Cheney Cited Iraq Intelligence That Was Known To Be False
Cheney Cited Iraq Intelligence That Was Known To Be False
One of the given rationales for attacking Iraq was that Saddam was linked to the 9-11 hijackers through a claim that Mohammad Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April 2001 before the attacks. The supposed Prague meeting was advanced by former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, using evidence obtained from the Czech government. But according to the FBI, Atta was in Virginia Beach at the time. The Czech government later backed off its claims, but Vice President Cheney stuck to it. In December 2001, Cheney said:
“Well, what we now have that’s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that–it’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.” [NBC, Meet the Press, 12/9/01]
Now we know that through a recently-disclosed British paper, the Bush administration had doubts about whether the Prague meeting did in fact occur. In the 3/18/02 memo, former British Ambassador Christopher Meyer said Paul Wolfowitz told him “there might be doubt about the alleged meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker on 9/11, and Iraqi intelligence (did we, he asked, know anything more about this meeting?).”
The new evidence indicates that Cheney had reason to believe that his claims of a “pretty well confirmed” meeting were in fact not confirmed at all.
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22 Responses to “Cheney Cited Iraq Intelligence That Was Known To Be False”
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guess we know who Safire used for his source. Where’s Okrent when you need him?
June 13th, 2005 at 4:25 pmDated 3-18-05 LETS NOT FORGET THIS JUICY PIECE OF EVIDENCE.
The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq’s oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC’s Newsnight has revealed.
Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq’s oil once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of “Big Oil” executives and US State Department “pragmatists”.
“Big Oil” appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.
Insiders told Newsnight that planning began “within weeks” of Bush’s first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.
An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d’etat.
Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.
WERE IS MR. ALJIBURY?
I’d like to hear his testimony right now!
I’D ALSO LIKE TO SEE THE STATE DEPARTMENT INTERVIEW OR REPORT.
June 13th, 2005 at 4:41 pmLets see how they handle their own evidence.
Why has the American media not discussed this!!!!!??? Are there grand machinations in place that are sheilding and barring it from appearing? I just don’t understand…….Trust me, I believe you……just want to see people questioning and people grow angry…..
June 13th, 2005 at 5:01 pmEverybody is more interested in the fate of M.J.
June 13th, 2005 at 5:14 pmNever mind that our country is being destroyed.
So the liars knew they were lying when they said they weren’t lying. No surprise there. The liars got caught. No surprise there either. Nobody seems to care. Or more importantly that there is no mechanism for punishing the liars.
Elections are not punishment mechanisms. Not when electronic voting machines give tainted fixed results (see “Rob Georgia”).
How then do these bastards get punished? Until this gets figured out and implemented, the screaming idiots that run around inside the MonkeyPalace will continue to proclaim that “We are now empire” and are beyond reach of the normal course of history.
June 13th, 2005 at 6:07 pmCheney has no problem doing business with terrorist supporting governments.
What’s a little lying?
June 13th, 2005 at 7:45 pmCheney has never minded telling a lie if he thought it would get him somewhere.
This administration has used the PNAC manifesto as a roadmap from the day they got into office. Why hasn’t that been used as evidence against them?
June 13th, 2005 at 8:52 pmMichael Jackson is more important than Dick Cheney. Who cares if Dick Cheney is lying again? What else is new? Iraq has lots of oil and Neverland doesn’t. 400 billion barrels of oil is worth 20 plus trillion dollars, why should the Iraqis have that money when the oil companies deserve it? It pays to lie all of the time. Zapata Engineering is looking for WMD, and GIs don’t like that either.
There is going to be more killing again tomorrow in Iraq. War is good business and business is good.
Go back to sleep and don’t worry about a thing. It’s all under control.
June 13th, 2005 at 9:00 pmTrying to understand the dates…
On 12/9/01, Cheney claims “confirmed”
On 3/18/02, Wolfy had “doubts”
If the dates were reversed, then a slam-dunk. But maybe the doubts truly did arise *after* they thought they had confirmed the intel.
