Cheney lies even as truth emerges

By Libby Spencer

Cheney and Rush Limbaugh yukked it up on Rush's show with a good old fashioned, liberal-bashing gabfest. The money quote was Cheney's trotting out the long debunked contention that there was any nexus whatsoever between Saddam Hussien and Al-Qaeda.

...Remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. He ran a training camp in Afghanistan for Al-Qaeda, then migrated after we went into Afghanistan and shut 'em down there, he went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then of course led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. ...

Little wonder that 30% of Americans still support this administration if they only listen to Rush for their news. TPM Muckraker has the links that establish that Zarqawi actually took up residence in Northern Iraq, among the Kurds, an area over which Saddam had little control and that Saddam feared his influence as much as we did and that Zarqawi didn't align himself with AQ until 2004. Not to mention, the US apparently had a chance to take out Zarqawi before the invasion but didn't do so - for reasons unknown, but it's not difficult to draw the conclusion they didn't want to disturb their casus belli for the invasion.

Providing the current debunking of Cheney's lies on the matter, a declassified DoD report released yesterday provides the latest proof on Feith's chop shop's cooked up intelligence.

...the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.

"Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on specific terrorist operations," that CIA report said, adding that discussions on the issue were "necessarily speculative."

A footnote to the report also adds, that "post-war debriefs... ...all confirmed that the Intelligence Community was correct: Iraq and al-Qaida did not cooperate in all categories" alleged by Feith's office." This of course is polite polispeak to say the White House lied through its teeth to get their war.

This is all old news really but it does serve to reinforce the treasonous conduct of the White House throughout its administration. Given that there are so many new converts to reality-based thinking, it's a necessary and important part of the process of reining in the Imperial President before he does any further damage to our national security. Perhaps it's not too late to impeach after all.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)