Posted on 10/25/2005 9:12:26 PM PDT by churchillbuff
President George W. Bush may have no military exit strategy for Iraq, but the “neocons” who convinced him to go to war there have developed one of their own—a political one: Blame the Administration. Their neo-Wilsonian theory is correct, they insist, but the execution was botched by a Bush team that has turned out to be incompetent, crony-filled, corrupt, unimaginative and weak over a wide range of issues.
The flight of the neocons—just read a recent Weekly Standard to see what I am talking about —is one of only many indications that the long-predicted “conservative crackup” is at hand.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Uh, maybe you mean Osama? He's the one who masterminded 9-11. Even Bush admits that Saddam didn't have anything to do with it.
Kristol is not popular in a lot of conservative circles, but this article is complete crap. The Weekly Standard's biggest complaint for a long time has been that troop numbers were too low. They have hammered on this for a year. Otherwise, they have defended the war well, including an article by Christopher Hitchens awhile back that just kicked the ass of Mother Sheehan and company.
It's a toss up as to who is more loathesome to me, Kristol or Fineman..LOL
In the past I've speculated that no more than 20% of the so-called "neo-conservatives" are registered Republicans. Does anyone know Bill Kristol's party affiliation?
One minor point..the 'weapons we sold' were never WMDS. This is a 'talking point lie' of the left. We sold Sadaam weapons..but not WMDS!! Get your facts straight before u get the ZOT or at least give us a clue that u r being flippant as a zot on the zotties!
I'll bet nobody at the Weekly Standard has anyone in their family tree who ever served in the military. I'd also point out that it was the "neo-conservatives" themselves -- not the political side of the Bush administration -- who had long suggested that the U.S. could win the Iraq war with minimal troop levels.
So..u r a tool...lol. Nope..right after 911..the Lame Stream Press started gunnin for Saddam!! I was there! If u don't have access to Lexus Nexus or even ur last brain cell..call home to momma..cause I can't help u!...LOL
I thought that was the case. But for whatever reason, they didn't wait too long to start clamoring for more troops.
As for military members in the Weekly Standard family tree, I don't know. I suspect you are right.
Bush: No Iraq link to 9/11 found
President says Saddam had ties to al-Qaida, but apparently not to attacks
By SCOTT SHEPARD
COX NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- President Bush, having repeatedly linked Saddam Hussein to the terrorist organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said yesterday there is no evidence that the deposed Iraqi leader had a hand in those attacks, in contrast to the belief of most Americans.
The president's comments came in response to a reporter's question about Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press" program that Iraq was the "geographic base" of the terrorists behind the attacks on New York and Washington.
Bush said yesterday there was no attempt by the administration to try to confuse people about any link between Saddam and Sept. 11.
"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," Bush said. "What the vice president said was is that he (Saddam) has been involved with al-Qaida.
"And al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaida operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat. ... There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties."
Most of the administration's public assertions have focused on the man Bush mentioned, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior Osama bin Laden associate whom officials have accused of trying to train terrorists in the use of poison for possible attacks in Europe, running a terrorist haven in northern Iraq -- an area outside Saddam's control -- and organizing an attack that killed an American aid executive in Jordan last year.
Security analysts, however, say al-Zarqawi made his way to Iraq, where his leg was amputated. . Unconfirmed reports claim he then visited northern Iraq, where a militant Islamic group affiliated with al-Qaida is encamped not far from the border with Iran.
The group, however, far from being an ally of Saddam, sought to replace his secular government with an Islamic regime.
A senior intelligence official, who asked not to be identified, said the information linking the group, Ansar al Islam, to Saddam comes "almost exclusively from defectors produced by the Iraqi opposition. They are not uniformly credible."
Bush's statement was the latest in a series by administration officials this week that appeared to distance the White House from the widely held public perception that Saddam was a key figure in the attacks.
Publicly, at least, Bush has not explicitly blamed the attacks on Saddam. In speech after speech, however, the president has strongly linked Saddam and al-Qaida, the terrorist organization of bin Laden, the renegade Saudi whose followers hijacked jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania.
