FYI...the statement the MSM has been making:
On July 18, 2003, the administration, facing criticism for the intelligence used to justify the war, declassified an eight-page part of the NIE dubbed "key judgments" and conducted a lengthy background briefing with reporters to discuss it.“Key judgments" is the operative word here. They were declassified by Tenet in October of 2002, six days after the NIE was complete per the following information:
On October 7, 2002 DCI Tenet sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee declassifying portions of its new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
Another article:
A 25-page version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was released in October 2002. It made clear-cut statements about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities in two pages of "Key Judgments."A copy of the Key Judgments document can be found here. Warning: .pdf file.
As usual, the MSM gets it wrong. More info I just found:
The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." - Statement of Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL).
Wow, what a bunch of paranoid nonsense. I'm not just picking on you ravingnutter. I'm looking at all these posts in amazement that anyone still believes this tripe about Saddam being behind 911 and having WMDs.
You guys need to get up to speed. The CIA concluded in 2004 that ol' Saddam was faking having WMDs because (for whatever bizzare reason) he thought that Israel and Iran were more of a threat to him, and for some reason he thought that if they thought he had them it would make them less likely to attack him. (sounds strange but hey, we are talking about Saddam).
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2006/03/saddam_hussein_maintained_wmd_illusion_to_fool_israel/
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/07/1097089490912.html?from=storylhs
As for the 'evidence' of a connection between Saddam and 911, presented in the link to this post, it all boils down to the word of Iraqi exhiles with every reason to lie and our own intel that bought into the lie. In fact, the 911 commission concluded exactly the opposite.
The 9/11 commission concluded that Osama bin Laden had been "willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq" at one time in the 1990s but that the al Qaeda leader "had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army."
The 520-page report said investigators found no evidence that any "contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship."
"Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States," it said.
President Bush said in September 2003 that "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 [attacks]."
So, are you calling GB a liar?
Saddam was a liar alright. Such a good liar that he screwed himself over. He must have been really naive (stupid?) to think that telling his people that he really had WMDs, when he didn't, in the hope that it would be picked up by Mossad or Iran intel, wouldn't also be picked up by our NSA/CIA and provide them with just the propaganda ammo they were looking for as a reason to invade. Dumb-da-dumb-dumb.
No doubt he would have liked to possess WMDs for his own purposes, but guess what, he didn't. Why? Because the sanctions were actually working enough to keep them out of his hands.
There's no doubt that GB really did think Saddam had 'em before Operation Shock and Awe. And it would be a reasonable conclusion that he might be in cahoots with Al-Qaeda given the evidence available at the time. But in the end both theories were wrong. End of story.
Sorry I got a bit off track with that post. I know this thread wasn't really about 911 and Saddam etc. It was the original post's inclusion of the following that got me on that track:
Here are just a few of the verifiable facts that the media intentionally misleads the American public about:
As early as 1998, Media Reports Connect Saddam to 9-11 Plot (How the American Media engages in TREASON to support TERRORISM in the U.S.)
-- That and other posts on other threads from people who are still looking for those WMDs and 911/Saddam connections prompted that last post.