Vice President Cheney defended the administration's statements that there were ties between Al Qaida and Iraq and slammed the NY Times in the process. For those who missed it, today's Times editorial outright accuses the Bush administration of lying and stated it should apologize.

It's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.

Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different.

Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide. While it's possible that Mr. Bush and his top advisers really believed that there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, they should have known all along that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaida. No serious intelligence analyst believed the connection existed; Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief, wrote in his book that Mr. Bush had been told just that.

Well the editors at the NY Times certainly do have some huge cajones don't they? In the process of calling the President a liar, they blatantly lie to their readers. The 9/11 Commission's report never stated "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda". The report actually lists contacts between the two.

In fact, the two leaders of the Commission came out this afternoon and said there were contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Top members of the 9/11 commission are toning down any disagreement with the Bush administration over Iraq and al-Qaida.

The panel's Republican chairman says there were "contacts" between Saddam Hussein's government and the militant group. Tom Kean says some contacts "were shadowy -- but they were there."

President Bush today disputed the commission's finding that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam and al-Qaida.

Bush insists, "There was a relationship." But, he says his administration has never claimed Iraq and al-Qaida together "orchestrated" 9/11.

The top Democrat on the panel says the reported rift between the administration and the commission is "not that apparent" to him.

Maybe it is the NY Times that should apologize!

Now back to the Vice President. In an interview with Gloria Borger on CNBC, Cheney slammed the NY Times and others in the press, calling them "irresponsible" and "lazy" in the way they reported the 9/11 Commission's Report. In the interview he laid out the public evidence that shows Iraq had ties with Al Qaeda, something the press seems unwilling to do. Here is the transcript via the Drudge Report (questions and answers unrelated to the 9/11 Commission have been edited out):

BORGER: But obviously first the news of the week is the 9-11 Commission report. And as you know, the report found, quote, "No credible evidence that al-Qaida collaborated with Iraq or Saddam Hussein. Do you disagree with its findings?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: I disagree with the way their findings have been portrayed. This has been enormous confusion over the Iraq-al-Qaida connection, Gloria. First of all, on the question of whether or not there was any kind of a relationship, there clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming. It goes back to the early '90s.

It involves a whole series of contacts, high-level contacts between Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials. It involves a senior official, a brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence service going to the Sudan before bin Laden ever went to Afghanistan to train them in bomb-making, helping teach them how to forge documents. Mr. Zarqawi, who's in Baghdad today, is an al-Qaida associate who took refuge in Baghdad, found sanctuary and safe harbor there before we ever launched into Iraq. There's a Mr. Yasin, who was a World Trade Center bomber in '93, who fled to Iraq after that and we found since when we got into Baghdad, documents showing that he was put on the payroll and given housing by Saddam Hussein after the '93 attack; in other words, provided safe harbor and sanctuary. There's clearly been a relationship.

There's a separate question. The separate question is: Was Iraq involved with al-Qaida in the attack on 9/11?

BORGER: Was Iraq involved?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: We don't know. You know, what the commission says is that they can't find any evidence of that. We had one report which is a famous report on the Czech intelligence service and we've never been able to confirm or to knock it down.

BORGER: Well, let me just get to the bottom line here...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: But it's very important that people understand these two differences. What The New York Times did today was outrageous. They do a lot of outrageous things but the headline, Panel Find Qaida-Iraq Tie. The press wants to run out and say there's a fundamental split here now between what the president said and what the commission said. Jim Thompson is a member of the commission who's since been on the air. I saw him with my own eyes. And there's no conflict. What they were addressing was whether or not they were involved in 9/11. And there they found no evidence to support that proposition. They did not address the broader question of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida in other areas, in other ways.

BORGER: Well, my reading of the report is that it says that, yes, contacts were made between al-Qaida and Iraq, but they could find no evidence that any relationship, in fact, had been forged between al-Qaida and Iraq.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: And you're talking generally now, not just 9/11.

BORGER: Not just 9/11. And let's talk generally and then we'll get to 9/11.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Talk generally.

BORGER: Generally.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: That's not true.

BORGER: So you disagree?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Absolutely. Look at the Zarqawi case. Here's a man who's Jordanian by birth. He's described as an al-Qaida associate. He ran training camps in Afghanistan back before we went to war in Afghanistan. After we went in and hit his training camp, he fled to Baghdad. Found safe harbor and sanctuary in Baghdad in May of 2002. He arrived with about two dozen other supporters of his, members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was Zawahiri's organization. He's the number two to bin Laden, which was merged with al-Qaida interchangeably. Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida, same-same. They're all now part of one organization. They merged some years ago. So Zarqawi living in Baghdad. We arranged for information to be passed on his presence in Baghdad to the Iraqis through a third-party intelligence service. They did that twice. There's no question but what Saddam Hussein really was there. He was allowed to operate out of Baghdad. He ran the poisons factory in northern Iraq out of Baghdad, which became a safe harbor for Ansar al-Islam??? as well as al-Qaida fleeing Afghanistan. There clearly was a relationship there that stretched back over that period of time to at least May of '02, a year before we launched into Iraq. He is the worst offender. He's probably killed more Iraqis than any other man in Iraq today. He is probably the leading terrorist still operating in Iraq today.

BORGER: Now some say that he corresponded with al-Qaida only after Saddam was deposed.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: That's not true. He had been involved working side by side, as described by the CIA, with al-Qaida over the years. This is an old established relationship. He's the man who killed our man Foley in Jordan, an AID official, during this period of time. To suggest that there's no connection between Zarqawi, no relationship if you will, and Iraq just simply is not true.

BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohammad Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, I never said that.

BORGER: OK.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Never said that.

BORGER: I think that is...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.

