This deserves more scrutiny:
Q The Vice President, who I see standing over there, said yesterday that Saddam Hussein has long-established ties to al Qaeda. As you know, this is disputed within the U.S. intelligence community. Mr. President, would you add any qualifiers to that flat statement? And what do you think is the best evidence of it?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Zarqawi. Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda. He's the person who's still killing. He's the person -- and remember the email exchange between al Qaeda leadership and he, himself, about how to disrupt the progress toward freedom?
Saddam Hussein also had ties to terrorist organizations, as well.
In other words, he was affiliated with terrorism -- Abu Nidal, the paying of fam= ilies of suiciders to go kill innocent people. I mean, he was no doubt a destabilizing force. And we did the absolute right thing in removing him from power. And the world is better off with him not in power.
"Zarqawi is the best evidence", huh? Since one could fathom that W is name-dropping without fear of accountability or large-scale scrutiny, let's excercise a little civic duty and dig into this latest golden link between Saddam (I think we can expand that to Iraqi leadership and planners) and Al-Quaeda.......after I do a little "real work"....how duties compete.
2 comments:
Since Zarqawi has been operationaly linked to AQ - and since Zarqawi has been operationaly linked to iraqi insurgency post war - then Zarqawi is demonstrative of the support of AQ for Sadman Hussyvein and vice versa??? is that what bushy was trying to say or more likely not say but imply...
from the Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0622/p09s01-codc.html
The point, as it so often is in politics, isn't what those in the administration actually said with all their link talk; it's what they implied.
Since it began talking about invading Iraq, this administration pushed two main lines of argument as justification. First, Iraq needed regime change because the government there was amassing or had amassed weapons of mass destruction. Second, Iraq was likely to use those weapons against the US or sell them to someone who would because it was part of the Al Qaeda-led jihad against the United States.
With the first argument largely discredited, the White House is holding on tenaciously to the second - tenaciously, but carefully. For the past year members of this administration have been dancing along the line of connecting, but not completely connecting, Al Qaeda and Iraq.
There are numerous examples, but one of the best is Cheney's comment on "Meet the Press" last September. "If we're successful in Iraq," he said, "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Parse that carefully and you'll see he is 100 percent correct. If the US brings a stable democracy to Iraq, it will strike a blow at "the heart" of "the geographic base" of Islamic terrorism: the Middle East. But the wording, if you will, leads the reader or listener to more dramatic conclusions, particularly when the "9/11" is added in there. They are led toward the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda are working together.
Of course, members of the administration are generally pretty careful not to cross that line. They're careful not to say it explicitly; they just let the public infer it.
That's not exactly unprecedented. Semantics and careful lawyerly phrasing are all too common here. But straightforward talking is supposed to be this administration's strong point. And for all the talk of restoring honor and integrity to the White House, here we are again arguing over how to define "relationship."
Well put. Stick this in your fortune cookie, Karl Rove:
Confucius. Book 14, Chapter 5.
Book 14, Hsien Wan.
The Master said, "The virtuous will be sure to speak correctly, but those whose speech is good may not always be virtuous. Men of principle are sure to be bold, but those who are bold may not always be men of principle."
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