Nobody to match Bush

Bush Has Problems

It’s time he concerned himself with the care and feeding of American conservatives.

They wrestle over a prescription-drug bill but not, really, over whether the entire approach is defective. We hear the grand figure that under the Senate bill, we would undertake a trillion-dollar entitlement over ten years. That translates to: taking a trillion dollars from some people and giving it — not exactly to a different set of people, but to people identified by different means.

The emphasis is of course on help to older people, the principal beneficiaries of whatever the reduced cost would be in buying drugs. Older people have more to worry about in looking after their health, but less in looking after school bills and mortgage payments. It would be very difficult to prove, over the long run, that older people will, as a class, benefit from the pending bills. There is no tax bill on the table that exempts older people from taxation, and it is probable that they will devote the same percentage of their income as before to medical expenses.

The House bill being manifestly superior to the Senate bill, one wonders: What happened to President Bush? He is, incidentally, everywhere criticized abroad, and, now, by Democratic presidential candidates, as autocratic, domineering. How to account for his passivity in most matters of legislative, to say nothing of judicial, consequence? He fought hard for his tax bill and, of course, for his nominees to the courts of appeal. But on most other matters, it is as if he did not exist. The Supreme Court has pronounced itself arbiter of all serious questions having to do with states' rights. The president was manifestly pleased that the Court took over the whole affirmative-action problem, and he confessed himself "pleased" that the Court acknowledged the utility and the pleasures of diversity.

Diversity will, one supposes, be interpreted by some as license to incestuous love, and Judge Kennedy can be counted on to look into "spatial" and "more transcendent" dimensions of the question. We know only this, that laws seeking to regulate moral questions will govern only if the Supreme Court okays them.

Mr. Bush has to concern himself with the care and feeding of American conservatives, here defined as men and women who believe that there are institutional matters which governments rightly concern themselves with. Most such have for generations been taken for granted. It was simply inconceivable, up until a few years ago, that a judge could not display the Ten Commandments in his courtroom, unthinkable that marriage could take place except between a man and a woman.

The latter distortion creeps its way into law, and the Bush administration hasn't evolved a strategy for coping with it. Senate majority leader Bill Frist has said that he would approve a constitutional amendment to define marriage in the traditional way, but Mr. Bush has not endorsed such an amendment. In the best of worlds he would not need to, confident that the states would continue to reflect public sentiment on the matter. But of course state legislatures are only in session as long as state courts permit. And the Supreme Court is hovering behind its high altar, waiting to pronounce the word of five justices. It would require argumentation no more devious than the ruling in the Lawrence case to declare that legal sanctions on marriage, narrowly specified as between man and woman, are a denial of equal protection under the law.

The attitude of Mr. Bush on the matter of the other two branches of government is remarkably compliant. He has not exercised the veto power once, matching the record of John Quincy Adams. The judiciary is apparently secure from his criticism. Supporters can say that he has worked hard for his judicial nominees, which is true. But what you must not bet the farm on is that nominees of Republican presidents are going to remain originalists on reaching the Court. The constitutional massacre of Lawrence and the University of Michigan rulings would not have prevailed save for the affirmative votes of justices appointed by Reagan and Bush Sr.

All presidents, nearing voting time, tend to be dominated by the animal need for reelection. Mr. Bush has something to worry about here. His popularity rating in the polls seems to be going down about one half point per U.S. soldier killed. Eighteen soldiers, nine points down, from 61 percent approval to 52 on his handling of the Iraq question. He will very much need the enthusiastic endorsement of conservatives who believe that a chief executive should be more assertive against lobbyist-dominated congressmen, and more alert to the co-optation of moral authority by the courts. There are plenty of reasons for conservatives to vote hopefully for Bush, but he has to remind them what those reasons are.

William F. Buckley Jr.

