Anybody who knew anything about the middle east realized that al Qaeda’s goal was to overthrow secular governments such as Saddam’s, and understood that the Bush administration’s claims of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda were fabricated. The Washington Post provides more evidence of this today:
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides “all confirmed” that Hussein’s regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.
The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community’s prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.
The Bush administration conned many into supporting their policies based upon the false claims about a tie between al Qaeda and Iraq. Dick Cheney’s not going to give up on what he sees as a useful propaganda tool:
The report’s release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq “before we ever launched” the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.
“This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq,” Cheney told Limbaugh’s listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had “led the charge for Iraq.” Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would “play right into the hands of al-Qaeda.”
No doubt those who listen to Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh’s show will continue to believe that Saddam was resonsible for 9/11. They’re the same people who also believe that there was WMD in Iraq, that the Swift Boat Liars both served with Kerry and were providing honest reports, that intelligent design better explains the development of complex lifeforms than evolution, and that there is a scientific controversy over climate change.
