Sen. Leahy in LA Times: "Tell Us Another One, Mr. Vice President"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-levin12apr12,0,6767470.story?coll=la-opinion-center

Tell us another one, Mr. Vice President
Dick Cheney is still trying to link Iraq with Al Qaeda and 9/11.
By Carl Levin, CARL LEVIN, a Democratic senator from Michigan, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
April 12, 2007

TO PARAPHRASE President Reagan, there he goes again.

On Rush Limbaugh's radio program last week, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and stated: "He went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al Qaeda operations inside Iraq…. This is Al Qaeda operating in Iraq and, as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."

It is incredible that more than four years after the invasion, the vice president is still trying to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to Al Qaeda and that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was evidence of a connection.

- snip -

The problem is, that's simply not supported by the facts or by our intelligence community — and everyone except the vice president acknowledges it. In September, for example, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that Hussein was "distrustful of Al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." And the CIA reported a year earlier, in October 2005, that the Iraqi regime "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." As the Intelligence Committee report noted, the Iraqi intelligence service was actually trying to capture Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad under an alias. Is the vice president willfully ignoring what the rest of the government has concluded? Or does he have access to information he hasn't shared with us? If so, he should produce it.

- snip -

The vice president has made so many outlandish statements that the country barely raised an eyebrow at his false statement last week. The public has stopped believing the words of a man who promised, before we invaded Iraq, that we would be "greeted as liberators" and reassured us nearly two years ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes."

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[rodeodance]

1. whow---pretty jiving---a sen to a VP

[fob]

2. What does Senator Leahy have to do with this article?

Am I missing something or is it a typo in the op?

[jillan]

3. Wondering that too.

Clicked on the op because I am a huge Leahy supporter.