Hayes, Limbaugh falsely cited 1998 bin Laden indictment

[DoYouEverWonder]

Hayes, Limbaugh falsely cited 1998 bin Laden indictment as proof that Clinton administration had "connected" Iraq, Al Qaeda

Dec 13, 2005

On the December 9 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Weekly Standard staff writer Stephen F. Hayes cited the Department of Justice's 1998 indictment of Osama bin Laden on charges of conspiring to attack the United States as evidence that the Clinton administration had "connected Saddam and Al Qaeda." And on the December 9 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh also claimed that the indictment proved it was "Bill Clinton and his administration who first talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network." But Hayes's assertions were misleading at best, and Limbaugh's were false. While the original indictment did refer to an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection, several months after it was handed down, then-assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Patrick J. Fitzgerald specifically removed from a subsequent indictment of bin Laden -- which superseded the original indictment -- the reference to an Iraq-Al Qaeda link after failing to substantiate that such a relationship existed. This indictment charged bin Laden and numerous other Al Qaeda operatives with planning and carrying out the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Further, Hayes defended Vice President Dick Cheney's claim of an April 2001 meeting between September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer by citing a November 2001 New York Times article. Yet, by December of that year, the Times and other news outlets raised serious doubts about whether the meeting took place, a fact that Hayes did not mention.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512130004


For anyone who is interested, all of the court documents and transcripts for the 1993 WTC Bombers trial can be found at http://cryptome.org/usa-v-ubl-dt.htm

[Doctor_J]

1. Limpballs lied?

You're kidding! And one of Bushwhore #2's writers lied too? What is the world coming to?

:sarcasm: