June 18, 2004

Lies

You have, no doubt, heard by now that the 9/11 Commission has found no link between the al Qaeda terrorist organization and the new-deposed Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. You've heard it because that's what the mainstream media is reporting. It screams from the headlines. Here's a screen grab of one on MSNBC.com.

A front-page headline in the New York Times read: "Panel finds no Qaeda-Iraq Tie." The Washington Post headline said: "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link is Dismissed." The CBS Evening News reported that the 9/11 Commission's report "directly contradicted one of President Bush's justifications for going to war against Iraq." ABC News said the report "unequivocally" disputed the administration's claims of links between Saddam and al Qaeda, while NBC said the Commission's report was "sharply at odds with what leading members of the administration continue to claim."

Lies. All lies.

There were connections, and the 9/11 Commission's vice chairman, Democrat Lee Hamilton, said so yesterday and blasted the press for distorting the Commission's report. Hamilton says the Commission's findings support Bush administration contentions of links between Saddam and al Qaeda .

Cartoon by Cox & Forkum

Hamilton told the Associated Press: "The sharp differences that the press has drawn [between the White House and the Commission] are not that apparent to me."

He told PBS's The News Hour: There are all kinds of connections. And it may very well have been that Osama bin Laden or some of his lieutenants met at some time with Saddam Hussein's lieutenants."

Hamilton said that the probe failed to uncover any direct operational link between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terror network involving attacks on the U.S., but there is no question that "they had contacts."Hamilton is one of a few Democrats who seems to get that we're actually in a real war, and what matters is truth and victory, more than partisan politics and beating up on President Bush. Read his commentary published Sunday, May 23, in the Toronto Globe & Mail.

Meanwhile, 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, a Republican former governor of New Jersey, told MSNBC:

It doesn't mean there weren't al Qaeda connections with Iraq over the years. They're somewhat shadowy, but I think they were there. But with 9/11, no, our staff has found no evidence of that.

No wonder public trust in the media is plummeting.

A beat-Bush agenda is driving the mainstream media to spread distortions and outright lies via its headlines, stories and broadcasts. In times past, that kind of thing might have worked. But not any more. Today, you don't have to be a passive consumer of the "news" served up by a few big networks and newspapers that have a stranglehold on the news. Because they no longer have that stranglehold. They are the gatekeepers to a garden whose fences have all fallen down.

For example, you don't have to believe what CBSCNNABCNBCMSNBC and the big papers like the NYT, WaPo and LA Times tall you about the 9/11 Commission's report. You can go on the Internet to the Commission's website and read the report for yourself. People who did know the major media lied. One more reason to trust the major media less, and your own eyes more.

Meanwhile, it's worth noting that the government of Russia has revealed that it provided the U.S. government with intelligence reports of planning by Saddam's regime for terrorist attacks inside the U.S. after the September 11 attack and before the U.S. invasion in early 2003. Did those plans involve al Qaeda? The answer matters not. Al Qaeda is just the most visible manifestation of an ideology of Islamofacism that uses terror as its main weapon against the west.

It's an ideology that must be fought - and is, in the mountains of Afghanistan and the heat of Iraq.