If you ever wondered why credibility is in short supply in Washington, read this:
Republican congressman from North Carolina told CNN on Wednesday that the “evidence is clear” that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.
“Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11,” Rep. Robin Hayes said.
Told no investigation had ever found evidence to link Saddam and 9/11, Hayes responded, “I’m sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places.”
Hayes, the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on terrorism, said legislators have access to evidence others do not.
President Bush said in September 2003 that “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 [attacks].”
Nevertheless, Hayes insisted that the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam and “folks who work for him” has been seen “time and time again.”
“Nobody disputes 9/11,” Hayes said. “They would do it again if not prevented.”
Everyone repeat after me:
‘There is no link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.’
Saddam did a lot of really awful things, and the world is better off without him. He may very well have been thrilled that 9/11 happened. But there is no connection.
Stop it, Rep. Hayes. Just stop the insanity. Why is it always someone from North Carolina or the south?
*** Update ***
I really don’t know what is more maddening- the attempts to claim Saddam had something to do with 9/11, or the attempts to claim Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism in general. Tom Maguire addresses the latter.
SomeCallMeTim
Why is it always someone from North Carolina or the south? Umm, asked and answered?
Richard Bottoms
You may recall the wonderfuly descriptive F**k the South site. It answers your question completely.
carpeicthus
Fantasists. Amazing. Shouldn’t someone worry when their elected official isn’t just different from them politically, but demonstraby deranged?
norbizness
Was there at least banjo music playing in the background as he was making his pronouncements?
Kimmitt
I, um, don’t think he’s trying to deceive. I think he’s telling the truth as he sees it. I think he’s that incompetent. My 2c.
Jeff
Yeah, why are you so surprised about this? There are a few exceptions, but besides some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, southern Republicans are the dumbest people on Capitol Hill.
ppgaz
Why always somebody from the South?
I think it’s the Moon Pies.
Jimmy Jazz
Saddam was stealing my cable and overturning my garbage cans as I slept.
Jeremy
Hey now…don’t call “North” Carolina “the South”. Anything above Pickens County, South Carolina is a Yankee state. :-)
Mike S
Laurie Maurie(sp?) and Steven Hayes have done a fine job of pushing this bullshit. Then you have the Talk Radio wing of the GOP helping it along.
Russ
One thing I learned while in Military Intelligence was that there’s always something you don’t know.
So, John, I’d agree with you based on the facts we have available.
But I’ll bet there is intel that will never see the light of day that might support Hayes’ assertion… in which case Hayes needs to be slapped down for referring to it in public.
hadenoughofthisyet
Well, it seems as though Congressman Robin Hayes is not the only one who still believes this. All you have to do is check out the freerepublic comments today.
Mass, unresolved cognitive dissonance perhaps?
SomeCallMeTim
Russ:
One of the primary points of punishment (I’d say the primary point) is to deter others. This requires public punishment. If we know that Hussein was involved in 9/11 and we’re trying to punish him for it, not publicizing the connection (and, in ways possible, the evidence that supports it) makes much of the Iraq war pointless for that purpose.
hadenoughofthisyet
But I’ll bet there is intel that will never see the light of day that might support Hayes’ assertion… in which case Hayes needs to be slapped down for referring to it in public.
If I had to name one piece of information that would turn the tide of support for the war in Iraq — this would be it. I know this, you know this, everyone knows this. Even Steven Hayes of the Weekly Standard knows this. I remember reading one of his columns a while back where he wrote (paraphrasing) he could not understand why the Bush administration wasn’t shouting from the roof tops about the collaberation that he had written about between Osama and Saddam.
Perhaps because there wasn’t anyway?
JG
Whenever I say Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism I’m saying he’s not like Iran or Libya in that he actively runs camps. He will of course give aid to anyone who’s a pain in our ass or Israels ass. Never a doubt about that.
If there is evidence that Saddam was linked to 9/11, show it. I’ll still be mighty pissed at our level of pre and post0war planning but I’ll have a whole olt more support for this war. I certainly won’t be calling it a war of choice anymore.
Jimmy Jazz
John, Re: your puzzlement as to why Dems say those mean, mean things everytime Bush gives a speech? This is why. While Cheney has made some demonstrably unprovable and flat out wrong statements on linkages between Iraq/Al Queda/ 9/11, Bush is satisfied with his terraterraterraOsamaSaddamevilaxis9/11neveragain hypnobabble.
