Hey gbajiFollow

doesnt count if the smiley doesnt show...

Let's take as a given the premise that most Americans either cannot or do not distinguish between "Al-Qeada" and "9/11".

Let's ALSO take as a given that Bush's PR people are astute enough to recognize this fact.

Lastly, let's take as a given that the slogan "War on Terror" (or, "Tara" if you're a mentally defective President from Texas with an inexplicable grudge against a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer character) came into popular use after the attacks on 9/11 and therefore has an ingrained association in people's minds with that particular date...and that the Bush's PR folk are ALSO aware of this fact.

Now, if the Bush camp says repeatedly that the War in Iraq is VITAL to the War on Terror, isn't it LOGICAL to assume that most people are going to interpret that statement as "Iraq has something to do with 9/11" because in most people's minds, terror=Al-Qeada=9/11.

Isn't it ALSO logical to assume that if the Bush camp's PR people have even the tiniest inkling of the way the popular psyche works, then they're aware of this effect, and are deliberately invoking it to get the public to favor a questionable war?

Sorry to interject logic into your little semantics-nitpicking attempt to divert the subject from the actual facts, but in light of the three premises with which I began this response, I'd say it's not the least bit unreasonable to believe that the Bush PR folk have deliberately led the American people to FEEL (even if they don't actually know a reason why) Iraq has something to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Edited, Sep 12th 2006 at 8:38pm EDT by Ambrya

All I did was quote Bush. You still haven't quoted me anything to support your argument that this is all the liberal's media's fault.



So? There was a relationship between AQ and Pakistan, between AQ and Saudi Arabia, between AQ and Yemen, between AQ and Iran, between AQ and Germany, etc... What does this prove, or what does this contribute to the public debate? Absolutely nothing. So why did Bush mention it repeatedly? Why did he never talk about the relationship between Pakistan and AQ, which is much more important and relevant than the Iraq/AQ one? I can't think of any reasonable reason.

Unless, of course, he is trying to imply that this relationship led directly to 9/11. In which case he's linking 9/11 and Iraq.

You see, everytime you see one of these quotes, you say "So what? All he's saying is that there were informal and unofficial contacts between some people in Iraq, and some people in AQ, but it's not related to 9/11". Then why does he mention it over and over, if it has nothing to do with 9/11? Why mention something that no one is certain of, and that has had no impact on the US?

I know you try your best to twist and turn their words as hard as you can to make it appear as though they don't talk about 9/11. But if they're not talking about 9/11, why mention it? And, more specifically, why mention it at the expense of places and people that really are connected to 9/11?



This is brilliant. How to twist words 1.01. So, according to you, he's refeerring to the region (the ME), when he says "it". Let's see which one makes more sense, "it" as Iraq, or "it" as the ME.



Hmmm.



I know which one makes more sense to me. But still, i'm sure you'll find a way to say that in fact he's referring to a metaphorical "base" in a "conceptual" region.



Do you know it has never been *proven* that white crows don't exist? The burden is not on ordinary people to prove that Iraq was not involved in 9/11, but on your stupid government to prove that it was. If they can't do it, despite all the intelligence twisting and them going to war on that assumption, then we can safely assume they were not involved.



All I did was quote him. Nothing more. So, in answer to your question, no.

Anyway, Ambrya got it spot on. These people are not stupid.

I can't believe you are still here arguing you were right to invade Iraq, and that the Bush administration never said there were links between 9/11 and Iraq. Of course, we can always wonder why they invaded Iraq if they never said there were links between the two, but I'm sure you'll pull out another rabbit out of the hat to explain that one.

Pie. The discussion is about pie.

I like Key Lime Pie the most.



I think I'll go make some when I get home tonight...

First of all, the claim that just because Iraq didn't like us is a justification for us to go to war, kill tens of thousands of Iraqi's, squander hundreds of billions of dollars, get several thousand of our own young soldier's killed, and squander the goodwill of the world is absurd. I don't like my neighbor's yappy dog and sometimes I wish it were dead. That doesn't mean I can be arrested for animal abuse. Having the "desire" to harm someone or something isn't a crime.

I sincerely doubt most American's would disagree with me on this. You can't punish someone for thinking something. Iraq hated us--whooptie-doo. Unless they had the intent and ability to attack us (neither of which has been demonstrated, and most claims of which--such as the WMDs--have been shown to be false or grossly overinflated for the purposes of selling the public on the war) then...wait for it...THE WAR HAS NO JUSTIFICATION! American people would NOT get behind a "pre-emptive strike" because we're not the thought police and don't believe people should be punished simply for not liking us. So instead, the Bush camp presented Iraq as having "ties" to 9/11 through intimation and verbal sleight of hand.



The Bush administration did everything right.

Convince the public Iraq has WMDs...check.

Convince the public that there were material ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda...check.

Mislead the public that the war in Iraq has something to do with 9/11...check

Yep, yep Curious George did absolutely everything right...if his intent was to mislead the public into supporting a war that they would otherwise find to have highly questionable justification.

French Apple, with the buttery-crumbly stuff on top, with a healthy scoopy of vanilla-bean ice cream on top.

