Cheney Praises Stephen Hayes, Pushes SH/Al-Qaeda Link

[rodeodance]

Says that "Actually, Hayes doesn’t even claim the documents demonstrate a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda. Rather, according to Hayes"

http://www.thinkprogress.org/
Cheney Praises Stephen Hayes, Pushes Hussein/Al-Qaeda Link

Today on Tony Snow’s radio show, Vice President Cheney praised a Weekly Standard piece by Stephen Hayes that uses second-hand descriptions of unreleased Pentagon documents to argue that Hussein had extensive ties to terrorists:

SNOW: The Weekly Standard over the weekend published a long piece by Steve Hayes, who talked about emerging evidence of longstanding ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. You’ve heard it said many times there’s no linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. You’ve heard Democrats beat you and the President about the head and shoulders with this. Were there links to — between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections.......


If the documents are so beneficial for the administration’s case for war, why haven’t they been released yet? This is where it gets fishy. The Defense Department says it won’t release the documents because, if it did, the documents would create bad press for the administration:.....

[punpirate]

1. What Cheney actually has said about Hayes' article...

... is that the documents yet to be translated and analyzed show that there's a connection between al-Qaeda and Hussein.

Logically stupid. Preparing us for yet more idiocy which someone in the rapidly diminishing authentic press will have to dig up and refute, only to be ignored, because Cheney put out this meme first.

It's stupid and silly, but, that's the way the press operates these days.

If one actually reads Hayes' article, he can attribute his assertion to no one, and makes the assertion himself, on the basis of thirteen sources which he neither quotes verbatim or identifies.

It's more smoke to give credence to previous lies in order to further Bush and Cheney's current lies, i.e., here's hoping the most credulous of the press and the public jump on this and repeat it ad nauseum.

Jesus, it's tiresome, ain't it?

[EST]

2. Operative word-

Tiresome. Kinda makes ya' wonder how anyone so unimaginative and outright dumb could go so far.

[punpirate]

3. He can and has because the media keeps repeating what he says...

... as if it were fuckin' gospel. Of course, that's because most of the idiots listening to the news believe in the gospel....

Yeah, tiresome is the word, alright.

[EST]

5. Could it be that this all happens because the whores

desperately want and need something to believe in? They, like the breath of life, have a void that begs to be filled. Their tiny universe of selfish self-petting will collapse at some point, soon, and they are all going to need some competent assistance.
More than half the people now realize that this corrupt network of losers is incompetent and they've figured this out in the face of an almost total right wing media. All the forces arrayed against us have, albeit slowly, begun to give ground. The constant state of pseudo-war, instead of police actions or legal harassment is grinding a once free people to the point where all looks bleak.
The r/w keeps up their tired screeching "we're winning, we're winning!" whistling past the graveyard. I sometimes wonder if we even had to do anything at all. Possibly we could have stood by, laughing at them and directing traffic, and this administration would have dropped fifty percent in their ratings all by themselves, no help from us at all.

But, it's in our nature to struggle and pile on the effort: keeps us busy, I suppose.

[lapfog_1]

4. Both Osama and Saddam are bad guys

and maybe "crazy" in someones opinion... but neither are illogical in their actions. Even when Saddam invaded
Kuwait, he actually believed that the United States "greenlighted" the operation.

So... given all of the history, especially the reported history of Osama opposing Saddam's invasion and threat
to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, why in the heck does anyone believe for a second that the two ever
had ties with one another? I believe that Osama HOPED beyond hope that Bushco would invade Iraq. Not only
a recruiting tool, but Iraq/Iran would make a much better linchpin to his "greater caliphate" he wishes to
establish... much better than Iran/Afghanistan or Afghanistan/Pakistan. Not to mention that Iraq/Iran has all
of that oil! And he knows all too well that it's Petrodollars (Petro-euros) that will fund the next generation
of Al-Qaeda.

There is no evidence that there were ties... and there won't be any (other than that which is a figment of some
fertile neocon imaginations)... because the two individuals were at deathly odds with one another.