President Bush Admits Iraq Had "Nothing" To Do With 9/11

President Bush convened a Press Conference for August 21st 2006. Whilst speaking about his justifications for invading Iraq Bush touched on the 3,000 people who died on September 11th 2001. To which a reporter pressed "What did Iraq have to do with that?" "The attack on the World Trade Center?" To which the President replied "Nothing".



There you have it, from the horses mouth so to speak. Iraq had "nothing" to do with 9/11. It's kind of hard to spin such a succinct answer. President Bush also finds himself at odds with members of the US intelligence community as well as members of the British parliament who cite an increase in terror attacks globally following the Iraq invasion.

BBC: Iraq war 'increased terror threat'
Britons are more - not less - likely to be the target of terrorist attacks as a result of the war in Iraq, an influential group of MPs claims.

Also add the former British Ambassador to the United States who holds the same sentiments, in contrast to those publicly espoused by Blair and by Bush.

Ex-British Ambassador: Iraq War 'Fueled Terrorism'
But in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Meyer said: "There is plenty of evidence around at the moment that home-grown terrorism was partly radicalized and fueled by what is going on in Iraq."

"There is no way we can credibly get up and say it has nothing to do with it. Don't tell me that being in Iraq has got nothing to do with it. Of course it does," said the veteran diplomat, who was ambassador in Washington in the run-up to the war.

[edit on 24/8/2006 by Mirthful Me]

[edit on 24/8/2006 by Mirthful Me]

By the way, I never understood why people believed that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11... People are so dumb. They believe EVERYTHING little bush is saying without proofs..

The medias should talk about the connections Al-Qaeda-ISI-CIA.... or Mujadeen-ISI-CIA-US department of education...

[edit on 24-8-2006 by Vitchilo]

could you possibly post a link to bush saying that iraq was linked to 9/11? he has linked saddam to terrorism (paying the families of suicide bombers and giving safe haven to known terrorists), but i dont recall him ever trying to link saddam directly to 9/11. i have seen posts in several threads here that make that claim, but, as far as i know, not from bush.

What Pres. Bush said was, "You can't separate Saddam Hussien and Al-Quaida in the war on terror," as I recall. He linked Iraq to support for terrorism. Guilt by association.

This link fom Hardball on MSNBC really puts it in perspective.

link

Had to dig quite a bit, but I have some quotes, again from Hardball, and a link to back them up. The quotes are from video clips shown on the linked edition of the show.

SHUSTER: The problem is that none of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis.

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing except for its part of—and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack.

SHUSTER: But before the war, President Bush himself suggested Iraq was involved.

BUSH: The war on terror, you can‘t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.

We have learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade. He is a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda.

link

[edit on 24-8-2006 by Icarus Rising]

They have been trying to get at Iraq since before 9/11. At least 6 months before 9/11. So ya the Bush Admin had a hardon for Iraq.

Bush always suspected Saddam was behind 9/11

Thanks Icarus Rising I was trying to find something on that and couldnt.

[edit on 8/24/2006 by ThichHeaded]

This is the sort of news that should get out and reach the people today.

What's the point in Iraq, what's the point of our army being over there, the casualties, the 100s of billions of dollars spent there.. what is it all for then?

After 9-11 we went to Afghanistan, not Iraq. We went to Afghanistan for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. During our time in Afghanistan, we got more info about more Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and that is when WMD came up. Because WMD and Al-Qaeda don't mix well, we tried to ask Saddam to hand over the WMD, he denied, and UN tried to ask Saddam and then searched for WMD, but didn't find any. So, we attacked Iraq because we figured capturing Saddam will probably give us intel on WMD, but we still haven't found any.

Now to make a long story short, we pretty much "chased the terror" into a trap called Iraq. We can't leave now or they will retaliate. We have to build a successful government, and authority out of the Iraqis before we can leave.

