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Never any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, says Dick Cheney
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From the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company:
conflate (k?n-fl?t')
tr.v. con·flat·ed, con·flat·ing, con·flates
1. To bring together; meld or fuse.
2. To combine (two variant texts, for example) into one whole.
[Latin c?nfl?re, c?nfl?t- : com-, com- + fl?re, to blow; see bhl?- in Indo-European roots.]
con·fla'tion n.
Dick Cheney's most recent illumination sets the record straight for all of us silly people who ever thought anyone was conflating Iraq and al Qaeda in order to provide the necessary justification to invade Iraq in 2003. Here’s the money quote from CNN’s story entitled Cheney: No link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11:
“I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11.”
From the same story:
The former vice president said in 2004 that the evidence was “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Hussein’s regime in Iraq, and that media reports suggesting that the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks reached a contradictory conclusion were “irresponsible.”
“There clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming,” Cheney said at the time.
Condoleeza Rice has backpedaled from asserting that their were “ties going on between al Qaeda and Iraq,” to “No one was arguing that Saddam Hussein somehow had something to do with 9/11.”
Bush’s quotes: From this extensive list from the BBC of Bush’s assertions of a connection bewtween al Qaeda and Sadam Hussein, "Before 11 September 2001, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained" to “No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.” September 17, 2004.
And here we find a quote from McClatchy News Service in which Cheney asserts that waterboarding at Gitmo was worthwhile because it did in fact turn up the OBVIOUS link between al Qaeda and Hussein:
Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq , asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn’t true.
Cheney’s 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.
And more from an extensive chronology leading up to the Iraq invasion:
“Vice President Dick Cheney’s repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration’s claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed.” Additionally, CIA officials “charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president’s office had ‘pressured’ agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam’s capabilities and intentions.” [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]
And even more:
Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney’s office kept close tabs on the questioning. “Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda,” Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.
So, wow, now I’m confused. Cheney badly needed a connection so that he could, uh… deny there was a connection.
To sum up, Condi Rice, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and a gigantic Senate Intelligence report all say there was never a link between al Qaeda and Sadam Hussein. Oh yeah, and George Tenet says he was pressured to come up with any evidence linking the two so that someone, not these people, but someone else could invade Iraq, someone who very badly wanted to.
And not for their oil.
We'd all love to erase the mistakes we made. But when there's a public record, it's just not as easy.
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