BORGER: Well, now this report says it didn't happen.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No. This report says they haven't found any evidence.

BORGER: That it happened.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Right.

BORGER: But you haven't found the evidence that it happened either, have you?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No. All we have is that one report from the Czechs. We just don't know.

BORGER: So does this put it to rest for you or not on Atta?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: It doesn't add anything from my perspective. I mean, I still am a skeptic. I can't refute the Czech plan. I can't prove the Czech plan. It's ...(unintelligible) the nature of the intelligence (unintelligible).

BORGER: OK, but let's...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: But that is a separate question from what the press has gotten all in a dither about, The New York Times especially, on this other question. What they've done is, I think, distorted what the commission actually reported, certainly according to Governor Thompson, who's a member of the commission.

BORGER: But you say you disagree with the commission...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: On this question of whether or not there was a general relationship.

BORGER: Yes.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Yeah.

BORGER: And they say that there was not one forged and you were saying yes, that there was. Do you know things that the commission does not know?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Probably.

BORGER: And do you think the commission needs to know them?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: I don't have any--I don't know what they know. I do know they didn't talk with any original sources on this subject that say that in their report.

BORGER: They did talk with people who had interrogated sources.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Right.

BORGER: So they do have good sources.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Gloria, the notion that there is no relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida just simply is not true. I'm going to read this material here. Your show isn't long enough for me to read all the pieces...

BORGER: Sure it is.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: ...but in the fall of '95 and again in the summer of '96, bin Laden met with Iraqi intelligence service representatives at his farm in Sudan. Bin Laden asked for terror training from Iraq. The Iraqi intelligence service responded. It deployed a bomb-making expert, a brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence.

BORGER: OK, but now just let me stop you there, because what this report says is that he was not given the support that he had asked for from Iraq, that he had requested all of these things but, in fact, did not get them.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: He got this. We know for a fact. This is from George Tenet's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee February 12th, 2003, etc. I mean, it's there. It's ...(unintelligible).

BORGER: So is the commission credible as far as you're concerned?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: I haven't read their entire report on everything. I think they're doing good work. I think it's a very tough job they've been doing and I don't mean to be overly critical of them. I think this is not an area they looked at. According to Governor Thompson again, they didn't spend a lot of time on the question of Iraq and al-Qaida except for the 9/11 proposition.

That's what they're asked to look at. They did not spend a lot of time on these other issues. They've got one paragraph in the report that talks about that. And so the notion that you can take one paragraph from the 9-11 Commission and say, `Ah, therefore that says there was never a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida.' It's just wrong. It's not true. I'd love to go on on all of this stuff, but the fact of the matter is there clearly was a relationship there. Now...

BORGER: Let me just ask you, bottom line, though, on 9/11...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: On 9/11...

BORGER: ...Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11?

Vice Pres. CHENEY: We have never been able to prove that there was a connection there on 9/11. The one thing we have is the Czech intelligence service report saying that Mohammad Atta had met with the senior Iraqi intelligence official at the embassy on April 9th, 2001. That's never been proven. It's never been refuted.

***

BORGER: Let me ask you what your response is to the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, who said upon looking at this 9/11 report that this administration, quote, "misled America."

Vice Pres. CHENEY: In what respect? I haven't seen that.

BORGER: In terms of the relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: We never said that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. We never said that. You can't find any place where I said it, where the president said it. I was asked that, as a matter of fact, by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" on the Sunday after the attack and said, `No, we don't have any evidence of it.' Later on we received this information from the Czechs, but again, as I say, we've never been able to prove that nor have we been able to knock it down.

BORGER: Now the report says, though, that there isn't any relationship, so...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: They've concluded, based on what they've done.

BORGER: And you're not there.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: They've concluded and I haven't had a chance to read all of their report. They've concluded based on the work they've done that there was no connection, that Iraq was not responsible for 9/11. And I can't say they were. I've never seen evidence that supports that, except this one report from the Czechs.

***

BORGER: Mr. Vice President, I don't think I've ever seen you, in all the years I've interviewed you, as exercised about something as you seem today.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: I was. I admit, Gloria, and you and I have known each other a long time. But I do believe that the press has been irresponsible, that there's this temptation to take...

BORGER: But the press is making a distinction between 9/11 and...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, they're not. They're not. The New York Times does not. The Panel Finds No Qaida-Iraq Ties. That's what it says. That's the vaunted New York Times. Numerous--I've watched a lot of the coverage on it and the fact of the matter is they don't make a distinction. They fuzz it up. Sometimes it's through ignorance. Sometimes it's malicious. But you'll take a statement that's geared specifically to say there's no connection in relation to the 9/11 attack and then say, `Well, obviously there's no case here.' And then jump over to challenge the president's credibility or my credibility and say ...(unintelligible).

BORGER: Do you feel it's your personal credibility on the line, because obviously you have been portrayed as...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, I'm grateful. I...

BORGER: ...the hard-liner in the administration...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No.

BORGER: ...somebody who's...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Gloria, I don't feel persecuted. I don't need to. The fact of the matter is, the evidence is overwhelming. The press is, with all due respect, and there are exceptions, oftentimes lazy, oftentimes simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework.

BORGER: But it's the commission that reached--I mean, I know. I don't want to go back over the old ground here, but...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, but you need to go back and look...

BORGER: OK.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: ...at what Governor Jim Thompson said today about his conclusion as a commissioner based on the work that's been done; that they focused on 9/11. Their conclusion based on what they've seen on 9/11 is there was no Iraqi involvement, but he said, we did not address the rest of it. That was not our mission. That wasn't our assignment, to look at the broader relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida.

It's about time the administration came out swinging. They will need to do this continually to get around so-called News sources like the NY Times.