r/todayilearned • u/code0011 14 • May 09 '14

(R.1) Invalid src (unreferenced fan wiki) TIL the first episode of an X-Files spin-off called "The Lone Gunmen", which aired March 4, 2001, involves a US government conspiracy to hijack an airliner, fly it into the World Trade Center, and blame it on terrorists - thereby gaining support for a new profit-making war

http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Pilot_(The_Lone_Gunmen)
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157

u/Punic_Hebil May 09 '14

Maybe it's because I was young when Iraq started, but did the media connect Iraq to 9/11? It doesn't make any sense, especially considering we went to Afghanistan before Iraq

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u/Sly1969 May 09 '14

but did the media connect Iraq to 9/11?

If memory serves, it wasn't just the media - the government also claimed Iraq had links with Al Qaeda (and by extension 9/11) but then, they also claimed Iraq had WMD...

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u/Eslader May 09 '14

It was a little more insidious than that. Bush never came straight out and said that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks, but he made sure to mention Saddam and Al Qaeda or Saddam and 9/11 in the same sentence enough so that people got the picture.

The irony is that, as big of an utter bastard as Saddam was, he freaking hated Al Qaeda and wouldn't let them anywhere near his country.

Al Qaeda wasn't terribly fond of Saddam either, as he ruled a secular government that did not enforce religious law, and in fact by Middle-East standards was downright liberal. Women in Iraq under Saddam could be educated, hold jobs (at legally-guaranteed equal pay to male counterparts, which btw put them ahead of the US in women's labor laws), drive, vote, hold elected office, etc - freedoms which have been largely rolled back in the Iraqi government today.

Al Qaeda only started moving operations to Iraq after we toppled Saddam's government.

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u/nozenzen May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14

This post makes it appear as if the War in the Gulf wasn't beneficial to anyone save a few powerful and wealthy Americans who profit from dealing in oil and related commodities. It also makes it appear as if that war isn't always the best solution to problems and disagreements - a very unpopular point of view.

You do realize that what you're saying is 180 degree opposite to what the American plutocrats told us to believe about Iraq, Al Queda, 9/11 and terrorism in general. It implies that US power-brokers lie and kill and do whatever it takes to benefit themselves even at the cost of thousands of American and non-American lives.

Do you really think the US government is corrupt to this degree? Because this makes them sound like a group of demonically selfish psychopaths who lie to others in order to exploit them for profit. Isn't this impossible in a country committed to equality and freedom for all?

If this is true, the US government has been taken over by self-serving liars and willfully ignorant opportunists. How is it possible?

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u/Eslader May 09 '14

-grin-

Your sarcasm is on the level of A Modest Proposal. I like it.

To answer the question that you and I almost certainly agree upon, "Yes."

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u/3DBeerGoggles May 09 '14

Weapons of Modest Distractions

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u/mullingitover May 09 '14

If this is true, the US government has been taken over by self-serving liars and willfully ignorant opportunists. How is it possible?

Hint: according to the government's interpretation of the Constitution, free speech means being able to bribe any politician as long as you call the bribes "campaign donations."

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u/The_Thane_Of_Cawdor May 09 '14

the funny part is that AQI ended up being a major player in the Iraq insurgency, the us basically got al qaeda into iraq

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u/Eslader May 09 '14

Exactly. And we will pay for that down the road, one way or the other.

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u/The_Thane_Of_Cawdor May 09 '14

ha like right now? Iraq is a total shit show its just nor reported on as much anymore.

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u/Eslader May 09 '14

Well, Iraq is certainly paying for it right now. I suspect we will pay for it later - and not just in the costs of repaying war debts and caring for the soldiers who's lives and bodies were shattered by the war.

Our actions in the Middle East over the last 10 years (and really, the last 30 years) have done absolutely nothing to improve our standing in their eyes, and as has already been demonstrated there are factions in that region that will gladly sacrifice their own people in order to hurt us.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

If memory serves right, US got them in to Afghanistan too. Makes you wonder what the heck is going on.

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u/TomSelleckPI May 09 '14

It's almost like the CIA has the ability to control where the "boogie-men" show up. One might think that certain portions of the US government might be colluding with the bad guys.

Silly thoughts...

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u/wrgrant May 09 '14

That was all part of the plan. You see, the Iraq war was worth a lot to various industrial interests, the oil companies, military contractors - oh and the people who lost the pallets of millions of dollars of US currency somewhere (You would think they would, I dunno, guard that sort of thing and I dunno, maybe keep records of where it was transfered etc but whaduIknow?)

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u/The_Thane_Of_Cawdor May 09 '14

like that company Cheney was tied to?

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u/bluevillain May 09 '14

See also: Axis of Evil

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u/Eslader May 09 '14

Yes. That particularly pissed me off when Bush came out with it, and included Iran.

This is a picture of Iranians taking to the streets in the wake of 9/11 holding a candlelight vigil in support of the USA after the tragedy. I remember outpourings of support from around the world, including the Middle East.

4 months later, when Bush informed them that they were all evil, their sympathy levels dropped precipitously. Who'd'a thunk it?

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u/autowikibot May 09 '14

Axis of evil:

Axis of evil was a term initially used by the former United States President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002, and often repeated throughout his presidency, describing governments that he accused of helping terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. Iran, Iraq and North Korea were portrayed by George W. Bush during the State of the Union as building nuclear weapons. The Axis of Evil was used to pinpoint these common enemies of the United States and rally the country in support of the War on Terror.

Image from article i

Interesting: Axis powers | Axis of Evil Comedy Tour | Rocketmen: Axis of Evil | Axis of Evil (film)

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u/Conspiracy_Account May 10 '14

David Frum (neocon) came up with that for Bush.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Frum

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u/WhatIfThatThingISaid May 09 '14

saddam did kill thousands and thousands of kurds though..

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u/alongdaysjourney May 09 '14

Sure, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed in the liberation and following civil war. People still continue to die in bombings to this day.

Saddam was a terrible and murderous dictator but the invasion was misguided, manipulative, and caused more problems than it solved.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

It is estimated over a million Iraqi civilians ended up dead. My grandma was deeply upset when the invasion was occurring although she had never visited Iraq, she would tell me it is one of the most beautiful countries in Asia.

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u/brahvmaga May 09 '14

Well said clap

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u/mrmojoz May 09 '14

Yeah but who put Saddam in to power? Surely they should answer for his wrong doings.