Then third string doofuses like Hayes and the AM Radio spinmeisters confuse the issue further.
Opinion polls demonstrate again and again that there are a ton of confused folks out there, and this adminstration has done everything in their power to keep them that way.
ppgaz
Yes, Jimmy.
When you have the bamboozle mojo working, you can say just about anything and the crowd will roar.
We’re reminded of Woody Allen’s version of the Russian resistance to French invasion:
“Do you want them coming here with their heavy sauces?”
“Noooo!!”
Marcus Wellby
But I’ll bet there is intel that will never see the light of day that might support Hayes’ assertion… in which case Hayes needs to be slapped down for referring to it in public.
Oh please! Like this wouldn’t have been leaked ages ago if it were true?? The only secrets this admin keep are the ones that embarass them.
Although I could be wrong — maybe they keep all the Saddam/911 evidence locked in the trunk of a flying saucer at area 51? Or perhaps on the set where they filmed the “fake” moon landing?
Hokie
Pfft, Vermont is the only Yankee state.
In any case, I think it’s time for Robin Hayes to fess up. Clearly he’s holding out on us. Why does he love Saddam and hate America?
Jimmy Jazz
Maybe he’s one of those “non terrorist insurgents” we’re negotiating with “all the time”.
hadenoughofthisyet
And, it’s nice to see Andrew McCarthy of NRO weighing in on this subject today.
If the president is guilty of anything, it’s not that he’s dwelling on 9/11 enough. It’s that the administration has not done a good enough job of probing and underscoring the nexus between the Saddam regime and al Qaeda. It is absolutely appropriate, it is vital, for him to stress that connection. This is still the war on terror, and Iraq, where the terrorists are still arrayed against us, remains a big part of that equation.
AWJ
I’ve been exposed to this stunningly illogical line of wingnuttery more than once myself.
You’re discussing the Iraq war with a righty acquaintance whom you’ve heretofore assumed to be one of the sensible conservatives. The conversation turns to the connection between the war and the 9-11 attacks (or lack thereof), and your acquaintance suddenly looks at you as if you’re from Mars. “But of course Saddam did 9-11! Don’t you liberals know anything?” (generally followed by a typical attack on the “liberal mainstream media” which is, presumably, at fault for your being so woefully uninformed)
You mention the fact that the 9-11 Commission found only weak evidence of any ties whatsoever between Saddam and al-Qaeda, and no evidence of collaboration in the 9-11 attacks. And the fact that not only has the President never asserted a Saddam/9-11 link, he has actively denied such a direct link on more than one occasion.
“Well, the government can’t share the REAL evidence they have because of, you know, national security! And even if they did release the proof, the MSM would just cover it up or spin it because they’re all liberals who hate Bush.”
But it’s one thing to hear this from some random wingnut in a blog comment thread, and another thing to hear it from a Congressman.
Jimmy Jazz
As per the box at one of Maguire’s linked sites
Link,
Saddam apparently financed terror groups that killed a total of 36 Americans. Most of these groups seem focused on Israel.
Accepting all of this at face value, I still have a strong suspicion that terrorist groups targeting America pick up more money in a good weekend in Riyahd (or from radical clerics in Europe) than they did in a decade from Saddam.
Sorry, try again. Putting pictures of the Twin Towers blowing up next to Saddam’s mug isn’t the sort of thing I’m looking for.
Simon
Mike S, just fyi, it’s Laurie Mylroie who you’re thinking of. She’s the grandmaster of Iraq/al Qaeda/911 spin mojo.
SLE
The president and the other 9/11-is-Iraq fantasists are not members in good standing of the reality based community.
UBL was resident in Afghanistan, as were his camps and his advisors. The islamo-terrorists that we have caught are: Moroccan, Saudi, Algerian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian, in addition to whatever Iraqis we have caught.
It ought to be telling that not one of the evil bearded people we see in the press is Iraqi, except for Muqtada, who clearly had absolutely no feeling about the US other than general disdain for kaffirs until we came to his country and gave him a political opening.
Re-asserting something that the public views as untrue isn’t going to create support for this war.
akaoni
John,
Anyone who flat out states that Saddam had no ties to terrorism is indeed incorrect, but the question to ask is were the ties he had, and the actions he took enough to justify an invasion, costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives (both US and Iraqi). If you read the State Department info that Maguire provides, the answer is clearly: no.