 

WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? Matthews went on the air and played dumb. HOWLER readers? They were mightily satisfied:

WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2003

THERE YOU WENT AGAIN: Amazing! HOWLER readers staged a Tuesday tantrum, forced to read offensive material that could be interpreted as vaguely semi-supportive of Bush! Indeed, yesterday’s e-mails showed how hard our readers are willing to work if they have a worthwhile project. Yesterday’s project? Readers set out to prove that conduct which was repulsive when done to Clinton and Gore is highly correct when done to Bush. HOWLER readers worked extra-hard, trying to defend the indefensible.

Our entire staff is on the road today, so we can only provide a truncated HOWLER. But what follows is a general reply to your letters of outrage and complaint.

What was wrong with the articles we criticized yesterday? Let’s make this as simple as possible. If you’re going to accuse public officials of conducting a “hoax” (Nicholas Kristof), you can’t refuse to publish their explanation (Kristof) and you can’t bury their explanation at the end of a long, front-page article (the Post). You can’t pretend you don’t know what they’ve said. And no, you can’t make the kind of factual presentation made on Monday night’s Hardball:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, the big thing about this issue, I think, has been overlooked. It’s not a question of whether the president was given wrong material to use in his speech. The question is, Who is calling the shots? Who in this government is deciding what is being said to the American people and to the world about what the United States believes was the threat from Saddam Hussein? Do we have a Ted Baxter in the White House?
That’s what the conservatives are saying, that the president was merely given the wrong script. But, the bigger question is, Who talked to the president? Who told the president—the National Security staff, the vice president’s office, wherever in the government—that we faced a nuclear threat from Saddam Hussein?…You have to ask yourself the question, how does the president get information? Who gives it to him?

Does somebody simply say, “Put this in the president’s speech and he will read it like he is a newsreader,” or do you have to make the case to the president? Here is the question I want answered. When President Bush saw on his script—in his speech for the State of the Union—that Iraq had attempted or had, in fact, bought nuclear materials from the governor of Niger in Africa, did he ask anybody how do we know this, why do we know this, and I would like to get to the bottom of it?

Matthews’ questions would have made sense, but it seemed that he had been off the planet during the previous week. According to the Bush Admin’s repeated explanations, if Bush did ask about that speech—if he did ask, “How do we know this?”—he would not have been told “that Iraq had attempted or had, in fact, bought nuclear materials from the governor of Niger.” According to repeated Admin explanations, Bush would have been told that British intelligence says that Saddam sought uranium from several countries in Africa. But, like many pundits and reporters this week, Matthews has simply disappeared the Bush Admin’s explanation. Maybe he doesn’t know what the Admin has said. Maybe he’s creating a simpler, pleasing story. (He did just that, again and again, in his endless attacks against Clinton and Gore.) But let’s say it again: As a matter of fairness and intellectual integrity, you can’t accuse public officials of conducting a hoax—you can’t accuse them of being Ted Baxter—unless you’re willing to report their explanation for the conduct you criticize. If something is wrong with their explanation, then by all means, feel free to say that. But Matthews either didn’t know what the Admin has said, or he chose to pretend that he didn’t. This was endlessly done to Clinton and Gore. You loved it when we complained about that. Yesterday, you found yourselves deeply outraged.
Once again, here’s what the Admin has said about Bush’s “16 word” statement:

They have noted that the statement cited British intelligence.

They have noted that the Brits still assert that Saddam did seek uranium from several African nations.
On its face, that’s a fairly sensible explanation of Bush’s remark. But that’s why propagandists will omit it. If you want to build a feel-good case against Bush, you will simply omit these ameliorating facts. As noted, Matthews has done this many times in the past. He seems to be doing it again.
Readers, those were simply horrible pieces which we critiqued in yesterday’s HOWLER. And there’s no excuse for that silly presentation on Hardball (Matthews made similar presentations last night). Meanwhile, the irony here must be apparent. While Matthews accuses Bush of not knowing his brief, it is Matthews who seems unaware of basic facts. Rice and Rumsfeld were everywhere last weekend, saying that the “16 words” were not about Niger. Maybe Matthews was at the beach. Like Ted Baxter, he seems deeply clueless.

