"On the afternoon of 9/11, before any intelligence had been gathered, Rumsfeld was relaying orders to connect the attacks with Saddam Hussein as well as Osama Bin Laden."

Bush Press Secretary Calls Ron Paul “Nuts” Following 9/11 “Glee” Comments

Congressman: “extremists have taken over” US government

Steve Watson

Ari Fleischer, the former White House Press Secretary under George W. Bush, responded to comments made about the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 by GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul by tweeting “The man is nuts.”

During a speech in Iowa Thursday, Congressman Paul told the thousands in attendance that the terrorist attacks in 2001 were used by the Bush administration to launch preemptive wars and pursue an interventionist foreign policy.

“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat,” Paul said. “That’s exactly what they’re doing now with Iran.”

While Fleischer contends that Ron Paul is insane for making such a suggestion, he has apparently forgotten that it was George W. Bush himself who, in the days after 9/11, gloated to his budget director, Mitch Daniels, “Lucky me–I hit the trifecta!”

While the nation reacted with shock and horror at the devastation and destruction, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement in the attacks, just hours after they took place.

Notes taken by Stephen Cambone, then a senior policy official under Rumsfeld were released under FOIA request in 2006, showing that the Defense Secretary was intent on hitting Iraq in retaliation.

“Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly,” the notes state. “Near term target needs – go massive – sweep it all up, things related and not.”

On the afternoon of 9/11, before any intelligence had been gathered, Rumsfeld was relaying orders to connect the attacks with Saddam Hussein as well as Osama Bin Laden.

“Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH at same time – not only UBL [Pentagon shorthand for Usama/Osama bin Laden],” the notes say. “Tasks. Jim Haynes [Pentagon lawyer] to talk with PW [probably Paul Wolfowitz, then Mr Rumsfeld's deputy] for additional support … connection with UBL.”

Rumsfeld also wrote in his memoirs, Known and Unknown, released earlier this year, that he was asked by the president to draw up plans for the invasion of Iraq just two weeks after the attacks.

Thousands of de-classified documents accompanying the memoirs also revealed that Rumsfeld and his Pentagon aides were planning for regime change in Iraq BEFORE 9/11.

“If Saddam’s regime were ousted, we would have a much-improved position in the region and elsewhere,” Rumsfeld wrote in a memo to Condoleeza Rice dated July 27, 2001.

In the same ten year old memo, Rumsfeld also predicted Iran will “almost certainly have a nuclear weapon sometime within the next five years.”

A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Whether Ari Fleischer likes it or not, Ron Paul is thus entirely vindicated in making the points he did during his Iowa speech.

“Extremists have taken over, and they’re the ones who run the foreign policy and have convinced us to go along with all these wars,” Paul noted.

“How many foreign countries can threaten us right now?” Paul asked. “How many are likely to invade us or drop a bomb on us? I can’t imagine.”

The Congressman also reminded the audience that plans for a domestic crackdown on liberties were already drawn up prior to 9/11.

“The PATRIOT Act was written many, many years before 9/11,” Paul said. The attacks simply provided “an opportunity for some people to do what they wanted to do.”

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/bush-press-secretary-calls-ron-paul-nuts-following-911-glee-comments.html