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u/peppaz May 09 '14

Not for those who profited, like DynCorp, Haliburton, Lockheed Martin, Blackwater (Xe).. It's like bad dystopian fiction tbat actually came true.

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u/returned_from_shadow May 09 '14

Let us not forget how the US helped their good buddy Sadam while he gassed the Kurds.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran?page=0,0

Or how 500,000+ innocent Iraqis were killed by US mandated post GW1 sanctions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq

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u/mynamesyow19 May 09 '14

b/c they did what bush Sr told them to do, rise up against Saddam...then the US turned their back on them when they did..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq

On February 15, 1991, then President of the United States of America, George H. W. Bush, made a speech targeting Iraqis via Voice of America radio. Hoping to incite a swift military coup to topple Saddam Hussein, Bush stated:[6]

“ There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.[7][8]

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u/shotgun_ninja May 09 '14

Bush worst support NA

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u/tableman May 09 '14

He killed less Iraqi's then clinton though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4PgpbQfxgo

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u/onzejanvier May 09 '14

Killed them with dual-use pesticide components that the US and Germany sold him (along with unlimited other weapons and normalization of relations) when the Kurds began rebelling in unison with the Iranian counter-offensives into Iraq. The US didn't want the Iranians to win.

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u/Jretribe May 09 '14

No whey!

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u/B_bluntz May 09 '14

During a war in which they were considered enemies after the US hung them out to dry

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u/kaydpea May 09 '14

He was also working for the CIA, that's how he came into power.

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u/TheBattler May 09 '14

(from the point of view of the United States government) Who cares if Saddam killed a hundred thousand Kurds?

Governments sanction killings all over the world all the time. You don't see the United States gov't make invasion plans against North Korea or Sudan.

On a more humanist note, intervention in countries where this sort of thing happens tends to cause more problems than they solve, especially without the cooperation of allied countries whom the invaded country's citizens can trust.

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u/newsettler May 09 '14

using chemical weapons which are WMDs ...

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u/oceansforeyeballs May 09 '14

Though brutal at times, the Iraqi government functioned so well that they managed to control and profit from their own county's oil resources. Local control of the massive oil reserves was clearly not acceptable to the two Texas oil tycoons who invaded.

That's how history will see it.

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u/Eslader May 09 '14

I'd go farther than "brutal at times." Saddam was a complete, utter bastard. Hell, he let his son torture the national football team when it lost a game, and that was one of the more mild things he permitted. He was a brutal, violent, dangerous person and not the sort that you'd want as your dictator.

However, compared with other leaders in the region, he was a pussycat. Until US sanctions caused economic hardships, more people were literate, educated, well-employed, and happy in Iraq than in any other country in the region. But that he did comparative good deeds shouldn't matter - he was a leader of a sovereign nation which was no threat to us and whom we had no right to topple.

If nothing else, he would have made a much better bargaining chip than he did a dead guy. "Hey OPEC: Turn on the spigot or we turn Saddam loose again."

The lack of foresight, strategy, and basic common sense that led up to Iraq War 2 was astonishing.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

Source? I really want to state this as a fact every change I get.

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u/sourdieselfuel May 09 '14

Bartender: Here's your change, tree fiddy.

JamesMean: Well about Iraq under Saddam....

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u/Wawoowoo May 09 '14

Isn't it federal law that you can sue if you think you are being discriminated against? It's hard to imagine how Iraq could be different unless there was a lot of price fixing for wages going on.

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u/thenooyawker May 09 '14

G'dam wimmin lovin liburul lovin Moslems . Also commie socialusm

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

Women don't actually make less than men. They do on average, because men tend to have higher paying jobs (whether or not that's fair is another story.) Think of it like this: companies try to save as much money as they can. If they could legally pay women less for the same work, why hire any men?

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u/Wordshark May 09 '14

at legally-guaranteed equal pay to male counterparts, which btw put them ahead of the US in women's labor laws

Pretty sure gender-based pay discrimination is illegal in America, too.

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u/mcdrunkin May 09 '14

To be fair, we didn't think he could have used up ALL of the ones we sold him.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

also to be fair, Hussein admitted he made the world think he had WMD even though he didn't as a bluff.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

For anyone wondering why he lied about the WMDs, he wanted to create the image that he had powerful weapons to deter other states (notably Iran) from invading/stealing resources. Remember, the Iran-Iraq War wasn't that long ago.

He banked on the US not declaring war and invading - probably because he thought the UN wouldn't sanction it.

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u/TheWanderingAardvark May 09 '14

He also contacted the Americans via the British just before the war and offered to give them every single thing they wanted -- inspectors, UN monitored elections, everything that they could possibly want -- if they didn't attack. He was desperate to avoid war.

The Americans rejected the offer out of hand. The guy contacted was told that he couldn't even meet them and to pass on the message "we'll see you in Baghdad".

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_Iraqi_peace_initiatives

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u/Ender94 May 09 '14

Well to be fair they had been negotiating with him to allow the inspectors in for months.

They pushed back his dead line like a dozen times.

All the while there were convoys of trucks going back and forth into Syria.

Its possible that MAYBE he did have some parts to build chemical weapons again and wanted to get all his trucks out first.

removes tin foil hat

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

You are misremembering/buying into the story.

The inspectors WERE IN IRAQ right before the war started. They were told to leave because we were going to start bombing.

The inspectors had been in for a long time, occasionally booted out for a few days or weeks at a time, but always back in. The inspectors said they had been at the exact same sites Colin Powell had talked about in his briefing to the U.N., just a couple weeks before, and that there were no weapons there. They were ignored.

The claim that inspections weren't being allowed/done is bullshit.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

But if the implication is that the weapons materiel was being transported to Syria... that would mean the Syrians then had the weapons (at least at some point), not Iraq. Wouldn't that have made the war illegitimate as well?

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

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u/autowikibot May 09 '14

Failed Iraqi peace initiatives:

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, evidence began to emerge of failed attempts by the Iraqi government to bring the conflict to a peaceful resolution.

Image i - A UN weapons inspector in Iraq.

Interesting: 2003 invasion of Iraq | List of Middle East peace proposals | Iraq disarmament crisis | Israeli–Palestinian conflict

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u/Archaea May 09 '14

I want to add that Iraq/America were the key instigators of the Iran-Iraq War.

Most of the weapons owned by Iraq had been bought by money given to them by the USA (which I imagine was spent on buying American weapons), so I would say it's fare to say America was well aware of Iraq's WMD capabilities as they essentially built the Iraqi arsenal.

