.jpg)
|
|
|
Political commentary by Bill Press No Al-Qaida Connection Equals No Justification For War That's pretty bad. But there's something a whole lot worse. The worst
thing a president could do is take this country to war on false pretenses.
Yet that's exactly what George W. Bush has done. No doubt, the Iraqi people are a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in
prison and out of power. He was a brutal tyrant. He was so evil that,
perhaps, President Bush might have convinced the American people of the
need to invade Iraq for humanitarian reasons alone. Except he didn't. Bush never made that argument. Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz even admitted after the war that Saddam's criminal treatment
of the Iraqi people "was a reason to help the Iraqis, but it's not
a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale
we did it." As documented before in this column, there is zero evidence to support
those claims. Every one of them proved to be untrue. There were no weapons
of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons. And with no navy, no long-range
missiles, a rag-tag army, only a handful of planes and 60 percent of its
territory controlled by U.S. and British fighter jets, the idea that Iraq
was a threat to the United States is laugh-out-loud funny. But the fourth reason Bush gave was the most powerful of all: that Saddam
Hussein was directly linked to al-Qaida and therefore partly responsible
for the horror of Sept. 11. During the build-up to the war, that was an
argument made repeatedly by President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza
Rice and Colin Powell. It's a charge repeated just days ago by Vice-President
Dick Cheney: "He had long-established ties to al-Qaida." Baloney. According to the staff report of the 9/11 Commission, based
on interviews with former top al-Qaida lieutenants and released on July
16 in Washington, there was "no collaborative relationship"
between Iraq and al-Qaida. And again: "We have no credible evidence
that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States." What about that alleged meeting in Prague between 9/11 mastermind Mohammed
Atta and a senior Iraqi official, still cited by Cheney as proof that
Hussein and bin Laden were partners in crime? It never happened, the commission
concluded. According to the CIA, Atta was actually in Virginia and Florida
when the meeting supposedly took place. Were there contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida? Yes, the commission reports.
Iraq was one of many Arab countries from which bin Laden sought support
in building his terrorist network - even though, at the time, he was also
arming anti-Saddam forces in the Kurdish region of Iraq. A senior Iraqi official met with bin Laden in Sudan, where al-Qaida's
founder asked for arms and permission to establish training camps in Iraq.
But - and here's the key - Hussein turned him down. There was no al-Qaida
presence in Iraq and no Iraqi support for their operations. But how about terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? According to the
commission, he did travel in and out of Iraq during recent years. But
he only moved to Iraq and began directing terrorist attacks against American
troops after Hussein had been removed from power. So why do Bush and Cheney continue to assert the Iraq-al-Qaida connection
when there was none? For one very simple reason: It is the very cornerstone
of the president's war platform. Without an al-Qaida link, there is no
connection to Sept. 11. Without a connection to Sept. 11, there is no
way to portray the war in Iraq as part of the continuing war on terror.
Without ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, there is no justification
for the war in Iraq. President Bush's entire case for war has fallen apart. He must now be
held responsible for misleading us into an unnecessary war. © 2004 Tribune Media Services, Inc. Paid for by the California Democratic Party Back to Groups and Official Viewpoints Page
|
|
|
This website is volunteer managed, designed and donated. Content is the sole responsibility of Democrats of Napa Valley Club. Democrats
of Napa Valley |
||