Meet the DePressed....

On Meet De Press this Sunday morning, Tim Russert had on Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission. The following really irks me:


MR. RUSSERT: I want to go back to your original report. You found that there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that was "operational." And you found that there was no evidence that the--Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out attacks against the U.S. Is that accurate?

MR. KEAN: That's correct.

MR. RUSSERT: So there's no suggestion that Iraq was, in any way, shape or form, involved with September 11?

MR. KEAN: No, and we can find no evidence whatsoever, and we came out with that statement clearly.

Why does that bother me? Because, for the life of me, I can never understand why Dems and libs continually push this belief that President Bush ever said "Saddam's Iraq had a hand in orchestrating 9/11". What I find so insidious in Tim Russert's question which I italicized in bold, is that it puts the subliminal message into viewers' minds that we went to war with Iraq because we were told by President Bush that Saddam was involved with September 11th. It's always been clear to me since before the war that this wasn't one of the arguments put forth.

When a highly respected journalist and great interviewer like Tim Russert continually does this sort of crap, is it any wonder that so many people are misled, not by President Bush, but by MSM? They continually misreport and mischaracterize exactly what the Administration says, ever since the run-up to war.


Here's what Annenberg's FactCheck.org has to say in regards to an anti-war coalition ad that was running in September:

"Saddam Hussein had al-Qaeda ties."

The ad quotes Bush as saying, "There's no question Saddam Hussein had al-Qaeda ties." Bush said that September 17, 2003, after months of fruitless searching for evidence of WMD's in Iraq.

However, the full quote shows Bush also made clear that he was not claiming that Saddam had any connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In fact, he was knocking down a suggestion made four days earlier by Vice President Cheney, who said on NBC's Meet The Press that it is "not surprising that people make that connection" when asked why so many Americans believed Saddam was involved in the attacks.

Bush, Sept. 17, 2003: We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th . What the Vice President said was, is that he has been involved with al Qaeda. And al Sarawak, al Qaeda operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat. He's a man who is still running loose, involved with the poisons network, involved with Ansar al-Islam. There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties.

Since the word "ties" can cover any connection, however weak, Bush was in fact stating the truth. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission later cited reports of several "friendly contacts" between Saddam and Osama bin Laden over the years, and cited one report that in 1999 Iraqi officials offered bin Laden a "safe haven," which bin Laden refused, preferring to remain in Afghanistan. But nothing substantial came of the contacts. The commission said: "The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship."

Does MSM-bashing ever get old? No...not really. So long as it is out there, we should continue to hammer it home, the liberal bias that passes itself off as straight, nonpartisan news reporting.

Check out this book, by Stephanie Gutmann. Heard the author interviewed last week on Dennis Prager. This photo should speak volumes about the nature of journalistic accuracy and reporting.