Lieberman Peddles the Old Iraq-9/11 Connection
I had CNN's Situation Room on in the background, when I saw the sight of Senator John McCain and Senator Joseph Lieberman on my TV screen. As you probably know, Lieberman has endorsed Republican McCain for President.
(You also know but for any who have forgotten: Lieberman was a Democrat, then lost his party's 2006 primary to the anti-Iraq-war candidate Ned Lamont, then ran for the Senate anyway as an Independent, and won almost all of the Republican vote and 20% of the Democratic vote. And he's an Independent in the Senate, but is counted as a Democrat.)
On the Situation Room, McCain talked about the surge is working, the surge is working. (Violence is down, and now we can stay there babysitting and shooting and getting shot for the next 10 to 20 years. Yippeee!)
And then Lieberman, asked about his 2006 campaign, said it was important he had defeated the pro-Lamont, antiwar part of the Democratic party because once the 2008 Presidential campaign came around the Lamont part of the party would have trouble with "the American people, who know we're at war with a brutal enemy who attacked us on 9/11."
"We are at war with a brutal enemy who attacked us on 9/11."
Really, Senator Lieberman, and who would that be?
Are we back to looking for Bin Laden in Afghanistan? Have we decided to hell with Musharraf and we've invaded Pakistan to track down Al-Qaeda? Have we deposed the royal family in Saudi Arabia, where most of the hijackers came from, and we've decided to impose democracy on that country?
I'm not in favor of invading Pakistan or deposing the Saudi Arabian royal family, but as ideas they at least CONNECT with 9/11.
But Senator Lieberman didn't mean any of that, did he?
He meant to imply (to mislead, distort, to lie)... that our invading Iraq, a country that did NOT attack us, is connected to the 19 terrorist hijackers who attacked us on 9/11.
And it is not connected, is it, Senator Lieberman, or Senator McCain?
We were not attacked by a country. We were attacked by members of an organization. By 19 individuals who belonged to the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, which had safe haven in Afghanistan (not in Iraq!).
Class, what countries were the individual terrorists from?
Answer: "Fifteen of the attackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt, and one from Lebanon."
Class, and how many on that list were from Iraq?
Answer: "16."
No, Vice President Cheney, that is the wrong answer, please sit down again. What? You're going to gather your own intelligence to analyze this list? Very well. Only spend just a few billion dollars on it, alright?
In the lead up to the war, Cheney and Bush and others spent LOTS of time misleading the American people about the non-existent connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.
But the administration a couple of years ago let go of trying to push that connection (except for Cheney).
And on TV Bush even once admitted there was no connection, which he said in a mumbled, annoyed voice when asked the question explicitly by some reporter during a press conference. (Asked long after we'd been there, of course).
But here is Senator Lieberman SELLING THAT LIE again. And McCain smiled benignly in the background.
I mean most of the liars in the Republicans party who continue to hawk this war and claim it's for our safety no longer try to tie Iraq with 9/11.
They usually do the song and dance about "the war on terror" and we have to fight it everywhere, and now there IS Al-Qaeda in Iraq, though it wasn't there before we invaded. And if we don't fight them over there, we'll have to fight them here. (That last bellicose bromide is said often by McCain.)
I just found Lieberman intoning "the American people... know we're at war with a brutal enemy who attacked us on 9/11" to be enraging. Enraging. We've gone past that lie.
Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Then we attacked back. We didn't react to Japan's attack by bombing Korea, did we? Or by invading China? Or by attacking Connecticut, who elected the dense and smiling Mr. Lieberman. Elected him over and over again.
Bush and Cheney sold this war first for our self-defense (we were in DANGER from Saddam, and we had to act IN THE NEXT TEN MINUTES OR ELSE). Then when there were no WMD's, the justification changed to we were creating democracy there. Then we were babysitting a civil war (well other people said that, Bush kept saying it wasn't true). Now it's calmer there, but it's hardly safe, and so what is the result of that? Now we're to be there for ever and ever? At billions a week, or is it a billion a minute by now?
I find it appalling and shocking that we are in a war, with men and women dying and being horribly maimed, when it was undertaken under false pretenses. And when as many of us believe, our being there as an occupier makes us less and less safe, and creates more terrorists. It's not a good bargain. You break it, you own it, said ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell, referring to the Pottery Barn Rule. How I wish we had invaded Pottery Barn. Then at least we'd have some nice merchandise, and could use some of it to give as Christmas presents.
And Lieberman just re-brought out that old, biggest lie about the war again, the supposed connection between our Iraq and 9/11. Enough with that lie.
Senator Lieberman is despicable.
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Lieberman will never stop falsely connecting Iraq with 9-11. He will never connect bin-Laden to Saudi Arabia. That is his master deceit. Lieberman will be placed between Iago and Rasputin for mad masters of treachery.
