Special Training Class for Those Just Waking Up

[SFC(R)L]

Iraqi Terrorists Detail Ties To Bin Laden
Dave Eberhart,
Monday, March 18, 2002

A terrorist group operating in northern Iraq told the New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg that their organization "has received funds directly from al-Qaeda."
In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory, captured members of Ansar al-Islam also alleged:


The intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam.

Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.

A number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam.

Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
If these charges are true," Goldberg writes in the current issue, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."

The prisoners Goldberg spoke to last month are kept in a jail that is run by the intelligence service of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose director told Goldberg that American intelligence officials had not visited the site. "The FBI and the CIA haven't come out yet," the director said.

According to Kurdish officials, Goldberg reported, "Ansar al-Islam grew out of an idea spread by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former chief of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now Osama bin Laden's deputy in al-Qaeda."

One official explained, "Zawahiri's philosophy is that you should fight the infidel even in the smallest village, that you should try to form Islamic armies everywhere. The Kurdish fundamentalists were influenced by Zawahiri."

The group has between five hundred and six hundred members, according to Kurdish officials, including Arab Afghans and at least thirty Iraqi Kurds who were trained in Afghanistan.

Last September, the officials said, representatives of Osama bin Laden gave Ansar al-Islam $300,000. These officials added that the real leader of Ansar al-Islam is an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, who has spent a great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps but is also, they said, an officer of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's principal intelligence service.


"A man named Abu Agab is in charge of the northern bureau of the Mukhabarat," one official told Goldberg. "And he is Abu Wa'el's control officer."

Smuggling Al-Qaeda Members


Kurdish intelligence officials said that there is no proof that Ansar al-Islam has ever been involved in international terrorism or that Saddam Hussein's agents were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. But they claimed that several men associated with al-Qaeda have been smuggled over the Iranian border into an Ansar al-Islam stronghold near the city of Halabja.

Two of these men, who go by the names Abu Yasir and Abu Muzaham, are high-ranking al-Qaeda members, they say. An Iraqi intelligence officer, Qassem Hussein Muhammad, one of the prisoners with whom Goldberg spoke, said that his own involvement in Islamic radicalism began in 1992 in Baghdad, when he met Ayman al-Zawahiri after being assigned to help guard him.

After reports surfaced that Abu Wa'el had been captured by American agents, Qassem says, he was sent by the Mukhabarat to Kurdistan to find out what was going on. "That's when I was captured," he said. Asked if he was sure that Abu Wa'el was on Saddam's side, Qassem said, "He's an employee of the Mukhabarat. He's the actual decision-maker in the group -- Ansar al-Islam -- but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat."

In the prison, Goldberg also spoke to a young Iraqi Arab named Haqi Ismail, whom Kurdish officials described as a middle-to high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, who was captured as he tried to get into Kurdistan three weeks after the start of the American attack on Afghanistan.

Jawad, a twenty-nine-year-old Iranian Arab who is a smuggler and bandit from the city of Ahvaz, and whom Kurdish intelligence officials said was most recently employed by bin Laden, told Goldberg that he began to smuggle for bin Laden in the late 1990s.

Liquid Might Be Bio-Weapon

In 2000, Jawad's al-Qaeda contact told him to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into Afghanistan for the Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad told Goldberg that he had no idea what liquid was inside the motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or biological weapon.

"There's been a relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of al-Qaeda since 1992," Jawad said.

In the articel,"The Great Terror," Goldberg also provided a comprehensive account of Saddam's massive conventional, chemical, and possibly biological attacks on the Kurds in the late 1980s, during which as many as 200,000 Kurds in northern Iraq were killed, out of a population of about four million.

Christine Gosden, an English geneticist who has been studying the attacks on the Kurds since 1998, says, "The Iraqi government was using chemistry to reduce the population of Kurds. The Holocaust is still having its effect. The Jews are fewer in number now than they were in 1939. That's not natural. Now, if you take out 200,000 men and boys from Kurdistan, you've affected the population structure. There are a lot of widows who are not having children."

Gosden believes that it is quite possible that the countries of the West will soon experience serious chemical- and biological-weapons attacks. "Please understand," she said, "the Kurds were for practice."

Gosden told Goldberg that she cannot understand why the West has not been more eager to investigate the chemical attacks in Kurdistan. "It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest that the West would want to study the long-term effects of chemical weapons on civilians, on the DNA," she says, pointing out that, "for Saddam's scientists, the Kurds were a test population. They were the human guinea pigs. It was a way of identifying the most effective chemical agents for use on civilian populations, and the most effective means of delivery."

Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who was formerly a high official in Saddam's nuclear program, told Goldberg that he had direct knowledge of the Army's plans for Halabja. "The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as 'How far are the dead from the cannisters?'"

Fouad Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist in Kurdistan who led Goldberg on his tour of Halabja, and other experts "now believe that Halabja and other places in Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent."

