every night and every day...
Dick Cheney continued his campaign of lies and deceit against the American People and the Constitution he swore to protect and uphold. This week, on comedian Rush Limaugh's show, Cheney had the audacity to repeat his bogus allegations that Iraq and Al Qaeda were working togethre before our invasion in 2003.
This was after the release of a report that captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam and two of his former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not in any way directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This, not according to democrats, or the liberal media or any of the administrations perceived enemies, but according to a Defense Department report released this week.
The Pentagon report also contains new details about the intelligence community's pre-war consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts. Judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious and/or unconfirmed information.
"This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told the comedian's listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his bogus argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of Al Qaeda."
Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, requested the report's declassification, and said in a written statement that the complete text (a summary was released in Feb.) demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office, run by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith, had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.
And the CIA was not alone or on an island with their view. The Defense Department's own intelligence showed that there was no actual "relationship" as described falsely by the vice-president to this day. And unfortuanately, too many people have gotten blinded by the macho rhetoric of Cheney and Company to see thru all the blatant lies.
The only person who reported and tried to defend the presumtions that the Bush / Cheney "faith based" crowd wanted to believe, and the facts be damned, was Bush loyalist Doug Feith. Feith also reccomended to Cheney directly that they should just ignore the CIA and those who disagreed with their made-up assessments.
The rebutting of the administrations wishful pre emtive conclusions were buried from the get-go, as the report shows. Feith's orig. argument, entitled "Iraq and Al Qaeda" was rebutted and shown to have "no intelligence value" with at least 15 of the 26 points directly refuted. But as so many people are realizing for the 1st time now, these "wolves in sheep's clothing" were going to invade Iraq for their own purposes and interests, instead of the american people's interests and purposes, come hell or highwater.
A joint cheif member saw the political agenda boiling to the surface ahead of any facts early on. He told the author of a request to widely circulate the 'Making The Case" paper " that putting it out there would be playing into the hands of people" such as then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and belittled the author for trying to support "some agenda of people in the building."
Was it that Feith was right on some things and wrong in others? Not according to the report, which noted..."that post-war debriefs of Sadaam Hussein, [former Iraqi foreign minister] Tariq Aziz, [former Iraqi intelligence minister Mani al-Rashid] al Tikriti, and [senior al-Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh] al-Libi, as well as document exploitation by DIA all confirmed that the Intelligence Community was correct: Iraq and al-Qaida did not cooperate in all categories alleged by Feith's office."
Oh, and one more thing.
Zarqawi, whom Cheney who continues to depict as an agent of al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war, was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group, according to several intelligence analysts. He publicly allied himself with al-Qaeda after the U.S. invasion, in early 2004.
But of course, some will continue to blame the media, democrats or whomever else they can try to pin it on. And the wolves in sheep's clothing will continue to rape, pillage and plunder with the blessing of their 30% base that will swallow any lie Cheney and his pundits tell.
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