Democracy itself is in grave danger, Part 3,

[Guest guest]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/24/gore_speech/index2.html

 

 

 

" Democracy itself is in grave danger " | Part 3,

 

 

 

Thus, for all these reasons, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have

decided to fight to the rhetorical death over whether or not there's a

meaningful connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. They think that if they lose

that argument and people see the truth, then they'll not only lose support for

the controversial decision to go to war, but also lose some of the new power

they've picked up from the Congress and the courts, and face harsh political

consequences at the hands of the American people. As a result, President Bush is

now intentionally misleading the American people by continuing to aggressively

and brazenly assert a linkage between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.

 

 

If he is not lying, if they genuinely believe that, that makes them unfit in

battle with al-Qaida. If they believe these flimsy scraps, then who would want

them in charge? Are they too dishonest or too gullible? Take your pick.

document.write('');

But the truth is gradually emerging in spite of the president's determined

dissembling. Listen, for example, to this editorial from the Financial Times:

" There was nothing intrinsically absurd about the WMD fears, or ignoble about

the opposition to Saddam's tyranny -- however late Washington developed this.

The purported link between Baghdad and al-Qaida, by contrast, was never believed

by anyone who knows Iraq and the region. It was and is nonsense. "

 

 

Of course the first rationale presented for the war was to destroy Iraq's

weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Then the rationale

was to liberate Iraqis and the Middle East from tyranny, but our troops were not

greeted with the promised flowers and are now viewed as an occupying force by 92

percent of Iraqis, while only 2 percent see them as liberators.

 

But right from the start, beginning very soon after the attacks of 9/11,

President Bush made a decision to start mentioning Osama bin Laden and Saddam

Hussein in the same breath in a cynical mantra designed to fuse them together as

one in the public's mind. He repeatedly used this device in a highly disciplined

manner to create a false impression in the minds of the American people that

Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Usually he was pretty tricky in his

exact wording. Indeed, Bush's consistent and careful artifice is itself evidence

that he knew full well that he was telling an artful and important lie --

visibly circumnavigating the truth over and over again as if he had practiced

how to avoid encountering the truth. But as I will document in a few moments, he

and Vice President Cheney also sometimes departed from their tricky wording and

resorted to statements were clearly outright falsehoods. In any case, by the

time he was done, public opinion polls showed that fully 70

percent of the American people had gotten the message he wanted them to get,

and had been convinced that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

 

The myth that Iraq and al-Qaida were working together was no accident -- the

president and vice president deliberately ignored warnings before the war from

international intelligence services, the CIA, and their own Pentagon that the

claim was false. Europe's top terrorism investigator said in 2002, " We have

found no evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaida. If there were such links,

we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever. "

A classified October 2002 CIA report given to the White House directly undercut

the Iraq-al-Qaida claim. Top officials in the Pentagon told reporters in 2002

that the rhetoric being used by President Bush and Vice President Cheney was " an

exaggeration. "

 

And at least some honest voices within the president's own party admitted as

such. Sen. Chuck Hagel, a decorated war hero who sits on the Foreign Relations

Committee, said point blank, " Saddam is not in league with al-Qaida ... I have

not seen any intelligence that would lead me to connect Saddam Hussein with

al-Qaida. "

 

But those voices did not stop the deliberate campaign to mislead America. Over

the course of a year, the president and vice president used carefully crafted

language to scare Americans into believing there was an imminent threat from an

Iraq-armed al-Qaida.

 

In the fall of 2002, the President told the country " You can't distinguish

between al-Qaida and Saddam " and that the " true threat facing our country is an

al-Qaida-type network trained and armed by Saddam. " At the same time, Vice

President Cheney was repeating his claim that " there is overwhelming evidence

there was a connection between al-Qaida and the Iraqi government. "

 

By the Spring, Secretary of State Powell was in front of the United Nations

claiming a " sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network. "

 

But after the invasion, no ties were found. In June of 2003, the United Nations

Security Council's al-Qaida monitoring agency told reporters his extensive

investigation had found no evidence linking the Iraqi regime to al-Qaida. By

August, three former Bush administration national security and intelligence

officials admitted that the evidence used to make the Iraq-al-Qaida claim was

" tenuous, exaggerated and often at odds with the conclusion of key intelligence

agencies. " And earlier this year, Knight-Ridder newspapers reported " Senior U.S.

officials now say there never was any evidence " of a connection.

 

So when the bipartisan 9/11 commission issued its report finding " no credible

evidence " of an Iraq-al-Qaida connection, it should not have caught the White

House off guard. Yet instead of the candor Americans need and deserve from their

leaders, there have been more denials and more insistence without evidence. Vice

President Cheney insisted even this week that " there clearly was a relationship "

and that there is " overwhelming evidence. " Even more shocking, Cheney offered

this disgraceful question: " Was Iraq involved with al-Qaida in the attack on

9/11? We don't know. " He then claimed that he " probably " had more information

than the commission, but has so far refused to provide anything to the

commission other than more insults.

 

The President was even more brazen. He dismissed all questions about his

statements by saying " The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship

between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaida, because there was a relationship between

Iraq and al-Qaida. " He provided no evidence.

 

Friends of the administration tried mightily to rehabilitate their cherished but

shattered linkage. John Lehman, one of the Republicans on the commission,

offered what sounded like new evidence that a Saddam henchman had attended an

al-Qaida meeting. But within hours, the commissions files yielded definitive

evidence that it was another man with a similar name -- ironically capturing the

near-miss quality of Bush's entire symbolic argument.

 

Next page | The administration works closely with a network of " rapid response "

digital Brown Shirts

1, 2, 3, 4, 5