On Fox News Sunday, Hume falsely asserted that Al Qaeda in Iraq "was there before we got there"
SUMMARY: On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume asked Juan Williams, "Who are we fighting there [in Iraq] now, Juan?" then answered his own question: "Al Qaeda in Iraq. They were there before we got there, and they're there now." In fact, U.S. military and intelligence officials have reportedly stated that Al Qaeda in Iraq didn't exist before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, didn't pledge its loyalty to Osama bin Laden until October 2004, and isn't controlled by bin Laden or his top aides. Further, the 9-11 Commission found "no evidence" that contacts between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda "developed into a collaborative operational relationship" before the Iraq invasion.
On the September 9 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, following National Public Radio senior correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams' statement that "the war in Iraq is serving as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, creating this group Al Qaeda in Iraq where it might not otherwise exist," Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume asserted: "That's the whole argument that you've heard all along: you better not go and take these people on in any way because it only stirs them up and creates more of them. I don't buy it." Later, Hume stated, "We were also going [to Iraq] because we believed there was a terrorist connection," to which Williams replied: "And they never proved the terrorist connection, Brit." Hume then asked: "Who are we fighting there now, Juan?" and answered his own question: "Al Qaeda in Iraq. They were there before we got there, and they're there now."
However, contrary to Hume's claim that Al Qaeda in Iraq was "there before we got there," a June 28 McClatchy Newspapers article reported that "U.S. military and intelligence officials" say "[t]he group known as al Qaida in Iraq didn't exist before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, didn't pledge its loyalty to al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden until October 2004 and isn't controlled by bin Laden or his top aides," as Media Matters for America noted.
Media Matters has also repeatedly noted (most recently here) that the 9-11 Commission found "no evidence" that contacts between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda "developed into a collaborative operational relationship" before the 2003 invasion. Several other purported pre-war links between Iraq and Al Qaeda have also been debunked.
Further, as Think Progress noted, a September 6 report from the Congressional Research Service stated that "most of the daily attacks [in Iraq] are carried out by Iraqi Sunni insurgents," not members of Al Qaeda in Iraq. From the report:
A numerically small but politically significant component of the insurgency is non-Iraqi, mostly in a faction called Al Qaeda-Iraq (AQ-I). Increasingly in 2007, U.S. commanders have seemed to equate AQ-I with the insurgency, even though most of the daily attacks are carried out by Iraqi Sunni insurgents. AQ-I was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a June 7, 2006, U.S. airstrike. AQ-I has been a U.S. focus from very early on in the war because, according to U.S. commanders in April 2007, it is responsible for about 90% of the suicide bombings against both combatant and civilian targets.
From the September 9 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday:
HUME: Juan, look at what's happening in Iraq. Al Qaeda is a Sunni operat -- organization. And which people in Iraq are turning against Al Qaeda? It's the Sunnis. Al Qaeda --
WILLIAMS: Brit, this is one limited area in Anbar --
HUME: Excuse me --
WILLIAMS: -- and we can't even afford to pull our forces out of Anbar because the progress there is so tenuous.
HUME: It isn't just in Anbar; it is elsewhere as well. The problem that Al Qaeda faces in any war of ideas is that it is a gang of mass murderers. That's what these people are. They offer nothing to the people of the world. And that is why what he [bin Laden] says in the tape is true: All these nations in the world are after them, they're on the run. They're not winning. They're not winning any war of ideas. The truth is, they really have no ideas.
WILLIAMS: Well, in fact, what we're seeing, and this is something that even what the 9-11 Commissioners say this morning in the paper, is that the war in Iraq is serving as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, creating this group Al Qaeda in Iraq where it might not otherwise exist. And so, therefore, what you're seeing is this propaganda effort continuing to grow.
HUME: That's the whole -- that's the whole argument that you've heard all along: You better not go and take these people on in any way because it only stirs them up and creates more of them. I don't buy it.
WILLIAMS: Well, that's not why we went to Iraq --
WILLIAM KRISTOL (Weekly Standard editor): Well, there were about 16 --
WILLIAMS: Remember we were going there after weapons of mass destruction? Remember we were going there to spread democracy?
HUME: We also were going there because we believed there was a terrorist connection and if the terrorists didn't care about Iraq --
WILLIAMS: And we never proved the terrorist connection, Brit.
HUME: Who are we fighting there now, Juan? Al Qaeda in Iraq. They were there before we got there, and they're there now.
WILLIAMS: We are overwhelmingly in the middle of a civil war between Shia and Sunni, and we have switched sides. Initially, we were supporting Shia and we thought that we could get a political structure of governance working -- which is why we had a surge -- to allow a government to take place, a successful government, and to allow the army and the police to stand up so we could stand out. And guess what? They haven't done any of that in the time the surge has been in place.