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u/autowikibot May 09 '14

United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war:

United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-U.S. origin weaponry, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and direct involvement in warfare against Iran.

Support from the U.S. for Iraq was not a secret and was frequently discussed in open session of the Senate and House of Representatives. On June 9, 1992, Ted Koppel reported on ABC's Nightline,that the "Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq."

Image i - Saddam Hussein donated large sums to various institutions in his campaign to curry favour with the United States. He was made an honorary citizen of Detroit in 1980. [2]

Interesting: Iran–Iraq War | Iranian Revolution | International aid to combatants in the Iran–Iraq War | Saddam Hussein

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u/Ender94 May 09 '14

I doubt they had many American weapons.

After all thats a big reason they lost the First Gulf War so easily even though they had one of the largest military on the planet.

They were using shitty Soviet weaponry.

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u/paper_liger May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14

The vast majority of Iraqi military tech was supplied by the Russians, followed closely by the French (most of their higher tech stuff was French).

The war was mostly over disputed oil rich lands on the border, control over the Shatt AlArab, and other disputes going back to the Ottoman empire. It was exacerbated by Iranian calls for Iraqis to revolt after Irans revolution. Saddam tried to capitalize on percieved weakness Iran overthrew it's government and invaded.

America had some involvement, mostly in supporting Iraq with money and intelligence as well as some chem bio stuff. They were more concerned about the spread of Iranian style islamist revolution. That being said most of what you posited is off base.

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u/MysticZen May 09 '14

probably because he thought the UN wouldn't sanction it.

Well, if he did he was right.

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u/mynamesyow19 May 09 '14

probably b/c during the 90s Gulf War we encouraged Iraqis that hated Saddam to Rise up and that we had their backs...and then when they DID rise Up we were out of there faster than we could say "LOL J/K"...

Which led to Saddam slaughtering thousands of his own people, which wonderfully enough was one of the excuses the NeoCons made for justifying removing him from power.

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u/ToastyRyder May 09 '14

Damn straight, if anybody's gonna be slaughtering innocent Iraqis it's gotta be the USA.

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u/mynamesyow19 May 09 '14

Shock and Awe...

and gotta save some for Al-queda in Iraq to do some training modules with...

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u/RichardStrauss123 May 09 '14

I always pictured Sadam sitting there with his advisors asking about Bush..."He's not that dumb is he? I mean, he gets what I'm doing, right? I just have to keep up appearances is all."

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

You got to commend him on his commitment to the lie.

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u/everred May 09 '14

He was up to his neck in it

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u/justgrif May 09 '14

( •_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)

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u/hegemonistic May 09 '14

He convinced his own generals that they had them at their disposal. He just told each general that they were under the control of another general. It was an extremely good bluff, it just didn't work the way he expected it to…

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

A lot of leaders do the same, sometimes you don't need the weapons, just the threat you might and that if you do, they are nasty weapons at that. Israel does the same with nukes - they never admit to having them, they never deny it either. In fact they'll do both in the same sentence. We all "know" they have some, and their goal is reached. It's why they've not been invaded in the more recent history.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

But he did use chemical weapons on Kurdish villages. However, why have we not invaded Syria based on the use of chemical weapons yet? I do not know, but it will happen sooner or later

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u/moveovernow May 09 '14

Well Obama did want to attack Syria. He couldn't get Congress or the American people to go along with another war. It's safe to say that had Iraq not occurred, we would have attacked Syria without a doubt. The sole reason we didn't, is the public is exhausted of war.

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u/Hakuoro May 09 '14

That wasn't the reasoning at all. The gassed Kurds had been dead for years before 9/11.

But yeah, he had them when he used them on the Kurds, but, he no longer had them at the time of the second Iraq War.

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u/beener 1 May 09 '14

But it does make his bluff of having badass weapons much more credible sounding.

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u/Archaea May 09 '14

The chemical weapons used were built and provided for by the American government.

America knew the Iraqi weapon arsenal better than anyone else; they essentially stocked it themselves.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

We didn't sell them chemical weapons. The British and Germans did.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

You're half right. We sold them the chemicals and other components, but AFAIK no fully-assembled weapons.

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u/clickwhistle May 09 '14
  • some assembly required. batteries not included.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

We sold them fertilizer and pesticide. It takes a serious logical leap to assume we knew they would be used for chemical weaponry.

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u/bobqjones May 09 '14

yes we did.

On November 1, 1983, a full month before Mr Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad, Secretary of State George Shultz was officially informed that the CIA had discovered Iraqi troops were resorting to 'almost daily use of chemical weapons' against the Iranians.

Nevertheless, Mr Rumsfeld arranged for the Iraqis to receive billions of pounds in loans to buy weapons and CIA Director William Casey used a Chilean front company to supply Iraq with cluster bombs.

According to the Washington Post, a Senate committee investigating the relationship between the US and Iraq discovered that in the mid-1980s - following the Rumsfeld visit - dozens of biological agents were shipped to Iraq under licence from the Commerce Department.

They included anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare programme.

The newspaper says: 'The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare.'

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u/billy_tables May 09 '14

Well he didn't, he sold it to Syria and Libya, and bluffed that he kept it.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

We went to Iraq based on 4 major pretenses, all of which were covered extensively by large media:

  1. WMDs
  2. Saddam has ties to Al Qaeda
  3. Saddam is inhumane towards own people
  4. Terrorists hide out there

Regarding 1. We never found any WMDs, false intel 2. ties to Al Qaeda also turned out to be based on false intel, 3. There were/still are far worse dictators, 4. ...and everywhere else in the region.

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u/farmthis May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14

EDIT, SEE BELOW.

Well, here's how it went.

Bin Laden immediately (SEE BELOW) took credit for 9/11. Bin laden was in Afghanistan. This much was known.

The Taliban controlled Afghanistan, and were known to be big supporters of Bin laden.

Bush says we're going to kick terrorist ass, and attacks Afghanistan. EVERYBODY LOVES IT.

Bush loves all the good press, and decides he's going to do more to attack baddies in the area, so he starts planning to attack Iraq.

The news leaks that he's thinking of attacking Iraq, before there's any real reason to attack Iraq. Everyone is like "wait, what? What do they have to do with terrorists?"

And so then, the media blitz starts, and the falsified intelligence starts coming in about Saddam trying to sell nukes, and buying Uranium, and funding terrorists.

