Cavuto left unchallenged Bartlett's straw man: "[W]hen it comes to the plot of 9-11, nobody has suggested that or directly said that Saddam Hussein ordered those attacks"
SUMMARY: On Your World, Neil Cavuto failed to challenge Dan Bartlett's straw man argument that "nobody has suggested that or directly said that Saddam Hussein ordered" the 9-11 terrorist attacks. In fact, no one is accusing the administration of claiming that Saddam ordered the terrorist attacks; rather, critics point out the Bush administration's repeated attempts to link Iraq and 9-11 more generally.
On the August 31 edition of Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto failed to challenge White House counselor Dan Bartlett's straw man argument that "nobody has suggested that or directly said that Saddam Hussein ordered" the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bartlett made this argument in response to a question from Cavuto about whether Bush administration critics will claim that the administration is "trying to link 9-11 to Iraq" as the five-year anniversary of the attacks approaches. In fact, no one is accusing the administration of claiming that Saddam ordered the terrorist attacks. While the Bush administration has never gone so far as to make that claim, it has repeatedly attempted to link Iraq and the attacks of 9-11, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Bartlett's language echoed recent statements from President Bush, who, at an August 21 press conference, responded to a question about the relationship between Iraq and the attack on the World Trade Center by claiming that "nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack." Also, as Media Matters noted, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams failed to challenge Bush's statement during an August 29 interview that "I personally do not believe Saddam Hussein picked up the phone and said to Al Qaeda, 'Attack America.' " As Media Matters has noted, on October 14, 2002, Bush declared, "[T]here is a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein." Shortly before the Iraq invasion, on March 17, 2003, he claimed that Saddam's government had "aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of Al Qaeda." And on May 1, 2003, Bush said that the toppling of Saddam's government had "removed an ally of Al Qaeda." Media Matters has noted additional examples of Bush and other administration officials repeatedly and falsely asserting a connection between Iraq and 9-11 or Al Qaeda here, here, here, and here.
From the August 31 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto:
CAVUTO: Do you think, though, Dan, that your critics are going to come out and say, "Look, they swore on a stack of Bibles that they weren't trying to link 9-11 to Iraq, and, yet, now, on the five-year anniversary, they are, in fact, linking Iraq to the greater battle of terror"?
I know it's nuanced, but, to the Democrats, they're saying that's being phony.
BARTLETT: Well, Neil, it's interesting. Here we are, as the president demonstrated in his speech, having a debate amongst ourselves about whether Iraq is central to the front in the war on terror or not. As the president has already said, when it comes to the plot of 9-11, nobody has suggested that or directly said that Saddam Hussein ordered those attacks.
But what the president has said, and what he has repeatedly pointed to, is the fact that the terrorists are making this the central front in the war on terror. Bin Laden himself, who President Bush quoted in the speech, says: "The Third World War rages in Iraq today. This is the epicenter of the fight."
So it doesn't matter what we say. We should be taking the -- the words of the enemy seriously. They think it's the fight of -- of the war on terror, so we must as well.
President Bush recognizes that many Americans may not have supported his original decision to remove Saddam Hussein. He also recognizes that people are anxious about what's happening there today. But we shouldn't mistaken [sic] ourselves to believe that this is not tied to the broader struggle that we are fighting to protect our country.
It is instrumental to the victory that we all want and hope to see. And it's important that we have the policies in place to fight and win. And, unfortunately, too often, we heard Democrats take the other side, to say, "We can pull out, and there won't be any consequences in the broader war on terror."
That's absolutely wrong. And President Bush argued a very strong case for why that would be just that.
CAVUTO: All right, Dan Bartlett, thank you for stopping by. Appreciate it.
bush is a pathological liar. he keeps repeating we had to invade because saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in. they were there. they pulled out because bush was going to war.
I posted a comment earlier today, on another thread to an item titled "NBC's Williams allowed Bush to make false and misleading assertions about Katrina recovery, pre-war WMD claims, and Iraqi links to 9-11"...
And I observed there how strange I thought it was, that the president, just one week after being asked rather unexpectedly at a White House press conference the question of "what does Iraq have to do with 9-11?"...
That after having answered that question then, both succinctly and truthfully, by simply stating "Nothing"...
I posted there it seemed unusual for him to say to Brian Williams:
BUSH: I personally do not believe Saddam Hussein picked up the phone and said to Al Qaeda, "Attack America".
