boiled meat

Ok, there seems to be a great deal of wordplay going on with this whole "we didn't say collaboration, we said connection" crap -- so let's take a look:

The commission did acknowledge that a meeting had taken place between al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officers during the 1990s in Sudan, but said there was no evidence it led to a working relationship.

Ok, so 10 years ago some Iraqi intelligence (no pun intended) met with Osama. Does that suggest anything? Yes, they met. Let's see who else had contacts then -- oh yeah, the Bush family and the bin Laden family -- you know, big oil business is a small family indeed. Do people suggest the Bush family should be hunted down because they had a connection to the bin Ladens? No, not really. But lawmakers are now saying Saudi Arabia has been given a pass on terrorism since 9/11 even though most of the hijackers came from that country. Yeah, it was the same bright guys who ok'd Dear Leader's premptive war, so they don't hold much water for me, but they do raise an important point: why have they gotten the treatment?

So we're reaching back 10 years to draw some flimsy connection because Dear Leader used that lie as one of the primary reasons we went to war, and as the Finacial Times says:

Yet there was nothing intrinsically absurd about the WMD fears, or ignoble about opposition to Saddam's tyranny - however late Washington developed this. The purported link between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, by contrast, was never believed by anyone who knows Iraq and the region. It was and is nonsense, the sort of "intelligence" true believers in the Bush camp lapped up from clever charlatans they sponsored such as the now disgraced Ahmad Chalabi. Yet, even this week, vice-president Dick Cheney continues to assert Saddam had "long-established ties with al-Qaeda".

No wonder that, until recently, polls regularly showed more than half of Americans believed Iraq was behind the attack on New York's twin towers.

Whether the Osama and Saddam thesis was more the result of self-delusion or cynical manipulation, it - along with Washington's mismanagement of the whole Iraqi adventure - has been enormously damaging.

The Bush administration has misled the American people. It has isolated the US, as American diplomats and commanders pointed out this week. And its bungling in Iraq has given new and terrifying life to the cult of death sponsored by Osama bin Laden. Above all, it inspires little confidence it is capable of defeating the spreading al-Qaeda franchise, which always was the clear and present danger.

Hell, if were going to go back to recent history to develop our rationale for war, let's go, back a mere 20 years ago Rumsfeld was shaking hands with the evildoer himself -- fuck, Reagan was selling him WMD's. I know, I know, times change -- he was our dictator then.

Today Moscow came out with a startling revelation -- saddam was planning to attack the us and they gave that info to bushco before the war -- remember church lady -- how convinient. More will come out in the days ahead I'm sure -- but here's a tidbit from the Telegraph:

The statement, coming from a man who vocally opposed the war against Iraq, baffled political commentators in Moscow.

There was speculation that Mr Putin made the comments to offer Mr Bush a helping hand at a time when he is facing criticism at home.

Uh, ya think? Do they need some oil contracts or what? Or maybe they like our definition of torture, especially in relation to Chechnya. And do we really put a lot of faith in an ex-kgb agent who will probably never leave office? Our own State Department is baffled by the information (although that's not too surprising since Powell has been licking dear leader's boots for three years now and has been an impressive stooge. He's the only guy that can go from commanding respect from people in many different ideological/political backgrounds to looking like sparky).

I miss the days when we could argue about a blow job, it was so much simpler then. Where was Putin then? I like yer pretty lips -- can you squeal like a pig?