Bush Joins the Chorus
So, the circle is complete. George Bush now echoes the statements made by Rumsfeld and Rice in the last few days, that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the events of 9/11.
(But see, it’s all still part of the war on terror. Iraq is the geographic center of the region from which these threats came. By which I guess they mean that it’s located approximately midway between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two countries that, despite being ruled by antidemocratic regimes friendly to the Bush administration, have far more substantial involvement with al Qaeda than Saddam’s Iraq ever did.)
Anyway. From the Toronto Star: No proof Iraq tied to 9/11: Bush. And from the Chicago Tribune: Bush: No Iraqi link to Sept. 11.
Look at them blinking innocently into the TV lights. “Us? Try to mislead people into thinking that Saddam was involved with 9/11? Never! Why, the 70% of the country that currently believes in that just got the idea on their own. We certainly had nothing to do with it!”
It’s fascinating to see the degree of coordination on the spin coming out of the White House. Say what you will about their near-total lack of honesty, morality, and patriotism, the members of the Bush administration do know how to read from the same script. It’s almost like ballet, the deft way they all pivot and leap into the air together. When the lie has served its purpose, they do away with it, like a retreating army blowing up bridges behind it. Jerome Doolittle comments on this in his Badattitudes Journal: Why keep old lies around?
September 18th, 2003 at 2:01 pm
Well, even the NYT admitted today that the Bush administration has never since 9/11 made the claim that Saddam et. al. was connected with the 9/11 attacks.
So why is it news, somehow, that they still say that, and whay does it lead you to criticize them for continuing to say so?
September 18th, 2003 at 2:47 pm
Well, because they’ve been very careful to not precisely say it while saying a lot of things that would lead anybody to think that was their meaning. They’ve been careful about it because I’m sure they knew they would, at some point, face this particular criticism since it was the main reason Americans could swallow the war, but is also a clear lie.
But there’s no way you can think that all this time the Bush administration has been shaking their heads saying “boy where _are_ people getting this idea that Saddam attacked us?” They’ve learned that’s the key… when you lie, don’t lie in a soundbyte. Do it with a many implications from many people over time. That way nobody can run aa damning quote and it can all be blown off as media spin and conjecture.
September 18th, 2003 at 2:49 pm
Hm, there’s no such word as “soundbyte” is there.
September 18th, 2003 at 2:54 pm
It’s news because for the last year or so the Bush administration has been engaged in a coordinated effort — and a successful effort, at that — to foster the false impression that Saddam actually _was_ linked to 9/11, when they knew perfectly well that he wasn’t. So when they now make a point of coming out and saying, oh, there’s no connection, and we never said there was, it’s transparently dishonest.
It’s not the individual statement itself that’s dishonest. It’s their failure to acknowledge the context in which they’re making it, a context that they intentionally created.
But it’s not like this is any big secret, and I hope you’ll forgive me if I think your question is a little disingenuous. If one reads the NYT article in question, the lead makes all this fairly obvious:
[begin quote]
President Bush said today that he had seen no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as the White House tried to correct an assertion that Vice President Dick Cheney left extremely murky on Sunday.
Mr. Cheney, on “Meet the Press” on NBC-TV, was asked about polls that showed that a majority of Americans believed that Mr. Hussein had been involved in the attacks.
“I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection,” said Mr. Cheney, who leads the hawkish wing of the Bush administration. Asked whether the connection existed, Mr. Cheney said, “We don’t know.”
[end quote]
Or from the Chicago Tribune:
[begin quote]
President Bush declared Wednesday that he has no evidence linking Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, contradicting comments made by Vice President Dick Cheney last weekend and an impression held by a solid majority of Americans.
[end quote]
Or from the Toronto Star:
[begin quote]
U.S. President George W. Bush conceded for the first time yesterday that the United States had no evidence indicating Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Bush made the comment in a brief encounter with reporters at the White House, an apparent bid to answer critics who have accused him of linking the Iraq war and the terrorist attacks to justify an ongoing occupation, which is responsible for mounting American deaths and draining an economy already mired in deficit.
[end quote]
September 30th, 2003 at 10:53 am
When interviewed (last week) by Tim Russert (Meet the Press), Vice President Cheney said that…
“If we’re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it’s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”
I saw that interview and I can usually understand people and I said “what a confusing statement”! He didn’t say that we attacked Iraq for 9/11 or did he?? Luckily Tim Russert , the interviewer, was also so confused that he said “So the resistance in Iraq is coming from those who were responsible for 9/11?” and that forced Cheney to clear up his confusing statement. In other interviews, those kind of confusing statements were left unchallenged.