Mad Social Scientist

From Bush:

You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.

From Cheney:

Blaming what he called "lazy" reporters for blurring the distinction, Vice President Dick Cheney said that while "overwhelming" evidence shows a past relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, the Bush administration never accused Saddam of helping with the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We have never been able to prove that there was a connection there on 9/11," he said in the CNBC interview that aired on NBC's "Today" show Friday.

Cheney was echoing comments by President Bush on Thursday, and they followed a report by the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission that found no "collaborative relationship" between the former Iraqi leader and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

Cheney, however, insisted the case was not closed into whether there was an Iraq connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. "We don't know."

The vice president noted a disputed report about an alleged meeting between an Iraqi intelligence official and lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in the Czech Republic in April 2001. "We've never been able to confirm or to knock it down," Cheney said.

The 9/11 commission, however, said in one of three reports issued this week that "based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred."

Cheney responded that, for his part, the findings remained inconclusive. "It doesn't add anything from my perspective. I mean, I still am a skeptic."

Overall, the vice president defended the administration's view of Iraq's links to al-Qaida, saying the "the evidence is overwhelming" and citing the commission report's evidence of a meeting between bin Laden and an Iraqi official in 1994 in Sudan, as well as the presence of terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

He said he disagreed with the commission's conclusion on whether there was a "general relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaida.

"I don't know what they know," Cheney said of the commission, adding however that he "probably" knows more about Saddam and al-Qaida than the panel.

But Cheney declined to disagree outright with the report's conclusion that no evidence exists to connect Saddam to Sept. 11 — saying instead that, "I disagree with the way their findings have been portrayed. There has been enormous confusion."

Reiterating the distinction between contacts and actual collaboration on the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said some news media had blurred that distinction and reported the administration was directly tying the attacks to Saddam.

"The press is, with all due respect there are exceptions, often times lazy, often simply reports what someone else in the press says without doing their homework," Cheney said.

(I'm so glad Cheney has been working to clear up this confusion for the public.)

From Rice:

In publishing a report that cited no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the Sept. 11 commission actually meant to say that Iraq had no control over the network, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Friday.

As the White House strove to curb potential damage to President Bush's credibility on Iraq, his closest aide on international security denied any inconsistency between the bipartisan panel's findings and Bush's insistence that a Saddam-Qaeda relationship existed.

"What I believe the 9-11 commission was opining on was operational control, an operational relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq which we never alleged," Rice said in an interview with National Public Radio.

"The president simply outlined what we knew about what al Qaeda and Iraq had done together. Operational control to me would mean that he (Saddam) was, perhaps, directing what al Qaeda would do."

From Rumsfield:

...But let me just say this: I have read this -- editorials, "torture" -- and one after another. Washington Post the other day -- I forget when it was -- just a great, bold "torture."

The implication -- think of the people who read that around the world. First of all, our forces read it. And the implication is that the United States government has, in one way or another, ordered, authorized, permitted, tolerated torture. Not true. And our forces read that, and they've got to wonder, do we? And as General Pace said, we don't. The President said people will be treated humanely, and that is what the orders are. That's what the requirements are.

Now, we know that people have done some things they shouldn't do. Anyone who looks at those photographs know that. But that's quite a different thing. And that is not the implication that's out there. The implication that's out there is the United States government is engaging in torture as a matter of policy, and that's not true. Think of the second group of people who see it. All those people in the region and in Iraq and in Afghanistan, that we need their cooperation, we need their help, the people in those countries, the people in the neighboring countries, and think how unhelpful that is for them to gain the inaccurate impression that that is what's taking place.

Third, think of the people who, for whatever -- whenever -- today, tomorrow, next year -- capture an American civilian or American military personnel and will use all those headlines about torture and the impact in the world that people think that's what's taking place, and use that as an excuse to torture our people. So this is a very serious business that this country's engaged in.

Now, we're in a war, and I can understand that someone who doesn't think they're in a war or aren't in a war, sitting in an air-conditioned room someplace can decide they want to be critical of this or critical of that, or misstate that or misrepresent something else, or be fast and loose with the facts. But there's an effect to that, and I think we have to be careful. I think people ought to be accountable for that, just as we're accountable.

One last quote:

Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Oh wait, that's not a Bush official---that's from Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials.