MORE ON THE WORST ARGUMENT EVER
Links? Ties? Contacts? What's It All Mean?

Bush joins Condi Rice's definition oriented argument in response to the damning statement from the 9/11 Commission about the lack of ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. From the Washington Post:

Bush Defends Assertions of Iraq-Al Qaeda Relationship

The panel's staff reported on Wednesday that there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

In challenging the commission's finding, Bush and his aides argued that their previous assertions about the ties between Iraq and the terrorist organization were justified by the contacts that occurred.

"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda," Bush said. "We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda."

Officials with the Sept. 11 commission yesterday tried to soften the impact of the staff's finding, noting that the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, agrees with the administration on key points. "Were there contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq? Yes," Thomas H. Kean (R), the panel's chairman, said at a news conference. "What our staff statement found is there is no credible evidence that we can discover, after a long investigation, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein in any way were part of the attack on the United States."

The panel's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, said the finding referred to a lack of evidence of "operational" ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Click here for the rest.

And if I understand the Commission's statements correctly, this last thought isn't simply about 9/11: they found no evidence of any collaborative relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Obviously, this hasn't taught the White House any lessons about 'fessing up. Their whole when-we-said-ties-we-actually-meant-contacts argument may very well succeed in confusing enough of the population to give them some breathing room on the biggest fuck-up in US history. Don't be fooled. When they said "ties," they really meant "ties," and not "contacts." (If you follow the vocab links, I think that the #2 definitions, for both words, are what we're considering here, and, hell, you could even interpret the definition of "contacts" as meaning a close relationship, too...man, definitional arguments are some tough shit.)

From the Center for American Progress, Eric Alterman tries to clear up some of the potential confusion:

Think Again: No Link? Who Knew?

In the period leading up to the war, President Bush frequently couched his remarks to be deliberately misleading on this topic without actually crossing over the line into what all would recognize as a lie. For instance, in his 2003 State of the Union, Bush claimed, ''Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda,…Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own." The theme of Saddam's training and funding of "al Qaeda–type organizations before, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations" was a constant feature of the president's speeches. Following a terrorist attack in Bali that left over 180 people dead, Bush insisted that Saddam planned to employ al-Qaida as his own "forward army" against the West. In a speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, Bush charged, "Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel, and Western governments. Iraqi dissidents abroad are targeted for murder.... And al Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq." To Americans he used simple scare tactics that had no basis in recent reality. Borrowing a tactic from the late John Lennon, Bush asked, "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein," in his 2003 State of the Union Address. "It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. "

Though he never came up with any evidence at all, Bush never gave up this particular line of argument. Just before the war began, he cried in similarly misleading terms, "The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on."

Emphasis mine.

Click here for the rest.

So, once again, the bottom line is that, whether the White House literally asserted a collaborative relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda or not, it is absolutely, positively certain that the Oval Office mounted a huge effort to get that idea across to Americans one way or the other in order to justify the invasion.

However you look at it, Bush's response to this new info is horseshit, nothing but high school debate class word games given social legitimacy by the prestige of the Presidency. Game over, man. They are fucked.

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