Boy, oh boy. The Bush administration has taken the Clintonian art for parsing and technicality to an entirely new level.
Neocon war monger Paul Wolfowitz is still trumpeting that line about Iraq being the bedfellow of al Queda, despite all evidence to the contrary. He is trying to make it appear that al Queda is behind the constant attacks on US forces:
Asked about the increasing casualties among American soldiers in Iraq, Wolfowitz, appearing on “Fox News Sunday” said, “It is a sacrifice that is going to make our children and our grandchildren safer because the battle to win the peace in Iraq now is the central battle in the war on terrorism.”
His current line is that Iraq is the “central battle” in the war on terrorism. Never mind that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11 – or that there is no evidence to support that claim – and that the war on terrorism seems to have all but fizzled out. When was the last time you heard them talk about finding Osama bin Laden?
Now, here’s the doozy: Since there is no evidence at all that Iraq helped al Queda or that, in fact, al Queda even gave as much as a fig about Saddam Hussein, a secular leader like the ones that bin Laden fights against, Wolfowitz has finally parsed and pieced together an excuse for this linkage. Are you ready for this one? I’m serious. Really. This will make you either laugh out loud or shake your head in disbelief:
He linked bin Laden to Iraq by saying that the al Qaeda leader first called for the death of Americans because they were stationed in Saudi Arabia to carry out flights over southern Iraq, as part of Washington’s post-Gulf War policy. He went on to say that the killings of 19 Air Force personnel in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the 17 Navy sailors on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 would not have happened if the United States had not been engaged against Iraq.
In other words, our own actions in the Gulf region are the cause of the terrorist attacks, and since our actions were against Iraq, naturally, the whole thing is Iraq’s fault. That makes them “linked.” Technically, yes, that’s a “link.” But what a Clintonian stretch that is. I guess it depends what the meaning is “link” is.
By that logic, I am linked to Kevin Bacon and he is responsible for the fact that I got bronchitis last month.
Incredible.
