats, and most other Western governments and intelligence services. But in making this defense, the White House also inadvertently pointed out the real problem: intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs did not drive its decision to go to war. A view broadly held in the United States and even more so overseas was that deterrence of Iraq was working, that Saddam was being kept “in his box,” and that the best way to deal with the weapons problem was through an aggressive inspections program to supplement the sanctions already in place. That the administration arrived at so different a policy solution indicates that its decision to topple Saddam was driven by other factors — namely, the desire to shake up the sclerotic power structures of the Middle East and hasten the spread of more liberal politics and economics in the region.
[BUT THIS WASN’T THE REASON GIVEN TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. INSTEAD THEY WERE FED FEAR MONGERING IMAGES OF “MUSHROOM CLOUDS.” BUSH/CHENEY & CO. LIED AND DECEIVED TO TAKE US TO WAR.]
A MODEL UPENDED
The proper relationship between intelligence gathering and policymaking sharply separates the two functions. The intelligence community collects information, evaluates its credibility, and combines it with other information to help make sense of situations abroad that could affect U.S. interests. Intelligence officers decide which topics should get their limited collection and analytic resources according to both their own judgments and the concerns of policymakers. Policymakers thus influence which topics intelligence agencies address but not the conclusions that they reach. The intelligence community, meanwhile, limits its judgments to what is happening or what might happen overseas, avoiding policy judgments about what the United States should do in response.
[…]
The Bush administration’s use of intelligence on Iraq did not just blur this distinction; it turned the entire model upside down. The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community’s assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.
Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, “the greatest,” but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.”
— Sydney J. Harris, syndicated columnist. Died 1986.
==========================================
What an indictment of the lame rightwing nationalists running this country and their supporters.
The professional diplomats like Joseph Wilson are the ones who created this mess. These arrogant academics and bureaucrats think the President and Congress have no business in foreign policy.
RTH – I would have more respect for Paul Pillar if he admitted that he concluded a long career as a National Stupidity Officer. So now he pontificates from the bastion of right-think, Georgetown University. Everyone knows he couldn’t have gotten on that faculty without providing a virtual Lewinsky to the left wing yoyo’s running that school. You can believe the CIA got a little bit smarter the day he left.
Wow, who knew that we had two national security geniuses posting here.
Either of you two care to support your posts? No?
Well, this little exchange has been fun but since your posts are only slightly above “MEGA DITTOS, RUSH” I’ll bow out.
RTH – You can’t read an article in the WA-POST, NY Times, NPR, or other anti-administration outlets without the preface before his name of “highly regarded CIA analyst” Paul Pillar. Come on, this is the classic case of a disgruntled employee who left his boss, George Tenet (a democrat by the way appointed by Clinton) and is now making his living selling I TOLD YOU SO stories to the news outlets that eat that stuff up. Yada, Yada, Yada, he says, if only everyone in the agency had listened to him the US wouldn’t have any problems. Everyone else who disagreed with him “politicized” their decisions, but he NEVER brought politics into his thinking. Hopefully Goss is clearing the rats like him out of the CIA and putting people who stick to facts into the decision-making positions.
First, let’s clear the air. As I have posted elsewhere on Brad’s blog, Bush did not use any Iraq / al Qaeda connection as the basis for invading Iraq. He used Dick Cheney’s aversion to Saddam. Ha! Only kidding.
Bringing democracy to Iraq was stated as one of the reasons for going to war in the congressional resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force against Iraq.
Bringing democracy to Iraq has been this nation’s policy since 1998, signed into law by Bill Clinton. And here’s what President Clinton said in a speech way back then:
Heck, Bush even asserted that a democratic Iraq could transform the entire region in a similar way on PBS! Before the war!
But go back to that original thread for the rest.
What’s amazing and irritating is that we now have the words of Paul Pillar heralded as though he were an innocent bystander at the time. In his position he could have jumped up and down and made a difference if he had doubts about intelligence itself, which he did not seem to have at the time. Instead, after the war began, and in the run-up to the 2004 election, he made clear his view that terrorism is a fever to be managed. That particular policy view was rejected by the Bush administration; other views were rejected too. What’s special about Pillar is that if he’d seen problems with the intelligence before the war, he could have flagged down the train. By all accounts, including his, he did not. Sour grapes.
Billlionaire George Soros, who spent $20,000,000 on Air America and other smear groups, runs his business through offshore banks in order to pay almost no income taxes.
Army Intelligence op ABLE DANGER linked highjackers to Saddam.
The Commission never took into account the following:
* Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and Binalshibh had given American intelligence disinformation; at the beginning of Chapter 7, the Commission dismisses KSM’s assertions about a lack of AQ contacts in Southern California. Why suddenly rely on them here?
* If Iraq had a hand in 9/11, the Iraqis would have required Atta to travel using special cover when they met. The Iraqis would not have wanted the Americans to link Atta with Saddam. They certainly would have provided him a special passport and false identity for such a meeting; they had done the same with Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 WTC bomber, using Kuwaiti paperwork stolen during their 1991 invasion. In fact, no one is sure that Ramzi Yousef is his actual name.
* The purpose of the trip may have been to ensure that the “muscle hijackers” did get into the US safely, and to arrange for logistical and financial support to make that happen. It would have also given Atta an opportunity to finalize all plans before proceeding with the final phases of his mission.
* The reason that “[t]he available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting” could be that they left out the Able Danger evidence that might support it.
The insistence that Atta could never have been in Prague on April 9, 2001 despite the insistence of Czech intelligence to the contrary never stood on firm ground. With this new revelation about Able Danger and the immediate invocation of the Commission-approved Atta timeline, it becomes even less sure and more suspicious than ever.
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