I have said in the past that I think that as time passes, historians, and the American people will have a progressively worse opinion of the Bush/Cheney administration (yes, it can get worse, it can go from 20% favorable to zero). This is the opposite of what several Republican pundits have tried to assert. The problem for the former administration is that the truth is going to come out regarding some of the things they have done and those revelations are going to be devastating.
Yesterday, Cheney inadvertently outed himself as a liar regarding a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Taking us back to 2002 and 2003, in order to sell the Iraq war, one will recall that there were claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, pilot-less drones that Iraq could use to fly those weapons to the US, and claims that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda to attack us on 9/11. Cheney weighed in on the reported link between 9/11, Al Qaeda and Iraq several times, yesterday being the most recent and revealing episode. As reported here, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23228.html in an Andy Barr article in Politico:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says there was “never any evidence” that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq played any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
“On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11, there was never any evidence to prove that,” Cheney said during an interview Monday night with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren.
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The video of this interview can be seen at http://www.politico.com/singletitlevideo.html?bcpid=1155201977&bctid=25026448001
Barr’s article goes on to point out that this directly contradicts what then Vice President Cheney said in a 2003 Meet the Press Interview on NBC when Cheney said:
“the Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack.”
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But there is even more evidence that Barr missed. Consider the 2004 interview Cheney had on CNBC as reported here at CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/18/cheney.iraq.al.qaeda/ when Cheney said:
"There clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming "It goes back to the early '90s. It involves a whole series of contacts, high-level contacts with Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials."
"The press, with all due respect, (is) often times lazy, often times simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework."
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Well, I have a response for Dick Cheney on his last point. I’ve done my homework concerning his statements on Iraq and 9/11 and here are the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiNtpIpD6k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RytxVNM0llQ
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Cheney repeatedly made assertions that there were high-level connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda and, through asserting a meeting happened between Iraq officials and Mohammed Atta six months before 9/11, insinuated that there was a connection between Iraq and 9/11. Cheney was so effective in this insinuation that 40% of the American people believed Iraq had a role in 9/11 as recently as 2007.
If the lying on this point wasn’t enough, in the interview Cheney sought to blame the CIA for various security & defense failures of the administration including 9/11, saying:
“They (the CIA) misread Saddam Hussein's intent when he invaded Kuwait in 1990,” Cheney said. “They underestimated the extent of the Iraqi program to try to acquire nuclear capability back in '90 and '91. They missed 9/11.”
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