When Dick Cheney was on Meet the Press on Sunday suggesting that there may have been a connection between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the attacks of 9/11, I found it outrageous.
Of course, I find a lot of things outrageous. That’s never meant anyone would follow-up on Cheney’s duplicity. Turns out, however, that some others found Cheney’s remarks pretty interesting and it’s lead to a multi-day controversy. Who knew?
Yesterday, President Bush became the latest White House official to distance himself from Cheney’s assertions that there may have been a connection, telling reporters what is painfully obvious — that there is no proof tying Hussein to 9/11.
“We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th,” Bush said. “What the Vice President said was, is that [Hussein] has been involved with al Qaeda.”
OK, a couple of things here. First, that’s an odd use of passive voice. “We’ve had no evidence”?
Second, and far more importantly, Bush is just wrong about what Cheney said. While Cheney did point to (weak) connections between Iraq and al Queda, he also clearly suggested that Hussein may have been involved in 9/11, even alluding to the long-discredited Mohamed Atta meeting in Prague.
Regardless, I’m glad Bush was categorical about the conclusion. As far as I can recall, this is the first time Bush has personally said that there’s “no evidence” tying Hussein to 9/11. Naturally, Bush never offered an unqualified similar statement before our invasion of Iraq. I wonder why.
Unfortunately, Bush couldn’t leave well-enough alone. He was right about the lack of evidence, but he felt compelled to turn a truthful comment into a dubious one.
Almost immediately after noting that there’s nothing to tie Hussein to 9/11, Bush went on to say, “There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had al Queda ties.” This is a point Bush has been emphasizing for months. As the LA Times noted, Bush also said in his May 1 Mission Accomplished speech, “We’ve removed an ally of al Queda.”
Unfortunately, Bush isn’t telling the whole truth here, either. Most of the intelligence community has repeatedly said these alleged ties were questionable and unconvincing.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, responded to Bush’s comment by noting the ties “are tenuous at best and not compelling.”
Meanwhile, Cheney isn’t out of the woods yet. Not only have Bush and Rumsfeld hung him out to dry on Iraq and 9/11, but intelligence officials are coming forward to say Cheney wasn’t telling the truth about Iraq and al Queda ties, either.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism specialist, told the Boston Globe that Cheney’s “willingness to use speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations is appalling. It’s astounding.”
Best of all, more and more journalists are beginning to realize what administration critics have been saying all along — that instead of just isolated misstatements, the administration has developed a track record for misleading the public about foreign policy and national security.
Oddly enough, the strongest piece I’ve seen on this was an editorial published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune (via Kicking Ass), published yesterday.
“Dick Cheney is not a public relations man for the Bush administration, not a spinmeister nor a political operative,” the Star Tribune said. “He’s the vice president of the United States, and when he speaks in public, which he rarely does, he owes the American public the truth.” The paper then went point by point, highlighting some of Cheney’s most obvious falsehoods.
“Opponents of the war are fond of saying that ‘Bush lied and our soldiers died,'” the paper concluded. “In fact, they’d have reason to assert that ‘Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lied and our soldiers died.’ It’s past time the principals behind this mismanaged war were called to account for their deliberate misstatements.”