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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (426090)	7/12/2003 5:27:24 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 769670

Bush's Next Big Lie To Explain is Al Qaida-Saddam Lie: Ex-Officials Dispute Iraq Tie to al-Qaida Sat Jul 12,12:42 PM ET Add Politics - AP to My Yahoo! By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - As President Bush (news - web sites) works to quiet a controversy over his discredited claim of Iraqi uranium shopping in Africa, another of his prewar assertions is coming under fire: the alleged link between Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime and al-Qaida. Before the war, Bush and members of his cabinet said Saddam was harboring top al-Qaida operatives and suggested Iraq (news - web sites) could slip the terrorist network chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. Now, two former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking Saddam to the group responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was never more than sketchy at best. "There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist operation," former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann said this week. Intelligence agencies agreed on the "lack of a meaningful connection to al-Qaida" and said so to the White House and Congress, said Thielmann, who left State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research last September. Another former Bush administration intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed there was no clear link between Saddam and al-Qaida. "The relationships that were plotted were episodic, not continuous," the former official said. Critics attacked the Bush administration assertions from the beginning for being counter to the ideologies of Saddam and al-Qaida and short on corroborating evidence. A United Nations (news - web sites) terrorism committee says it has no evidence — other than Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites)'s assertions in his Feb. 5 U.N. speech — of any ties between al-Qaida and Iraq. And U.S. officials say American forces searching in Iraq have found no significant evidence tying Saddam's regime with Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terrorist network. "One of the things that concerns me is the continued reference to the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. There's not much evidence to support that linkage," said Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a presidential candidate. In the weeks and months before the war, Bush and administration officials repeatedly said Saddam had ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups which could provide a pathway for weapons of mass destruction to find their way to terrorists. U.S. forces have not found any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq so far. "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids (news - web sites) and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida," Bush said in his January State of the Union speech. "Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own," Bush said. At the time, many terrorism experts criticized the claim. They noted that Saddam's secular regime was just the kind of Arab government bin Laden's Islamic extremists want to replace. Critics also pointed out the lack of hard evidence of links between Saddam and bin Laden. The administration's case apparently was persuasive. In a poll conducted last month by Knowledge Networks, 52 percent of those questioned said they thought the United States found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam was working closely with al-Qaida — although no such evidence has been found. "You see the polls — lots of Americans believe that there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaida despite the lack of intelligence evidence on that score," said Gregory Treverton, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council under President Clinton (news - web sites). The administration's key evidence of a link was an operative named Abu Musab Zarqawi, who got medical care in Baghdad in May 2002 after being wounded in Afghanistan (news - web sites). In his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, Powell called Zarqawi "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants." Current and former intelligence officials now say Zarqawi's links to al-Qaida are more tenuous — the CIA (news - web sites) now says Zarqawi considers himself independent of al-Qaida, for example. And while Zarqawi spent time in Iraq, it's unclear whether Saddam's regime simply allowed him to be there or actively tried to work with him. "There was scant evidence there had been any other contacts between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden," Graham said in an interview Friday.

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (426090)	7/12/2003 5:30:58 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Watson, nobody cares about Kerry and Kennedy photos. They're the two senators from Massachusetts and agree on many issues. So what? Kennedy is also the one the Bush White House has turned to for help on education and health care, two of the biggest issues. Because Kennedy has more credibility on those issues than anyone in the senate. Teddy is a womanizer who drinks when he's not working but Kerry isn't. Trying to lump them together is a meaningless exercise. Besides, everyone has seen this 1000 times before and nobody but far rightwing Kennedy-haters care. Kerry is his own man how and has been for a long time. Kennedy is close to retirement. Also, if JFK were alive to run against Bush in 2004 he'd beat him in a landslide. JFK was one of our most beloved and successful presidents. So your point is -- ?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (426090)	7/12/2003 5:39:51 PM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Thomas, I wish I could find it again...there is a picture of Liveshot and Chappy at the Dewey Canyon riots, and Chappy is giving instructions to Liveshot... EACH STEP TAKEN BY LIVESHOT WAS CALCULATED AND PLANNED..right down to the Kennedy speechwriters speech given by Kerry.