Majority Leader Boehner suggests Saddam was a 9/11 accomplice

September 28, 2006

Confusion among the electorate about Iraq’s non-existent role in 9/11, and Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, is disappointing, but we should be able to expect better from our House Majority Leader. We should, but we can’t.

On MSNBC’s Hardball yesterday, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), Tom DeLay’s replacement as the Republicans’ leader in the House, was in rare form. Consider this exchange on WMD:

BOEHNER: Chris, while we have not found weapons of mass destruction, the whole world believed that he had them. I believed that he had them. What he did with them, we don’t know.

MATTHEWS: Did he have them?

BOEHNER: I do believe that he had them.

Amazing. It’s been nearly three years since Charles Duelfer said Iraq did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, but there’s our House Majority Leader, on national television, with his own take on reality. Either Boehner is stunningly uninformed or he’s intentionally trying to confuse the nation. It’s as simple as that.

As if that weren’t enough, consider what Boehner had to say about Saddam’s connection to 9/11.

Again, from the transcript:

MATTHEWS: Do you believe [Saddam] had a role in 9/11?

BOEHNER: Not a direct role, a supportive role.

MATTHEWS: What was the support?

BOEHNER: Training terrorists, training camps in Iraq…

MATTHEWS: For 9/11?

BOEHNER: For terrorists. There is no question that he supported their activities. He supported the training camps up in northeastern Iraq. There is no question about it.

MATTHEWS: So Saddam Hussein was in league with the al Qaeda group?

BOEHNER: He was providing cover for them, yes.

MATTHEWS: I keep trying to find that evidence, Congressman, and I can’t find it. Nobody has come up with that. The vice president was asked about it, the president was about that, they both admitted recently that he had no role in 9/11.

BOEHNER: I didn’t say a direct role. In terms of training and allowing terrorists to be trained up in northeastern Iraq, his aiding…

MATTHEWS: Was he an accomplice for the 9/11 attack?

BOEHNER: Listen…

MATTHEWS: You say not direct, that means indirect. What was his indirect role? Did he help 9/11?

BOEHNER: Not directly.

C&L has a video of all of his and it just leaves me shaking my head. This isn’t just some guy off the street who’s confused about current events; this is the House Majority Leader, spouting pure nonsense for a national television audience.

Remind me again why the Republican Party has credibility on national security issues?

Yeah I saw that guy last night – towing the party line, trying to keep the public in the dark.

They’ll do anything to win……………..elections that is.

  • Brainwashed ….

    So by his reasoning …work with me here…..

    GWB supported Al Qaeda INDIRECTLY b/c there were sleeper cells in the US during the Bush Presidency in 2001 and Bush knew about these sleeper cells but didnt act upon them ..

    IS that the kind of logic he is trying to sell…..????

  • Look, These guys know that what they are saying is BS. We know what they are saying is BS.

    They also know that by continuing to say that Saddam was in league with Al Queda it stays in peoples minds. Irag = Terroism.

    It’s how you win elections.

    It has nothing to do with the truth. It has everything to do with winning elections.

  • It’s election time. What else can we expect of Republicans — nervous Republicans? Fool me once, fool me indefinitely.

  • “Remind me again why the Republican Party has credibility on national security issues?”

    Millions of both intentionally and unintentionally ignorant and lazy citizens in this country, perhaps? Millions of bedwetting cowards in this country, perchance? Fox News? Combination of the above?

  • He sounds like a conspiracy nut to me. Why would a Sunni dictator who oppresses his country’s Shi’ite majority ally with a Shi’ite terrorist? Maybe Boehner is right, but it doesn’t make sense.

  • “Remind me again why the Republican Party has credibility on national security issues?”

    They are willing to drop bombs indiscriminately.
    Big booms in a foreign land make people feel safe.

    I’ve come to regard the following analogy as apt:

    Fundamentally, psychologically…
    The republican party is like having a big bully on your side at middle school.

    The bully might beat the crap out of innocents… but… when you feel threatened… that can be tolerated with a shrug.

    So yes, it traces back to “we the sheeple.”

    And yes, it traces foward to Republicans who must work night and day to maintain the propinquity of 9/11 iconography.

    In fact:

    The American people and the Republican party are caught up in an incestuous eddy of fear and hate and irrationality.

    There is no easy escape from that vortex.

    I wrote in a Drum thread eons ago that Bush’s Iraq Mess would go to a trillion dollars. We are nearly halfway there with no end in sight…

  • Sorry, have to correct. Matthews, by recent standards, did remarkably well challenging Boehner’s confusion / lies / deception, take your pick. Past performance (lack thereof) conditioned me otherwise.

