When you have it both ways, how can you be wrong?

Washington, DC– In a major Washington policy address this Thursday, former Vice President Al Gore will accuse the Bush Administration of intentionally misleading the American people by continuing to falsely claim a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

He will charge that Bush and Cheney have “institutionalized dishonesty as an essential element of their policy process.”

Well, I don�t think Al Gore�s really in a position to determine honesty, is he? Unless he WAS really stupid enough not to know the �Buddhist Fundraising Party� wasn�t really for fundraising or that fate miraculously stepped in due in part to drinking too much iced tea and sent him to the bathroom at the precise moment illegal fundraising was being discussed at his dinner table. Yours was truly an administration built on a foundation of truth, wasn�t it?

Ok, I�m done laughing now, let�s continue.

So you say there has never been an Iraq/al Qaeda connection? You say Bush lied, again and again and again.

Interesting.

In an August 25, 1998 report, ABC news discussed the missle strike ordered on the el Shifa plant in Sudan:

Before the pharmaceutical plant was reduced to rubble by American cruise missiles, the CIA was secretly gathering evidence that ended up putting the facility on America’s target list. Intelligence sources say their agents clandestinely gathered soil samples outside the plant and found, quote, “strong evidence” of a chemical compound called EMPTA, a compound that has only one known purpose, to make VX nerve gas.

The U.S. had been suspicious for months, partly because of Osama bin Laden’s financial ties, but also because of strong connections to Iraq. Sources say the U.S. had intercepted phone calls from the plant to a man in Iraq who runs that country’s chemical weapons program.

Maybe it was a different U.S.?

Of course, then there�s ol� trustworthy Richard Clarke.

“There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever,” declared Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism official under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, in an interview on March 21, 2004.

Funny, does �no evidence�ever� cover 1998?

[Richard] Clarke did provide new information in defense of Clinton’s decision to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, in retaliation for bin Laden’s role in the Aug. 7 embassy bombings.

While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed shortly after the missile attack that they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is “sure” that Iraqi nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.

Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.

Given the evidence presented to the White House before the airstrike, Clarke said, the president “would have been derelict in his duties if he didn’t blow up the facility.”

Your own words damage you more than I could ever do, with say��.a document linking Iraq/alQaeda directly.