Baban told Goldberg that the Iraqis could conceivably have used aflatoxin as well; aflatoxin is a biological agent that causes long-term liver damage. Baban said, "Here is a civilian population exposed to chemical and possibly biological weapons, and people are developing many varieties of cancers and congenital abnormalities."

In 1995, the Iraqis admitted that they had weaponized aflatoxin, Charles Duelfer, then the deputy executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection team in Iraq, told Goldberg. "This was the first time Iraq actually agreed to discuss the Presidential origins of these programs," Duelfer said.

Although "it is unclear what biological and chemical weapons Saddam possesses today," Goldberg wrote, August Hanning, the chief of the B.N.D., the German intelligence agency, provided information on another type of weapon. "It is our estimate," he said, "that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years."

[Sneaky SF Dude]

War Monger! NEOCON APOLOGIST!

[SFC(R)L]

Oops..sorry...how about this?

'Proof' of Iraq/Bin Laden links
Weekend Austrailian ^ | November 04, 2001 | From AFP


Posted on 11/04/2001 7:33:53 PM PST by concerned about politics


'Proof' of Iraq/Bin Laden links

A FORMER Iraqi special forces officer has given new proof of links between Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden and Iraq, according to a report.

The newspaper said that it was told by a leading member of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Nabeel Musawi, of the testimony of the 36-year-old former officer, identified only as A.S.

The INC is one of the main opposition groups to Saddam Hussein's government.

The newspaper said that the former officer told of a training camp called Salman Pak in Iraq where members of bin Laden's terror network had trained as pilots and on how to seize control of aircraft.

Musawi said that the former officer told him: "There were also women pilots who were trained and I believe that the next time, if there is a next time, it could be a woman who takes over an airplane."

The source also told of a meeting on the Pakistani border in December 1998 between an Iraqi diplomat working in Turkey and Osama bin Laden.

He further claimed that Iraq had sent a tonne of anthrax bacteria to bin Laden.

The former officer was said to have been in a poor physical state after being tortured and poisoned while in prison.

[SFC(R)L]

IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials met with BIN LADEN in Afghanistan several more times. A second group of BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives from Saudi Arabia were then trained by IRAQI INTELLIGENCE in IRAQ to smuggle weapons and explosives into Saudi Arabia and other countries, which they later accomplished in an effort to carry out future terrorist acts of violence. A third group of BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives received a month of sophisticated guerrilla operations training from IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials later in the Summer of 1998.

[Sneaky SF Dude]

They will attack the source. The only acceptable sources are op ed pieces from leftist media or academics.

[SFC(R)L]

Despite philosophical and religious differences with SADDAM HUSSEIN, BIN LADEN continually sought to strengthen and reinforce the support he and AL QAEDA received from IRAQ. In mid-July 1998, BIN LADEN sent Dr. AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI, the Egyptian co-founder of AL QAEDA, to IRAQ to meet with senior Iraqi officials, including Iraqi vice president TAHA YASSIN RAMADAN. Upon information and belief, the purpose of this meeting was to discuss and plan a joint strategy for a terrorist campaign against the United States.

[SFC(R)L]

To demonstrate IRAQ’s commitment to BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA, HIJAZI presented BIN LADEN with a pack of blank, official Yemeni passports, supplied to IRAQI INTELLIGENCE from their Yemeni contacts. HIJAZI’s visit to Kandahar was followed by a contingent of IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials who provided additional training and instruction to BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives in Afghanistan. These Iraqi officials included members of “Unit 999,” a group of elite IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials who provided advanced sabotage and infiltration training and instruction to AL QAEDA operatives.

[SFC(R)L]

In addition to the al-Nasiriyah and Salman Pak training camps, by January 1999, BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives were being trained by IRAQI INTELLIGENCE and military officers at other training camps on the outskirts of Baghdad.

[SFC(R)L]

On January 22, 2001, the Arab language newspaper Al Watan Al Arabi, reported that SADDAM HUSSEIN and his sons had called for an Arab alliance to “launch a global terrorist war against the United States and its allies.” The newspaper characterized HUSSEIN’s statement as calling for an uncompromising campaign and “scorched earth policy.”

[SFC(R)L]

On July 21, approximately six weeks before the September 11th attacks, IRAQI columnist Mulhalhal reported that BIN LADEN was making plans to “demolish the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.”

[SFC(R)L]

According to the FBI, from July 2000 through March 2001, ATTA, SHEHHI, HANJOUR, JARRAH and HAMZI traveled to the U.S. where they resided and took pilot courses to learn to fly the Boeing 747, 757, 767 and Airbus A320 in furtherance of the AL QAEDA IRAQI conspiracy to hijack U.S. aircraft to commit terrorist acts.

