Pretty Well Confirmed

From Al Kamen's column in today's Washington Post (2nd item):

Noted without comment.

June 17, 2004. Vice President Cheney talking to CNBC's Gloria Borger.

Borger: "Well, let's go to Mohamed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, 'pretty well confirmed.' "

Cheney: "No, I never said that."

Borger: "Okay."

Cheney: "Never said that."

Borger: "I think that is . . . "

Cheney: "Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down."

On Dec. 9, 2001. Cheney talking to NBC's Tim Russert.

Cheney: "Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that -- it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue."

A transcript of that CNBC interview is here. Meet the Press transcript here.

Comments

[rst]

i always get a good laugh out of people who cannot admit to being deceived.

Hold your judgement. You do not yet know who is ultimately being deceived.

[joe]

Visions of Japanese soldiers in tattered uniforms, hiding out in the jungles on Pacific islands in the late 1960s.

[Kraorh]

Devil's Advocate: Is it even remotely possible that Dick Cheney just made a mistake? I don't remember what I might have said verbatim in a single interview almost two years ago.

Moreover, at the time (Dec 2001), the CW may well have been that the meeting happened. My recollection of the Prague meeting is that, like which diets work best, there seems to be a fluxuation over whether it was true and confirmed or not. Besides, even in the Dec. 2001 interview, he only seems certain about the meeting itself - he expresses doubt about what, if anything, happened.

Of course, if the VP made a mistake, once they bring this to his attention, he owes Borger an apology/explanation...

[Neil Lindsey]

Evan Williams:

You have summed up the whole matter very nicely. The Bush team didn't look at the evidence and then decide that war was the only option. Rather, they decided to go to war and then gathered the snippets of information - no matter how flimsy -to support their decision. So confident were they that Iraq had loads of WMD that they never bothered to confirm their suspicions. Instead, they foisted their suspicions with such confidence that anyone who doubted them were presumed to did so only out of unpatriotic disbelief. Now, continuing the deception, they say that it doesn't matter whether WMD were forund or meetings took place, because we got our man...and he was evil.

[Anymouse]

Neil,

How do you know? Were you at the meetings?

[Fred Gillette]

There are so many characters in the Administration who have said so many things, but I like to keep it simple and use Paul Wolfowitz' stated motivation as the rationale benchmark. He wanted to bring democracy and liberty and consequently Weastern-freindly governments to the region.

Time magazine called him the godfather of Gulf War II when they selected him as their Man of the Year. Wolfowitz, to my surprise, was quite frank in a recent New Yorker article about his rationale. Or was it an article in the Atlantic. It sucks getting old.

Either way, I don't care what that lying bastard crew of Cheney/Condi/Rummy/Bush say about meetings that Atta had or about the existance of WMD. Jesus, we sold Iraq the stuff in the '80s. I'd rather stick with Wolfowitz' original motivation which is possibly the only honest one.

That does not mean I am a war supporter. Trying to bring democracy and liberty via chaos, death and destruction is somewhat counterintuitive.

[linguist]

Hasn't anyone other than me noticed that

"was that report that -- it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague"

is Cheney doing an indirect quote of someone else's report? He's not the one saying that it's pretty well confirmed, the REPORT is. So he's not being entirely dishonest when he claims he never said that. (I realize I'm splitting hairs, and infinitives, but that's what linguists do.)

[thoreau]

Clinton should have said "Anybody in the White House will tell you that I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Or Hillary could have said "I have learned from reliable sources that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy."

These wouldn't have been lies, and I have no doubt that every hawk on this forum would have shown their consistent standards for Presidential honestly and defended these statements as being technically correct.

Right?

[Stephen Fetchet]

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040620-050700-2315r

[joe]

Only someone who hates Jews would point out a contradiction by the Vice President.

First!

[bruce]

Indeed, the only thing more unpatriotic than pointing out a contradiction by the Vice President is pointing out one by the President. Damn commies.