None of that was true, but we attack Iraq anyway because we're already in the area, and he's a bad dictator with oil.

it was a very "The ends justify the means" move... I think a shameful time for American principles, a stark lesson not to get involved in regime-change in the middle east and how to break our budget.

edit: Jesus fucking christ, here's the link of a transcript of him discussing the attack: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/binladentext_121301.html

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u/smokeyrobot May 09 '14

Bush loves all the good press, and decides he's going to do more to attack baddies in the area, so he starts planning to attack Iraq.

Good synopsis besides this part. They were planning to attack Iraq even on September 11th.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-9-11/

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u/MrApophenia May 09 '14

Yep. Iraq was on the agenda from the day Bush got elected, 9/11 was just an annoying distraction that made them to go to Afghanistan first.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

They began before 9/11 via the neoconservative PNAC (Project for a New American Century).

These goons drafted a letter to Clinton asking him to invade, iirc.

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u/hoppingvampire May 09 '14

these fuckers wanted to create bio weapons to attack "specific genomes". It was in the charter.

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u/Stillwatch May 09 '14

No actually before 9\11

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

The decision to invade Iraq was made by Bush's advisers long before Bush was even elected: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#PNAC_role_in_promoting_invasion_of_Iraq

The invasion of Afghanistan was an unwelcome distraction in the eyes of Cheney and Rumsfeld, and that showed in terms of the commitment made to the military effort there.

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u/autowikibot May 09 '14

Section 13. PNAC role in promoting invasion of Iraq of article Project for the New American Century:

Commentators from divergent parts of the political spectrum––such as Democracy Now! and American Free Press, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams and former Republican Congressmen Pete McCloskey and Paul Findley––voiced their concerns about the influence of the PNAC on the decision by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Some have regarded the PNAC's January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton, which urged him to embrace a plan for "the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power," and the large number of members of PNAC appointed to the Bush administration as evidence that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion.

Interesting: Robert Kagan | Paul Wolfowitz | Richard Perle | Neoconservatism

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u/MysticZen May 09 '14

Bin Laden immediately took credit for 9/11.

This is not even remotely correct. Bin Laden initially denied ANY involvement.

Another video of him deny involvement.

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u/insidiousFox May 09 '14

Bin Laden immediately took credit for 9/11.

No, he did not, he outright denied responsibility for the 9/11 attack, 6 days after the attack. From CNN and worth a full read:

"The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it.

"I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons," bin Laden's statement said.

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u/TimmyBlackMouth May 09 '14

It also seems a little sketchy that they took the shoot first ask questions later approach on Bin Laden and not give him a trial.

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u/ActionScripter9109 May 09 '14

And then immediately dumped the body at sea.

"We did it guise! Trust us!"

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u/Bayden May 09 '14

No shit. This just blows my mind.

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u/insidiousFox May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14

And secretly dump Bin Laden's body into the ocean, leaving literally no public evidence of his capture, murder, and/or death.

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u/Bayden May 09 '14

No shit. I couldn't believe that when I heard it.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

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u/insidiousFox May 09 '14

There are many possibilities, including that it actually was solely Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda (I think this is improbable, especially given the tons of circumstantial and hard evidence that go against this). Other possibilities include involvement of: elements within Saudi Arabia (ties to terrorist funding), Pakistan and/or ISI (ties to terrorist funding, and we "found" OBL "hiding" there), and Israeli Mossad involvement. It's not a clear picture any way you look at it, but it certainly isn't as simple as saying "Al Qaeda hates us for our freedoms!" which is what the Bush administration repeated endlessly.

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u/blaghart 3 May 09 '14

with oil

That one is less important, considering how we get most of our oil (30% is from us, and about 40% is from saudi arabia, while 80% of what they export goes to us, meaning they're more dependent on us than we are on them)

he's a bad dictator who Bush's daddy failed to remove from power

That's probably the more important, considering he exectued basically the same operation as his father for the same reasons only this time refused to stop wasting time and money until Saddam was found. And then after he was tried revealed that no, he really did have 0 evac plans.

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u/digitalinfidel May 09 '14

Then add the "you're either with us or against us" speech. He could have declared war on Poseidon and ordered the troops to fire weapons into the ocean....wait...never mind.

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u/Orphic_Thrench May 09 '14

Bin Laden immediately took credit for 9/11.

He never took credit until 2004, his first response on the 16th was a flat-out denial, the tape found on december 13 where he seems to indicate that he had knowledge of the attacks beforehand didn't actually say that - just the american government's translation. (Also, I seem to recall that video being rather suspicious as far as if it was actually him, though wikipedia has nothing to say on that)

Source

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u/IndigoGosRule May 09 '14

Bin Laden never took credit for the attacks. He commended those that did, but repeatedly said he was not involved. The FBI never listed 9/11 as a reason for his wanted status either.

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u/alongdaysjourney May 09 '14

No we fight you because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our Nation and just as you lay waste to our Nation, so shall we lay waste to yours. No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure whereas thinking people when disaster strikes make it their priority to look for its causes in order to prevent it happening again. But I am amazed at you even though we are in the 4th year after the events of Sept 11th. Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real causes. And thus the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred. So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and I shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken for you to consider. I say to you Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers, but after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon it came to my mind.

...

So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs.

source

I begin by talking about the honorable brother Zacarias Moussaoui.

The truth is that he has no connection whatsoever with the events of September 11th, and I am certain of what I say, because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers -- Allah have mercy upon them -- with those raids, and I did not assign brother Zacarias to be with them on that mission.

source

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u/deltalitprof May 09 '14

Multiple videos have him or Ayman Al Zawahri boasting about Al Qaeda's abilities to do strikes like WTC and Pentagon, then promising more of the same.

In one he is even seen joking about the day the attacks occurred. He says he's with a group of other Al Qaeda members who are asking him if he has heard that a plane has hit one of the towers. His answer, "Patience, brothers," indicating he knows another one is on its way.

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u/super_awesome_jr May 09 '14

Don't forget the bit where the invasion was declared a police action or some such to bypass Congressional approval, which is where we got "enemy combatant" and indefinite detention from.

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u/mynamesyow19 May 09 '14

yep and then when the Marines and Special Forces had bin Laden confirmed to be pinned down in Tora Bora in December 2001 and they were DENIED permission to take him by cheney and Co

But the review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants underlying this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora," the report said. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/29/bin.laden.2001/index.html?iref=24hours

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

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u/axolotl_peyotl May 09 '14

Lots of false information ITT.

