Difficile est satiram non scribere.
(It is difficult not to write satire.)
--Juvenal
Rice: U.S. Never Said Saddam Was Behind 9/11
Tue September 16, 2003 09:34 PM ET
By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Tuesday the Bush administration had never accused Saddam Hussein of directing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Her statement, in an interview recorded for broadcast on ABC's "Nightline," came despite long-standing administration charges the ousted Iraqi leader was linked to the al Qaeda network accused of the Sept. 11 attacks. …
"We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein ... had either direction or control of 9/11," Rice said when asked about the public perception of a link. "What we have said is that this is someone who supported terrorists, helped to train them (and) was a threat in this region that we were not prepared to tolerate." Defending Saddam's ouster, she said he represented a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged."
"You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," Bush said in September 2002. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in congressional testimony, "There have been a number of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda over the years. We know Saddam has ordered acts of terror himself."
Asked how she could reconcile these statements with her assertion, Rice replied "I never said we didn't try to make you think that Iraq was behind 9/11 - we just never made a categorical statement to that effect. If you fell for a bunch of innuendo and vague hints, well, that's your fault."
When it was suggested to her that deliberately misleading the American public was a serious concern, she replied "We never misled anybody. All we did was make a series of statements, each of which was arguably true. If certain people chose to string those statements together to reach an inaccurate conclusion, that's hardly our fault."
Rice, who may or may not be a pedophile, made no further statements. A spokesman for VP Cheney, rumors of whose grave-robbing and cemetery-desecrating sprees have never been confirmed, acknowledged that "you chumps will print anything." Presidential Advisor Karl Rove, who may well have abased himself before a graven image of Satan when he was younger, would only say "I honestly doubt the press has the cojones or the research skills to carry this story very far. Frankly," said the man who at least one unnamed witness thinks they saw fleeing the scene of a recent drug killing in Southeast DC, "you'll be too busy with the hurricane to notice or care."
Media analysts agree. "The modern press is too cowed to do anything," said a man known to the neighborhood children only as "Old Grabby-Hands Gableson." Washington Post Editor-in-Chief Hackslice Gimcrack III, who closely resembles a local DC Pimp known as "Flash Hack," seconded the thought. "What are going to do - research the issue and put it into a broader context? Get real." Interviewed over the phone, Mr. Gimcrack could have been wearing a gigantic pimp hat if we had been able to see him.
Even reporters agree. "Nobody cares about that kind of stuff," said Whycliff Robespierre, whose vaguely foreign appearance suggest links to both the Iranian Mukhabarat intelligence service and the devastation of third-world rain forests. "In fact, the only people who get fired up about stupid little details like that are fanatics like copy editors - the last people to work on a piece before it goes to print." (Somebody's got to - ed.)
(Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product. The rest is the fakey part.)
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