I prefer hairpie.

He spoke about Al-qaeda and *many* other nations. He spoke more broadly about other terrorist groups and their connections to various states as well. Don't you remember the whole "axis of evil" bit? Or has that conveniently slipped your mind for the purpose of this discussion?

The difference is that we already had a cause for war with Iraq. Iraq was already in violation of multiple UN sanctions. It was already in a state of "cease-fire" with the US. It was in a state of violations of that cease-fire agreement. Thus, the option for invasion was open in Iraq, where it was *not* with those other nations.

Those other nations were not led by someone who'd promised time and again to attack the US using any means available. Those other nations were not at a state of war with the US. There's a whole list of criteria that Iraq met that those did not.

Sheesh! Ever feel like you're going in circles? We've had this discussion before. I've pointed this out before. The whole "but if it was about prevention, why did we target Iraq?" thing has been hashed out dozens of times. Sure. There's a whole set of "bad nations" out there. But Iraq was arguably the worst of them from a US security standpoint, and was the one that we could actually do something about. That's a combination of factors that makes Iraq the logical choice.



Sigh...

Stop looking at one thing all by itself. See the bigger picture. You can't blanketly say "10 other nations did X, so we can't punish just one of them for it". You have to realize that one of those nations is doing X, and Y, and Z. It's not just one thing. It's the combination of things. And no. No one's trying to imply that Iraq's relationship had anymore to do with 9/11 then any of those other nations. I'm not sure how many different ways I can say the same thing before it sinks in.

Our decision to invade Iraq had NOTHING to do with their degree of involvement in 9/11. Is that enough? You'd think so, but it seems like no matter how many times you're told this, you keep wanting to come back to it. The process is incredibly simple. You ask yourself "What's the worse thing that could happen right now?". The answer is "An attack of the same scale as 9/11, but using WMDs of some kind". The next question is "Where's the most likely place that terrorists could obtain WMDs?". The answer is incredibly simple: Iraq. It's the only nation on that list with the capability to make WMDs. The connections with terrorist groups (not just Al-qaeda) to potentially use them that way. And the hatred of the US to actually do it.

No other nation fits those three criteria. Except *perhaps* North Korea. But they don't actually "hate" us that much. And they don't have the same level of ties to Islamic fundamentalists. And it's the only one even close. Iran might. But it has no biological or chemical weapons programs to speak of, and it's nuclear program is still in progress. There's still time to prevent them from getting to that point. Iraq ends up being the only real "threat" that might result in that kind of worst case scenario attack.

Is it really that hard to see? I don't think so.



Because he's not trying to tie Iraq to 9/11. He's trying to get people (like you) to understand the conditions I just described. But for some bizarre reason, some of you are so insistent on looking backwards at 9/11, that you refuse to realize that there are dozens of other ways we could be attacked, by dozens of different terrorist groups, and in manners far more deadly then 9/11 was. That's the "threat" that Bush is trying to protect us from. That's the reason he must make people see the connections between Iraq and terrorism (again. Not just Al-qaeda). Because that's the next threat. Not the last one. You don't honestly believe that all we have to do is fight to prevent one terrorist group (Al-qaeda) from repeating the exact type of attack they did on 9/11? If we accept that we must protect from a wider assortment of attacks, from a wider group of potential terrorists, then we need to look at where those attacks will come from, who might fund them, and where they'll get any weapons they might use. Given those questions, and the time frame, Iraq really does pop up to the top of the list.



Because 9/11 is the event that should be waking us up, not just to identical threats, but others as well. In exactly the way an advocate for "child saftey" might use a dramatic accident in which a dozen children were killed to push a more general agenda including other saftey concepts that are otherwise unrelated to the accident in question. There's nothing wrong with that. Dramatic events often are the triggers that motivate us to examine what we're doing and come up with better was to do it. If all you learn from 9/11 is to not let Al-qaeda hijack any more planes, then you've failed miserably. The lesson is much broader then that.



Sigh. You're replacing the wrong words. The first part is in reference to Iraq. It's the second part (which you made no effort to do the word replacement on) that is referring to the Middle East region in general. You can't simply replace the words though, due to the way he's using them. They're concepts. He's saying that Iraq is in the heart of the "geographic base" of the terrorists. He's clearly talking about the Middle East in general. Not trying to imply that Iraq is the geographic base, but that it's in the middle of it.

You keep looking at the first half, but ignoring the second (which is interesting, since it's the second half that you're using in your argument). If Iraq is at the "heart of the geographic base", then it can't *be* the geographic base, now can it? He's clearly stating that putting a democracy in the middle of the middle east will have a strong impact on the region and will make it possible for that new democracy to be a starting point to reducing the strangle hold that terrorist organizations have in the area. Dunno. Seemed kinda obvious to me. You have to really twist the words around to assume he's calling Iraq the source of the terrorist attacks that have hit us already.




Um. Except that they're not trying to prove that Iraq was involved in 9/11. Why on earth are you demanding that they do that?!

You're trying to argue that they're misleading people because they haven't proven something that they never claimed in the first place! Isn't that a bit insane? I think so... But you're forced to take that position because you're starting with the end assumption (Bush is misleading us to get us into Iraq), and then having to twist everything else that came before in order to make it fit that assumption.