Yes he was a brutal dictator, but according to the State Department document that Maguire sites, Iraqs main actions focused on “antidissident activities,” aiding organizations associated with pro-palestinian terrorism, anti-Iraninan covert operations, and “denouncing and delegitimiz[ing] UN personel.” Certianly these activities are harmful and should be denounced, but do they reach the level of meriting the invasion and overthow of a country. I think not.
The real argument against the war is not that Saddam wasn’t a bad guy and it wasn’t that he wasn’t associated to some degree with terrorism. The argument is that his involvement in terrorism, and general threat to the United States (and to a lesser degree his neighbors in the Middle East) was not great enough to warrant invasion. This holds true for standards of international law as well as from as standard of post 9/11 self defense. In fact the whole terrorism debate obscures what I think are the real motivations behind the invasion. Withiout a discussion of these motivations, we cannot have an honest discussion of current policy regarding the waging of the war in Iraq, and the future of US military involvement in the region.
Mike S
Thans Simon. I’m especially bad with names.
Nikki
John,
If you can’t get Republicans to admit there was no link between Saddam and 9/11, how could you possibly think they would be receptive to any ideas Democrats propose to help get us out of this mess?
James Emerson
Mr. Reprehensive
Talk is cheap…You got evidence…then it’s two years past time to introduce it to the American public. Otherwise STFU.
Since you haven’t bothered yourself to produce proof, then I have to figure that your evidence…if it exists…contains a picture of Rumsfeld and Hussein doing the karaoke version of “Stand By Your Man.”
John, you really have a knack for picking topics that have explosion potential. Trackback not included.
Jon H
There’s probably a videotape going around, showing Saddam watching a floating Osama Bin Laden balloon.
Jon H
So, three years and change into the war, has anything interesting been discovered at the infamous Salam Pak “terrorist training center”?
Haven’t heard much about that since March of 2003.
Tim F
Jesus Harold Christ, every leader in the arab world shells out for the Palestinians. Think of it as protection money to mollify the radical islamists. In terms of consribution, if you compare Saddam’s payout to any other major Arab state you have to think that Hussein’s support was token at best. If that’s it then we’re obligated to invade every country between Turkey and the Sahara desert.
In fact precisely the reverse of what John claims is true. The terrorists with whome America is actually at war, al Qaeda and sympathetic groups, despise Saddam and he despised them. Al Qaeda wants to unify the the arab world under a fundamentalist Islamic banner. Secular arab states and their American support stand in the way. So, the Baathists and Nasserites and their western patron have to go.. Not only did Saddam have negligible, token ties to any real terrorist outfit, unseating Saddam and replacing him with an unpopular American occupation that can be tarred as anti-Islam could easily be described as the #1 item on the al Qaeda wish-list.
Tim F
…and for those who think that Zarqawi was anything other than a cynical prop this might help.
Darrell
Can you imagine if, back in 2002 when we were trying to get a UN backed international coalition together as all you leftists wanted.. can you imagine the screams from the left if Bush had launched an attack into Iraq at that time without first attempting to build an international consensus to invade Iraq? Can there be any honest doubt that TimF and his fellow Dem whiners would be screaming had we sent troops or bombed Iraq while trying to get international consensus on whether or not invade Iraq back in 2002?
What’s more, you lying hypocrites talk about how awful it is that we missed an opportunity to take out Zarqawi, yet you whine like bitches that we took out someone even more dangerous, Saddam.
Oh, and because Clinton was more legalistic and ‘reality based’, he gets a pass for not taking out Osama with a cruise missile when he had the chance, right?.. or for not extraditing OBL from Sudan when give the chance on a silver platter.
Nah, none of that matters to the ‘reality based’ group of here who tells us that Zarqawi was nothing but a “prop” for the evil Bush administration.
ppgaz
You’re right, Darrell. The job of every citizen is to obey the dictates of the president, without question and without hesitation.
It’s right there, in the Constitution. We have no right to criticize our leaders. You are right to always defend them and shout down any opposition. You are a true patriot.
