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

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (583783)	6/18/2004 11:15:45 AM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I've printed out the 9/11 Commission report and will be reading it this weekend. I will be glad to show you some examples of media, including NYT, bias as it comes up. Stay tuned.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (583783)	6/18/2004 12:42:21 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Instapundit - ANDREW SULLIVAN slams the Big Lie: "The NYT had the gall to demand that Bush and Cheney apologize. In fact, it's the NYT that needs to apologize." Though he has some suggestions for Cheney, too. UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein comments: "Hey, I can't even find the goalposts anymore," and observes: I mean, now the quibble is over the relative strength of the ties between committed mass murderers, each of whom declared war on the US... Some people are just not serious about fighting this war. Period. Indeed. SULLIVAN - CHENEY VERSUS THE NYT: The vice-president's direct attack on the New York Times' portrayal of the 9/11 Commission report was a zinger. On balance, i think Cheney is right. The links between al Qaeda and Saddam may not have amounted to a formal alliance, but they existed all right, as the Commission conceded. The NYT itself reported that "The report said that despite evidence of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 90's, 'they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.'" But if there were "repeated contacts" between al Qaeda and Iraq, how can it be true that, as the headline put it, that "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie"? Headlines truncate things, of course. But Cheney is dead-on in describing this headline as misleading. Here's Tom Kean, the chairman of the Commision: "What we have found is, were there contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq? Yes. Some of them were shadowy - but they were there." Here's Lee Hamilton: "I must say I have trouble understanding the flack over this. The Vice President is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that. What we have said is what the governor just said, we don't have any evidence of a cooperative, or a corroborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and these al Qaeda operatives with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me the sharp differences that the press has drawn, the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me." The NYT had the gall to demand that Bush and Cheney apologize. In fact, it's the NYT that needs to apologize. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And then of course, there is this: Putin: Saddam Planned Terrorism In US By Captain Ed on War on Terror Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters this morning that Russia had learned of terrorist attacks planned by Saddam Hussein and had passed the warnings on to the Bush administration following 9/11: Russia warned the United States on several occasions that Iraq's Saddam Hussein planned "terrorist attacks" on its soil, President Vladimir Putin said Friday. "After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received such information and passed it on to their American colleagues," he told reporters. The Kremlin leader, who was speaking in the Kazakh capital, said Russian intelligence services had many times received information that Saddam's special forces were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States "and beyond its borders on American military and civilian targets." "This information was conveyed to our American colleagues," he said. He added that Russian intelligence had no proof that Saddam agents had been involved in any particular attack. Russia had diplomatic relations with Saddam's Iraq and opposed the U.S.-led military offensive that toppled him. Well, this puts a different shine on the 9/11 Commission's report, doesn't it? Putin bitterly opposed the Anglo-American effort to unseat Saddam Hussein, so Putin has no particular axe to grind on this issue. In fact, one would expect that any report that damages Bush's credibility on this issue logically bolsters his own. It appears from this AP report that not only did Putin make this announcement, it sounds as though he called the press conference to specifically deliver this news. Note also that Russia maintained diplomatic relations with Hussein, almost until the moment the bombs began to fall in Baghdad in March 2003. Perhaps this comprises part of the "sensitive" reporting that the Bush administration had on its desk in the fall of 2002, when it had to decide from where the next attacks on American soil might come. Since Hussein had managed to get around the arms embargo, thanks to UN Security Council members such as Syria and to an extent France and Germany, and since the UN oil-for-food program had given Saddam billions of dollars in resources within easy reach, it isn't hard to conclude that Saddam had been a clear and present danger -- one could even say imminent danger -- given Putin's warnings. Nor could the Bush administration easily reveal their source, given Putin's stature and his relationship with Saddam, which now appears to have been very convenient for Bush and Blair. Maybe, as Hugh Hewitt suggested on his radio show last night, we need a commission to look into the 9/11 Commission. captainsquartersblog.com Stay tuned!

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (583783)	6/18/2004 6:26:07 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

The major media slanted it so much that even Hamilton couldn't take it. 9/11 Chair Hamilton Slams Media Distortions Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton blasted the mainstream press yesterday for distorting the Commission's findings on links between Iraq and al-Qaida, saying those findings actually support Bush administration contentions. "The sharp differences that the press has drawn [between the White House and the Commission] are not that apparent to me," Hamilton told the Associated Press, a day after insisting that his probe uncovered "all kinds" of connections between Osama bin Laden's terror network and Iraq. Story Continues Below Hamilton's comments followed a deluge of mainstream reports falsely claiming that the 9/11 Commission had discredited the Bush administration's claim of longstanding links between Baghdad and bin Laden. But the Indiana Democrat said the press accounts were flat-out wrong. "There are all kinds of ties," he told PBS's "The News Hour" late Wednesday, in comments that establishment journalists have refused to report. "There are all kinds of connections. And it may very well have been that Osama bin Laden or some of his lieutenants met at some time with Saddam Hussein's lieutenants." Hamilton said that while his probe had failed to uncover any direct operational link between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terror network in attacks on the U.S., there's no question that "they had contacts." newsmax.com Message 20233921