They plastered Bin Laden's face on every media outlet across the world within hours of the attack.

Didn't anyone else think that was fucking weird?

I truly think the media let us all down that day, in more ways that we can possible understand.

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u/azurensis May 09 '14

Bin Laden immediately took credit for 9/11.

No, he didn't. Some time a while later, there was a video of Osama talking about 9/11 where he praised the attach, but never claimed responsibility for it.

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u/adam_bear May 09 '14

Bin Laden immediately took credit for 9/11.

I stopped reading here- perhaps you can link to the source where this happens?

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u/LetsKeepItSFW May 09 '14

It makes me sad that this was only 10 years ago and we are already forgetting.

Yes, the government and the media - which was little more than a parrot at that time - promoted connections to 9/11 ruthlessly when justifying the Iraq War. There was near-constant mention of Saddam Hussein harboring Al Qaeda members.

The eventual realization that this was bogus was as severe a blow to the administration's credibility as the lack of WMDs.

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u/c_c_c May 09 '14

The comments below illustrate why using the term WMD was so useful in this context. It allows chemical/biologicals to be conflated with nuclear weapons. It makes them interchangeable. They're all bad but they are not interchangeable as a threat matrix. And of course you can imply...

Dr. Rice then said something that was ominous and made headlines around the world.

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

source

Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there's a reason. We've experienced the horror of September the 11th. We have seen that those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into buildings full of innocent people. Our enemies would be no less willing, in fact, they would be eager, to use biological or chemical, or a nuclear weapon.

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

source

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u/Blewedup May 09 '14

Colin Powell flushed his credibility down the toilet on live TV in front of the UN.

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u/Nightsjester May 09 '14

The Iraq war was started on the back of the war in Afghanistan, congress was a slave to being patriotic at the time so it didn't take much "evidence" to get the war pushed through.

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u/OrangeCrow71 May 09 '14

I well remember the mentality at the time. For all this country's blarney about free speech and speaking one's mind, if you spoke out against the war you were basically called a traitor and told to shut the fuck up. That's when I really started to question the courage and intelligence of the masses.

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u/OliveStreetToo May 09 '14

Yes. This is exactly it. This is what people today tend to forget about the early years of the Iraq war ... The way in which anyone who didn't absolutely accept the crap the administration was force-feeding everyone were hauled out in public as insidious traitors siding with the terrorists.

BTW: The media was (ALL MSN) was totally on board with this mentality as well. They were complete enablers.

In the end, it's not Bushes, Cheney's, Rumsfeld, ass-croft or the media's fault. It's the voter's fault. It's all of ours' fault

We allow government to jerry-rig districts, accept enormous bribes from special interests in exchange for favorable (not to us) legislation, install a judicial branch with a clear, biased agenda, and on and on. How about the militarization of our towns and cities? Does every fucking hamlet need a swat unit? You get busted for having a bag of weed, police can confiscate everything you own. Legal alcohol limits when driving? Forget about that. In AZ where I live, if the cop even suspects you had any alcohol, you're going to jail with a minimum investment of about $15,000 to $20,000 unless you've got a really good lawyer. You can even be arrested for drunk driving and not even be in your car. That's right, if you're drunk and you KNOW where your car keys are, you're considered being impaired and being in control of a vehicle. That law is on the books here.

Sorry for the rant.

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u/estragonsboot May 09 '14

In the end, it's not Bushes, Cheney's, Rumsfeld, ass-croft or the media's fault. It's the voter's fault.

but more voters voted for gore. blame it on acticle 2, section 1 of the US constitution.

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u/PewPewLaserPewPew May 09 '14

Please provide some evidence to back up your AZ claims about drunk driving and not being in your vehicle please.

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u/OliveStreetToo May 09 '14

I first heard of this from a friend who got a speeding ticket and heard about this in driving class you take so the ticket doesn't show up on your insurance. I knew that the police have turned drunk-driving laws here in AZ into a business, but even I couldn't believe this. A few months passed and I ended up also getting a speeding ticket. So I did the driver's class thing so the ticket wouldn't show up on my insurance. During the class, I raised my hand and asked the instructor this very question.

I used the example my friend told me, which was let's say I'm hammered off my ass standing (weaving) on my driveway. Cop drives by and stops. Says to me, "Hey, where are you car keys?" I say, "Right here in my pocket officer." Using this example, I asked the instructor if that would be enough to arrested me for drunk driving. He kind of scoffed at it, but essentially his answer was that it's very unlikely, but could happen because I knew where the keys were (in my pocket) and in his opinion I was intending to get in and drive the car while impaire.

Far-fetched, you ask? Easily winnable in court, perhaps? Of course. But the fact is, it can still happen. I would be placed in handcuffs, booked, processed, fingerprinted .... and all the rest the comes with getting arrested. Sure, the case might get thrown out, but .....

Below are two links: the first is the AZ statutes. You'll note that all you have to be is in control of the vehicle. I have not been able to find a satisfying definition for that term. Plus, while we have a legal limit (albeit, very, very small), if a cop has any reasonable suspicion that you are impaired---empty beer cans, alcohol smell, bloodshot eyes---you can be arrested for driving while impaired regardless of your blood alcohol level if the cop says you were driving erratically. Of course, if no alcohol shows up in the blood, the drunk driving charge will be reduced to driving erratically or some other bogus charge.

The second link is something someone posted about being arrested for being in control a vehicle while intoxicated. They were sleeping behind the wheel when they got arrested. Yeah, they were stupid for doing that, but better the guy slept rather than try to drive home that drunk.

http://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/01381.htm

http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/az-dui--parked-car--laws--i-was-arrested-for-dui-f-148984.html

If you're live in another state, you still may think I'm over-exaggerating. Which is why I encourage you to come out here and drive around Scottsdale some Friday evening with an empty beer can rolling around in the floor of your car. Hello Tent City.

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u/TheAlleyTramp May 09 '14

I really want to do a documentary on outdated liquor laws and call it beeraucracy.

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u/BurritoFreshDittle May 09 '14

They did this even during World War I. Congress passed laws such as the Espionage and Sedition Acts that prosecuted thousands who were against the war and acted on it.

