My local paper, the Sierra Sun, published a LTE today where the writer claimed that "Neither President Bush nor anyone in his administration has ever tried to link Hussein directly to 9/11."
I need/want to rebut this clearly ad factually and so wrote the following OP-Ed piece which I hope you all can correct/add to/edit/etc.
In his September 22nd Letter to the Editor, XXX of Tahoma wrote: "Neither President Bush nor anyone in his administration has ever tried to link Hussein directly to 9/11." If we take Mr. XXX words literally ("Hussein", "directly" and "9/11"), then he may be correct, but if we understand that our government has actively worked to convince us that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were one and the same, then Mr. XXX is dead wrong.
Read on and you will see the connections (or links to use Mr. XXX term) that Bush, Cheney and Rice have stated actually existed between Iraq/Hussein and 9/11. And none of these quotes is "fictitious".
In December of 2001 Vice President Cheney stated that it was "pretty well confirmed" Iraq had links with the 9/11 hijackers. From NBC's, Meet the Press 12/9/01 : "Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that-it's been pretty well confirmed that he (referring to Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers) did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack." http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
To justify his war on Iraq, Bush wrote Congress on March 19, 2003 that acting against Iraq was consistent with "continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. " http://www.whitehouse.gov/...
The website Think Progress states "More generally, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the administration encouraged the false impession that Saddam had a role in 9/11. Bush never stated then, as he does now, that Iraq had "nothing" to do with 9/11." http://thinkprogress.org/...
In March of 2003 Bush repeatedly linked 9/11, Saddam and Iraq in a high profile, prime time press conference. From the Christian Science Monitor "In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11. Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks." http://www.csmonitor.com/...
Even after the war began, Cheney continued to link Iraq and 9/11. From NBC's Meet the Press (the same show in which Cheney stated "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators"): CHENEY: If we're successful in Iraq, ... 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." http://msnbc.msn.com/...
That same month, on ABC's Nightline, White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said that one of the reasons Mr. Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9-11 threat emerged." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/...
If all the above are not clear and blatant attempts by President Bush and others in his administration to create false"links" between Iraq, Hussein and 9/11, I don't know what are. While Bush and others may not have literally stated "Saddam Hussein directly aided al Quaeda in the 9/11 attacks" they certainly have done their best to foster that impression in the mind of the American public. It's time to stop falling for the propaganda and to demand a change in government that will hold responsible those who lied to us.