In his May 1 declaration of military victory in Iraq from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, Bush said, "We have removed an ally of al-Qaida and cut off a source of terrorist funding." He also said, "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror."
Two months earlier, in a speech aimed at mustering public support for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, Bush said, "The attacks of September 11th, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction."
Critics have said the steady drumbeat of that message has tied Saddam to the attacks in the mind of the public. A recent poll by The Washington Post found that nearly seven Americans out of 10 believe Saddam played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, a notion the administration has done little to tamp down.
But retired NATO commander Wesley Clark, in a little noticed appearance on NBC's "Meet The Press" on June 15, charged that "a concerted effort ... to pin 9/11" on Saddam began in the fall of 2001, and "it came from people around the White House." Clark, who declared his campaign for president yesterday, did not identify anyone by name.
It was just weeks after the terrorist attacks that the first link between Saddam and al-Qaida was alleged by the administration. It came from Cheney, who said it had been "pretty well confirmed" that Mohamed Atta, the man held responsible for masterminding the Sept. 11 hijackings, had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in April 2000, an allegation congressional investigators later dismissed.
Sunday, Cheney began the group of Bush administration officials denying any ties between Saddam and Sept. 11. He said "we don't know" whether Saddam was connected to the attacks, but admitted, "It's not surprising that people make that connection."
The vice president also said: "If we are 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, 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."
White House National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, in an interview aired late Tuesday on ABC's "Nightline," said one of the reasons Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged." But she insisted, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."
Her remarks echoed those of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a briefing for reporters at the Pentagon earlier Tuesday. Asked if Saddam was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Rumsfeld replied, "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated to reporters yesterday that the administration never directly linked Saddam to the Sept. 11 strikes.
"If you're talking specifically about the September 11th attacks, we never made that claim," McClellan said. "We do know that there is a long history of Saddam Hussein and his regime and ties to terrorism, including al-Qaida."
The only people to blame for the mess in Iraq all speak Arabic.
LOL!
You're the "tool" - of ignorance. I've just cited you an article quoting Bush saying Saddam wasn't behind 9-11. Cite me an article where the MSM was gunning for Saddam, as you put it, after 9-11. Everybody recognized that the culprit was Osama. The neocons, however, wanted to get Saddam - a goal they'd had before 9-11, so they leveraged this event to their purpose.
What's VERY interesting to me is that 3 years after Saddam's WMD disappeared, Iran now has a nuke weapons program...
Remember where the Iraqi jets went during Gulf War I?
I wonder if he's paid by the thread?
"If you're talking specifically about the September 11th attacks, we never made that claim," McClellan said. "We do know that there is a long history of Saddam Hussein and his regime and ties to terrorism, including al-Qaida."
CASE CLOSED...typical for the LSM..last paragragh..last sentence. Go back to the DU..TOOL!!
Bush and the liberal media are pushing that line, but there are strong indications that Saddam might have bankrolled 9/11. Proof is harder to find, especially when no one in power wants it found.
Another Fineman overreaching analysis. These MSM types will say and do anything to take down the Reps. They keep on trying to replay Vietnam and Watergate.
THat's my point - but you said 9-11, so you were implying there's a link with 9-11. There's a lot of bad guys in the world - starting with Castro, China, North Korea, Mugabe, and Saddam. But just because they're bad doesn't link them to 9-11, or make it appropriate for us to respond to 9-11 by sending troops to die invading their countries. China is a far bigger threat to us than any other country on the face of the earth, but we're trading with them, not invading them. The Iraq invasion was a needless waste of young American lives. Just like Clinton's "nation building" expeditions with the military were.
This is another made up conflict in the MSM.
Destroying and repelling those who promote evil and chaos has always been a mission of civilization. "Neo-con" is not and never was a new, unusual ideology.
For a while we simply forgot that bad people will kill us, if we let them. 9/11 reminded the nation that we needed to get back to work.
You've never gotten what the war on terror is all about, have you? Pity.
And there's plenty of evidence that at the very least, Saddam knew OBL was planning 9/11, as evidenced by Iraq's own newspaper article published in July 2001.
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