[edit on 24-8-2006 by LAES YVAN]

But North Korea didn't have their own strong case built against themselves? or Iran? Iraq has chemical weapons.. what back in the 90s? He and Iraq as a whole posed no giant threat to America. The Weapons of Mass Destruction excuse is so cliche for B.S. and just as cliche as "Terrorism". Afghanistan had very well known Al Qaeda ties and that was were we had Bin Laden before but due to "intelligence errors" we never seem to of massed a large enough effort to capture him.

On the grand scale at the time, Iraq had no huge threat posed to the U.S. and there were no Al Qaeda camps located in Iraq.

I come mean come, and even if so, if Iraq (as Bush just talked about) had nothing to do with 9/11 then why invade? How far do you go to support your country even when its wrong, I stopped back in 10th grade when they invaded Iraq. I knew it was for oil, I watched Colin Powell give folly evidence for why to invade Iraq and I just laughed and so did a majority of the nation.

You can't defend its decision to go into Iraq in light of terrorism, otherwise jump on the Bush administration band wagon and have fun, I heard it's really rough, that's why a bunch got off.

Originally posted by LAES YVAN
After 9-11 we went to Afghanistan, not Iraq. We went to Afghanistan for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

No we went to Afghanistan to produce more poppy seed. You see, there was more to that than met the eye. The Taliban outlawed the manufacture of poppy seed, after the Taliban was overthrown the production of poppy seed rose to have 200+% or something like that.

Also not that we went there to get an oil pipeline to go thru there and Iraq to get a good source of oil.

Originally posted by Masisoar

On the grand scale at the time, Iraq had no huge threat posed to the U.S. and there were no Al Qaeda camps located in Iraq.

Care to share your source for that information?

Bush was right, Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. We went to Iraq because of the WMD and Al-Qaeda.

North Korea is a bluff, Kim Il sung always threatens us with WMD, but he says "If America attacks us, we will use Nukes, blah blah blah". He's a horrible poker player.

[edit on 24-8-2006 by LAES YVAN]

It has already been proven, I wonder why the title states Bush Admits Iraq had nothing to do wit 9/11.

Also remember he said alot of things to like.

9/12 "We will hunt down Bin Laden and make him pay."

Sometime in 04 or something he states..
"I have no idea where he is, it really isn't a top priority now." Referring to Bin Laden when asked about him.

So your boy says alot, its a wonder what is truth and lies sometimes.

Ya know like God telling him to take over Afghanistan and Iraq.

[edit on 8/24/2006 by ThichHeaded]

from icarus's source:

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing except for its part of—and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack.

SHUSTER: But before the war, President Bush himself suggested Iraq was involved.

BUSH: The war on terror, you can‘t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.

We have learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade. He is a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda.

link

from thich's source:

The issue of Saddam's involvement has been a long-standing source of contention between London and Washington. In the days immediately following the attacks, President George W Bush confided to colleagues that he believed that Saddam was directly involved in the attacks. "He probably was behind this in the end," he said.

so i ask you again subz, where exactly did bush say that saddam was responsible for 9/11? stating you private opinion to someone confidentially is not the same as stating it as fact to the entire world on international television.

its not that i agree with bush....i've said several times that iraq was a mistake. but starting an atsnn article that is, at best, a twisting of the truth to meet your own political views is kind of unethical, dont you think?

Originally posted by snafu7700
so i ask you again subz, where exactly did bush say that saddam was responsible for 9/11? stating you private opinion to someone confidentially is not the same as stating it as fact to the entire world on international television.

It's not even a matter of directly stating it, Bush implied it numerous times to make a case for Iraq.

Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks. A New York Times/CBS poll this week shows that 45 percent of Americans believe Mr. Hussein was "personally involved" in Sept. 11, about the same figure as a month ago.

www.csmonitor.com...

But, then again, Bush has said this same thing back in 2003..

"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th" attacks," Bush said in a brief encounter with reporters after a meeting with members of Congress.

Yet, that doesn't stop polls such as this...

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll in March asked the question slightly differently and got a different result.

It asked, "Do you think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, or not?" In that case, 51% said yes; 41% no.

www.usatoday.com...