...which is no statement at all, saying that Iraq and 9-11 have "nothing" to do with one another; and that in fact, if you read such a statement carefully, you will see that it cleverly implies such a connection may indeed exist (but that "I personally do not believe" so); and more than that, his statement actually (truly, and quite cleverly) says:
BUSH: ...Saddam Hussein picked up the phone and said to Al Qaeda, "Attack America".
Well, if you understand what it is I'm saying, and agree with the extraordinary care and craft with which these people speak (that is, unless they're caught off guard, as the president was last week), then you'll see that this guy, Bartlett, has done the exact same thing as the president did when he spoke to Brian Williams; as this guy says to Cavuto:
BARTLETT: ...when it comes to the plot of 9-11, nobody has suggested that or directly said that Saddam Hussein ordered those attacks.
...which just like the president's statement, is no statement at all saying that Iraq and 9-11 have "nothing" to do with one another; but in fact cleverly implies such a connection may indeed exist (but that "nobody has suggested that or directly said that"); and just as the president did, this guy's statement also actually (truly, and quite cleverly) says:
BARTLETT: ...Saddam Hussein ordered those attacks.
Now, you might think this to be an extraordinary high standard to hold language too, but I do not; because this administration has gotten an awful lot of mileage so far, from the clever (and deceitful) use of words...
Words such as "freedom" and "terror" and "Al Qaeda" and "war", and for that matter "Patriot".
And I swear, that when these guys have the time to cleverly devise their statements (unlike the president last week at the press conference, when he blurted out "nothing"), they make statements like the ones transcribed here; statements that actually contain the phrases:
...Saddam Hussein picked up the phone and said to Al Qaeda, "Attack America".
...Saddam Hussein ordered those attacks.
...if I didn't think it was important to what I was trying to make clear.
bold off I hope
smart enough to know how to keep his job and who signs his paycheck. He is also not capable of challenging guests who he wants to come back and spew the current White house rubbish.
See our Republican Party Chair as he displays his true talent, speaking lies from both side of his face.
We allways understood the "grain of salt" was needed to listen to our politicians, we just never allowed them to outright and routinely to lie to us. A Democratic Society does not allow this to stand, which we are fast becoming a Fascism as Danny would have it.
This man needs to stand by his convictions, or no, no, I'm sorry; he needs to be convicted, in the same way they through Susan McDougal in jail for standing for her convictions, for not lying.
We should at least return the favor and put a real criminal in the same cell. Maybe her example will show them the path to righteousness, or maybe it's just where he belongs.
Happy Thoughts;
Dan Grady
the "morals and values" guys and their media minions sure seem to have no problem excusing their actions with "exact words" and "no we didn't" cop outs.
Aren't these the same people who blow their melons at petty criminals going free on 'technicalities" like having their civil rights violated?
Next Bush will be claiming that we never invaded Iraq.
- Dem02020's , posted above, use of his bold feature to point out aspects of his post reminded me of just how charged you can get when you talk about Bush. To be faced with something you know is wrong, yet you can do nothing about, is something shrinks say is a sure formula for stress. I find myself wanting to shake up America and say: it's their, plane and day; this President is lying to the American public on a daily basis, and there seems to be no end to his pathologies.
There is a lot of responsibility that comes along with commanding troops; this President does not seem to be in touch with that responsibility. From the very start of this war, this administration used every aspect of deception to build a case for what amounts to killing humans beings. With the focus on our troop's safety, we discovered we were ill prepared and ill equipped to fight an invasion. I say invasion because at no point were we considered liberators.
Another aspect of responsibility is accountability for the funding and total lost of life involved in a war. Hearing of garbage bags of money being passed around as a form of payment for contractors who refused to deal in nothing but cash money sounds gangster to say the least; there is 9 billion dollars unaccounted for. "Where is the Money?"
We seem to distance our actions when it comes to "collateral damage," and we only want to focus on American deaths. Mr. Bush as repeatedly said "we are fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here." Does that mean the Iraqi lost of life is acceptable, so we can kill them and only concern ourselves with "collateral damage?" As far as I see it, there is one death toll: the total amount of life lost to fight this illegal war.
When it comes to this war, it's hard to know what we are fighting for, but I can see one thing we are not fighting for: fairness.
Joseph