Another Big Lie

According to a recent CNN poll, 43% percent of Americans still believe that Saddam/Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Wow! I think this bit of information may be the primary determinant of whether someone thinks the Iraq war was a good idea or not. If I had thought there was a connection between Saddam/Iraq and 9/11 then I would have supported the war – but even though I did not have access to top secret information, I knew all along there was no connection.
Here is why:
1.    Saddam ran an atheist government that was diametrically opposed to the fundamentalist religious wackos that were the terrorists.
2.    Saddam survived by keeping complete control – he wasn’t about to share power with terrorists.
3.    The terrorists hated Saddam. Osama bin Laden had labeled Saddam an infidel and called for his assassination.
4.    If Saddam had given weapons to the terrorists, they would have been as likely to use them on him as us.

Knowing these self-evident truths served to immunize some Americans from the lies of the Bush administration. Remember in the run up to the war, how Bush and his cronies always included Saddam and bin Laden or Iraq and al Qaida in the same sentence? They did this incessantly for months – over and over on the propaganda shows on FOX and right wing radio, on every appearance on every news show they would hammer this association into the minds of the American people. Is it any wonder that by the beginning of the war, 80% of Americans thought there was a connection between Saddam and 9/11?
There was a lot of parsing of words in these implications of linkage between Saddam/Iraq and the terrorists. You could say that I am linked to Kevin Bacon (because I know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows Kevin Bacon) but it would be fundamentally dishonest to make the association. The 9/11 Commission stated categorically that there was “no collaborative relationship” between Saddam and al Qaida.
Bush recently admitted there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 and he said no one in his administration ever implied there was. That is another big lie.