How do you think people got that opinion?

Originally posted by snafu7700

its not that i agree with bush....i've said several times that Iraq was a mistake.

Iran wasn't a mistake . . . at least not for the agendas of Bush and Co. actually that was the goal all alone.

And making the public confuse about the reason of going into Iraq in order to gain good PO was part of the propaganda.

Iran is meant for the United States to lose it's credibility. That's what I think, especially after the whole Glaubatz scenario. It's credibility is going to end up being so bad that it will make it easy to assimilate it into the North American Union.

That's what I think.

Care to share your source for that information?

Bush was right, Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. We went to Iraq because of the WMD and Al-Qaeda.

North Korea is a bluff, Kim Il sung always threatens us with WMD, but he says "If America attacks us, we will use Nukes, blah blah blah". He's a horrible poker player.

[edit on 24-8-2006 by LAES YVAN]

www.scoop.co.nz...

Seven months before two-dozen or so al-Qaida terrorists hijacked three commercial airplanes and flew two of the aircrafts directly into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, killing 3,000 innocent civilians, CIA Director George Tenet, testified before Congress that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United States or to other countries in the Middle East.

www.washingtonpost.com...

he government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.

www.cnn.com...

Two days after resigning as the Bush administration's top weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay said Sunday that his group found no evidence Iraq had stockpiled unconventional weapons before the U.S.-led invasion in March.

And your argument against North Korea not being a threat even if he's bluffing. They were labeled on the axis of terror too and were playing around with Weapons of Mass Destruction, you didn't see Iraq at the time toying with ICBMs.

Even if North Korea was bluffing, they already had the enriched uranium and HAD A STRONGER CASE for reason for invasion.

How do you justify Iraq first? Civil Welfare? God Africa could use that more than Iraq could.

Originally posted by Jamuhn
It asked, "Do you think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, or not?" In that case, 51% said yes; 41% no.

How do you think people got that opinion?

In this period of time it would not be a far stretch for people to associate the belief.

Saddam was harboring known terrorist Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Khadr al-Salahat, Abdul Yasin…the stretch is not too far…The mindset was already being prepared well in advance of the current administration.

The prior administration already had Saddam pegged as the evil, WMD producing, terrorist training despot long before the claims by Bush’s administration… I am giving very few examples (of many, too many) of how this opinion was formed…prior.

President Clinton State of the Union Address 1998:

Together we must also confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons, and the outlaw states, terrorists and organized criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade, and much of his nation's wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
Source

The association of Bin Laden and Saddam was also played in the press quite often and the Grand Jury Indictment against Osama used testimony to associate him with Saddam in 1998.

Source

Not so easy to pin on Bush alone.

mg

Originally posted by snafu7700
so i ask you again subz, where exactly did bush say that saddam was responsible for 9/11? stating you private opinion to someone confidentially is not the same as stating it as fact to the entire world on international television.

Oh please, you must be joking.

All we heard in the drum beat to invasion was speech after speech where Saddam and 9/11 were equated. Bush told us Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda and that he does not want the next 9/11 to be in the form of a mushroom cloud over NYC. Saddam - 9/11, Saddam - 9/11, Saddam - 9/11, Saddam - 9/11, Saddam - 9/11, that is all we heard and the very reason why over half of Americans thought he had a direct hand in the attacks.

It's a psychological tactic to reinforce a belief that Saddam and 9/11 were connected and that the invasion was to pre-empt another 9/11. If Saddam had "nothing" to do with 9/11 then what was there to pre-empt? Where are all these terrorist plots Saddam was a part of? Do we forget that Osama Bin Laden refered to Saddam as an "apostate"? A crime for which the US-ally Saudi Arabia enforces the death penalty? Oh but Saddam - 9/11, Saddam - 9/11, Saddam - 9/11, Saddam - 9/11, Saddam - 9/11? What? I never said Saddam had anything to do with 9/11

Originally posted by snafu7700
its not that i agree with bush....i've said several times that iraq was a mistake. but starting an atsnn article that is, at best, a twisting of the truth to meet your own political views is kind of unethical, dont you think?