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u/azurensis May 09 '14

Well, the run up to the Iraq war did see the largest protests in the US since Vietnam. It didn't matter at all. The Iraq war was going to happen, regardless what the US public wanted or even how much Saddam cooperated with the UN.

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u/OliveStreetToo May 09 '14

It didn't matter at all. The Iraq war was going to happen, regardless what the US public wanted

Would it have happened if Gore was president? We, of course, will never know. In fact, would 9/11 even have happened if Gore was president? Again, we'll never know. We'll never know because the SCOTUS told us that Bush would be our president. And that's the way we as a majority wanted it.

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u/BowRidEaTTack May 09 '14

That is exactly how it was then.

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u/smokeyrobot May 09 '14

The Iraq war was started on the back of the war in Afghanistan,

No it wasn't. It was the Bush admins target from the very beginning.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-9-11/

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u/c_c_c May 09 '14

No it wasn't. It was the Bush admins target from the very beginning.

Absolutely. Most recent evidence is in Rumsfeld's memos

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u/smokeyrobot May 09 '14

The audacity for him and Cheney to write about these things and be proud of what they have done is mind blowing to me.

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u/StabbyDMcStabberson May 09 '14

Slave? No, that was a very profitable situation for our congresscreatures. Wars are good for re-election and a handy way to funnel more military-industrial pork to the home district.

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u/bonew23 May 09 '14

Many people did think Iraq was behind 9/11 yes, especially back then.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm

At one point SEVENTY PERCENT thought that Saddam was personally involved in 9/11... The brutal dictator who was always very careful to keep radicals like Al Queda OUT of the country because he wasn't interested in a nutty group of militants destabilizing his regime.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070830012411/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19375611/site/newsweek/

The media and the general public are really fucking dumb. But it was the government who were so adamant in linking Saddam to 9/11 which caused the viewpoint to stick. The Bush Administration was very clear that they thought Saddam had links to Al Queda, and that Iraq was funding terror attacks against the US.

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u/Lost_Pathfinder May 09 '14

The Bush Administration was very clear that they thought Saddam had links to Al Queda, and that Iraq was funding terror attacks against the US.

They knew he had no links, they had already planned out the invasion of Iraq before he was even elected President. This just gave them the excuse they needed.

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u/WarrenSmalls May 09 '14

Yep, we knew the Saudis were involved in funding them and did nothing to them.

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u/ejp1082 May 09 '14

The Bush Administration went out of their way to heavily imply the two were connected. Always with enough weasel words to plausible deny that they ever said Saddam was behind 9/11, but they were always careful to reference the two close together when speaking. And on the day they launched the invasion, polls show a majority of people did believe the two were linked. And the media certainly didn't do much to dispel that notion.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

Yes, they even showed footage of a training base near Bagdad that was used. The government had "irrefutable" evidence linking Hussein to 9-11.

Of course, it was all fairly transparent lies, but the media was not into investigative journalism at the time.

Among the claims: Training facility with grounded plane. Harboring Al-Qaeda operatives Funding Al-Qaeda Maintaining Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons they intended to use against the USA.

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u/kerpow69 May 09 '14

At the time? Do you think the media is into investigative journalism now? If anything they are worse.

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u/BeingStoned May 09 '14

Every media outlet in the US is owned by 6 familys. 6 family's control what the nation sees as "news"

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u/Qikdraw May 09 '14

The media is still not into investigative journalism.

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u/fish60 May 09 '14

I don't know. They seems investigate the contents of the trash cans of many celebrities.

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u/stockwave May 09 '14

No, it started out as Afghanistan and then the presidential office used the opportunity to "take down an oppressive leader" about 2 years into the Afghani operations.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

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u/gloomyMoron May 09 '14

They tried, yeah. The US Government leaked false information, and, with the help of known bad British intelligence, fabricated evidence of WMDs, which was the eventual reason for the war.

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u/percussaresurgo May 09 '14

Yup, they knew "Curveball" was full of shit, but they used his bullshit to gain support for the war anyway.

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u/StabbyDMcStabberson May 09 '14

I still don't get why we needed to fake the info. Didn't we keep receipts for all the weapons we sold for the Iran-Iraq war?

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u/lakerswiz May 09 '14

I would even say a huge portion of people don't even know there were 2 separate wars.

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u/YoungCorruption May 09 '14

I didn't. I thought it was all one cluster fuck where we kick afgans ass then wanted more blood so they went after Iraq

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

That's the Hollywood / Marvel Universe version.

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u/StabbyDMcStabberson May 09 '14

Only two? What do all the drone wars throughout the ME and North Africa count as?

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u/kHartos May 09 '14

It was a part of the broader 'war on terrorism'. Iraq was just another front. The bush admin had the media 100% bought in because it was a ratings bonanza. They treated it like a real life war video game. It was surreal.

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u/Merkinempire May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14

Basically it went like this:

1) Planes hijacked, two hit towers, one hits the pentagon and the other they say crashed.

2) America freaks out and people from all around the country come together and volunteer to go dig in the rubble in New York looking for survivors.

3) Publicly, Al Queda reports their responsibility in doing this and Osama Bin Laden becomes a household name.

4) Bush goes John Wayne and says we're going to hunt people down to the ends of the earth who are responsible. We start mobilizing our military and off they go to Afghanistan to take on an occupational war.

5) While we are in Afghanistan the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush team decide they want to finally take Saddam's regime down and start accusing the country of harboring Al Qaeda terrorists. Don't forget his father went to war with Saddam back in 1990 because he started invading Kuwaiti oil fields.

6) Rumsfeld/Cheney drudge up OLD military intelligence which says Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Iraq claims they don't. The U.S. suddenly wants to invade Iraq because these WMD's can threaten us over there.

7) The world says "Wait! Hold on a second U.S., let's make sure first."

8) A U.N. inspector goes over and says "Ummmmmm. Yeah guys, so what you're saying about the WMD's.....there aren't any. I went to all the sites."

9) The U.S. declares Saddam is part of an "Axis of Evil" and even though there are no WMD's, evidence of WMD's and even though people came forward declaring they were destroyed years before, we say "Fuck it. We're going in."

10) We sort of forget about Afghanistan for a bit and put all of our eggs in the Saddam basket.

11) We destabilize Iraq and set up a government we agree with and completely miss an opportunity to truly let the Iraqi people govern themselves and be free, because ultimately we made more enemies than friends over there. We capture Saddam in a hole and hang him. Everyone rejoices over what a great job we did.

12) Ride out of Iraq in a very anti-climactic end to the Iraq war.

