From http://www.conspiracysmasher.blogspot.com

Ronald Wieck said...
It is NOT "known" that Bush had heard of the first attacks before he left his hotel. Someone is making this up (I never heard this one before and the timeline makes it impossible).
The reasons for invading Iraq have never changed. People with agendas want to pretend that Bush claimed there was only one rationale for the war, but nobody ever believed that.
When did Cheney contend that UBL had nothing to do with the attacks? This claim is nonsense.
If Rumsfeld ever thought that Flight 93 was shot down, he certainly changed his opinion as more information became available.

It's tiresome. If you have something, tell us about it. Stop spreading falsehoods. You aren't investigating a controversy; you're creating one out of whole cloth.

11:17 PM

Sword of Twooth said...
Sorry Ronald. Wrong on all four counts.

1) Bush knew about attacks before leaving hotel.

http://forums.bluelemur.com/viewtopic.php?t=3601

Here is a transcript of an ABC report from that day:

'ABC News' Special Report:
(8:53 AM ET) Tuesday 11 September 2001

[SNIP]

JENNINGS: ...Want to check in very quickly with the president of the United States. John Cochran with the president in Florida. John:

JOHN COCHRAN reporting:

Peter, as you know, the president's down in Florida talking about education. He got out of his hotel suite this morning, was about to leave, reporters saw the White House chief of staff, Andy Card, whisper into his ear. The reporter said to the president, 'Do you know what's going on in New York?' He said he did, and he said he will have something about it later. His first event is about half an hour at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida.

JENNINGS: Thanks, John. John Cochran with the president...

[SNIP]

ABC Transcript: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/timeline/2001/abcnews091101.html

According to this transcript, John Cochran's report aired after the second plane hit. However, the reporter that Cochran mentions must have asked the question before that and sometime after the first plane hit the North Tower - meaning that the earliest Bush could have left his hotel for the school would have been 8:46 a.m. when the first plane reportedly hit.

2) The reasons for invading Iraq.

Here are some quotes from the Government in which a clear link is implied between the events of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan (source: BBC)

President Bush in a televised address to defend his administration's policy on Iraq, September 2003.

We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after 11 September, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there's a reason. We've experienced the horror of 11 September.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell in a presentation to the UN Security Council, setting out the US case against the Iraqi regime, February 2003.

We don't know.

Vice-President Dick Cheney when pressed on whether there was a link between Iraq and 11 September during a TV interview, September 2003.

We will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who've had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.

Mr Cheney in the same interview, commenting on the war against Iraq.

We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it.

Mr Cheney in the same interview, while recounting the controversial claim that one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met an Iraqi official in Prague before the attacks.

[Saddam Hussein posed a risk in] a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice defending the reasons why the US went to war against Iraq, September, 2003.

3) Cheney said in an interview that UBL was not involved in 9/11. He was corrected by the interviewer.

Here it is [in full,] on the White House's own website.

Interview of the Vice President by Tony Snow
The Tony Snow Show
Via Telephone

Q I want to be clear because I've heard you say this, and I've heard the President say it, but I want you to say it for my listeners, which is that the White House has never argued that Saddam was directly involved in September 11th, correct?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's correct. We had one report early on from another intelligence service that suggested that the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, had met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague, Czechoslovakia. And that reporting waxed and waned where the degree of confidence in it, and so forth, has been pretty well knocked down now at this stage, that that meeting ever took place. So we've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow Osama bin Laden [sic] was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming. But there -- that's a separate proposition from the question of whether or not there was some kind of a relationship between the Iraqi government, Iraqi intelligence services and the al Qaeda organization.

[more interview]

Q Okay. A couple of things, I think a couple of minutes ago -- I want to make sure -- you said Osama bin Laden wasn't involved in 9/11 planning. You meant Saddam Hussein, correct? That Saddam Hussein was not involved in September 11th?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Correct. Yes, sir.

Q Okay.

THE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Thanks for straightening that out. I didn't realize I'd done that. (Laughter.)

www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060329-2.html

4) Rumsfeld made the remark [about flight 93 being shot down] in December 2004.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/12/27/rumsfeld.flt93/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comment Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made during a Christmas Eve address to U.S. troops in Baghdad has sparked new conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the speech, Rumsfeld made a passing reference to United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to stop al Qaeda hijackers.

But in his remarks, Rumsfeld referred to the "the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania."

Really, Mr Wieck, you should be better informed.

4:53 AM