FORGOTTEN HISTORY: Bush admits no Saddam 9/11 link in 2004 debate

With another presidential election at hand, and terror alerts and odd events about to descend upon us again, it's worth remembering that President George W. Bush admitted during a 2004 presidential debate that the country we invaded and now occupy to the tune of up to trillions of tax dollars spent, over a million Iraqis killed, and thousands of American troops killed and tens of thousands maimed for life, had nothing to do with 9/11.

Nothing.

Bush admitted Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 at least three times.

1. Once in response to polls showing his propaganda had convinced 70% of the public that Iraq was involved in 9/11,
   


2. in 2006 when a reporter accidentally asked an important question,
   
   
3. and in 2004 during a debate with Senator John Kerry (see below).
   

Kerry was not the perfect candidate, but at least in this exchange, he had the better handle on reality; or more precisely, he acknowledged reality whereas Bush lied about and tried to change the subject.

KEY EXCERPTS:

BUSH: I would hope I never have to. I understand how hard it is to commit troops. Never wanted to commit troops. When I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I'd be doing that.

But the enemy attacked us, Jim, and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people, to do everything I can to protect us....

KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, "The enemy attacked us."

Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist...

He also said Saddam Hussein would have been stronger. That is just factually incorrect. Two-thirds of the country was a no-fly zone when we started this war. We would have had sanctions. We would have had the U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein would have been continually weakening...

LEHRER: Thirty seconds.

BUSH: First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that.

FULL TEXT

Republicans have successfully sold themselves as the better party on national security, but when they lie to us on an issue as crucial as this, can we trust them with the safety of our country and families?

If we're teaching Iraqis democracy, what do polls say they want?

GRAPHICS: What do Iraqis want? An important Q if teaching democracy


The Coalition Provisional Authority did a poll of Iraqis on a number of questions and one was whether they view us as liberators or occupiers.

The results were pretty grim:










LINK TO POLL DATA

A Gallup poll done around the same time was only slightly more supportive of us staying.

The only poll that has shown anywhere near majority support for us being there was from a right wing think tank, that has a vested interest in making this Neocon adventure look good.

The argument that we are fighting terrorists there instead of here assumes there's a set number of people who are mad at us, and we can eventually kill enough of them to make the problem go away.

The problem is, at the base of all of it, is a resentment of our involvement in propping up their dictators, who don't share the oil wealth with their own people. All this gets channeled into religion because they have no effective political outlets in most countries over there. So by intervening militarily, we are making more not less people resent and want to attack us.

Polls of reaction in other Arab countries to our invasion of Iraq confirm this. A Zogby poll in 2003 found that 90% disapproved of our invasion
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030317-025106-382...

Zogby's most recent poll of Arab countries shows MORE disapprove with 98% of Egyptians (our allies) disapproving.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7080-2004Jul2...

If you want to teach people democracy, you can't do it with a gun in their face.

Gorbachev accidentally showed us an easier way to do it. He told the dictators of Eastern Europe the Soviets couldn't afford to help them oppress their people anymore. Within a few years, those dictators were out of jobs, and those countries were more or less democracies.

And I don't think a single Russian soldier was killed.

Musharraf, Mubarak, the Saudis, various kings and generals, would all wither away and die without our money and help of our intelligence services. The results might be messy, but the people over there wouldn't blame us for it--they'd thank us.

Print this out, and send it to your congressman and senators and tell them to stop treating us and the Iraqis like fucking idiots.

They are there to steal the oil. Stop it. Don't use our tax dollars and soldiers lives to enrich a very, very few. Or we'll start wondering about how seriously they take democracy here.