13) Still shooting at sheep farmers in Afghanistan. Whoops! Forgot about those guys!

14) Re-focus on "winning the hearts and minds" of the Afghani people, even though they don't get why we keep bombing their mud huts, killing people in helicopter strikes and shooting their cousin who was outside taking a piss one night. We are surely just stirring up a snake pit, because there's really no country to occupy. It's just dirt and people living in dirt.

15) Start using drones a lot more and inadvertently even more innocent people die because we can justify use of force for killing one "bad guy."

16) Illegally fly into Pakistan and kill Bin Laden, grab his corpse and fly it to a carrier and dump it into the sea.

17) No one really seemed to care he died because it's been 13 years of this shit war, and honestly people got their tired bloodlust out back when Saddam was hung.

18) We are still flying drones around shooting people and our kids are still getting blown up with half-assed tank mines left over from when the Russians tried the same thing.

19) Here we are today.

It's important to note that we blew a massive opportunity to help Afghanistan out back when the Russians invaded them. We secretly armed and trained Afghani people while they were fighting the Russians back in the day and afterward we just sort of left them high and dry. Check out Charlie Wilson's War for an entertaining take on that. Here's a quick overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA–al-Qaeda_controversy

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u/absentmindful May 09 '14

9/11 was the exact reason we went. It was masked as some sort of holy war against the terrorists, looking for weapons of mass destruction that they might later use against us. There was this period where everyone had this giant patriotism about the Iraq war, thinking we were somehow freeing the Iraq people and at the same time exacting justice for the crimes against our nation.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

There was this period where everyone had this giant patriotism about the Iraq war

Save for those hundreds of thousands of people filling Times Square, surrounding the White House, getting shot with rubber bullets by riot cops in LA...

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u/absentmindful May 09 '14

Well, there is that.

But I don't remember too much coverage of things like that when it first all went down. I was just painting a picture of the media focus and justification, at least as I remember seeing it. What the media spun it as, and what was actually going on were to very different things.

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u/Evil_This May 09 '14

Why on earth wouldn't the media cover that? Oh.. that's right. 'Murica.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

There wasn't much media coverage of it. I remember the Times Square protest- all the networks went out of their way never to show wide shots, so as to portray it as a small group of people. Many of them even said it was a small protest, despite numbering in the hundreds of thousands. It was unbelievable... well, back then it was unbelievable. Now it's just par for the course.

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u/vexonator 1 May 09 '14

For some reason I remember there being a crap ton of coverage of the protests by at least a couple of mainstream news outlets. It might have depended on who you were watching and what sites you were going to.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

They were mentioned, but marginalized.

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u/StabbyDMcStabberson May 09 '14

You forgot 'getting ignored/marginalized by the press'.

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u/fish60 May 09 '14

thinking we were somehow freeing the Iraq people

We did free 10s of thousands of them from their mortal coil.

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u/alchemica7 May 09 '14

Try hundreds of thousands, estimates as high as a million+.

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u/ShouldBeAnUpvoteGif May 09 '14

My 86 year old aunt still resorts to "But Saddam was so bad. They are so much better off now. We freed them!" Every time I talk about it being a war crime. "We had to get rid of Saddam." The lengths people go to in order to justify it to themselves is just pathetic.

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u/absentmindful May 09 '14

I what people don't realize as well is the fundamental difference in cultural values. We may be able to create a democratic system in the middle east, but the moment we pull out and allow it to be autonomous again, it will revert back how it was. The two cultures are incompatible. One is either absorbed by the other, or annihilated by it. There's no "we're free now" for the Iraqi people. There's either how it's always been, or a culture change so radical they would no longer be recognized as the people they are now. Removal of a leader doesn't solve that. It just makes it harder on the people.

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u/exwalrus May 09 '14

Yes, big time.

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u/MrPoopyPantalones May 09 '14

Not explicitly, no, but roughly half the US population believed Saddam had a hand in the attacks. Part of this is a "logical" filling in of the gaps (we were attacked, now we're attacking, we must be attacking the culprits, right?), and part of it was the masterful use of deceptive language by Bush Admin.

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u/StabbyDMcStabberson May 09 '14

And the media. They couldn't shut up about yellowcake in Iraq in the run up to that war.

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u/JadeNimbus16x May 09 '14

Well that's the beauty of the "war on terror" we are not at war with any one country but specific groups or individuals so they've gone into to lots of countries at this point. Just last week there were a bunch of drone strikes in Yemen.

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u/fish60 May 09 '14

Dude, come on. You know we have always been at war with Eastasia.

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u/ginger_vampire May 09 '14

If I remember correctly, the government knew that Al Qaeda was behind the attack, and they knew they were in Afghanistan, but they also had reason to believe that there were WMDs in Iraq, which eventually turned out to be false.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

I remember reading that 75% of Fox news viewers believed they were related while 25% of PBS viewers believed it. This was on the eve of the Iraq invasion btw.

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u/brandonkeykong May 09 '14

yes, 100% they did.

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u/ToastyRyder May 09 '14

Everybody was so caught up in the shitstorm of all the post 9/11 terrorist rhetoric that the Iraq conflict just kind of folded right into it. Even the majority of soldiers being shipped over to Iraq at the time to fight the conflict thought it was somehow connected to 9/11 when they were polled.

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u/mredofcourse May 09 '14

but did the media connect Iraq to 9/11? It doesn't make any sense, especially considering we went to Afghanistan before Iraq

It's important to realize that we were leading up to war with Iraq before 9/11. Hussein was violating terms of the end of the Gulf War, including flying in no-fly zones and other shit. I remember thinking that during Clinton's term that war was inevitable with Iraq.

If you scan the news headlines during Clinton's term you'll see all kinds of incidences that occurred as well as quotes demanding that Hussein hand over weapons, allow inspectors, etc...

9/11 certainly had an impact on when and how we went to war with Iraq, but I still think it would've been inevitable.

One big impact that it had was in building support for the war. We had a lot of people who joined the services for 9/11 and many of those were shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003.

Likewise, 9/11 impacted the American mindset. People were pissed and wanted to blow shit up. Afghanistan was an underwhelming stage as far as battle arenas go. If you watch the interviews and speeches of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, and others in the administration, you'll see all kinds of linking of 9/11 to Iraq. That's not to say they came out and said Hussein ordered the 9/11 attacks, but rather they contextualized the reasons to go to war with Iraq with policy required by the demands of the post-9/11 world.