  • World-class asshattery! Here is a thought and I wonder if a DEM who is likely to lose shouldn’t try pressing these kind of buttons (Jack Carter -looking at you).

    US politicians who continute to confuse the issue of Iraq and 9/11 as well as defending the President’s positions on the Iraq war are aiding the terrorists by distracting us from the real problem! The longer we stay in Iraq, the longer we give in to Pakistan, the longer we spread our military and intelligence resources too thin, the stronger the terrorists get.

    If America were focused as one on terrorism and not split on Iraq and listening to this BS from Boehner we would catch Bin Laden! We would destroy training camps for terrorists. We would have resources at home to secure our ports. We would win the war on terror!

  • The operative phrase in Boner’s answers is “I believe.” Whattsamatta, don’t you believe in God?

  • The Boehner and Matthews dialogue was written by David Mamet — compare “not directly” to “not exactly” in Glengarry Glen Ross (the scene in the car between Ed Harris and Alan Arkin).

  • “[Saddam] supported the training camps up in northeastern Iraq. There is no question about it.” – Boehner

    That would be, Saddam didn’t invade Kurdistan because we would have bombed his troops. Thus he ‘supported’ the al Qaeda wanabees in northeastern Iraq by not destroying them when in fact he did not have the ability to anyway.

    And considering they were giving the Kurds grief, who after all were in rebellion against Saddam, why should he.

    This Boner, he is an idiot.

  • For Republicans concerning Iraq, lies are their only friends and their base are the people who believe those lies or desperately wish they were true.

    Jim Strain’s post hits on the Repubs key out — they are talking about what they believe and not having to rely on facts. This echoes with their supporters who also sport an odd set of beliefs. But a belief is not the same as the truth nor does believing in something make it right.

  • “Remind me again why the Republican Party has credibility on national security issues?”

    Because they say what many uninformed people want to hear.

  • Boehner is a lying bastard. Matthews is an enabling bastard and a TV-rating whore. Thank God for Stewart, Olbermann, and Colbert–and NBC’s David Gregory.

    Hey CB, did you hear that Tony Snowjob is going to go around the country and do fundraising for Republican candidates? I wonder where that fits on the job description for the White House Press Secretary?

  • Koreyel,

    The American people and the Republican party are caught up in an incestuous eddy of fear and hate and irrationality.

    To be fair, only part of the American people (regrettably an electoral majority) are caught in that downward spiral. With luck, this year we may see that part shrink enough.

  • If Herr Bush turned his back on all the pre-9/11 warnings, gutted the intelligence unit designed specifically to track down OBL, and then declared the leader of a group responsible for the mass murder of some 3,000 indivuals on US soil via an overt act of war against the United States—then why isn’t “Bones” ranting about Herr Bush’s complicity to 9/11.

    What would these intellectual munchkins be doing, if it were a Democrat in the White House at that moment in history?

    What would the national reaction have been 65 years ago, if FDR had declared Hirohito to be not significant, and had gutted all intelligence-gathering aimed at the Japanese Empire?

    Boehner is a tail-tucking dog of a cowardly cat—and Matthews is no better for calling him on it….

  • I think he actually believes it. Something I have come to realize about the Right Wing is that faith is more important than facts. No matter how much evidence they will be shown, they still believe that Saddam was involved in Sept. 11th and that he had WMD’s. It is just like their religion. The facts don’t matter as long as they have total belief. Those facts are a trick to make them doubt their faith, so therefore it cements them all the more into the belief that he had WMD’s.

    To them, what you believe and have faith in is more important than what the facts show. I don’t think he is lying. I think he believes what he is saying.

  • “For Republicans concerning Iraq, lies are their only friends and their base are the people who believe those lies or desperately wish they were true.” – petorado

    Actually, that would be: “The Base are the people who resolutely believe those lies.”

    That’s it. The Base is Resolute.

  • This is reminiscent of Dick Cheney, for whom a favoured tactic was an inscrutable smile and the implication that he somehow “knows things” that the public doesn’t. That’s pretty easy, when you make it up.

    Somewhere along the line, without a clear event of demarcation, it became more important to support the leader than to tell the truth. Oh, everybody lies a little, and it’s unrealistic to expect sainthood – but I’m talking about lies that were used to drag the country into war, and are now being used to shore up support for generation-long occupation.

    I wish I could be confident that a change of leadership would be enough to reverse this disastrous trend, but I’m afraid it’s going to be more complicated than that. I’m hoping for an acceleration of continental drift that will cause North America to split, so we might not share a common border.

    • Comments are closed.