Gee! We wonder if Matthews is simply reading what his handlers put up on his screen…

______________________________________End of quote.

Sounds familiar.

 

THERE THEY GO AGAIN! The press corps has made up its mind on Iraq. Result? Basic facts will be mangled:

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2003

THERE THEY GO AGAIN: It isn’t hard to state the Bush Admin’s case about that uranium-from-Africa statement. According to the Admin, Bush’s “sixteen words” were based on British intelligence—and British intelligence still believes that Bush’s statement is accurate. According to the Bush Admin, it may turn out that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from an African country. We don’t know if this is true. But this is what the Bush Admin has said.

No, the case isn’t complex, or hard to state. But the Washington press corps has turned hard against Bush in the matter of uranium-from-Africa. And there they go again, dear readers! At present, many journalists are bungling the facts, in a way which harms Bush, when they discuss this hot topic.

Consider this morning’s page-one lead article in the Washington Post. If you read all the way to paragraph 15 (out of 24), you learn that Bushies say that those “sixteen words” may turn out to be accurate:

PRIEST AND MILBANK (pgh 15): Bush aides have argued in recent days that the statement may, in fact, prove to be correct. Officials said Sunday the British had sources other than the forged documents, but they have declined to reveal them.
And if you read all the way to paragraph 21, you learn that Bush’s controversial statement did not refer just to Niger:
PRIEST AND MILBANK (pgh 21): Fleischer said yesterday…that while the line cut from the October speech was based on the Niger allegations, he said the State of the Union claim was based on “additional reporting from the CIA, separate and apart from Niger, naming other countries where they believed it was possible that Saddam was seeking uranium.”
But these key facts are obscured all through the Post piece, right from the opening paragraph. Here’s how the piece begins:
PRIEST AND MILBANK (pgh 1): President Bush yesterday defended the “darn good” intelligence he receives, continuing to stand behind a disputed allegation about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions as new evidence surfaced indicating the administration had early warning that the charge could be false.
But what “new evidence” do the writers mean? What new evidence suggests that the Admin had early warning that the uranium-from-Africa claim could be false? Uh-oh! Priest and Milbank cite yet another 2002 mission to Niger, in which General Carlton Pulford concluded “that Iraq probably could not acquire nuclear material from Niger” (our emphasis). Of course, since the Bushies have said that the SOTU statement refers to other countries as well as Niger, Pulford’s report—even if believed—doesn’t contradict Bush’s speech. But in this article, that point is obscured right from the start. A reader has to work very hard to dig that info out of this article.
Indeed, all over the press corps, reporters are now mysteriously failing to get the point the Admin made this weekend. In particular, many scribes are conflating the earlier uranium-from-Niger report with the later uranium-from-one-of-several-countries claim—the claim which the Brits still affirm. Last night, Chris Matthews conflated these claims on Hardball; Jim Angle even conflated the claims on last night’s Special Report. But the most striking conflation is found in the lead of Nicholas Kristof’s column this morning:

KRISTOF (pgh 1): After I wrote a month ago about the Niger uranium hoax in the State of the Union address, a senior White House official chided me gently and explained that there was more to the story that I didn’t know.
Apparently, there’s a great deal to this story that Kristof doesn’t know, like what the Bush Admin said all weekend. Did Bush’s statement constitute a “Niger uranium hoax?” All weekend long, major spokesmen explained that Bush’s statement concerned nations other than Niger. But legions of scribes don’t seem to have heard. Kristof is just one of many.
For the record, Kristof pushes this point very hard. He persistently implies that Bush’s statement was a reference to Niger only. “[T]he White House, eager to spice up the State of the Union address, recklessly resurrected the discredited Niger tidbit,” he says. And he never reports what the Admin has actually said—that the statement referred to other countries. Kristof complains about the Administration’s “dishonesty and delusion,” and he calls the Bush statement a “falsehood.” But given his column’s shaping of facts, he may have a slight problem himself.

