Russert catches Cheney lying about Iraq and Al Qaeda on Meet the Press

Just two days after the US Senate Intelligence Committee released a report stated categorically that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda leader Zarqawi, Cheney went on Meet the Press this morning and stated categorically that there was a link. When Russert pushed him and told him that the Senate report says he's wrong. Cheney replied that he hadn't seen the report. ThinkProgress has the video.

This is hard to buy when you got a report released by the Republican controlled Senate that can be an indictment against the administration for their failures leading up to the war in Iraq and one of the key people in the report "hasn’t seen it".

Cheney outright lied today. He's been doing it for years about Iraq and Al Qaeda, but this time he was caught. Kudos to Russert for catching him. But the mainstream media needs to blow up this story. At some point, Cheney and Bush need to be held accountable for their continuing need to lie about the war in Iraq.

Other Bush Admin lies in the news:

(1) After letting bin Laden escape in late 2001, Bush called off the hunt for Osama and instead prepared for war in Iraq.

Bush should be run out of town on a rail. Bush called off the hunt for bin Laden only 6 months after September 11 because Bush wanted to invade Iraq. So much for 3,000 dead Americans. Bush gave up on them before the smoldering ashes at Ground Zero had barely gone cold. We are literally in greater danger as a country because of the incompetence of the man running our nation. God help us.

From today's Washington Post:

On the videotape obtained by the CIA, bin Laden is seen confidently instructing his party how to dig holes in the ground to lie in undetected at night. A bomb dropped by a U.S. aircraft can be seen exploding in the distance. "We were there last night," bin Laden says without much concern in his voice. He was in or headed toward Pakistan, counterterrorism officials think.

That was December 2001. Only two months later, Bush decided to pull out most of the special operations troops and their CIA counterparts in the paramilitary division that were leading the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq, said Flynt L. Leverett, then an expert on the Middle East at the National Security Council.

"I was appalled when I learned about it," said Leverett, who has become an outspoken critic of the administration's counterterrorism policy. "I don't know of anyone who thought it was a good idea. It's very likely that bin Laden would be dead or in American custody if we hadn't done that."

Several officers confirmed that the number of special operations troops was reduced in March 2002.

(2) War in Iraq stopped us from getting bin Laden in 2003

Wonder if this made it into Disney/ABC's movie?

From today's Washington Post:

Although the hunt for bin Laden has depended to a large extent on technology, until recently unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were in short supply, especially when the war in Iraq became a priority in 2003.

In July 2003, Vine said that U.S. forces under his command believed they were close to striking bin Laden, but had only one drone to send over three possible routes he might take. "A UAV was positioned on the route that was most likely, but he didn't go that way," said Vines. "We believed that we were within a half hour of possibly getting him, but nothing materialized."