Another anti-liberation myth shattered: The Bush administration misled no one into believing Saddam himself helped plot the 9-11 attacks

Remember the line told by Michael Moore and others that the Bush administration used subliminal messages to convince the public that Saddam Hussein had a direct role in the 9-11 attacks?

Well, Rob over at "Bush in a Tree" proves it didn’t happen.

How could he prove this? He found public opinion polls that show Americans independently concluded Saddam was involved in 9-11 before Bush ever had a chance to suggest it, and that fewer Americans believed in a Saddam-9-11 conspiracy a year and a half later, just before the Iraq invasion.

The 72% in 2003. Saddam’s defenders have delighted in telling us how, by the time of the March 2003 Iraq invasion, 72 percent of Americans believed Saddam helped plot 9-11. "Bush played the Saddam-9-11 link like a master violinist," was the complaint.

But wait. There’s more to the story.

A February 6, 2003, Time-CNN poll did find that 72 percent of Americans said it was "somewhat" or "very" likely that Saddam was personally involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This poll was taken a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The 78% in 2001. Much less attention has been paid to the Time-CNN poll that asked the same question just two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. At that time, 78 percent of Americans believed it "somewhat" or "very" likely that Saddam was personally involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

So MORE Americans believed the Saddam link in 2001 than believed it in 2003. And yet we have been told time and again that the Bush administration persuaded large numbers of Americans that Saddam was a 9-11 conspirator.

World-Crisis.com posted an article, "Saddam as the Twentieth Hijacker," on Oct. 4, 2004, claiming:

In the first weeks after 9/11, fewer than 10 percent of Americans suggested to poll takers that Saddam was the source of the terrorist attacks. However, after the constant accusations and insinuations by the Bush administration, the number soared.

Without basis. Fewer than 10 percent of Americans suspected a Saddam-9-11 connection in the first weeks after 9-11? What poll was that based on? The post, which is reposted several times across the Internet, never gives a source because there is none. The 10 percent figure for 2001 simply is made up.

That "Saddam as the Twentieth Hijacker" article also claimed the 9-11 Commission had reported there was "no collaborative relationship" between Saddam and al-Qaida. This is almost true. The 9-11 Commission said that reported Iraq-al-Qaida contacts "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

"Do not appear" and "collaborative" are important words, and so was the Commission’s finding that Saddam’s regime had several contacts with al-Qaida. Under U.N. Resolutions 687, 1373 and others, Saddam was supposed to steer clear of all terrorist groups.

Saddam’s ‘contacts.’ That Saddam and Osama bin Laden did not have a "collaborative relationship" was not the question. No senior American official said they were working together day to day. Saddam’s violation was having any relationship with al-Qaida at all.

This is what the 9-11 Commission’s report of June 16, 2004, concluded on reports that Saddam and bin Laden had a relationship in the 1990s:

"Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein’s secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support [of the anti-Saddam Islamists] and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda.

A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

Dancing with terrorists. In making their case against Saddam, Bush administration officials talked about Saddam’s relationship to suicide-bombings in Israel, to terrorists "like al-Qaida" and to "al-Qaida affiliates" like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (By the way, was Zarqawi treated in a Baghdad hospital in spring of 2002? This story seems in question, but has it been reviewed?)

The Bush administration also said there was a report from Czech Republic officials that, on April 9, 2001, Mohammed Atta, the 9-11 hijacker-to-be, met with Iraqi officials in Prague.

The Clinton adminstration had noted a relationship between Saddam and bin Laden. It seemed hot and cold, but the two obviously had an enemy in common. In February 1999, Saddam offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq, and Clinton’s counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke worried that, if bin Laden were chased out of Afghanistan, he would "boogie to Baghdad."

No 9-11 accusation. In any case, the Bush team never said Saddam had a hand in the 9-11 attacks.

Nevertheless, movie director Michael Moore made his case that Bush’s aides linked Saddam directly to 9-11 by inserting this statement by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in his infamous pro-fascist film, "Fahrenheit 9-11":

"Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9-11."

Rice’s full quote. Movie-goers went home believing Rice had implicated Saddam in the Sept. 11 attacks. They took home that impression because Moore intentionally edited Rice’s words to give that impression. But here is Rice’s full Nov. 28, 2003, statement on the "tie" she saw between Iraq and 9-11:

"Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9-11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9-11, but, if you think about what caused 9-11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York."

Moore had the entire tape of Rice’s statement, but he included only an irresponsibly dishonest snippet in his movie. He removed Rice’s crucial words, "It’s not that Saddam ... was ... involved."

Moore falsehood. Moore’s act of propaganda did more than any newspaper column or TV broadcast to boost the claim that the White House was alleging Saddam’s involvement in the 9-11 attacks. It was a plainly false claim.

Saddam did provide sanctuary to Abdul Rahman Yasin, the U.S.-born, Iraqi-raised man who helped mix the chemicals for the first World Trade Center bombing that killed six people in 1993. And Saddam harbored terrorists Abu Nidal (who killed or wounded 900 in anti-Israel attacks from 1974 to 1991) and Abu Abbas (who planned the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking, during which Leon Klinghofer was pushed overboard in his wheelchair). But no top U.S. official has argued that Saddam helped plan the 9-11 "day of fire."

"Bush in a Tree" now shows that, if anything, statements by the Bush administration dissuaded some Americans from believing Saddam helped to take down the World Trade Center in 2001.

The polls prove it. Another pro-Saddam bubble has burst.

Frank Warner

Comments

[Neo]

If the "Bush Lied" meme is based on the assertion that Congress didn't have the same intelligence as the President, then couldn't it also be said that "Clinton lied us into Kosovo," without an exit strategy at that ?

[Frank Warner]

The Democrats (in the North!) also said Lincoln lied to justify the Civil War.