What is happening here? In the case of individual scribes, we can’t tell you, but in the aggregate, this pattern is familiar. To all appearances, the press corps has reached an overall judgment—the Bush Admin spun the intelligence on Iraq. That overall judgment may well be true. But as you know, when the press corps reaches an overall judgment, they often start looking for easy-to-tell stories to illustrate their global belief. If they have to change or make up facts, all too often they’re willing to do it. In this case, the Washington press corps has clearly decided that the Bush Admin mistreated intelligence. And, as they have done many times in the past, they seem to be massaging some basic facts to convince you of that global conclusion.

Given all the Bush presentations this weeknd, Kristof’s column is very strange. But then, all across the Washington press corps, reporters suddenly seem unable to grasp simple facts about this still-murky story. Did Saddam seek uranium in African countries? Here at THE HOWLER, we simply don’t know. But we do know what the Bush Admin has said, and we know that the press corps is fudging their statement. But there they go again, dear readers! The Washington press corps is fudging the facts. Let’s face it: It’s the thing they do best.

_________________________________

This is the article that set off the liberal email firestorm that I should have posted first. Apologies.

 

They are neither - are they? They are warnings - they are caution - perhaps even wrong. perhaps not.

Unlike the claims of the administration they were not delivered as statements of fact in evidence to indict a regime and justify a war. They were not offered by elected officials reporting official policy (as mandated by law in the case of the SOTU address), before the US Congress and the American people.

And, as I suggest, unless you can provide them as direct quotes, refuted by fact known at the time, they cannot under any possible definition be called lies.

 

You really should credit Bob Somerby, when you post his excellent work. I'm sure he wouldn't mind, given the proper credit.

 

Unlike the claims of the administration they were not delivered as statements of fact in evidence to indict a regime and justify a war. They were not offered by elected officials reporting official policy (as mandated by law in the case of the SOTU address), before the US Congress and the American people.

____________________________________

You have been asked several times and by several people to provide details which you must be afraid to do.

If even Somerby is questioning the allegations maybe so should you.

 

Afraid? You don't know me very well.

Somerby make some good points, but the fade quickly against the brilliant canvas of deceit as painted by the administration in it's portrayal of the Iraqi "threat".
---------------------------------------------

In addition to the now infamous "Yellowcake Forgery" there are these prior lies:

Bush/Cheney - false assertions and misrepresentation of facts know about Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons programs:

As a coda to his nuclear argument, Cheney told NBC's Meet the Press three days before US/UK forces invaded Iraq: "we believe he (Saddam Hussein) has reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Mr. Russert: ...the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program; we disagree?

Vice President Cheney: I disagree, yes. And you'll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of the intelligence community disagree...we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei (Director of the IAEA) frankly is wrong.

Contrary to what Cheney and the NIE said, the most knowledgeable analysts-those who know Iraq and nuclear weapons-judged that the evidence did not support that conclusion. They now have been proven right.

Adding insult to injury, those chairing the NIE succumbed to the pressure to adduce the known forgery as evidence to support the Cheney line, and relegated the strong dissent of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (and the nuclear engineers in the Department of Energy) to an inconspicuous footnote.
(Intelligence Unglued, by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity http://truthout.org/docs_03/071603D.shtml )


Bush/Powell tries to use edited audio-tape to LIE about Saddam/Bin Laden Connection:

Salon.com: War, lies and audiotape If truth is the first casualty of war, then this war's second casualty is the credibility of Colin Powell. Yesterday morning he insisted that the new tape from Osama bin Laden would show a "partnership" between al-Qaida and Iraq. He told the nation that he had a transcript of bin Laden's remarks. Understandably, however, the secretary of state didn't read from the transcript he claimed to have in his possession -- because it so clearly contradicted the headlines he was trying to create.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/02/12/osama/index_np.html

Philadelphia Daily News: But if bin Laden was trying to show personal solidarity with Saddam himself, he had a strange way of doing so. He denounced Saddam's secular, socialist al-Baath party as "infidels." What's more, the statement said that Iraq's rulers had "lost their credibility long ago" and that "socialists are infidels wherever they are." He didn't even mention Saddam by name.
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/5157847.htm



Bush/Powell LIES again about Saddam's ability to deliver weapons of mass destruction:

On February 5, Powell told the UN Security Council that the Iraqis possessed a drone that could fly 500km, violating UN rules that limit the range of Iraqi weapons to 150km. " There is no possibility that the design shown on 12 March has the capability to fly anywhere near 500 kilometers," drones expert Ken Munson said on Jane's website (http://jdw.janes.com). " The design looks very primitive, and the engines -- which have their pistons exposed -- appear to be low-powered," he said.