Do we expect anything different from Hume? He lost his credibility years ago. He's a joke now, a punchline really.
kristol and hume double team poor juan all the time, esp over the war....and they get to make up the facts too.
and mathews just now stated during the Johnson administration, the statement was made " The light at the end of the tunnel " Chris, you are not allowed to manipulate history to make a point. It was Kissinger that said that after a meeting with Le Duc Tho ( ? SP ) in the Nixon administration. Back to topic, Hume is a historical revisionist, that is why he has a job at FOX.
Notice how often they interrupt him whenever he is making points. He almost never interrupts them. Hume almost always pontificates first on the key issues. the lady handicaps the horse rce side of the issue usually managing to presume the validity of some point Hume is making . Krystol then expands on Hume and Williams gets interrupted by Hume usually with an hurumph or other nonargument. Seen it over and over.
Why the neocons just won't surrender to the truth on this issue is a mystery.
Al Qaeda and Saddam never collaborated on ANY operations, not 9-11, not the USS Cole bombing, not the embassy bombings, the 1993 WTC bombing, none of it.
This caterpillar pipe dream of Al Qaeda in Iraq before the US invasion owes its existence to Cheney, Cheney's biographer and Fox News.
Like the VAST supplies of WMD Saddam was hiding, this neocon honey pot of lies isn't anymore real than Winnie the Pooh, except Winnie's cute and they aren't.
Randy
Let's take one of the Con myths concerning AlQueda training camps in Northern Iraq under Saddam's rule. As the Cons say, 'this proves that Saddam was in cahoots with AlQueda'..therefore, we bomb the hell out of Iraq. Let's move forward to 2007....AlQueda is hiding in the country of Pakistan..therefore, according to ConRules of Logic, we should be bombing Pakistan. Aren't they just TIRED of their own lies. I feel that these Fox news people have sold their souls to the devil..a/k/a Murdoch or Scaife
Hume's comments, along with Cheney's appearances on Fox are precisely the reasons studies have shown Fox viewers to be the least well-informed of TV news viewers. There has never been evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam and Osama. Saddam was the type of Muslim leader Osama abhorred--a bad muslim. Hume and other Republicans also like to characterize the Democrat's strategy in dealing with terrorists as "appeasement" and "fear" of "taking them on." Note to Hume. Democrats at least have evolved beyond the "flight or fight" reaction of animals, unike the Republicans. Democrats can look at a problem and see complexity and work towards solutions which address that complexity.
Hume is an unrepentant neocon shill.
The fact that Faux News shows not even a twinkling of embarrassment that another one of their prized talking heads has again been exposed as a right wing hack & a chronic liar speaks volumes of the deep pride that they take in the profitability that seems to go hand in hand with their complete & utter lack of ethics & integrity.
At the end of the day, Murdoch is nothing more than a snake oil salesman.
Interesting how Media Matters failed to mention the $300,000 Saddam's regime paid to Al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawarhi.
Got a nonpartisan link?
I realized something I never really thought of before. If Saddam was harboring terrorists (like Zarqawii) as some claimed, why did Bush not give Saddam the same ultimatum to hand over Al Qaeda members like he gave the Taliban in 2001?
</b> Bungle's boss was afraid Saddam might hand him over! There goes a decade of planning to invade and overthrow Saddam.
<b> x </b>
Still didn't work; maybe some tag other than <b>, therefore some close other than </b>? <strong> maybe, </strong> ; or <em> perhaps </em>.
No large oil reserves in Afghanistan? Maybe? Ya Think?
"why did Bush not give Saddam the same ultimatum to hand over Al Qaeda members like he gave the Taliban in 2001?"
Bush may as well have used that reason, since WMD's was a crock as well. He didn't need it to be true, he just needed something that would stir up enough fear.
Saddam was a man who was desperate to maintain absolute power. Dictatorships endure by instilling fear and the image of their leader into every facet of the nation's culture. Why the heck would Saddam ever want to introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda? Especially when so many of Saddam's people hate him? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Britt Hume is just like everyone else at Faux. A kool-aid drinker and a bush apologist. I wish I invested money in Kool-aid back in 2000. I might be richer than Bill Gates by now.
Richard Clarke wrote in his book that there was an Al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, with training facilities which Junior was aware of. However he ask the question which Fox and Hume will NEVER ask: Since you were aware of this camp Mr. President why didn't you just drop a bomb on them. You were certainly aware that the Al Qaeda affiliate was not under Saddam's control (located on the north), why did you WAIT 18 months to launch a war against the ENTIRE country? Of course those types of questions are NEVER asked in Fox.
Hume and his ilk are the same people who told us, "WMD's", "Cakewalk" and "Greeted as Liberators". They didn't know squat back then. They don't know squat today.
