George Bush, Saddam Hussein & Osama : Who Is The Biggest Threat (And A Liar)?

Today’s edition of The New York Times raises certain vital questions.

First, who does one trust. Here is the world’s only superpower whose leaders have been caught with their pants down. And who, on the basis of a web of lies, are hell bent on devastating the nations and the lives of innocent people in different parts of the world.

The trusting American people have been taken for a ride. The US administration has been brainwashing them by spreading lies. A section of the media has been toeing the official line and acting as a disseminator of this web of lies.

Let us see what the NYT has to say today: “The Central Intelligence Agency last fall repudiated the claim that there were prewar ties between Saddam Hussein’s government and an operative of Al Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to a report issued Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“The disclosure undercuts continuing assertions by the Bush administration that such ties existed, and that they provided evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Republican-controlled committee, in a second report, also sharply criticized the administration for its reliance on the Iraqi National Congress during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

“As recently as Aug. 21, President Bush said at a news conference that Mr. Hussein ‘had relations with Zarqawi’. But a C.I.A. report completed in October 2005 concluded instead that Mr. Hussein’s government ‘did not have a relationship, harbor or even turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,’ according to the new Senate findings.

“The C.I.A. report also contradicted claims made in February 2003 by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who mentioned Mr. Zarqawi no fewer than 20 times during a speech to the United Nations Security Council that made the administration’s case for going to war. In that speech, Mr. Powell said that Iraq ‘today harbors a deadly terrorist network’ headed by Mr. Zarqawi, and dismissed as ‘not credible’’ assertions by the Iraqi government that it had no knowledge of Mr. Zarqawi’s whereabouts.

“The panel concluded that Mr. Saddam Hussein regarded Al Qaeda as a threat rather than a potential ally, and that the Iraqi intelligence service ‘actively attempted to locate and capture al-Zarqawi without success’.”

Now when the US administration’s lies have been nailed, see what the response from the White House to these latest revelations is: “The findings were released at an inopportune time for the Bush administration, which has spent the week trying to turn voters’ attention away from the missteps on Iraq and toward the more comfortable political territory of the continued terrorist threat.

“On Friday, the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, played down the reports, saying that they contained ‘nothing new’ and were ‘re-litigating things that happened three years ago’.

” ‘The important thing to do is to figure out what you’re doing tomorrow, and the day after, and the month after, and the year after to make sure that this war on terror is won,’ Mr. Snow said.

Some cheek this, Mr. Tony Snow! This is extremely shameful. Who would believe you when you open your mouth next?

Over and above its significance in tracing the US path to war in Iraq, the report is also likely to become fodder for the mid-term election campaign, now in full swing, adds The Independent.

“The intelligence committee’s senior Democrat, John Rockefeller of West Virginia, accused the Bush administration of playing on popular fear in the wake of 9/11 to justify America’s invasion of Iraq.

“The report was the Senate intelligence committee’s second look at the run-up to the Iraq war. The first, issued more than two years ago, looked at the CIA’s failings in assessing Iraq’s – ultimately non-existent – weapons of mass destruction.

“National security and the so-called war on terror was a big factor in President Bush’s re-election in 2004. His loss of credibility in Iraq may sink his Republican Party in the congressional elections on 7 November.”