...But viewed up close yesterday by reporters hastened by Iraqi officials to the Ibn Firnas weapons plant outside Baghdad, the vehicle the Iraqis have code-named RPV-30A, for remotely piloted vehicle, looked more like something out of the Rube Goldberg museum of aeronautical design than anything that could threaten Iraq's foes. To the layman's eye, the unveiling of the Iraqi prototype seemed to lend the crisis over Iraq's weapons an aura less of deadly threat than of farce.

"In any case, he and other officials said, the vehicle could not be controlled from a distance of more than 5 miles, in good weather, since its controllers tracked it "with the naked eye."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/112262_drone13.shtml


--credit to Buzzflash.com and Truthout.org for archiving these works.

 

The items you have produced do not justify the charge you made.

What you call the "yellowcake forgery" was not a forgery made by the US - presuming that you're referring to certain documents exposed as forgeries that are one sub-element of this story, not the whole story by any means. Bush's actual statement, as has been pointed out over and over again, was perfectly accurate, and British intelligence stands by its import - which does not rely on those suspect documents. No one has shown that Bush himself had any reason to believe that the statement was unsound.

For you and others to call this statement a lie is itself a fabrication based on faulty information. I'll be charitable and assume that you are misinformed, rather than dishonest.

We've been around on this one a few times here: Anyone who reads the Meet the Press transcript or who thinks just a little bit about the claim attributed to Cheney knows what a complete canard this accusation is. Anyone who continues to make the accusation exposes himself as being more interested in political attacks than in the truth.

The item was handled very well in an article posted to this thread. You can find it here:

http://www.rightwingnews.com/john/bushiraq.php

The relevant portion:

It would prove something about your own credibility, in my opinion, if you admitted that this claim about Cheney's supposed "lie" is rather ridiculous, and that anybody who spreads it around is spreading a fabrication based on faulty information without regard for its impact on the presidency, the political process, or the standing of the US in the world.

As in the past, when confronted with a difference of opinion, you characterize it as a lie on the part of the Bush Adminstration. The Salon and Phil. Daily News writers you cite do not believe that the Al Qaeda tape demonstrated a "partnership," apparently because OBL didn't express "solidarity" or affinity with SH. Neither excerpt mentions that OBL did call for "jihad" actions against the "crusaders" in Iraq. Whether the intended result could justly be characterized as a partnership, effective partnership, tacit alliance, alliance of convenience, or any other relationship is a matter of opinion and diction. At most, Powell might be accused of having used prejudicial language. It is not a matter of opinion, however, that foreign jihadists have appeared in relatively large numbers fighting on behalf of the Baath regime.

There is no evidence that the prototype plane shown to the press by Iraqi officials before the war was the plane that Powell described. You and your sources merely prefer to believe that the Iraqis were honest and open about their programs.

It is conceivable that Powell or, rather, the intelligence upon which he was depending, was wrong. It is conceivable that both were right. In no way does the exhibition of the prototype prove that he was "lying."

Your sources, as well as much of the mass media, leading Democrats, and you yourself, are doing exactly what you accuse the Bush Administration of doing: using fabrications, misrepresentations, exaggerations, and misinformation to justify a pre-conceived political agenda, ignoring facts and arguments that don't fit into the required framework, without regard for the deleterious effects on the country and the political process.

