People, get ready

So “indicted” means “the Secretary of State said something about him”? I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what that word means. In fact, I’m quite sure that in no way is it true that Mladic was an indicted war criminal until November 1995.

And don’t give me that “palled around” nonsense. Clark was there to try to stop a war, not to spend time with his good friends, the Bosnian Serbs. I know that you know that.

What is the accusation, exactly? That he was hanging out for fun with the Serbian commanders? He was a diplomat, trying to prevent a shooting war. They were meeting with friggin’ Milosevic for years. You can call it “palling around”, but you can’t seriously believe it.

Ted–That’s a pretty fine line you’re drawing, and intentionally misleading. If you’d like to take the focus off what crimes Mladic committed and when, then take it out of your original post. As it is, your original post suggests not just that Mladic hadn’t been indicted when Clark met him, but that he hadn’t committed war crimes. In fact Mladic had already committed war crimes when Clark met him, and the US had publicly stated that (so Clark can’t plead ignorance).

As it is, your defense of Clark is analogous to a situation where the producers of the Mike Tyson Punch-Out game put the game out after Mike Tyson was indicted, but before his conviction. Sure, they can say they didn’t put out a game featuring a “convicted rapist” –he wasn’t convicted until later. Whether the rest of us need to abide that distinction is a different question.

As for my description of them as “palling around”: can we let the pictures speak for themselves?

So are you absolving all those who were Nazi sympathizers before they started the Holocaust, because technically they weren’t yet mass murderers? At the very least it shows very very poor judgment.

reg,

Utterly incomparable situation. No one has ever accused Clark of sympathizing with the Serbs. He was there to try to stop a shooting war, not to see his chum Mladic. You should read how he talks about the Serbian leadership in his book; he knew very well that they were terible people. But he was not sent there to keep his hands clean, and it wasn’t his decision about whether we went to war with the Serbs or not. He was supposed to deal with these guys, and that’s what he did. (Not unlike these guys. I blame Norquist for meeting with the Taliban, but I can’t blame Rummy for meeting with Saddam. We can’t take out every bad guy; we have to negotiate with some of them.)

A better equivalent would be American diplomats who had to deal with the Nazis in the 30s before they declared war on us. The Nazis were obviously a morally repugnant regime, but our generals and diplomats didn’t have the luxury of keeping their hands clean and refusing to deal with the Nazis. Someone had to engage in diplomacy with them if we weren’t going to declare war.

History has shown that it would have been better if the Allies has been more aggressive sooner. Still, it seems obvious to me that we have no right to judge our diplomats as if they were Nazi sympathizers, doesn’t it?

While you may well have a point in pointing out the fact that Srebrenica was post-Clark, Ratko Mladic was known to be a (non-indicted) war criminal well before Clark met him. He was regularly described as such by the US administration, was recognised as such by the UN troops on the ground and, as importantly was recognised as such in the press even pre-Srebrenica – a representative comment from the period (if memory serves, but DON’T quote me on this, in the Wall Street Journal) was that “it’s like cavorting with Herman Goering”.

Mladic’s MO was well known when Clark went to visit him.

One conservative’s take on this:

Whether Gen. Clark is more of an Eisenhower or a McClellan is still very much an open question, and one worthy of serious and thoughtful public debate. There are plenty of reasons not to take Gen. Clark terribly seriously as a presidential candidate, and even plenty of reasons to question Gen. Clark’s performance in the Balkins. But this photo isn’t one of them.

I don’t doubt Gen. Clark’s patriotism. Heck, I don’t doubt Howard Dean’s patriotism. The suggestion that Gen. Clark knowingly approved of or supported war crimes is just too stupid to waste time on.

If you are famous, then people take lots of pictures of you. Eventually someone will take a picture of you that makes you look wicked or stupid. This one is no more useful to intelligent political debate than the equally breathtaking picture of Dubya accidentally dropping his dog Barney in front of the horrified girls of the Midway All-Stars softball team. Did this photo — http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030830/170/54b6b.html — of Dubya and Barney, taken moments later, get as much press coverage? Of course not. But I’m sure there are likewise hundreds of pictures of Gen. Clark looking appropriately grim and soldierly that would give one a more accurate insight into his character than the silly hat-switching picture.

