an incompetent boob who had done nothing for this country as President except for lower both the American morale and our prestige in the world. Exercising free speech on its own is meaningless as anyone can do so. The question is whether his voice matters, and clearly he is not qualified to pass judgement on things beyond his feeble comprehension.

I have a ton of respect for Jimmy Carter.

As for the assassin diaries reference, you think that these well documented events from Jimmy's career are nothing more than conspiracy theories? You do realize, don't you, that these things actually DID happen.

any better than this.  Thanks.

And it is really an interesting history.

It changed as time went on, so chiefly from my memory, by the time of Cheney's December speech, the Czechs were still backing the story, and while sceptical as always, the CIA accepted the report. Almost at the saame time of the speech, the first chinks in tha armour came up. By spring of 2002, the CIA doubted the report, based on reports from the FBI about fdriver's license and phone calls. Later, that too was shown to be wrong. (Atta didn' have a driver's license when he was supposed to have used it--I think that was it). Then later, the info got better. The CIA never excluded the possibility of the meeting, the Czech Intelligence still, so far as I know, stand by the report, although the Czech government does not.

Thing is, the Czech intelligence also indicated that they thought the meeting was about blowing up a local Radio Free Europe installation which was broadcasting into Iraq.

The point is that even if we were to grant the meeting took place, it does not prove that Iraq was behind 9/11. So saying that Cheney said that Iraq was behind 9/11 "even today" is wrong, and either Carter is lying or a dupe.

The source for the Tenet quote in Wiki is Ron Suskind. I went to the SSCI Report (Phase II), which, unfortaunately has nothing that early. (This report, called "phaseIIaccuracy" is available on the net, but appears to me to be an image, and i can't cut and paste from it. It's in pdf format. maybe you'd have better luck.) They note that a request was made after 9/11 to study any iraqi involvement, and then quote a CIA report:

We have no credible information that Baghdad was complicit in the attacks on the Pentagon or the World Trade Center on 11 September or any other Al-Qaeda strike, but two leads raise the possibility of ties between iraqi officials and two of the 11 September hijackers.

(One of the two referred to is Atta in Prague.)

The citation is to a CIA product from January, 2003. Either the report is recapitulating something from shortly after 9/11 (which seems to be so from the language) or it represents the CIA view in 2003. Most likely, both are true.

The PhaseII report goes on to document the Intelligence assessments about the Czech reports through 2002 and into 2003. All are in terms of "we cannot confirm," or "some reporting casts doubt" on the report. They report, for instace:

In the September, 2002 version of Iraqi Support for Terrorism, the CIA assessed that, "some evidence asserts that Atta met with Prague IIS chief Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Amir al-Ani; other evidence casts doubt on this possibility." In the January, 2003 version of the paper, the CIA assessed that "the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on this reporting."

While the "pretty much confirmed" of Cheney is certainly more policy speak than the careful words of intelligence, it is obvious that the CIA was not ready to dismiss these reports until they became, in their words, "increasingly skeptical" that the meeting took place, as they also said in January 2003. The conclusion to both the September 2002 and January 2003 reports was this:

"...while the above reporting does not conclusively contradict the occurrence of a meeting, it calls into question some aspects of the reporting."

Cheney's message tended to be congruent with the Intelligence assessments. He seemed to be hanging on to any last shred, and the intelligence assessments allowed him to do that.

What is true is that the notion that the CIA or any of the IC "debunked" the claim of the meeting is false. IUf one puts oneself in a policymaker's shoes, one can see how difficult it is to make policy statements on the basis of these intelligence assessments. It is a wonder that the claim wasn't made more.

Ther PhaseII report has a large redacted area which is reportedly about the CIA objection to the inclusion of a reference to the supposed meeting in a Bush speech in March, 2003. The CIA person involved is reported to have said that it was within the routine province of the CIA in reviewing public speeches, and that they objected to referring to something that was not confirmed in an official speech.

btw, After the clp of Carter on his show, Matthews went of into the stratosphere, saying that Cheney somehow said that Saddam had a nuclear weapon, a rocket to put it on, and would deliver it into the US.

No, what he said was that Cheney still maintains that Saddam "somehow was involved in the 9/11 attacks" (emphasis mine). Not quite the same as saying Iraq was behind 9/11.

Splitting hairs, IMHO.  Those two are basically saying the same thing.  I guess you may be able to make a nuanced case, but the gap is nowhere near as wide as you are making it out to be.

So while Cheney may not exactly maintain that it is a fact that Saddam was somehow involved in 9/11, he absolutely does maintain that it is a possibility.

Well, strictly speaking, he is correct on that point.  The fact that we have not uncovered any evidence of a link to date does NOT mean that such evidence could not exist.  Ergo, it still IS a possibility.

ready, set, go....

Let's accept "somehow was involved." Same comment. it's a lie, or Carter is a dupe. Cheney never publically stated that position.

In fact, Cheney, while being careful not to actually make the claim, has stated, basically, that the jury is still out on that.

I don't think so. He has said (for instance, the September, 2003 MtP interview) that the jury is still out, in a sense, on the Atta Prague meeting. Hardly the same thing. His message in that interview is exactly what the IC was saying, that we don't have enough information to confirm a meeting or to rule it out. He said, "we just don't know." Twice.

In September, 2006, on another MtP, we had this exchange:

RUSSERT: And the meeting with Atta did not occur?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Uh. We don’t know. I mean, we’ve never been able to, to, to link it, and the FBI and CIA have worked it aggressively. I would say, at this point, nobody has been able to confirm ...

Again, the CIA doubts it occurred. But Cheney is not saying here that iraq was involved in 9/11. Yet it is these quotes about Atta that always come up to support the lie that Cheney said that, to be exactly parsed here, Iraq was involved in 9/11.

And Cheney does maintain that there was a relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

As reported in the intelligence. the question was never that there were contacts, but in exactly what those contacts entailed. So far as I know, no member of the administration, including Cheney, ever publically maintained that there was an operational relationship between Iraq and a;-Qaida, for 9/11 or anything else.

So while Cheney may not exactly maintain that it is a fact that Saddam was somehow involved in 9/11, he absolutely does maintain that it is a possibility.

Actually, I can only find quotes where he maintains that the Atta Prague meeting was a possibility.

So yes, Carter is being somewhat... er... liberal in his interpretation of Cheney's position, but not as unreasonably so as your misquote would lead one to believe.

Uh, he lied or is a dupe. His "liberal interpretation" is simply incorrect, false, contrary to fact, an untruth.

If he meant to say that Cheney still holds out the possibility of the meeting having occurred, he is smart enough to find the words to say that.

but shouldn't there be some talent involved? All it does is really just demeans the prize.

but I must insist that Card is generally a fine writer. Admittedly he sometimes gets bogged down trying to make some moral point and (like Rand) starts lecturing instead of writing, but I think he's head-and-shoulders above her most of the time. Some of his SF stuff is quite good and most of it is solid, while his non-SF that I've read is either excellent or mediocre.

Even assuming that there is some rational basis for his claim, what purpose does it serve in saying it? So why say it? What additional illumination or information does it provide? Nothing of value, IMHO.

(and then that's enough defending of Fox for the week): it seems odd to jump to talk about "Black shooters" in the context of a story about a white kid who tried to blow away his classmates and teachers, and that might trigger the "what a thing to say" reflex. However, the school was majority Black, and so statistically the natural supposition might be to think the shooter was also Black -- how enlightened and insightful of Gibson to immediately suspect otherwise!

(I feel a little dirty now.)