Posted on 10/05/2004 11:04:48 PM PDT by ravinson
MSNBC has been repeatedly broadcasting a Brian Williams report in which he claims that Vice President Cheney was wrong when he stated in the debate tonight that he had never suggested there was a connection between Iraq and 9/11. Williams is basing his pointed attack on Cheney's credibility on the following excerpt from his September 14, 2003 appearance on Meet the Press:
[Cheney:]...If we’re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it’s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists, now 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.
But if you look at the Meet the Press transcript that Williams has excerpted, you see that Cheney is clearly not connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11, he's just referring to the obvious fact that both Hussein and bin Laden were based in the same region (i.e. the Middle East), as Cheney makes clear in answering Tim Russert's very next question:
MR. RUSSERT: So the resistance in Iraq is coming from those who were responsible for 9/11?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I was careful not to say that. With respect to 9/11, 9/11, as I said at the beginning of the show, changed everything. And one of the things it changed is we recognized that time was not on our side, that in this part of the world, in particular, given the problems we’ve encountered in Afghanistan, which forced us to go in and take action there, as well as in Iraq, that we, in fact, had to move on it. The relevance for 9/11 is that what 9/11 marked was the beginning of a struggle in which the terrorists come at us and strike us here on our home territory. And it’s a global operation. It doesn’t know national boundaries or national borders. And the commitment of the United States going into Afghanistan and take down the Taliban and stand up a new government, to go into Iraq and take down the Saddam Hussein regime and stand up a new government is a vital part of our long-term strategy to win the war on terror.
Brian Williams and NBC deserve this week's Dan Rather award for such biased and sloppy reporting, and the MSNBC lunkheads who aped his blatherous report without checking the Meet the Press transcript for the context of the remark deserve a share of that "award".
The spin on this is just bizarre. Pretty soon the Democrat-Media Complex will assert that there is no connection between 9/11 and terrorism.
I saw Matthew's head about to explode when others disagreed Cheney ever said what they were claiming. Funny as all get out.
I saw how Williams flat out lied when he tried to claim that Cheney was saying that there was a connection...when Kerry did not say that. Even when you look at the clip that Williams showed along......it does not say that.
Williams and Matthews were both lying about this tonight.
Kerry and Edwards want the American people to believe that Osama bin Laden is the only terrorist in the Middle East worth capturing. Interestingly, though, they have both committed the Freudian slip of calling Osama Saddam or vice versa.
Worse than bizarre!
You two beat me to the punch. Good work.
We were all going in the same direction at the same time!!
Chrissy Matthews practiced pissed on himself thinking that Brian Williams had finally found 'evidence' of this straw man claim that the DNC has been parroting about "Bush claimed that Saddam was linked to 9/11". This is such a bogus story and the Dems just can't let it go. Apparently, Chrissy just can't deal with another liberal loss in 2004.
"Apparently, Chrissy just can't deal with another liberal loss in 2004."
He'll take it. And learn to like it! ;)
It would be messy as hell though if Matthews Sh*t head should actually explode-it would be like the sewage treatment facility in a major city, exploding.
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