I can easily see this being the logic that gets used. Like with DSM: sure they were talking about war in July ‘02. But thinking changed before the UN was approached. And by the time Congress was consulted, the viewpoint reported in the DSM was long abandoned.
At least from watching the Bush/Blair press conference from last week, and Colon Powell’s statements to Jon Stewart, I get the impression they will try to deflect the British Memos with this sort of logic.
June 13th, 2005 at 11:52 pmDemocracyForAmerica.com is asking its members to help make decisions on how to put the lies (minutes) in the minds of every American.
June 14th, 2005 at 12:22 amJoin the grassroots organization and make suggestions.
They do not want to let BushCo off the hook.
Check them out, share your ideas, make a difference!
http://www.petitiononline.com/Dean/petition.html
Keep Dean at the DNC. He scares the right. He should choose his words a bit more carefully. Fundies instead of Christians, but he is energizing the base. Keep him where he is for now.
June 14th, 2005 at 1:49 amDoesn’t the PATRIOT act say something about providing false intelligence? Isn’t there some jail time for this?
June 14th, 2005 at 2:53 amThe Patriot Act is for schmucks like me, not big guys like Wolfowitz and Vice-President Cheney. They’re above the law and can do any thing they damn well please. There isn’t a thing anybody can do about it. It doesn’t matter how much evidence there was concocted to trump up charges against Saddam or to find WMD, the war was going to take place. Iraq is now liberated. Twenty four more dead in Kirkuk today, so it’s another day of unabated slaughter.
Paul and Dick should go to Baghdad and admire their newly acquired prize. See what they have wrought and judge for themselves if it was worth it or not. They could take along Madeline Albright, too.
I’m sure the schmucks their would welcome them with cake and flowers.
If I were you, I’d go take a nap and dream a little dream, this living is too much like a nightmare. No wonder Howard Dean was screaming before the election. He can’t help it. It’s all too much. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, what’s that?
Get your sons and daughters to join the military, just like all of the members of Congress are doing. The twins joined yesterday. Do your part.
June 14th, 2005 at 9:56 amI’m sure the schmucks ‘there’ would welcome them with cake and flowers.
I try to re-read my writing, but sometimes these mistakes slip through the cracks.
Everybody makes mistakes, so you really can’t blame George Bush for making a few too. Evidence? What evidence? We don’t need no stinking evidence.
That little ditty about all of the children of the members of Congress joining the military and George’s daughters enlisting, I was mistaken. Must have been dreaming. It was based upon bad information or fixed facts or something like that. I’m going back to sleep, my nightmares are heaven compared to this living.
June 14th, 2005 at 10:04 amWhat’s more outrageous is that AFTER the Prague connection had been debunked, Cheney was asked on CNBC about his “Pretty well confirmed” statement, and he replied, “I never said that.” Hardly anyone followed up on that lie other than the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
June 14th, 2005 at 10:06 amJon Stewart interviewed C. Powell toughter and more to the point than ANY OTHER MEDIA MOUTH! What’s that tell ya?
June 14th, 2005 at 11:10 amThe “BUSH LIED” crowd keeps trumpeting that we have found no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (We did find sarin in one shell lobbed at occupation forces.) But Bob Woodward in “Plan of Attack” informs us that George Tenet, who announced his resignation as CIA director on June 3, told George W. Bush that the case for Iraqi possession of WMDs was a “slam dunk.” That was the conclusion as well of every other competent intelligence agency in the world.
Tenet was right. Given that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction, indeed was developing nuclear weapons before the 1991 Gulf War, and given that Saddam’s regime had not accounted for WMDs he had possessed, any prudent intelligence agency would have to have concluded that he still had them. Moreover, there was no evidence that could have been obtained which would have convinced a prudent intelligence agency that Saddam did not possess them. This argument wasn’t made in the run-up to the war because Colin Powell and Tony Blair convinced George W. Bush to agree to a round of United Nations inspections. But the U.N. inspectors couldn’t prove that Saddam didn’t have WMDs. Given his past behavior, we had no basis for concluding he didn’t.