If you simply drop the assumption that the reason Bush talks about both Iraq and 9/11 in the same speach is to try to convince people that Iraq was involved in the attack itself, then everything makes a hell of a lot more sense. If instead, you actually listen to what he's saying, you'll realize that he's talking about 9/11 as an example of the kinds of things we need to prevent in the future and that Iraq is a likely future source of those kinds of attacks.

The simpliest explanation is usually the right one. In this case, you have to go through incredible mental gyrations just so you can keep your assumptions that Bush is somehow lying to us all. Hmmm... No thanks. I'll just assume that your assumptions are wrong and go on with my life.




Again. Not one of those quotes included a statement where a Bush administration official claimed that Iraq was in any way involved in the 9/11 attacks. How about you find *one* example that supports your argument and then I'll respond? Is that really so much to ask?

I don't think so.

Edited, Sep 13th 2006 at 10:07pm EDT by gbaji

Do I get pie?... ;)

Gbaji


How about this one?

Tim russert show 8th september 2002. from Dick Cheney.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I’m not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can’t say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn’t he there, again, it’s the intelligence business.

Mr. RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that and the president?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: It’s credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it’s unconfirmed at this point. We’ve got...

Mr. RUSSERT: Anything else?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is-again, I want to separate out 9/11, from the other relationships between Iraq and the al-Qaeda organization. But there is a pattern of relationships going back many years. And in terms of exchanges and in terms of people, we’ve had recently since the operations in Afghanistan-we’ve seen al-Qaeda members operating physically in Iraq and off the territory of Iraq. We know that Saddam Hussein has, over the years, been one of the top state sponsors of terrorism for nearly 20 years. We’ve had this recent weird incident where the head of the Abu Nidal organization, one of the world’s most noted terrorists, was killed in Baghdad. The announcement was made by the head of Iraqi intelligence. The initial announcement said he’d shot himself. When they dug into that, though, he’d shot himself four times in the head. And speculation has been, that, in fact, somehow, the Iraqi government or Saddam Hussein had him eliminated to avoid potential embarrassment by virtue of the fact that he was in Baghdad and operated in Baghdad. So it’s a very complex picture to try to sort out.

If you truly cannot see that Cheney, in this exchange, is not only connecting 9/11 to Sadaam Hussein and therefore Iraq, while blatantly lying through his teeth, you are even more dim than I would have thought possible.





the above from here

and another thing....

In this survey of 944 soldiers in Iraq.....

85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”


seems to me that if the Bushies didn't try and tell evryone that there was a connection, theres a pretty serious problem with communication going on somewhere, and theres gonna be a few pretty pissed off heavily armed and seriously traumatised military types wondering what the hell they are doing in Iraq atm

I didn't read anything else you posted, obviously, but I think it's totally reasonable to expect any qualified Anti-Christ to have some sort of precognitive ability.

gbaji, my dear chap. I find your total trust in your poiticians somewhat endearing. But, in all honesty, do you really believe, deep down, at the heart of your bottom, that Cheney,Bush and all the others in their gang, truly have your (or anyone elses) interests at heart?

I mean, seriously dude. can you with your hand on your heart, say that the same people who have been the root cause of all the destruction wrought in your name in Iraq, did so, because they honestly believed that Iraq, with its army of (mostly) conscripts, equiped with outdated weapons, and marching about in flip-flops, was a serious threat to the USA? the same USA that has the most formidable military, and offensive missile (nuclear no less!) system the world has ever seen, and as you will recall, isn't afraid to use it.

Why do so many people still believe that Hussein was responsible for 9/11, if the bushies didn't keep on connecting the two things? I really truly dont understand your explanation that its the fault of the liberal media. As far as i can recall the liberal media has been shouting about the lack of connection between the two. Yet you keep insisting that everyone, except yourself and your honest God-fearing politicians, are missing the point.

I put it to you that they are a bunch of lying, no good, dishonest brutal, power crazed scumbags, that are in Iraq for there own ends. They cheated and lied, are still cheating and lying. they don't give a flying fart about who gets hurt or killed, wether its the tens of thousands of civilians who have died, or the several thousand soldiers who have also karked it. they are there for the money, or the power trip, or (and I truly hope this isnt true) the religious war that has been discussed in ever more mainstream circles.

What I'd like to know is this. Why do you think that this administration is honest and caring and all sweetness and light, when everything they touch is turning to custard. Iraq, Afghanistan, the ME in general, international relations generally, the **** fight that is N. Orleans, the economy, the cost of fuel (who is making a packet out of that again?). When everything that George Dubya has touched in the past has had its wheels fall off, why oh why do you think that he's doing a good job now? Im at a loss to understand why you keep defending him/them when it is so blatantly obvious to most everyone else on the planet that they are seriously ****ing ****ed.

Why do you think that they, above all other power-mad political animals, are any better than the rest, when all the evidence is pointing the other way?

Id really like to think that you will reply with something that will help me to understand where your coming from with this. Im truly interestd what makes you think this way. Please.