The Occasional Dissident

“When I said no negotiations I meant no negotiations. We know he’s guilty. Turn him over. There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt.”
- U.S. President George W. Bush (“Bush rejects Taliban offer to surrender bin Laden,” The Independent, October 15, 2001.)

Dear citizens, I came across a rather disturbing report yesterday—disturbing in part because I believe I was unaware of the information and disturbing largely because it reveals some brutally painful truths that shock the conscience.  I was appalled to see the story, and when I shared just the littlest bit of it with friends over dinner last night, they immediately grasped the implications and were also appalled.  I take that to mean I have arrived at the correct conclusions from this, but I want to share the tale with you.  Your responses will help confirm the very evil nature of the goings-on or perhaps refute that characterization.  Some of you may want to take a firm grip on your seat.

I visit the web site icasualties.org a few times each day.  I hope you are doing the same.  Besides counting the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan—a number that reached 5,000 on June 1st—the site provides information on injuries to American service members and coalition casualties.  The site also usefully compiles stories on the two conflicts.  Yesterday, I was attracted to an AFP story found on Yahoo.com.  The story headline was innocuous: “Iraq and Afghanistan to resume ties soon.”  Good.  But, why and when had they broken ties?  Icasualites.org provides a short excerpt of each story listed.  And for this story, the excerpt reads:

Iraq and Afghanistan are planning to resume diplomatic relations “very soon”, 12 years after they were severed during the days of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, a senior Afghan diplomat said.

I only got this far over Sea Bass and Crab Cakes and Filet Mignon before my dinner companions recoiled in horror.  I likely can leave the story here and assume you have all understood the vile implications of this, but my purpose here is to leave nothing to chance, to take nothing for granted.  So, please excuse me, dear citizens, while I explain this in some detail.

Dick Cheney is publicly walking away from a lie.  (Too little, too late, we should agree.)  Fox News helps by posting a transcript of Cheney’s comments from an interview with Greta Van Susteren.

D. CHENEY: Correct, but on the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11, there was never any evidence to prove that. There was some reporting early on, for example, that Mohammed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official. But that was never borne out.  (“Dick and Liz Cheney ‘On the Record,’” Foxnews.com, June 3, 2009.)

Of course, we have listened to another, very different story from Dick Cheney and President Bush and their administration in the several months leading up to the invasion of Iraq and since.  The administration was incessant and devious in its repeated linking of Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks committed by al Qaeda.  Administration members were notorious for including “Saddam Hussein” and “9/11” in the same sentences without specifying a connection.  It worked.  By the start of the war, sixty-nine percent of Americans believed Saddam had played a role in the attack.  (“Hussein link to 9/11 lingers in many minds,” Washingtonpost.com, September 6, 2003.)

But others were more specific about a direct operational link.  When Cheney says, “there was some reporting early on, for example, that Mohammed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official,” he is accurately describing his own appearances on Sunday news programs where he asserted that this connection was very real.

In December 2001, Cheney had claimed: “It’s been pretty well confirmed that [Atta] 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.”  (“Atta in Prague” Newsweek.com, September 13, 2006.)

The claim is based on a single, questionable source that diligent efforts by our intelligence agencies and the FBI could not corroborate.  “[P]retty well confirmed” is a fabrication.  It was never confirmed.  Why believe it then?  Why believe there was any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda?  Some argued at the time that the entities were more likely to be enemies than allies.  While the reasons given were persuasive, we now know another very good reason to rule out a connection.

I am embarrassed to admit that while I was aware that only a few nations, including Saudi Arabia, recognized Taliban rule in Afghanistan, I was unaware of the rupture in Iraq-Afghanistan relations—a rupture that I believe was never explained to us before the war.  I have to allow, however, that wearing a uniform and working on the planning and execution of the 2003 invasion would have prohibited me from doing anything useful with the information had I had it.  Perhaps you also did not know.  But, how can we excuse the State Department, the intelligence agencies, the Defense Department, the National Security Advisor—indeed—how can we excuse the entire Bush administration for not knowing?  We cannot.  It is impossible to imagine they did not know information that stands against their claims of conspiracy, information that shows the “conspirators” moving apart rather than together.

It is far more likely they ignored this disruption precisely because it is directly opposed to the argument for a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda and the Afghanistan Taliban are bound like brothers.  The fighting in Afghanistan began because the Taliban refused to hand over al Qaeda leaders.  That is, their relationship is so close, so tight, that even the threat of a massive attack by the United States could not separate them.  Self-preservation was not motivation for handing over Osama bin Laden.  In this reality, Cheney and Bush and their administration wanted us to believe that a conflict between Iraq and the Taliban had no influence—posed no prohibition—on a relationship, on an operational and murderous relationship, between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.  They knew better.  They absolutely knew the idea of a connection between these antagonists was very unlikely.  They knew the “evidence” they did have did not justify a belief in a connection.  Yet, they told you and me something quite contrary.

On September 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld ordered the creation of plans to attack Iraq in response to the attacks by al Qaeda that had occurred just hours earlier.  His orders to his staff demanded that they “Go massive.  Sweep it all up.  Things related and not.”  (“Plans for Iraq Attack began on 9/11,” CBSNews.com, September 4, 2002.)  The administration then launched an all-out effort to sell the idea of attacking Iraq.  By the next year the WHIG, the White House Iraq Group, had been formed for a simple purpose—to fool you.  This story has been covered over and over in a number of excellent books, including Michael Isikoff’s and David Corn’s “Hubris.”  Even so, we are reminded frequently these days, now that the culprits are unable to protect the information they had hidden from us, that the duplicity, the dishonesty, was jaw-dropping.  We learn great things and little things, things like an animosity between Iraq and the Taliban that would reveal already baseless assertions of operational links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to be ridiculous and evil lies, things like the story that caught my eye yesterday.  Lies meant to allow Secretary Rumsfeld to launch his war.

Dear citizens, some of you will note the title of this essay alludes to an alliance in evil intent that exceeds imagination.  It is simply not credible to link these actors together in a conspiracy just as Bush’s linkage of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in an “Axis of Evil” was ridiculous.  That is true.  Some will argue Saddam Hussein, alone, without alliances to any person or group, was evil enough.  Agreed.  Others will point out the evil committed and still being committed by the Taliban and al Qaeda.  Acknowledged.  I point to the remainder, the intentional and hard-working killers, liars who formed an Axis of Evil by themselves, liars who fabricated an Iraq-al Qaeda connection despite the evidence against it, liars who sent thousands of brave American men and women to their graves—more Americans than the others combined.  This scheming, immoral clan, this Axis, started a criminal war by first fooling sixty-nine percent of us that Saddam Hussein had attacked us on 9/11.  Besides the restoration of Iraq-Afghan relations, we need, too, the restoration of truth and morality—a check on any future Axis of Liars.

- Alan Howe, June 2009