 

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 12:28 p.m. EDT
Clinton-Era Reports Cited Saddam-bin Laden Ties

In the nearly two years since President Bush named Iraq as part of the "Axis of Evil," the American press has been working overtime denying that there was ever any link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

But that's not what the same news outlets were saying before the 9/11 attacks, back when Bill Clinton was president and needed justification to attack Iraq.

Just weeks after Clinton bombed the daylights out of suspected hideaways for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, he used his January 1999 State of the Union Address to warn America about both bin Laden and Saddam, mentioning the two terror kingpins almost in the same breath.

"We will defend our security wherever we are threatened - as we did this summer when we struck at Osama bin Laden's network of terror," Clinton told Congress and the nation. "The bombing our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania reminds us again of the risks faced every day by those who represent America to the world."

Moments later Clinton segued into the threat posed by Saddam:

"For nearly a decade, Iraq has defied its obligations to destroy its weapons of terror and the missiles to deliver them. America will continue to contain Saddam, and we will work for the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people."

But rather than launch an all out assault on what reporters now call the "dubious" assertion that Saddam and bin Laden had made common cause, the press took Clinton's ball and ran with it.

In fact, as researched and documented this week by FrontPageMagazine.com, in 1999 the national news media was replete with reports linking the Butcher of Baghdad and the man who masterminded the killing of 3,000 Americans almost two years ago.

Here are a few highlights gathered by FrontPage from the press' Saddam-bin Laden file – stories that have since conveniently disappeared down the media's memory hole:

Associated Press Worldstream
Feb. 14, 1999


Taliban leader says whereabouts of bin Laden unknown


... Analysts say bin Laden's options for asylum are limited.


Iraq was considered a possible destination because bin Laden had received an invitation from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein last month. And Somalia was a third possible destination because of its anarchy and violent anti-U.S. history ....

San Jose Mercury News
SUNDAY MORNING FINAL EDITION
Feb. 14, 1999


U.S. WORRIED ABOUT IRAQI, BIN LADEN TIES TERRORIST COULD GAIN EVEN DEADLIER WEAPONS

U.S. intelligence officials are worried that a burgeoning alliance between terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could make the fugitive Saudi's loose-knit organization much more dangerous ...

In addition, the officials said, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal is now in Iraq, as is a renowned Palestinian bomb designer, and both could make their expertise available to bin Laden.

"It's clear the Iraqis would like to have bin Laden in Iraq," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counterterrorism operations at the Central Intelligence Agency ...

Saddam has even offered asylum to bin Laden, who has expressed support for Iraq.

... [in] late December, when bin Laden met a senior Iraqi intelligence official near Qandahar, Afghanistan, there has been increasing evidence that bin Laden and Iraq may have begun cooperating in planning attacks against American and British targets around the world.

Bin Laden, who strikes in the name of Islam, and Saddam, one of the most secular rulers in the Arab world, have little in common except their hatred of the United States ...

More worrisome, the American officials said, are indications that there may be contacts between bin Laden's organization and Iraq's Special Security Organization (SSO), run by Saddam's son Qusay. Both the SSO and the Mukhabarat were involved in a failed 1993 plot to assassinate former President George Bush ...

"The idea that the same people who are hiding Saddam's biological weapons may be meeting with Osama bin Laden is not a happy one," said one American official....


Beacon Journal wire services
Oct. 31, 1999
BIN LADEN SPOTTED AFTER OFFER TO LEAVE


DATELINE: JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN:


... The Taliban has since made it known through official channels that the likely destination is Iraq.

A Clinton administration official said bin Laden's request "falls far short" of the UN resolution that the Taliban deliver him for trial. ...


The Kansas City Star
March 2, 1999


International terrorism, a conflict without boundaries


By Rich Hood


... He [bin Laden] has a private fortune ranging from $250 million to $500 million and is said to be cultivating a new alliance with Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who has biological and chemical weapons bin Laden would not hesitate to use. An alliance between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could be deadly. Both men are united in their hatred for the United States and any country friendly to the United States. ...

United Press International
Nov. 3, 1999, Wednesday, BC cycle.


