Posted on 07/05/2004 12:26:26 AM PDT by FairOpinion
Vice President Al Gore delivered a speech at Georgetown University on June 24. The bulk of Gore's address attacked the Bush administration for continuing to insist that Saddam Hussein's regime had ties to al-Qaida. The United Nations, the CIA and even the Pentagon were cited by Gore as dissenting voices crushed in the Bush administration's rush to war. The preliminary findings of the bipartisan commission appointed by Congress to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Gore and The New York Times, have proven that any such claims were and remain baseless.
There are several problems with this - besides the fact that both the leading Republican and Democratic commissioners disclaimed the report had made sweeping conclusions about any relationship, beyond declaring they had no evidence of Iraqi involvement in the attacks.
For partisans such as Gore, any cooperation between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida is a figment of warmongering imaginations in this administration, and along with weapons of mass destruction, was one of the "big lies" that frightened the American people into supporting the war. Yet the Bush administration was not the first to assert dangerous ties between Iraq and al-Qaida. Perhaps then-Vice President Gore missed a prominent feature in the fourth paragraph of the Department of Justice's Nov. 4, 1998, indictment of Osama bin Laden:
"Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government, and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."
This section of the indictment was based on intelligence the Clinton administration had gathered about a pharmaceutical plant at El Shifa in Sudan. A consortium of Sudan's National Islamic Front included that bin Laden owned the El Shifa plant.
The Clinton administration defended the strike, arguing that far from being an innocent aspirin factory, the bin Laden-owned plant was producing VX nerve gas for al-Qaida. Counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke said as much to The Washington Post on Jan. 23, 1999:
"While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed, shortly after the missile attack, that they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is 'sure' that Iraqi nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.
"... [Clarke] said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan."
Clarke went on to accuse the Bush administration in his recently published book "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," of imagining ties between Iraq and al-Qaida where none existed.
In response to questions about Clarke's 1999 statements, which seem to suggest al-Qaida collaborated with Iraqi operatives, Clarke's former colleague from the Clinton administration Daniel Benjamin wrote, "I believe that the al-Qaida-Iraq connection probably remained indirect - that Baghdad had little knowledge of bin Laden's investment in the Sudanese chemical weapons production."
Yet, Clinton's Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, in his recent testimony before the 9/11 Commission, insisted that "the owner of the plant had traveled to Baghdad to meet with the father of the VX program." For the Iraqis not to have known bin Laden was a major investor in the El Shifa plant seems to be quite a stretch.
The question of Iraq's ties to al-Qaida has often been confused with the question of whether or not Iraq was directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Critics of the Bush administration insist that it is the president and vice president who have sown this confusion, while the vice president claims that lazy or ideologically driven reporters have constantly muddled the two separate issues.
Regardless, given these disturbing reports from the 1990s, it is either ignorant or dishonest to insist that the idea of dangerous ties between Iraq and al-Qaida was the sole creation of the Bush administration. The administration's critics may insist none of the evidence out there (and much of it remains frustratingly inconclusive) justified or will ever justify the bitter costs of the Iraq war. This is a serious, coherent position. What is not a serious or honest position is denying that any ties between Iraq and al-Qaida ever existed, or were entirely fabricated by a warmongering "neocon" cabal.
But since the Dems continue to lie about it, we have to keep pointing out the truth every time.
This article, by a college student at the University of Texas points out the facts and correct info.
ping
Al Gore is a disingenuous sore-loserman. Repeat a lie often enough and you'll BE Al Gore.
Maybe the dims are trying to divert attention from Clinton's totally stupid debacle in Kosovo.
Thanks for the ping; saved it to "the file".
This is the scariest part of this report from the Clinton Administration.
It means that inspectors could find a ton of this stuff AND it wouldn't be classified as a WMD because it is only a few ingredients short.
It could be carried in a carry-on bag anywhere in the world and all you need is Clorox and water to activate it.
America....WAKE UP!
And mixed together in a bathroom in a plane, at a terminal, on a train, in a stadium.....any closely confined space.
I just don't see how we won't eventually have another attack.
Brokow must've missed that one too. ....and Jennings and Rather as well.
The Soviet Union fell, in part because of American manipulation of Arab interests. That's good.
Because the Arabs realized they had become expendable, they got mad and did what Arabs usually do -- they pillaged, savaged and destroyed. That's bad.
President Bush I asserted American will and sat on them. That's good.
President Clinton, because he is a weenie and had no clue outside of his own interests, looked the other way when Arabs were growing more and more petulant. Thus we suffered the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of the Kobar Towers, Oklahoma City, and dozens of other intentional acts of terrorism by the swarthy-skinned islamofascists. Even the nerve gas factory which Clinton was "forced" to blow up was relabeled an "aspirin factory" so as not to upset the socialists/pacifists. The ying/yang must be preserved at all costs, according to those who rule by dialectic. All this has been very bad.
And thus Clinton's ineptitude resulted in the horrific destruction of 9/11.
An emboldened Arab culture is a culture of death and destruction. President Bush knows this and is struggling to lead the country on a righteous path toward peace.
Unfortunately, the road is filled with land mines laid by Satan himself.
But God's will prevails, regardless.
You summed it up very well!
Dr.E generally sums things up pretty well. (Not to say that I always agree.....:>)
And I will defend your right to disagree until I can persuade you otherwise. 8~)
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