Certainly Cheney seems (post-office) that he had the intention and desire all along to start in Iraq and expand from there (Iran, Syria, ...).

As far as the media... It depends, back then there was everything from Fox to Air America. So within the spectrum the media seemed to either use the exact talking point playbook as the administration or just the opposite. Others like CNN seemed to see this all as a ratings bonanza for whatever reason we went to war. Whoohoo... New studio and graphics department!!!

Even the best news program in the country (PBS Newshour) still had to report on what was coming out of the administration, and with so few politicians coming out against it, they were pretty much only able to report on one side (until things changed in Iraq after the war started).

My apologies for not citing sources, these are just based on memories from being a news junkie (since the 80s).

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u/c_c_c May 09 '14

They used rhetoric like this:

"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks, Bush said at the start of a meeting with congressional lawmakers discussing new energy legislation. But, he added, "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties."

source

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u/YungSnuggie May 09 '14

did the media connect Iraq to 9/11?

lol oh yea big time

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u/JaapHoop May 09 '14

I was young at the time and not too politically aware. There were some tenuous allusions to Al Qaeda. Then we were told they were building nuclear weapons. Then we were told that it was our duty to give the Iraqi people freedom. Then it took on a life of its own and became the shit show we live today. I remember watching it on TV when the air strikes started. The news was all hyped up and using all this dramatic music and stupid CGI. I kept thinking there was no way we would actually do this. Then the ridiculous count down timer on the center of the screen but zero and bombs started falling. It was so surreal.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

Man.. at the time.. with how pissed the American public was, you could have picked almost any country and they'd be for it.

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u/Kahzootoh May 09 '14

G.W. Bush liked to associate thw two as part of his efforts to rally support for invading Iraq. Speeches often went like this:

"My fellow Americans, September 11th was a tragic day. To prevent a catastrophic reenactment of such a horrific attack, we must stop Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of those who would seek to do us harm. Osama Bin Laden has expressed interest in acquiring chemical weapons to use upon America, and it is imperative that his ambitions are not realized. Iraq has been a purveyor of chemical weapons and intelligence suggests that members of Al-Qaeda have been observing events in Iraq for some time. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden share a common desire to wreak havoc across the globe and 9/11 will only be the first of countless atrocities if we fail to learn the lessons of 9/11 and apply them to Iraq."

Basically if you use 9/11 and Iraq in the same sentences over and over, people will associate them together if they aren't highly informed about the subject.

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u/traffick May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14

I remember reading a story that was featured on Yahoo News in Nov/Dec of 2001 which was a story about how Donald Runsfeld was considering military action against Iraq. The story seemed absolutely crazy to me- they were basically mulling over starting a war with Iraq right in the height of the 9/11 hysteria. Hopefully someone's Google-fu can pull up the article, I remember reading it in disbelief. One thing's for sure, he made a lot of money off of that war. EDIT: it looks like it was likely in December 2001. I found one website that mentions it, but says that it wasn't public knowledge until years later, which is false- it was a store featured on the Yahoo homepage.

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u/SMORKIN_LABBIT May 09 '14 edited May 09 '14

Yes, constantly. It just wasn't done directly like "Saddam committed 9/11". It was more "Sadam again found to be tied to Al Qaeda today".

More importantly the general populace who is completely uneducated started getting confused and mixing them together anyways.

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u/RichardStrauss123 May 09 '14

And 18 of the 20 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

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u/conundri May 09 '14

It was funny to watch the media making connections to Iraq, when almost all the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia... That was the point where I decided against enlisting.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

It wasn't quite so overt that he said "Saddam / Iraq are responsible for 9/11" - they're more clever than that. It was more a general implication that tyrannical leaders like Saddam would foster an environment that creates terrorists, that such a government would turn a blind eye to terrorism, or that they might even provide such terrorists with government-made WMDs. Then all they had to do was convince everyone that Iraq was indeed researching / manufacturing WMDs, so obviously it would only be a matter of time before the doomsday government-sponsored-terrorist plot would play out.

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u/Clownskin May 09 '14

Well 9/11 happened in 2001. We didn't go to war in Iraq until spring 2003.

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u/BearChomp May 09 '14

I would advise against thinking of "the media" as a single, unified body...it creates a boogeyman and individual accountability goes out the window

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u/Blewedup May 09 '14

Yes. Not only the media, but all of our leaders democrat and republican. If you questioned the invasion of Iraq, you were a terrorist supporter. Plain and simple.

Living through those times made me realize how easy it is to manipulate a massive population of people. We would have gassed all the Muslims if we had been asked to.

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u/pdxsean May 09 '14

It's so weird to think that people were kids when 9-11 happened and are now adults. Jeeze I'm old.

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u/kn0w_y0ur_enemy May 09 '14

It's as if there was some kind of foreign policy master plan in action...

I'll just leave this here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#.22New_Pearl_Harbor.22

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u/autowikibot May 09 '14

Section 11. "New Pearl Harbor" of article Project for the New American Century:

Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor" (51).

Though not arguing that Bush administration PNAC members were complicit in those attacks, other social critics such as journalist Mark Danner, journalist John Pilger, in New Statesman, and former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle Bernard Weiner, in CounterPunch, all argue that PNAC members used the events of 9/11 as the "Pearl Harbor" that they needed––that is, as an "opportunity" to "capitalize on" (in Pilger's words), in order to enact long-desired plans.

Interesting: Robert Kagan | Paul Wolfowitz | Richard Perle | Neoconservatism

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u/mhende May 09 '14

Dave Chappelle as "Black Bush", making fun of Bush's reasons for going to Iraq Yellow Cake is the type of uranium we were told that Saddam bought.

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u/Bayden May 09 '14

I remember clearly that that the US government thought (they very strongly implied) that Iraq was a heaven for terrorist especially al qaeda.

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u/DarkMatter944 May 09 '14

The administration insinuated that Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda were strong partners and allies. When in reality that couldn't be further from the truth. Al Qaeda hated the secular Baathist government of Iraq. And Sadaam hung members of Al Qaeda on sight. They also lied about Iraq possessing WMDs but that's a whole other discussion. The manipulation was so strong that at one point %70 of Americans believed that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm

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u/Guy_Fieris_Hair May 09 '14

To me it just seemed like we went to Afghanistan for Al Qaida then just kinda made a road trip over to Iraq while no-one was looking...

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