WASHINGTON – The U.S. government has tried to prevent accused terror suspect Osama bin Laden from fleeing Afghanistan to either Iraq or Chechnya, Michael Sheehan, head of counter-terrorism at the State Department, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee. ...

U.S. Newswire
Dec. 23, 1999


Terrorism Expert Reveals Why Osama bin Laden has Declared War On America; Available for Comment in Light of Predicted Attacks.

... Aauthor Yossef] Bodansky also reveals the relationship between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and how the U.S. bombing of Iraq is "strengthening the hands of militant Islamists eager to translate their rage into violence and terrorism."

National Public Radio
MORNING EDITION (10:00 a.m.ET)
Feb. 18, 1999


THOUGH AFGHANISTAN HAS PROVIDED OSAMA BIN LADEN WITH SANCTUARY, IT IS UNCLEAR WHERE HE IS NOW. ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS REPORTERS: MIKE SHUSTER

... There have also been reports in recent months that bin Laden might have been considering moving his operations to Iraq. Intelligence agencies in several nations are looking into that. According to Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counterterrorism operations, a senior Iraqi intelligence official, Farouk Hijazi(ph), sought out bin Laden in December and invited him to come to Iraq.

Mr. VINCENT CANNISTRARO (Former Chief of CIA Counterterrorism Operations): Farouk Hijazi, who was the Iraqi ambassador in Turkey ... known through sources in Afghanistan, members of Osama's entourage let it be known that the meeting had taken place.

SHUSTER: Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when, according to one U.S. government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There is a wide gap between bin Laden's fundamentalism and Saddam Hussein's secular dictatorship. But some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony. ...

Foreign news services also carried news of the now-supressed Saddam-bin Laden connection:

Agence France-Presse
Feb. 17, 1999


Saddam plans to use bin Laden against Kuwait, Saudi: opposition


Iraq's President Saddam Hussein plans to use alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden's network to carry out his threats against Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, an Iraqi opposition figure charged on Wednesday.

"If the ... Jaber, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said Iraq had "offered to shelter bin Laden under the precondition that he carry out strikes on targets in neighbouring countries."

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Feb. 17, 1999, Wednesday, BC Cycle


Opposition group says bin Laden in Iraq


DATELINE: Kuwait City


An Iraqi opposition group claimed in a published report Wednesday that Islamic militant Osama bin Laden is in Iraq from where he plans to launch a campaign of terrorism against Baghdad's Gulf neighbours.

The claim was made by Bayan Jabor, spokesman for the Teheran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Bin Laden "recently settled in Iraq at the invitation of Saddam Hussein in exchange for directing strikes against targets in neighbouring countries," Jabor told the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai al- Aam ... Taleban leaders in Afghanistan, where he had been living, said they lost track of him. Media reports have speculated he sought refuge in Chechnya, Somalia, Iraq, or with a non-Taliban group in Afghanistan.

Jabor, who was interviewed in Damascus, Syria, said Iraq began extending invitations to bin Laden six months ago, shortly after the United States bombed his suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan after linking him with the August 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and in Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania.

The United States indicted Bin Laden for the embassy bombings and has offered a five million dollar reward for information leading to his capture. Bin Laden's disappearance has coincided with stepped up threats by Iraq against neighbours Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey for allowing the United States and Britain to use their air bases to carry out air patrols over two "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq. ...
Newsmax.com
_______________________________________

Are these the same lies?

 

Desperation
Phil Brennan
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
DESPERATION 1: The loss of hope and surrender to despair 2: a state of hopelessness, leading to rashness. (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary)

The second definition best describes the condition of the National Socialist Democrat Party (NSDP) as its nine dwarf-like presidential hopefuls attempt to cope with a highly popular president.

Finding that the tired old class-warfare tactics that once served the NSDP so well no longer work – the public has at last caught on to that scam – and thus unable to convince the voters that George Bush wants to deprive the poor of food and lodging, drive elderly Americans into the poor house and prevent the voters from getting adequate medical care, they have descended into rashness of the most demented sort.

