Cheney went on the offensive yesterday(but then again when is he not on the offensive). He was on almost every news network trying to put the smack down on the New York Times for what he was calling irresponsible and lazy reporting for their editorial on the missing link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. In case you missed the NYT editorial it basically said that the administration should apologize for misleading the public into believing that there was a link. Well, Cheney still believes there was a link, but the NYT is not buying what he is selling, and it sounds to me like they might be pretty upset with the fact that he was going around calling them names in any and every microphone he could wrap his twisted mouth around. This is the NYT response from an editorial in tomorrow's edition:
"When it comes to 9/11, someone in the Bush administration has indeed drawn the connection to Iraq: the vice president. Mr. Cheney has repeatedly referred to reports that Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent. He told Tim Russert of NBC on Dec. 9, 2001, that this report has "been pretty well confirmed." If so, no one seems to have informed the C.I.A., the Czech government or the 9/11 commission, which said it did not appear to be true. Yet Mr. Cheney cited it, again, on Thursday night on CNBC."Mr. Cheney said he had lots of documents to prove his claims. We have heard that before, but Mr. Cheney always seems too pressed for time or too concerned about secrets to share them. Last September, Mr. Cheney's adviser, Mary Matalin, explained to The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney had access to lots of secret stuff. She said he had to 'tiptoe through the land mines of what's sayable and not sayable" to the public, but that "his job is to connect the dots.'
"The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy."
Also, it looks like the NYT is not the only entity that is asking for evidence from the administration about this so called Iraq-Al Qaeda link. The 9/11 commission wants some answers as well.
"The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know.""'Probably,' Mr. Cheney replied.
"Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said that, in particular, they wanted any information available to back Mr. Cheney's suggestion that one of the hijackers might have met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent, a meeting that the panel's staff believes did not take place. Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the administration had never been able to prove the meeting took place but was not able to disprove it either."
Well, somebody better start talking because I just took a web poll on an MSNBC website that shows that nearly 40% still believe that there is a link. No wonder the Republcans are still shoving these lies down are throats. It turns out most of the moron fringe in this country is still ready to eat it up.
Posted by Paul Hina at June 19, 2004 12:22 AM