No.

I twisted nothing. My whole point of posting this quote from the White House website was to dispell the myth that Saddam had even the slightest connection to 9/11. That is a widely held belief as attested to by the very large polling numbers. I've heard many a time from the usual strident Bush supporters on this very website how Saddam was involved with 9/11. This is an unequivocal statement that completely vapourizes that misimpression.

Also my political view is none aligned. I find myself leaning more and more to the conservative ideals. I guess it's what Churchill described. As to "unethical"? Not by a long shot.

Originally posted by missed_gear
In this period of time it would not be a far stretch for people to associate the belief.

Saddam was harboring known terrorist Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Khadr al-Salahat, Abdul Yasin…the stretch is not too far…The mindset was already being prepared well in advance of the current administration.

So harbouring terrorist is a valid excuse for regime change? Great, where do I sign up to overthrow the Bush regime? The United States has harboured terrorists for decades.

Dont you find it ironic that during the Bush administration's demands that the Taliban hand over Osama Bin Laden with no evidence cited by the United States of his involvement in 9/11 (refer to the FBI admitting they have no evidence Bin Laden was involved in 9/11 hence no reference in his top 10 most wanted listing of 9/11) that the United States refused a Haitian extradition request for Emannuel Constant who is responsible for murdering thousands of Haitian civilians? The extradition request was denied because Constant was receiving his orders to kill from the CIA, and that does not want to come out in public.

Double standards abound.

Well done subz.

Thank you. ...Another "Way Above" for you.


Ed to add: Sorry. ...Actually, I don't remember voting for anyone this month. Haven't been around much...

You have already voted for subz this month.

[edit on 24-8-2006 by soficrow]

Originally posted by TheBandit795
Iran is meant for the United States to lose it's credibility. That's what I think, especially after the whole Glaubatz scenario. It's credibility is going to end up being so bad that it will make it easy to assimilate it into the North American Union.

That's what I think.

Oh I believe that wholeheartedly. More pointedly the US intelligence community is being made to look ridiculous and has been ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. There is a concerted effort by Dick Cheney to portray the CIA as inept.

The CIA has been hand-balled the blame for the whole Iraq/WMD fiasco. But how is that possible when the Downing Street memo states that "intelligence is being fixed around policy"? Or that during the run up to the Iraq invasion Dick Cheney paid more visits to Langley than any other President or Vice President combined? At such visits he frequently repeated the same questions until he heard a favourable (read false) reply.


Possible encounter between Cheney and CIA analyst during those many visits

Cheney: "Does Saddam have WMDs?"

Intimidated CIA analyst: "No sir, the evidence doesnt..."

Cheney: "Does Saddam have WMDs?"

Intimidated CIA analyst: "Well, sir, we have nothing that..."

Cheney: "Maybe you didnt hear me correctly, I said 'does Saddam have WMDs?!!'"

Cheney stomps fists, mumbled "patriots" and "waste of money" and threatens to cut back federal funding.

Intimidated CIA analyst: "I think there was a British report that showed Saddam was possibly trying to acquire yellow cake but..."

Cheney: "I knew it, thanks bye"


Now that the link has been shown to be completely false, look who is blamed. Not the political hacks who were perverting their intelligence agencies so that intelligence could be "fixed around [the] policy" of invading Iraq, but the intelligence agencies who maintained throughout that there was no evidence suggesting Saddam had WMDs.

It gets better. Just yesterday I was reading a newspaper article that states the CIA is coming under fire from the Bush administration for not providing enough evidence showing that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons....

It's not that the lack of evidence is due to the fact that Iran doesnt actually have a nuclear weapons program as the IAEA has repeatedly stated it has found no evidence to suggest, but that the CIA is incompetent and is not looking hard enough.

So the question really is, why is the Bush administration undermining the CIA?

[edit on 25/8/06 by subz]