The people of Connecticut and of America should be asking themselves, just exactly where the loyalty of Joe Leiberman truly is. I don't believe for a minute it is with either the Democratic or the Republican Party, or for that matter with America.
The Democrats could fairly remove him from any committees he might head and send him into the limbo he most willingly sought. Lieberman IS NOT a Democratic politician anymore. Does he spy for the Repbublicans? They owe him NOTHING. He despises the Democrats and spits in their faces, can he be trusted at all?
I'll never forget when he literally elbowed himself to the front of a delegation of Democratic Senators at a press conference in front of OUR White House to DEFEND AND SUPPORT The Psycopath's decision to invade and the subsequent slaughter of Iraq.
Look at the difference in character between this selfish "Independent" and another, honorable man, "Independent" Bernie Saunders ... Lieberman is so laughable transparent in his motives, it's like when that yapping Ed Koch overtly supported the warmongering fascists (in his very own words) "Because of Israel" at the Republican Convention in 2004 in Manhattan.
Joe Lieberman is a traitor to his party and his country.
But there he was yesterday, with a big smile, on CNN, spewing his sick, murdering, war-mongering lies.
And McCain, did he ever see a bloody war he didn't support? He is the Republican rightwing industrial complex's DREAM candidate. He's also shamelessly milked his tragic experience in Vietnam to the hilt! And it taught him, absolutely nothing.
He has openly sucked up to Bush, was there was a deal struck a long time ago? McCain would be next in line after Bush and his Shock and Awe, scorched earth policies moved outside of the White House, but NOT out of our lives. (next in line, down the road, after McCain, in the GOP's dream scenario, comes The Psycho's boated brother, Jeb.)
Rightwing C-span is already gearing up to present Jeb in any show and under any pretext to give him dignified exposure.
If McCain or any other Republcan wins the next election, everything Bush and all of his secrets will be protected, and the march towards domination of the nation by the rightwing zealots and there millions of them, raring to go, will be set in stone.
Liebermans a scum bag.
We already know what he supports- why should we care who he supports. Take a vacation w/ the rest of the Repugs and phony Dems.
I remember when Lieberman was asked by CNN's Judy Woodruff about whether he ever served in Vietnam he replied, "Of course I would have loved to have been part of that group but I was in college at the time and also a parent." (Others such as Dick Cheney also hid out in college to avoid the dangers of combat in Nam and Cheney also succeeded in getting his fifth deferment after wife, Lynne, was impregnate
Lieberman may peddle IRAQ--911 connection and voice we need to extend the conflict to IRAN but what he really cannot say is he does this mainly in support for ISRAEL.
Many people have gotten this clue but are afraid to say it.
The only Al Qaeda camp I know of in Iraq was Al Zarqawi's and it was up in the Kurdish autonomous area that Saddam didn't control. It was right underneath the Northern No-Fly Zone.
There were plans to destroy it with an airstrike in the fall of 2003. The plans were shelved because taking out Al Zarqawi would have removed one of our justifications for the invasion "Saddam is harboring terrorists".
Maybe Lieberman is hoping to run for VP, this time as a republican. Wouldn't that be great? Another loser out trying to use lies that even most republicans, except Cheney, don't have the nerve to repeat anymore. The weakest candidate in the current field of democrats would blow them away!
The last line of your post says it all:
"Senator Lieberman is despicable
The other most successful part of our government's 9/11 operation (at this point if you don't think Cheney was behind it, you haven't looked at the data, or you are lieing), is that those who oppose the Cheney administration chase their tails about the misguided Iraq war, the false connection between al Quaeda and Saddam... blah, blah, blah. These are the things they WANT you to argue about, instead of questioning Cheney's responsibility for the whole thing. It's like arguing the choice of getaway car, instead of busting someone for actually robbing a bank. You people are blind.
when I heard that comment - i just about became unglued in my mine. i emailed cnn's did we make an error? website as well as an email to situation room and john king. why didn't he stop lieberliar right then? it was disgusting. just disgusting.
Outstanding, as always, Christopher.
Sadly, it appears that it will take some time before people fully realize the fundamental lunacy of the Iraq misadventure: the United States devoted the bulk of its military response to 9/11 to a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
It's quite astonishing, really, that more than fours years on, with all the treachery and deceit of this war so voluminously reported, there are still those, albeit without any "inkling" of critical thinking skills, desperately clinging to the falsehoods of their ideological heroes.
Laurie Mylroie, James Woolsey, Powell's U.N. speech, Richard Perle, Prague...S
By the by, our same Judge Baer later ruled that the plaintiffs would not receive a penny of that $104 mil - it was needed instead for "Iraqi reconstruction".
Now that's rich.
There are radical elements on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that do not want to see a solution/peace treaty. I suspect that Lieberman in one of them.
Congress needs a primer in the law of evidence. Watching Fox News is not "evidence.
Such BS! Lieberman still lies! How can he live with himself?
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