U.S. Senate concludes Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th.

1. Waldo, I’m not sure anyone on the “Right” has ever made that argument. Nevertheless, those on the “Left” have repeatedly accused us of it. Perhaps your comment is more appropriately directed at your colleagues on the “Left.”

2. Waldo, I’m not sure anyone on the “Right” has ever made that argument.

   Who are you quoting when you place the word right in quotes? I didn’t use the word, or refer to partisanship at all.

   And, just to clarify, you’re asserting that nobody who is a political conservative has ever claimed that Iraq had something to do with September 11th?

3. I know you didn’t, Waldo. And I can’t speak for everyone on the “Right,” though I should. ;-) What I do know is that the notion that “Iraq had [some]thing to do with September 11th” is that it has been a phrase used by the Left in accusing the Bush Administration of lying about Iraq, when — as far as I know — NO one in the Administration ever made such a claim.

4. How about Dick Cheney in March of 2003, or George Bush numerous times?

   I know at least that Cheney said it, because I have seen the tape. Meet The Press.

   Please correct me if I am wrong, but you just about couldn’t turn around in the last three years without hearing someone in the conservative wing trying to connect the two.

5. James:

   Here’s something from the Christian Science Monitor:

   http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html

   Bush wanted that impression out there. There is no doubt about this. That’s why a good portion of our population still believes Iraq had a hand in 9/11.

6. What I do know is that the notion that “Iraq had [some]thing to do with September 11th” is that it has been a phrase used by the Left in accusing the Bush Administration of lying about Iraq, when — as far as I know — NO one in the Administration ever made such a claim.

   Well, here’s one example that comes to mind, from September of 2003:

   Cheney link of Iraq, 9/11 challenged

   By Anne E. Kornblut and Bryan Bender , Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, 9/16/2003

   WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

   Evidence of a connection, if any exists, has never been made public. Details that Cheney cited to make the case that the Iraqi dictator had ties to Al Qaeda have been dismissed by the CIA as having no basis, according to analysts and officials. Even before the war in Iraq, most Bush officials did not explicitly state that Iraq had a part in the attack on the United States two years ago.

   But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally televised interview two days ago, claiming that the administration is learning “more and more” about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks. The statement surprised some analysts and officials who have reviewed intelligence reports from Iraq.

   And then in June of 2004:

   The panel said it found “no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

   The Bush administration has said the terrorist network and Iraq were linked.

   In response, a senior administration official traveling with President Bush in Tampa, Florida, said, “We stand by what Powell and Tenet have said,” referring to previous statements by Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet that described such links.

   In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that Iraq was harboring Abu Musab Zarqawi, a “collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants,” and he said Iraq’s denials of ties to al Qaeda “are simply not credible.”

   In September, Cheney said Iraq had been “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”

   There are certainly some strong examples of the White House working to connect Al Qaeda and Iraq, and those are probably the two chief examples.

7. Interesting timing on this, James. Just today Condoleezza Rice went on Fox News and claimed that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had a relationship for a decade. Within that interview, a video clip was played in which President Bush, in October 2002, claimed that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda members “in bomb-making, in poisons, and deadly gases” as justification for invading. Of course, the discussion was not explicitly about September 11, but it would hard to imagine what else the point of it would be, given that Al Qaeda’s primary offense against the U.S. was brought about on that date.

8. “Iraq and Al Qaeda’s goals have long been in complete conflict — they were enemies.”

   That’s a little extreme. “Rivals” might be a more appropriate term, and Saddam repeatedly expressed admiration for al Qaeda’s ability to effectively strike against US interests.

9. “US Vice-President Dick Cheney repeated assertions on Sunday on links between the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda despite a recent Senate intelligence committee report that concluded otherwise.”

   [From the September 10 2006 Financial Times.]

   “In defending the decision to invade Iraq despite its lack of weapons of mass destruction, Mr Cheney said the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former head of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed in a US air strike this year, was in Baghdad before the war was evidence that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda. But a Senate intelligence committee report on prewar Iraq intelligence released on Friday concluded that there was no evidence that Mr Hussein’s Ba’athist regime had either harboured or turned a blind eye to Mr Zarqawi. “

10. This annoys me to no end. There are plenty of reasons to invade Iraq, most of all that Saddam was willfully violating the ceasefire agreement that stopped hostilities in a UN-approved war. If you violate a ceasefire, hostilities resume. Add on the facts that Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction before and that he’s a brutal dictator who murders his own people, and you have both moral and legal arguments for going in.

    Of course, neither of these arguments is as sexy as “he’s supporting al-Qaeda.” Nothing gets the public on board like opening a fresh wound and instilling some fear.

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