[wilson owens]

Hey, Cheney's just gotta do what he can to continue the coverup. He's trying to protect the Mossad, who of course ran 9-11, just like they assassinated JFK.

[joe]

And to think, for a moment there, I actually thought I was being a jerk with that post.

[Joe Majsterski]

Wait, wait, you're not saying that Cheney... LIED, are you?! Nooo, my whole world is falling apart!

[norbizness]

Don't worry, he's a 'Popular Subterranean Homesick War Vice President' (trademark pending), so I'm sure it won't stick.

[heh2k]

he seems to have made a mistake with the year the meeting took place, too. (2000 vs. 2001)

[Jason Ligon]

Where were the veep's media guys? I could understand qualifying a previous statement, or even saying that you don't recall making such a statement. Why would you flat out deny ever making a statement knowing full well that it was on tape?

We, as American citizens, must demand higher quality deceit from our elected officials.

[joe]

Interesting philosophical questin you raise, heh2k; does that error make the statement less true?

[Larry]

Meanwhile, the evidence of Iraq/Al Qaeda cooperation keeps growing, something no one would ever know from Hit & Run.

[Skeptikos]

I guess it all swings around the meaning of the word "is". Oral sex is not sex, and "pretty well confirmed" does not mean "pretty well confirmed".

I know, I'm old fashioned. A bullshit artist is still a bullshit artist, even if they are occasionally right, and the odds are, they will be right sometime, even if accidentally.

Freedom is slavery, Peace is war. When will you silly people learn to stop thinking and just follow the leader. O' the glorious leader.

[Rick Barton]

Brazen lies! The veep now has now adopted neocon methods to go along with neocon advocacies. Of course, so much duplicity went into the push for this war that lying about some of it is probable.

[Evan Williams]

This is eerily akin to an interview I saw with Rummy. He sat there and said "I never said [X]". Then the host played a tape of him saying [X]. The look on his face was almost as priceless as his weasely ramblings trying to escape it.

So, Larry, where are your piles of evidence? I'm sure that Rummy's Office of Special Plans is working on that one right now.

So, let's assume for a second that there IS evidence that comes out of their cooperation on whatever.

It's obvious, painfully obvious, that, when they made their case for war, they had no solid evidence of such a link, and they had trumped up intel snippets in order to make a better case for the upcoming death-fest. So, now, if the evidence just so happens to, by luck, coincide with their guesses before the war, what does it matter? They didn't have evidence about WMD's, but they made claims about them. They didn't have evidence about the AlQaeda link, but they made claims about it. You cannot then say, just because an after-the-fact finding happens to coincide with their prior guesses, that a war based on guesses is then justified. If the police bust down your door without a warrant because they "guess" that you have drugs, and subsequently find a drug stash, that doesn't mean that it justifies their warrantless entry. Or if I see a guy on the street with a towel on his head, and I say "hmmm, I bet that guy is a terrorist!" and then I run up and shoot him in the head, and my guess is later confirmed, that doesn't mean that my decision to kill him was right.

The point is, before the war, scrappy guesses and shoddy intel were presented as enough justification for the ensuing bloodbath. If said guesses happen to have been somewhat correct, that doesn't mean that the choice to go to war based on guesses is then vindicated. That is a logical fallacy. And it opens up the door for more "let's go to war based on guesses and scrappy intel" in the future. Regardless of how the facts happen to pan out, the lesson to be learned here is that war is too serious to be spurred by guesses and shoddy intelligence.

[HH]

Michael Moore and the New York Times while we're at it...

[HH]

Er no, not right, as only Clinton knows for sure, just like his lawyer speaking for him on a rape charge didn't wash. And I doubt major intelligence organizations would tell Hillary of the "conspiracy." By the way, if David Brock says it's not vast and Clinton says it's not a conspiracy, does it even exist?

[Kevin Carson]

Evan Williams,

I think Larry is referring to the link that Stephen "the [stage whisper] J.E.W.S." Fetchet posted at the top of this thread.