Beldar – you are, of course, absolutely correct that to suggest that Clark supports war criminals is both ridiculous and unworthy. However, I don’t think that is what people are suggesting. Or I hope not.

The point is that the Mladic incident calls into play serious questions over Clark’s judgement, both under pressure and in a broader context.

Thorley, it’s a big stretch to call that a “lie.”

Clark originally, on Meet the Press, said that there was an effort to link Saddam to 9/11. Russert asked “Who did that?”
Clark said:
“It came from the White House. [Indisputably true. If you think the White House didn’t try to create the impression that Saddam was linked to 9/11, you’re posting from Uqbar.] It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. [If he’s implying that this is from the White House, why did he say ‘It came from all over’? In my book, that means ‘It came from the White House, and also from other places.’]… And these were people who had–Middle East think tanks and people like this, and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. [Doesn’t it sound like the “people” he’s talking about are from Middle East think tanks?]”

So Clark never said the call came from the White House. He could have been clearer, but these were unscripted remarks.

Perhaps Clark could have corrected Krugman’s misapprehension of his remarks sooner–but compared to the Bush Admin’s constant obfuscation, this is peanuts.

Reg: there is a long standing rule of debate on the net. It is called Godwin’s law. It states that any argument will eventually devolve in to mentions of Hitler. When this happens, the person that references Hitler loses the argument, and everyone else moves on. The most common reply to invocations of Godwin’s law is that, well, sure, but in this case, it really does make sense. Yes, I know it does. Sorry that you’re on a losing course of action. It hurts me, too.

Bing.

Oh Sniffy, sorry I broke your debating rules, though I never mentioned Hitler. I mentioned Nazi war criminals, though they are on a greater level of brutality, are in principle no different than those Serbian war criminals. Seems to me to be a just comparison. How is my comparison wrong?
Also, I’d prefer a state department ripping into war criminals, as Bolton is into the N. Koreans, rather than chinking glasses and palling around.

All I have to say about this photo, is that anybody who cited the Rummy-Saddam photo as a knock on Rummy is hypocritical to look at this photo any other way. At least Saddam was fighting the Iranians, what possible good comes out of befriending these Serbian butchers?

Oh yeah, and this has got to be the first time in his life that R.Novak gave a rat’s ass about someone going against State Department instructions.

Google agrees.

Well, first of all, Ted is explicitly saying that he doesn’t see the Rumsfeld photo that way. He said it a long time ago in this thread, and you’ve been rather conveniently ignoring it.

Second of all, on the merits, Rumsfeld was wrong and Clark wasn’t (just not because of the photos per se). Rumsfeld was following an intentional policy of supporting and arming Saddam’s regime in the ’80s. All Clark did was talk to Mladic. He gave him no weapons, no money, no moral support, no nothing. And he did it at a time in which the Clinton Administration was clearly hostile, albeit insufficiently aggressive, towards the Serbs. In fact, as I remember it one of the main reasons why they were insufficiently aggressive towards the Serbs throughout the ’90s was that they were opposed every step of the way by the Republican Party. (“We don’t have a dog in that fight.” — James Baker; “Give peace a chance.” — Trent Lott; “[The U.S. is] starting to resemble a power-hungry imperialist army.” — Tom DeLay)

Robert Novack is a contemptible hack. That is what he is paid to be. The person who called Clark has already come forward, so the repetition of that fake controversy is inane.

About the fake White House phonecall controversey being ginned up by uberhacks Novack, Safire and Will, see:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh092303.shtml

No, Wesley Clark didn’t say that the White House pressured him on Iraq (text below). And when people began to think that he’d said it, he explained what he actually meant. And yes, there really is a Middle East think tank with an office in Canada (Montreal). And as of last Thursday, we knew who called Clark on September 11 (or 12), 2001. The Toronto Star explained the matter. “Thomas Hecht, founder of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, told the Star he placed the call to Clark and drew his attention to a potential link between Saddam and the Al Qaeda suicide hijackers,” the paper reported. “The Begin-Sadat Centre has its headquarters in Israel and its only office elsewhere is the one Hecht established in Montreal.”