Tim F
Zarqawi was based in the independent Kurdish north, where the American military had free reign. In case you’re wondering, that means that we’d be mounting an operation in land that was already occupied by us. Now make sure to get that spleen off of your monitor before it dries.
Darrell
Uh no, other than the fact that they found a terrorist training camp there complete with hollowed out airplane fusealage. Are your ‘reality based’ sources on the left suggesting that Salman Pak was anything different than a terrorist training camp? Perhaps the hollowed out fusealage was part of a children’s amusement park instead?
Jimmy Jazz
Not to mention the months-long “secret” bombing campaign before the war.
Tim F
It’s hard to take seriously somebody who still thinks that Sudan offered bin Laden to Clinton. And, uh, “liberals” weren’t the ones crying holy hell when Clinton did send cruise missiles to take out bin Laden. That would be Republicans.
To those imaginary Democrats who would have cried holy hell if Bush had lifted the left pinkie it would have taken to ‘delete’ Zarqawi, I say for shame! An imaginary wedgie to every perfidious one of them.
Darrell
J Jizz, if the Bush admin had launched a strike on Zarqawi, we can rest assured leftists would be blasting and accusing Bush, lamenting that it was unnecessary, unjustified and criminal..and *horrors* done without UN approval. Oh, and of course done to help Bush’s re-election bid. With no strike on Zarqawi, the left is blasting Bush for protecting a terrorist, using him as a “prop” , blah, blah
See? There is no basis for logical discussion here with the left. It’s all about conjuring up accusatory, gossip mongering stories, mixing some conspiracy theory filling in there, shake well, bake and serve. The left lives on a steady diet of that
Darrell
From the Washington Post:
The government of Sudan, employing a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.
The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at a Rosslyn hotel on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later. Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts at the time, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture.
Here is Clinton saying so himself in an interview. Clinton worried about legalese, refused to take custody of OBL when offered by the Sudanese govt. on a silver platter. Them’s the facts, sorry if they don’t fit with your whacked worldview
Sojourner
Hmmm. Sounds like a Bush Administration press release.
Barry
Just getting in a bit of S. Carolina bashing – supposedly there was a saying, back before the Civil War: “South Carolina: too small to be a country, too big to be an insane asylum”.
Jon H
Darrell writes: “Uh no, other than the fact that they found a terrorist training camp there complete with hollowed out airplane fusealage. Are your ‘reality based’ sources on the left suggesting that Salman Pak was anything different than a terrorist training camp? Perhaps the hollowed out fusealage was part of a children’s amusement park instead?”
That was discussed before the invasion even happened.
Nothing has been said since the invasion.
p.lukasiak
or the attempts to claim Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism in general.
who, exactly, has claimed that “Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism in general.”
You have this rather nasty habit of criticizing real nonsense by Conservatives, then setting up straw men to criticize liberals.
Rummy, Cheney, and Negroponte all have a hell of a lot more to do with supporting “terrorism in general” than Iraq ever did, and in the time that Saddam Hussein has been in power, the US has consistently supported terrorists when those terrorists were acting consistent with US policy goals.
(Hell, would it really surprise anyone to find out that the US was actually funding a terrorist like Zarqawi when his terrorism was aimed at Saddam Hussein?)
Please stop this kind of bullshit — there was no relevant connection between the terrorist threat to the USA and Iraq. Indeed, Saddam was far less interested in “supporting terrorism” in his payments to the survivors of suicide bombers who attacked Israel than he was in getting good PR in the rest of the Arab world.
Darrell
Behold the deluded ramblings, droppings from the left. It’s ugly, but you have to make yourself look anyway to understand that the left really is that whacked
Tim F
If those imaginary leftists ever make it out of Darrell’s head I promise that I’ll do my patriotic duty and beat them up.
Tim F
Yes, everybody believed that the story was true. Everybody except the Republican-led 9/11 commission, who strangely found, “no credible evidence” to back up the story. Apparently the Washington Post was about as well-informed as Judith Miller and her famous rock-solid reportage on Iraqi WMDs.
The only remaining holdouts in the media are apparently the fair-and-balanced folks at Newsmax who claim to have the sole extant tape of Clinton admitting to the truth of the story. God forbid the rightwingers ever edit a Clinton tape to twist its meaning.
Darrell
You know TimF, in your posts you repeatedly bring up those who you say ‘can’t be reached’, won’t accept the truth, etc. Yet you are one of those very people.