That article includes some unglamorous details, buried further down, like these:

"Shakir is a pretty common name," said terrorism analyst and author Peter Bergen, "and even if the two names refer to the same person, there might be a number of other explanations. Perhaps al-Qaida had penetrated Saddam's security apparatus."

Analysts say the Fedayeen was not an intelligence unit, but an irregular militia recruited from clans loyal to the regime in the capital, in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and in the surrounding Tigris valley area. Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank set up by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, described them to United Press International last year as "thugs and bumpkins."

He said the Fedayeen were "at the low end of the food chain in the security apparatus, doing street level work for the regime."

[joe]

Tomorrow's Washington Post editorial:

"Democrats say Dick Cheney directly contradicted himself. Republicans say he didn't, and that Democrats are lying. One's position depends on how one reads the two statements, and it is bad form for Democrats to say such a mean thing about the Vice President, based only on differing interpretations. Their overheated hate speech crossed the line, and now everyone is being mean. Partisanship is bad. It would be nice if politicians could be less partisan. Like Ronald Reagan."

[Ken Shultz]

"Meanwhile, the evidence of Iraq/Al Qaeda cooperation keeps growing, something no one would ever know from Hit & Run."

The operative word here is cooperation. Although there has been increased discussion of Iraq/Al Qaeda contacts recently, there has been no evidence of "Iraq/Al Qaeda cooperation" whatsoever. That's the problem, isn't it?

What the rest of you are seeing here are some of the distinctive characteristics of a species I refer to as the Burger Eating Attack Monkey. As a species, they don't need to see or listen to facts and they typically misuse language to the advantage of whatever they?re arguing. You all see the pattern, don't you?

[Fred Gillette]

Joe, you meant Washington Times, didn't you?

[Fred Gillette]

Ken Shultz,

Yep, I see it and quite frankly was amazed when I read that sentence. That's one loud echo chamber Larry has going on in his head.

[xray]

Larry: Speaking as someone who gets all of his information abt world events from H&R, to the exclusion of all other sources, i have to say that i am aware that the "evidence" keeps "mounting" and that you and Matthew C are having to deal with CNS hemorrhages because of it. Thanx for keepin us all up to speed despite, you know, the blood coming out of your ears.

[joe]

Fred, I meant the Post. The Times version would call the Democrats nastier names, and would not claim that the Democratic way of reading the contradiction (that is, as a contradiction) was just as valid as the Republican way of reading it (that is, as not being contradictory at all).

[Rick Barton]

(An open letter to Vice President Cheney)

Dear Mr. Vice President,

One of the first principles of good conservative governance is honesty on the part of elected officials with the citizens. Please note that the prosecution of this war has led you to ignore this principle.

Also note that the war itself, given its elective nature, was a violation of another conservative principle. President Bush stated this conservative principle when advocated a "more modest foreign policy" in one of his debates with VP Gore. Please recall that Gore responded by roundly rejecting that approach.

Mr. Vice President, four more of our soldiers died in Iraq today. . What reasonably expected result could possibly justify the further expected loss of American life? Iraq was never a threat to our security. Since there wasn't a good reason for attacking, there is no good reason for more American deaths by prolonging the occupation any longer.

[mak_nas]

Meanwhile, the evidence of Iraq/Al Qaeda cooperation keeps growing, something no one would ever know from Hit & Run.

i always get a good laugh out of people who cannot admit to being deceived.

[Dick Cheney]

the president never said that.

[joe]

And, of course, the careful avoidance of the word "imminent" while making arguments about the immediacy of the need to pre-empt a threat.

[HH]

Even more

[Bill]

Why do we waste so much time talking about dishonest pols? Why don't we play a realy hard game, like, "Name that honest politician." The only problem with this game is that it may be impossible to win (or end).

[joe]

linguist,

I too have noticed, retroactively, the extremely careful weasel-wording of this administration's war arguments, wording that allows them to claim that they didn't technically lie. "British intelligence has learned that..," the wording of the lettes to Congress that links Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, the conflation of atomic bombs with a stray chemical shell from before the 1991 war as "weapons of mass destruction," etc.