I generally don't waste time responding to urban myths so thoroughly discredited, so I will just ask one question:
Still waiting for the unanswered question:
If there is a shred of credible evidence showing Iraq provided ANY material support for terrorists (which was Bush's claim to justify the war), then exactly why has the Bush admin gone dead silent on that subject after being publicly humiliated for not being able to back up those claims?
Please answer the question.
You throw up (literally) a bunch of crap the admin wouldn't touch with a fishing pole as if it were the smoking gun, yet run from an obvious fact:
If the admin could back up EVEN ONE claim of showing Iraq was supporting terrorism, when will the press conference be where Bush waves the proof and yells: "I told you so?"
NO?
That's what I thought you said.
And for the record, I am so sick of rehashing anecdotal BS garbage our own intel services have debunked about "sightings" and "meetings" yadda, yadda, yadda, I would just say the smart move is to join Bush and Cheney and stop going back to it. It's as dead as roadkill and smells similar.
http://www.iraqfoundation.org/news/2002/isept/26_bush.html
The administration had begun deemphasizing claims of links between Hussein and global terrorism. Senior intelligence officials told The Washington Post this month that the CIA had not found convincing proof, despite efforts that included surveillance photos and communications intercepts.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-06-26-iraq-alqaeda_x.htm
U.N. committee: No Iraq-al-Qaeda link
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. terrorism committee has found no evidence to support Bush administration claims of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and the United States has provided the committee with no proof, officials said Thursday.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/no-saddam-qaeda.htm
Bush Flatly Declares No Connection Between
Saddam and al Qaeda
The occasion was a press conference with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, which took place in the White House on 31 January 2003. Here's the key portion:
[Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.
THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question.
Under any circumstances, these answers are remarkable for their brevity and directness. No politician answers clearly and in just one sentence. Yet on this crucial matter, Bush and Blair did just that. (True, Blair then launched into his standard speech about how we need to attack Iraq anyway, but his direct answer is brief and to the point.)
What they unambiguously admitted is that there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden/al Qaeda. You may recall that bin Laden and al Qaeda are officially blamed for hatching, plotting, and carrying out the 9/11 attacks. That's who the British reporter was referring to. Now the President and Prime Minister have said there is no link between them and the government of Iraq. Could it be any simpler?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html
Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed
By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 17, 2004; Page A01
The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/11/Iraq.Qaeda.link/
Bin Laden recently declared solidarity with the Iraqi people, but he lashed out at Saddam's government. In the latest audiotaped message purported to be recorded by the al Qaeda leader, bin Laden denounced Saddam's socialist Baath party as "infidels."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0303-01.htm
Doubts Cast on Efforts to Link Saddam, al-Qaida
by Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida - one of the administration's central arguments for a pre-emptive war - appears to have been based on even less solid intelligence than the administration's claims that Iraq had hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons.
Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Saddam's links with al-Qaida, and several key parts of the administration's case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/09/16/cheney_link_of_iraq_911_challenged/
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 Rummy blurted out the truth once:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1005/dailyUpdate.html?s=ent
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was forced to go into damage control mode Monday hours after a statement he made began to spread through the media.
Mr. Rumsfeld "attempted to distance himself from his earlier comments that there were no links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda," reports The Guardian.
In a statement issued several hours after he had told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that "to my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two",
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=92288
There was no connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission reported yesterday that, "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on the attacks against the United States." David Kay, the Bush administration's weapons inspector in Iraq earlier concluded, "[W]e simply did not find any evidence of extensive links with al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links at all," and called a speech where Cheney made the claim, "evidence free." The supposed meeting between Osama bin Laden associate Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Praque – one of the administration's key bits of evidence – never occurred. The FBI now believes Atta was in the United States at the time.
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2003/6/27/1s.html
Threat Assessment: U.N. Panel Finds No Iraq-Al-Qaeda Link, But Warns of Al-Qaeda WMD Ambitions
By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire
UNITED NATIONS — The chairman of the Security Council group monitoring sanctions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban said yesterday that while al-Qaeda is still able to function in many countries, the group has seen no evidence of a link between the terrorist organization and the former government Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein (see GSN, May 23, 2002).
No proof of Iraq, al-Qaeda links: analysts
By Julian Borger, Michael Howard and Richard Norton-Taylor
January 31 2003
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/30/1043804465839.html
President George Bush used his State of the Union address to paint a terrifying picture for the American people of another attack like September 11 - but this time with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, reinforced the message, telling the House of Commons: "We do know of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. We cannot be sure of the exact extent of those links."
However, a number of well-placed sources in the British public service insisted there is no intelligence suggesting such a link. "While we have said there may possibly be individuals in the country [Iraq] we have never said anything to suggest specific links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein," said one.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w...on_assertion_linking_hussein_al_qaeda?pg=full
However, a former top weapons inspector said yesterday he and other investigators have not found evidence of a Hussein-Al Qaeda link.
''At various times Al Qaeda people came through Baghdad and in some cases resided there," said David Kay, former head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, which searched for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism. ''But we simply did not find any evidence of extensive links with Al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links at all."
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2004/0616-911report.html
Panel Says No Signs of Iraq, Qaeda Link
Deborah Charles
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators have found no evidence Iraq aided al Qaeda attempts to attack the United States, a commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackings said on Wednesday, undermining Bush administration arguments for war. . . .
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney this week reiterated pre-war arguments that an Iraqi connection to al Qaeda, which is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks, represented an unacceptable threat to the United States.
However, the commission said in a staff report, "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
"There is no convincing evidence that any government financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11 -- other than limited support provided by the Taliban after bin Laden first arrived in Afghanistan," it added. . . .
The report stood in contrast to comments this week by Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam had "long-established ties" to al Qaeda.
http://www.coalitionforworldpeace.org/news/040617wpost.html
But the report of the commission's staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation. In yesterday's hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding.
The staff report said that bin Laden "explored possible cooperation with Iraq" while in Sudan through 1996, but that "Iraq apparently never responded" to a bin Laden request for help in 1994. The commission cited reports of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda after bin Laden went to Afghanistan in 1996, adding, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
http://www.dawn.com/2004/10/06/top12.htm
Rummy said it:
WASHINGTON, Oct 5: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday he knew of no "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda, despite describing extensive contacts between the two before the Iraq invasion.
Mr Rumsfeld, during a question-and-answer session before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, was asked to explain the connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
"I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was," Rumsfeld said.
"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," Rumsfeld added. "I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who's connected to al Qaeda who was in and out of Iraq. And it is the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship. It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage."
http://www.fpleadership.org/exec/content/108-181-184-index.htm
The President’s claim remains unsubstantiated. As a bipartisan and independent inquiry concluded there was no collaborative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.
The 9/11 Commission stated: “[T]o date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.”
“The 9/11 Commission Report," p. 61.
The 9/11 Commission reported that as early as September 18, 2001 National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice received a memo on Iraqi involvement in 9/11. “The memo found no 'compelling case' that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks… Finally, the memo said, there was 'no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Laden on unconventional weapons'.”
“The 9/11 Commission Report,” p. 335.
The 9/11 Commission did find some evidence of contact between Iraq and al Qaeda during the 1990’s but concluded that nothing resulted from their meetings.
“The 9/11 Commission Report," p. 61.