All in all, a nothing-burger of a story. But lying liars are very busy trying to make Wesley Clark a liar, emulating the winning strategy they pursued in their trashing of Gore. How fake are our current conservative “pundits?” Here was the feckless and phony George Will, telling the world in the Washington Post that there is no Middle East think tank in Canada—that Wesley Clark, like Al Gore, is a liar:

WILL (8/31/03): As Clark crisscrosses the country listening for a clamor for him…he compounds the confusion that began when he said on June 15 that on 9/11 “I got a call at my home” saying that when he was to appear on CNN, “You’ve got to say this is connected” to Iraq. “It came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over.” But who exactly called Clark?

July 1: “A fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank.” There is no such Canadian institution.

Clark is a liar, Will was saying. And he was saying this too: Hey, rube! But then, so was the worn-out old hack William Safire, peddling this political porn in yesterday’s inept New York Times:

SAFIRE (9/22/03): As a boot-in-mouth politician, however, Clark ranks with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He began by claiming to have been pressured to stop his defeatist wartime CNN commentary by someone “around the White House”; challenged, he morphed that source into a Canadian Middle East think tank, equally fuzzy.

But Clark did not “begin by claiming to have been pressured…by someone ‘around the White House.’” And, four days after the Toronto Star actually named that Canadian think tank, the hapless Safire continued spreading the impression that Clark had just made that one up. (Safire was clever enough to use the weasel-word “fuzzy,” being craftily fuzzy himself.) Meanwhile, how hapless is this tired, worn-out old man? In this passage, Safire conflates two separate incidents involving Clark—Clark’s (unwise) suggestion that the White House tried to get him removed from CNN during the war, and Clark’s statement about Saddam and 9/11. But at the degraded New York Times, this kind of messy, nursing-home prose is just fine to dish out to its readers.
Al Gore was a Great Big Liar! And, Wesley Clark is a Big Liar too! Surely, by now, you all understand it—your “press corps” is spilling with rank propagandists, and they plan to retell their favorite dim tale. The question: Will America’s cowering “good guy” pundits—the Peter Beinarts, the E. J. Dionnes—dare to challenge their faking this time? Last time, they stepped aside as the corps’ lying liars made a sick joke of your White House election. Will the “good guys” cower and hide once again? The liars will lie until they are stopped. Will these cowering “good guys” dare to stop them?

WHAT CLARK SAID: For the record, we are generally skeptical about first-time candidates, and Clark has made some clear mistakes. (For example, he shouldn’t have repeated the “rumors” that the White House tried to get him canned from CNN.) But when Clark appeared on the June 15 Meet the Press, he did not say that the White House called him about Saddam and September 11. Here is the relevant passage:

CLARK: I think there was an immediate determination right after 9/11 that Saddam Hussein was one of the keys to winning the war on terror. Whether it was the need just to strike out or whether he was a linchpin in this, there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.
RUSSERT: By who? Who did that?

CLARK: Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, “You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.” I said, “But—I’m willing to say it but what’s your evidence?” And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had—Middle East think tanks and people like this, and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. But I never personally saw the evidence and didn’t talk to anybody who had the evidence to make that connection.

Can you read? If so, you will note that Clark didn’t say that the phone call came from the White House. And when people began to think that he had, he clarified what he had meant. That’s the way that decent people conduct a public discussion. But as we learned in the last election, your “press corps” is full of lying liars and fools. For example, note what Ben Fritz pointed out in Spinsanity: Note the way Will rearranged the order of Clark’s Meet the Press remarks to make it seem that he’d tied that call to the White House. In a real professional sector, people get fired for frauds of that type. But at the Washington Post, it’s OK. By the way, Fred Hiatt “edits” Will at the Post, Gail Collins “edits” the worn-out old Safire. Read much, Fred and Gail? And do you really think that American citizens are prepared to put up with this clowning again? Your papers made a joke of the last White House race. Do you really think that you’ll be allowed to produce this lying lying once again?