And we had no way of being sure that he would not arm Al Qaeda with them. That is the conclusion of Stephen Hayes’s “The Connection: How Al Qaeda’s Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America.” It is conventional wisdom around Washington, retailed by Richard Clarke, Sen. Carl Levin and Newsweek. But, as Hayes demonstrates, this conventional wisdom is wrong.
As George Tenet testified in October 2002, there were contacts going back to the early 1990s between agents of Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Clarke, when he served in the Clinton administration, said the same thing, as did many others in the Clinton administration. Czech officials believe that Sept. 11 hijacker Muhammad Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in August 2001. Hayes also reveals that in January 2000 Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, acting under orders from Iraqi intelligence, accompanied two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to a meeting in Malaysia that the CIA has concluded was a planning session for the assault on the U.S.S. Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks.
As Hayes is careful to note, some of the evidence of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties is questionable. Intelligence evidence often is. But it is interesting that many who criticize Bush for not “connecting the dots” before Sept. 11 are also criticizing those who connect the dots on Iraq-Al Qaeda ties. These critics seem to believe that Saddam Hussein’s regime should have been considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But foreign policy is not bound by the rules of a criminal court, and Saddam’s previous behavior entitled us to regard him as guilty until proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.
So put yourself in the position of George W. Bush in late 2002 and early 2003. You must assume that Hussein has or can produce weapons of mass destruction. And you know that Iraqi agents have met with Al Qaeda operatives. You know that both Iraq and Al Qaeda want to inflict maximum damage on the United States. You have had great success in eliminating Al Qaeda operatives, but you know that you haven’t got them all. So the only way to protect the United States is to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was, as Hayes said at an American Enterprise Institute panel last week, a “no brainer.”
It is interesting to ponder what those who continue to insist that “BUSH LIED” and that there was no danger from collusion between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein would have said if Bill Clinton had done what George W. Bush did in Iraq — which is consistent with much of Clinton’s rhetoric. Almost certainly they would have agreed, as some of them did in the Clinton years, that there was a danger from Iraqi WMDs and Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda. That they take the opposite view now is evidence not that they are right but that they are filled with partisan venom.
June 16th, 2005 at 1:46 pmIf you want to go back a ways, you’ll find an interesting tidbit about Cheney that has been buried ever since 9/11.
Cheney’s first assignment, as newly-appointed Vice President in 2000, was to ascertain the capabilities of potential terrorist actions against the United States, and what we could do to combat them. March–May 2000.
He may have scheduled meetings about these things, but he never attended them–perhaps he was too busy working on the “secret energy policy”. Cheney also had a “heart episode.”
How the most glaring failure of preparedness in all American history could be so buried and ignored is beyond belief.
Some media should remind us that we really have not been led very effectively….
June 28th, 2005 at 11:56 am[…] Another nuance, which astonishes me to no end, is that Bush is carefully injecting the lie that “nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack”. As TP has pointed out on numerous occasions, this administration’s quotes about Saddam allegedly working with al Qaeda would fill a book. It was how the Bushies justified invading Iraq in the first place. […]
August 21st, 2006 at 2:28 pm[…] As ThinkProgress has repeatedly documented, Vice President Cheney cited “evidence†cooked up by Douglas Feith and others to claim it was “pretty well confirmed†that Iraq had contacts with 9/11 hijackers. […]
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:30 amDelete this spam!
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:16 am[…] claim that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with al Qaeda. For example, he said it was “pretty well confirmed” that a 9/11 hijacker met with Iraqi intelligence officials before […]
March 17th, 2008 at 3:53 pm