They have been driven there by their inability to cope with a president who has just directed one of the most astounding victories in all of military history, who the public sees as mounting a vigorous and unrelenting attack on international terrorism, and whose administration has thus far prevented any further 9/11 attacks on our homeland.

Moreover, despite all their carping about the unfairness of it all – not giving tax rebates to people who pay no taxes – he has forced Congress to reduce the tax burden on the American people, many of whom will get checks in the mail this summer that Mr. Bush wrested from the sticky fingers of Uncle Sam and his spendthrift Socialist Democrat nephews in Congress.

Then there is the matter of their shrinking base. They can no longer count on monopolizing the African-American vote that they have always taken for granted. Too many of them have decided that life on the socialist plantation is not really the way to go, and even Jewish Americans – also taken for granted – are deserting them in large numbers.

To counter these dreary facts, they are trying to convince voters that the president of the United States is a liar – a conclusion they can easily reach given the fact that their last NSDP president was a monumental prevaricator ("I did not have sex with that woman ...," etc.) and thus in their warped minds it follows that all presidents should be under suspicion of being notoriously unfamiliar with the truth.

It's a Freudian concept known as projection – projecting your own faults onto an opponent.

They have a big problem here. Aside from the fact that not even the most mentally challenged among us could be convinced that a mere 16 words in a lengthy State of the Union speech could alone have sent this nation into war in Iraq, they face the difficulty of convincing the public that there was no real justification for dethroning a brute whose very existence in the troubled Middle East – the source of most of the oil we depend on to keep the economy going and our cars and oil burners running – was a threat to regional stability and to world peace and prosperity.

Then there is the record many of their party's leaders compiled before the war began, darkly predicting that thousands of American troops would die in a war that could last months, that Iraq would be laid waste and reduced to rubble, the oil fields would be set ablaze, and the Arab world would rise up in anger against the United States, resulting in an intensified war of terrorism against the U.S. and its allies.

Once the war began, they and their allies in the mainstream media gloomily predicted that we would bog down in a quagmire, that when we finally reached Baghdad our troops would be faced with fanatic and lethal resistance from the Republican Guard (which appears to have been named for the so-called moderate wing of the GOP, which collapses and flees in the face of any resistance whatsoever), and that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis would perish in a final holocaust.

Much to their disappointment, none of the above occurred. Coalition troops under the inspired leadership of Gen. Tommy Franks wrote a new chapter in military history, rolling over Saddam's forces, as if they were a bunch of kindergarten kids, in a matter of a couple of weeks from start to finish.

Unable to celebrate a loss in the war, the Socialist Democrats are now hoping for a chance to celebrate losing the peace. One can almost hear the satisfaction in their voices as they count off the deaths of every American soldier slain by the remnants of Saddam's fanatic loyalists.

Ann Coulter is right – these people really do hate America.

Sometimes it's hard to discount the idea that America's Socialist Democrats harbor sympathy for their fellow socialists in Saddam's socialist Ba'ath Party, now cast into the political outer darkness from which they will never emerge. As Bill Clinton would put it, they feel the Ba'athists' pain.

Using the dispute over the 16 controversial words in the State of the Union address as the linchpin of their campaign against President Bush, they have gone back to their antiwar rhetoric, questioning whether we should have ever launched an attack to which most of them reluctantly signed on before the war began.

A number of political experts have warned that this attempt to blacken the name of George W. Bush is going to backfire and condemn the NSDP to certain defeat in 2004, not only costing them any chance to win the White House but also causing an utter rout in the House and Senate elections as well.

They fail to recognize the fact that the majority of the American people recognize George W. Bush as a good and decent God-fearing man – a man with the kind of courage and determination that marked so many great Americans, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.

Attempting to paint him as evil – for that's what liars who use lies to provoke wars are – is an act of rashness, if not outright insanity.

They are desperate people, and desperate people do desperate things. We are watching an ancient national political party self-destruct before our very eyes.

It is said that whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad.

The gods must really have it in for the National Socialist Democrat Party. Who can blame them?


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Gotta love it.