There is absolutely no reason to listen to these people anymore. In fact, they no longer have any business being part of either our media or our government.
SAVE DEMOCRACY, VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!!
Fascists, Communists, and an Dictatorship need the benefit of RE-WRITING HISTORY to match their agenda for power. A Democracy is hindered, thus protected by a free flow of ideas, and a constant examination of the truth. It makes mistakes by the bucketts, but by the very nature of it's process it makes small mistakes that may be re-examined.
The Process is not pretty, like the Democratic Party it is chaotic from the stand point of various positions, and ideas sharing the same leadership for better or worse as a Representative Democracy must!
Listening to Brit as he re-invents his lies, his distortions, his blatant mistakes at every turn in the run-up to the war, and the spin after the war is truth in plain sight being distorted yet again by the same stupid people without any opposing voice!
A Democracy of free thinking, freedom loving, voting Americans that have consented to send forces into a war they were lied to about need to know who lied to them, and why! They need a way to confront these liars, and their deeds in the public square, not to have these same liars codified by their continued access to the pedistal of national televised 'news programs' that presume to be delivering "fair and balanced" imformation!
The Fairness Doctrine demanded equal time on policy issues and political debate! How nice it would be to have atleast the presumed effort of "equal time" to balance the foolishness these people spew as though they knew about anything they were talking about!!
Happy Thoughts;
Dan Grady
Maybe Fox News will live up to their moniker of "Fair and Balanced" by asking anyone with a dissenting opinion to come on to have a DEBATE. I am sure that Rupert "The Truth" Murdoch will insist that this take place.
P.S. Please ignore the above post, my medication hasn't kicked in yet today.
What do you mean by their not being "fair and balanced"?
The panel represents all types of viewpoints:
Bill Kristol is a Neo-Conservative, Charles Krauthamer is an Ultra-Conservative, Mort Kondracke is a Right of Center Conservative, and Williams (or Liasson) is a butt-kissing moderate. And of course the show's moderator (Hume) is another kind of conservative.
So as you can see, you have all the colors of the rainbow. What other viewpoints do you need? [;)~
P.S. At this bar we play both kinds of music: Country and Western
Sorry O.H., it's that damned medicine I take. But mixing them cause a terrible reaction. This morning, I took one dose of TRUTH, one dose of REALITY and topped it off with some HOPE.
Maybe our Con friends can try this mixture even though they have been told that it will kill them...or even worse, start thinking for themselves and becomes Liberals.
The people who are in Al Qaeda in Iraq may have been in Iraq before we got there. Some of them are native Iraqi's I suppose.
They were not hellbent on going after American soldiers, and we didn't have our soldiers in harm's way before we invaded either.
Bush acts like we, the USA, weren't fighting terrorism until he began the fight after 9/11. Bush wasn't fighting terrorism very well before 9/11, but other Presidents had done so, with varying degrees of success. Bush, on the other hand, has done a terrible job of fighting terrorism since he began that effort. He even messed up Afghanistan and the hunt for bin Laden.
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman is now rotting in jail for the rest of his life for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, as is Ramzi Yousef and at least 8 others involved in the attack. How did this horrific event end with 10 conspirators caught, convicted and sentenced? POLICE WORK.
Today, Osama bin Laden continues to thumb his nose at us and the incompetent Bush Administration by releasing, as Lewis Black called it, his vacation videos. We're quagmired in Iraq and bin Laden is out on a day hike.
they just won't let this lie go, will they? tenacious little right wingers.
TMAN, Wow, yeah, looks like YOU DID IT all right! Now, how about UN-doing it?!
Uhhh - egg on my face. Sorry TMAN! (I hit "NEXT" and now see that someone has fixed it).
"That's the whole argument that you've heard all along: you better not go and take these people on in any way..."
Please, Mr. Hume, please give me the name of ONE SINGLE PERSON who has advocated that what you cavalierly dismiss as "the whole argument." Once again you float the idea that you are either behind our invasion of Iraq, or you are in favor of doing absolutely nothing. Thank you for your intelligent contribution to this dialogue.
By the way, "these people" that we are now taking on (who are actually only 5-10% of the people our military is fighting in Iraq) weren't even in Iraq when we attacked. If we really wanted to go after "these people," we would have used more troops in Afghanistan, attacked Yemen, Somalia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, The Philippines, Chechnya, and Iran.
Someone correct me if I am wrong..... Why is General P and Ryan Crocker showing up for an exclusive on Faux Noise? I dont ever remember a sitting General in the middle of a war doing interviews on TV. Gen Abizaid, Gen. Sanchez, none of the theater commanders that i can remember have done that. Sounds odd to me. Obviously, doing it on Faux Noise is doing nothing to enhance his credibility. Shouldn't he leave the propaganda to the politicians?