Two things are true:

1. Novak spun the facts to create false impressions.

2. Clark met with Mladic after he was known to have committed numerous crimes.

I don’t fault Clark for doing his job. The signal-to-noise ratio in this whole ‘debate’ is pretty low, IMO.

Matt Weiner wrote (quoting Clark on “Meet the Press”):

It came from the White House. [Indisputably true. If you think the White House didn’t try to create the impression that Saddam was linked to 9/11, you’re posting from Uqbar.]

Actually I’m posting from Minnesota and if you want to make such a claim, it is up to you to provide some evidence to back it up. Please share with the group how the White House supposedly tried to create the impression that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. I’ve heard nothing from anyone in the administration stating that he was linked to it and the administration officials (such as the Vice President) have been pretty upfront with saying that they don’t know if we linked to it or not.

It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. [If he’s implying that this is from the White House, why did he say ‘It came from all over’? In my book, that means ‘It came from the White House, and also from other places.’]… And these were people who had—Middle East think tanks and people like this, and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. [Doesn’t it sound like the “people” he’s talking about are from Middle East think tanks?]”

Actually it might help if you quoted the full Clark remarks instead of selectively editing them. Here is the entire portion of what Clark Said (and I’ve bolded the parts you deliberately removed:

“Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, ‘You’ve got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.’ I said, ‘But–I’m willing to say it, but what’s your evidence?’ And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had–Middle East think tanks and people like this, and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. But I never personally saw the evidence and didn’t talk to anybody who had the evidence to make that connection.”

You see when you read Clark’s entire comments including the “it came from people around the White House” which preceded the “it came from all over,” it looks as if Clark is saying that the people speaking to him were from and around the White House. This is before he mentions any think tanks. I agree his comments were poorly constructed but since he was unwilling to name any of the supposed “sources” from the White House, I’m not willing to give him a pass on what seems to be an obvious smear on his part.

“it looks as if Clark is saying that the people speaking to him were from and around the White House.”

No it doesn’t. He said there was a concerted effort to link Saddam to 9-11, which came from the White House, people around the White House, and from all over. He then decribes a phone call he received. He never said the phone call came from the White House, and when some people misintpreted his comments he immediately corrected them. It is nonsense to call this “an obvious smear.”

“Please share with the group how the White House supposedly tried to create the impression that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11.”

Right out of the box, Donald Rumsfeld was looking for a way to pin 9-11 on Saddam:

“CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

[snip]

With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H.” – meaning Saddam Hussein – “at same time. Not only UBL” – the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden.

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn’t matter to Rumsfeld.

“Go massive,” the notes quote him as saying. “Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml

On the very day of 9-11, the Administration was looking to pin the blame on Saddam, even though there was no evidence. For the past two years, various administration officials (including the President) have dropped coy statements intended to create the impression that Saddam was involved. Knowing that they had no evidence, of course they were no going to make outright assertions that he was involved:

“Yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post last month found that 69 percent of Americans believe Hussein probably was personally involved anyway.

So where do people get this zany idea that Saddam and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were connected?

[snip]

The White House has never definitively declared a link between Iraq and Sept. 11. Yet, Team Bush has chosen its words in ways that expertly avoid declaring such a link even as they strongly suggest one anyway.

“We know Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy: The United States of America,” Bush said in his televised address in which he made his case for an invasion of Iraq last October.

“The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001 — and still goes on,” he said from the deck of an aircraft carrier on May 1, in a speech in which he declared an end to major combat in Iraq.

“With those attacks” on Sept. 11, Bush said, “the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.”

“We’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases,” the president said in his Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati. “And we know that after Sept. 11, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.”