I provided a Washington Post article and a tape with Clinton’s own words admitting that he could have gotten OBL from Sudan. So in addition to the sources I have already cited, which you have dismissed, here it is again from the leftist media matters site:
CLINTON: So we tried to be quite aggressive with them [Al Qaeda]. We got — well, Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we’d been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, ’cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn’t and that’s how he wound up in Afghanistan.
Clinton did not want to take OBL because (legalese talk following) according to Clinton, OBL “had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him”. You’ve got Bill Clinton in his own words saying he was offered up OBL. Apparently the left leaning Media Matters says the newsmax tape is authentic, despite your partisan hack spin to the contrary. So there you have it. You can choose to live in a ‘reality based’ world, or the one you’ve been living in. But since you’ve criticized Bush taking a pass on attacking Zarqawi within Iraq in 2002, it’s important to note that Clinton took a pass on a much easier route to getting his hands on OBL. Them’s the facts without a doubt
p.lukasiak
Clinton did not want to take OBL because (legalese talk following) according to Clinton, OBL “had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him”.
Damn that Bill Clinton! Actually obeying the law! What was he thinking!
(meanwhile, the identities of at least 13 covert CIA agents are about to be blown because Bushco decided to take the law into its own hands and interfere in a anti-terrorist investigation being undertaken by Italy…)
p.lukasiak
But since you’ve criticized Bush taking a pass on attacking Zarqawi within Iraq in 2002, it’s important to note that Clinton took a pass on a much easier route to getting his hands on OBL. Them’s the facts without a doubt
but, but, but…. didn’t 9-11 change everything? Shouldn’t that at least include taking out known terrorists in areas where we are providing them safe-haven from Saddam Hussein?
For Christ’s sake, Bushco never respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq. His failure to take out Zarqawi was a deliberate and calculated political move — Zarqawi was, in fact, an “anti-Saddam” terrorist, but since he was also associated with al Qaeda and within the technical borders of Iraq, he could be used for propaganda purposes by claiming that Saddam was harboring terrorists.
In fact, Bushco was harboring Zarqawi….but don’t let these facts get in the way of your Clinton-bashing…
Sojourner
Come on folks. Be nice to Darrell. He’s one of a rapidly declining group of people who still believe what this administration says. It won’t be long before his picture is right up there with the spotted owl, although I suspect the owl species will recover more quickly than the Bush believers.
Jimmy Jazz
Just a few dead enders and former regime elements.
HH
“The Republican-led 9/11 commission”…
Including Jamie Gorelick and Richard Ben-Veniste… bye-bye credibility…
HH
FYI the Commission’s assertions were based on the contradictory word of Clinton himself and of course the wholly discredited Sandy Berger. I’m sure you’ll cop to the Commission’s more thorough debunking of assertions in Fahrenheit 9/11 too, right?
Mike S
Including Jamie Gorelick and Richard Ben-Veniste… bye-bye credibility…
Posted by HH at June 29, 2005 10:10 PM
Did he say wholy Republican committee? Bye Bye intelligence.
DecidedFenceSitter
Hopefully, the spammer gets blocked. But anyways, you know Darrell the fact that Clinton didn’t take the easy, illegal road heartens me.
I believe that this country was founded on the principle of Law above all else, and in principle, no man is above the law, not the president, not the richest man in America. Whether this is actually true is a matter up for debate.
But if we arrested everyone who was a bad person, who’d like to do bad things to us, ignoring sovereignty and international treaties, that means we’re above the law. And I don’t like that.
Now note the part of that that you didn’t mention –
“So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, ’cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn’t and that’s how he wound up in Afghanistan.”
The Saudi’s, our allies, didn’t pursue him because it’s too difficult. This only reinforces my view that they aren’t our allies, and puts them in the same boat as the Palestine Authority of being unwilling to enforce law wherever it may take them because of the social fall-out.
Darrell
MikeS wrote:
No sh*t for brains, he did not say that. What he said was “wholly discredited Sandy Berger”. Can you read? You might want to take a good look at the drooling nimrod facing you in the mirror before questioning the intelligence of your betters next time
Sojourner
Darrell’s comments are always such a pleasure to read. The breadth of insight is truly mind boggled.
Mike S
Darrell is a child. I only wish the whole GOP had the brains that moron does.