{"id":1459,"date":"2004-03-24T12:14:36","date_gmt":"2004-03-24T17:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1459.html"},"modified":"2004-03-24T12:14:36","modified_gmt":"2004-03-24T17:14:36","slug":"james-woolsey-cant-help-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/james-woolsey-cant-help-himself\/","title":{"rendered":"James Woolsey can&#8217;t help himself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.talkingpointsmemo.com\/archives\/week_2004_03_21.php#002753\">Josh Marshall noted<\/a> that James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA and an enthusiastic supporter of Bush&#8217;s alleged anti-terrorism efforts, was on CNN last night sharing some highly unusual (read: false) ideas. Marshall hadn&#8217;t seen <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/TRANSCRIPTS\/0403\/23\/ldt.00.html\">the transcript<\/a>, so I checked it out for myself. Not surprisingly, it&#8217;s just as bad as advertised.<\/p>\n<p>Keep in mind, Woolsey has been on a bizarre tear for a while now. As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/001194.html\">I noted<\/a> last month, Woolsey went <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wamu.org\/ram\/2004\/r1040203.ram\">on NPR<\/a> and repeated the obviously false claim that Saddam Hussein denied U.N. weapons inspectors entry into Iraq before our invasion began.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In fact, the [U.N.] inspectors were not there just as the war started; the inspectors got kicked out in &#8217;98 by Saddam,&#8221; Woolsey insisted. When a listener called in to insist he was completely wrong, Woolsey added, nonsensically, &#8220;What happened is they were <i>trying<\/i> to get back in. The real inspectors stopped in &#8217;98 and they were <i>trying<\/i> to arrange a restart and they were unsuccessful.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Someone who treats the truth with such casual disregard can&#8217;t be expected to be taken seriously. But there was Woosley on CNN yesterday, sharing all manner of foolishness. As Marshall accurately noted, it was definitely a &#8220;through-the-looking-glass performance.&#8221;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nFirst, Woolsey still wants us to believe that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al Queda.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I think that one very important issue here, Lou is whether there had been any ties between Iraq and al Qaeda back in the 90s&#8230;. So although there are a number of people, some of who served at senior levels in the Clinton administration, who don&#8217;t want there to have been any contacts of any kind and don&#8217;t want to admit it between al Qaeda and Iraq, I think including Dick Clarke, because then they would be charged with not having done enough to lean on Saddam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Next, Woolsey implies Saddam was involved with the attacks of 9\/11.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There may not have been Iraqi <i>ordering<\/i> of 9\/11. The contacts going back a long time are clear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The whole interview was bizarre. I can&#8217;t imagine how there&#8217;s anyone left who considers Woolsey a credible source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Josh Marshall noted that James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA and an enthusiastic supporter of Bush&#8217;s alleged anti-terrorism efforts, was on CNN last night sharing some highly unusual (read: false) ideas. Marshall hadn&#8217;t seen the transcript, so I checked it out for myself. Not surprisingly, it&#8217;s just as bad as advertised. Keep in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}