Vice President Cheney didn’t let up last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when he said, “If we’re successful in Iraq . . . then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9-11.”

http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Sep/09242003/commenta/commenta.asp

“Indeed, administration officials began to hint about a Sept. 11-Hussein link soon after the attacks. In late 2001, Vice President Cheney said it was “pretty well confirmed” that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cheney was referring to a meeting that Czech officials said took place in Prague in April 2000. That allegation was the most direct connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks. But this summer’s congressional report on the attacks states, “The CIA has been unable to establish that [Atta] left the United States or entered Europe in April under his true name or any known alias.”

Bush, in his speeches, did not say directly that Hussein was culpable in the Sept. 11 attacks. But he frequently juxtaposed Iraq and al Qaeda in ways that hinted at a link. In a March speech about Iraq’s “weapons of terror,” Bush said: “If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.”

Then, in declaring the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, Bush linked Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions.”

Moments later, Bush added: “The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th — the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.”

A number of nongovernment officials close to the Bush administration have made the link more directly. Richard N. Perle, who until recently was chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, long argued that there was Iraqi involvement, calling the evidence “overwhelming.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A32862-2003Sep5&notFound=true

Matt Weiner wrote:

As for Dick Cheney’s clarity—he said, “It’s not surprising that people make the connection” between Saddam and September 11, and then said “we don’t know” whether Baghdad played a role in the attacks. This is like saying I don’t know whether Dick Cheney has ever eaten human flesh—I don’t have the slightest bit of evidence for it, and it seems damn unlikely, but it is logically possible that he has.

Actually here is what Vice President Richard Cheney said:

MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.
MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization.
We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.
Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

A couple of points. First the statistical claim that 69 percent of the population believe that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks is misleading. The poll breakdown is actually something like 30 percent think it is very likely that he was involved and 39 percent thought it was something likely that he might be involved. That latter of which IMNHO is not an unreasonable point of view.

Nowhere in this exchange does Vice President Cheney state that he believes Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11 (in fact he says repeatedly that he does not know and the intelligence is not sufficient to prove or disprove SH’s involvement which has been pretty much consistant with what the rest of the administration has said all along). He does point out and rightfully so that Saddam Hussein was tied to Al-Qaeda and that there were possible liinks between SH and the 1993 attack on the WTC. There is nothing in Vice President Cheney’s comments which can reasonably construed as trying to hype a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Rather since this is a War on Terrorism and since the administration has stated its intent since the Axis of Evil speech to go after members of terrorist groups (such as Al-Qaeda) and the States which harbor and support them, it is perfectly appropriate to show the connections between Al-Qaeda and Iraq.

That’s just one example, and it comes after the Saddam-9/11 link has been thoroughly discredited—we’ve been searching for evidence, and have found nothing.

Which is a strawman argument since you have not shown that anyone from the Bush administration ever claimed that the two were linked.

And here’s Bush in the State of the Union: Saddam “aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.”

Which is true and since the conflict in Iraq was part of the “War on Terrorism,” why should not the president of the United States point out the fact that the Baathist regime in Iraq aided and protected terrorists including members of Al-Qaeda?

You’re correct, I think, that the Administration never stated Saddam was linked to September 11. They tried furiously to create that impression—constantly mentioning them in the same sentence—without ever making an outright assertion. The purpose was to deceive without technically lying.

The Cheney comment alone is a clearer case of a deliberate attempt to deceive than Clark’s comments. Perhaps the group can help point Thorley to other examples.

Actually you’ve offered nothing to show that the administration was trying to deceive anyone. Vice President Cheney’s remarks were accurate and when presented in their full context (as opposed to snipping out a couple of phrases to distort their meaning) show that he never said or implied that the evidence showed a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 while rightfully pointing out though that the intelligence showed a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaead which by your own quote from President Bush was all anyone from the administration alleged.

That some of the critics of the administration may find it inconvenient to their Bush bashing that intelligence shows that Iraq was in fact tied to Al-Qaeda does not justify their perpetual attempt to distort this connection and falsely claim that the administration ever claimed or alleged that the former Iraqi regime was tied to the 9/11 attacks.