Heaneyland!

I never said the thing I'm about to say

Excuse me while I pound my head against the wall. You can read these excerpts from the New York Times while you wait. First, from an article about the findings of the 9/11 commission:

[I]n 17 preliminary staff reports, that panel has called into question nearly every aspect of the administration's response to terror, including the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda were somehow the same foe.

Bush, following the successful Republican strategy of ignoring facts that don't square with their beliefs, has contested that by...um...saying he's right and they're not, nyaah.

President Bush today told soldiers newly returned from distant battlefields that the 9/11 terror attacks and the war in Iraq were inextricably linked.

Bipartisan commissions be damned! This next article really calls for a longer excerpt:

President Bush and Vice President Cheney said yesterday that they remain convinced that Saddam Hussein's government had a long history of ties to Al Qaeda, a day after the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that its review of classified intelligence found no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" that linked Iraq to the terrorist organization.

Mr. Bush, responding to a reporter's question about the report after a White House cabinet meeting yesterday morning, said: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda" is "because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

Holy tautology, Batman! Bush and Cheney harp on a decade-old meeting between an Iraq official and Al Qaeda as if the fact that they were once in the same room at the same time justifies invading another country. But to return to the first article:

The sole example [Bush] cited of "numerous contacts" between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda was a meeting between a senior Iraq intelligence agent and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan in 1994, one that the commission said appeared to have gone nowhere.

I mean, if you're going to invade someone based on old associations with Osama bin Laden that didn't work out, then shouldn't we be sending troops to Reagan's grave?

Posted by Francis at 08:22 PM