Truth - Al Franken [21]
This revelation was first made public in a 9/11 Commission Staff Statement in June 2004. The administration immediately started backpedaling, but not in the way you might imagine. Instead of admitting that its earlier claims were unfounded, it denied that it had actually made its earlier claims.
You’ll remember, for example, the bombshell Cheney had dropped on the unsuspecting Tim Russert on the December 9, 2001, Meet the Press:
RUSSERT: A couple articles have appeared which I want to get you to react to. The first: “The Czech interior minister said today that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, just five months before the synchronized hijackings and mass killings were carried out.” . . .
CHENEY: 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. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don’t know at this point, but that’s clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.
Now, here’s the backpedaling. Three days after the 9/11 Commission staff statement, Cheney emerged from the shadows to be interviewed by Gloria Borger on CNBC’s Capital Report :
BORGER: Well, let’s get to Mohammad Atta for a minute because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, “pretty well confirmed.”
CHENEY: No, I never said that.
BORGER: Okay.
CHENEY: I never said that.
BORGER: I think that is . . .
CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9 of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down, we just don’t know.
Bush was pirouetting with equal dexterity.
The reason I keep insisting that there was a relation between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Uh huh. And . . . ?
The administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
Can you imagine if Bush had tried to get us to go to war by citing a handful of fruitless meetings? Donald Rumsfeld had more meetings with Saddam Hussein than Osama bin Laden had. Or to put it a slightly different way, Saddam Hussein had more meetings with Donald Rumsfeld than with Osama bin Laden. See? Slightly different.
But the Bushies bounce back quickly. Like Luke Skywalker heeding the disembodied voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi to use the Force, George W. Bush heard his own disembodied voice, whispering to him from two and a half years earlier:
Use 9/11, George. Don’t forget to mention 9/11. 9/11 is your best friend. Use it. Use your friend. That’s what you do with your friends, George. You use them. Use them for your own political gain. Do you understand what I’m saying, George? Use 9/11. Use it! For example, use it at the Republican National Convention. Have the convention in New York, where 9/11 happened. Except the Pentagon part of 9/11. And the Pennsylvania thing. But no one remembers those, really. Do they? Hard to say. Also, don’t mention bin Laden. It’s just 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. Oh! And give your convention speech from Ground Zero, through a bullhorn.
Karl Rove could always tell when the President’s inner voice had gone too far. He let Bush do everything but the part with the bullhorn at Ground Zero.
And so, as the Democrats organized their national convention around the positive, uniting, uplifting