Upon information and belief, sometime between April 8-11, 2001, ATTA left Florida where he was a flight student, to again meet in Prague with IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agent AL-ANI. ATTA returned to Florida and within two weeks opened a Sun County Bank account with $100,000 sent through a money changer in the UAE. Later in 2001, AL-ANI was expelled from the Czech Republic for espionage activities. Other intelligence reports indicate that AL-ANI met with another September 11th hijacker, KHALID AL MIDHAR as well.
Exhibit qq - Italian security sources reported that IRAQ made use of its embassy in Rome to foster and cultivate IRAQ’s partnership with BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA. HABIB FARIS ABDULLAH AL-MAMOURI, a general in the IRAQI SECRET SERVICE, and a member of IRAQ’s M-8 Special Operations branch, who was responsible for developing links with Islamist militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, was stationed in Rome as an “instructor” for children of Iraqi diplomats. ALMAMOURI met with September 11th pilot hijacker MOHAMMED ATTA in Rome, Hamburg and Prague. AL-MAMOURI has not been seen in Rome since July 2001, shortly after he last met with ATTA.

On July 7, 2001 two members of the IRAQ MUKHABARAT, ABU AGAB and ABU WA’EL traveled together from Germany to Afghanistan and eventually to Kurdistan. ABU WA’EL trained at AL QAEDA terror camps and became the authority for fundamentalist groups operating in Kurdistan, intent on crushing opposition to SADDAM HUSSEIN.

[Loyal American]

Ok already, most of these post I have seen many times!

Ohhhhhhhh, you probably aren't posting them for me are you! :think:

[SFC(R)L]

Ok already, most of these post I have seen many times!

Ohhhhhhhh, you probably aren't posting them for me are you! :think:

Nope...got a whole new crop of uninformed who need tutoring.

Just trying to help out.

[H-minus]

As predicted, this thread went over like a lead ballon.

If any of them do comment, it will be along the lines of 'the 9/11 commision said there was no link' or 'if its true, why doesn't Bush say so?'

Those are the two most common denials of what everyone with functioning brains already know, that Saddam was a major player in terror circles.

[RedStatePaPa]

Bush lied Bump.

[RedStatePaPa]

The "oh no you won't ignore this one" bump.

[Long Island Bob]

war for oil

[RedStatePaPa]

war for oil
Say it ain't so. :((

[RedStatePaPa]

But wait. Where are the Budcar and ON to intelligently refute this glaring propaganda with brilliant facts and analysis? ;)

[H-minus]

Busy accusing the US of controlling/not controlling Saddam.

[Loyal American]

Still don't see anyone in here that needs to be in here yet! :wall:

[RedStatePaPa]

Busy accusing the US of controlling/not controlling Saddam.
What side are they argueing today?


Any minute now someone will drop the latest talking point.

The CULTURE OF CORRUPTION

Run for your lives.

[Ronin11208]

I've been posting those very articles for the past couple years.

I see you are receiving the same indifference from liberals that I did.

I think I hear crickets chirping.

*chirp* *chirp* *chirp* *chirp*

[djb123]

Iraqi Terrorists Detail Ties To Bin Laden
Dave Eberhart,
Monday, March 18, 2002

A terrorist group operating in northern Iraq told the New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg that their organization "has received funds directly from al-Qaeda."
In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory, captured members of Ansar al-Islam also alleged:


The intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam.

Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.

A number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam.

Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
If these charges are true," Goldberg writes in the current issue, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."

The prisoners Goldberg spoke to last month are kept in a jail that is run by the intelligence service of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose director told Goldberg that American intelligence officials had not visited the site. "The FBI and the CIA haven't come out yet," the director said.

According to Kurdish officials, Goldberg reported, "Ansar al-Islam grew out of an idea spread by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former chief of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now Osama bin Laden's deputy in al-Qaeda."

One official explained, "Zawahiri's philosophy is that you should fight the infidel even in the smallest village, that you should try to form Islamic armies everywhere. The Kurdish fundamentalists were influenced by Zawahiri."

The group has between five hundred and six hundred members, according to Kurdish officials, including Arab Afghans and at least thirty Iraqi Kurds who were trained in Afghanistan.

Last September, the officials said, representatives of Osama bin Laden gave Ansar al-Islam $300,000. These officials added that the real leader of Ansar al-Islam is an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, who has spent a great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps but is also, they said, an officer of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's principal intelligence service.


"A man named Abu Agab is in charge of the northern bureau of the Mukhabarat," one official told Goldberg. "And he is Abu Wa'el's control officer."

Smuggling Al-Qaeda Members


Kurdish intelligence officials said that there is no proof that Ansar al-Islam has ever been involved in international terrorism or that Saddam Hussein's agents were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. But they claimed that several men associated with al-Qaeda have been smuggled over the Iranian border into an Ansar al-Islam stronghold near the city of Halabja.

Two of these men, who go by the names Abu Yasir and Abu Muzaham, are high-ranking al-Qaeda members, they say. An Iraqi intelligence officer, Qassem Hussein Muhammad, one of the prisoners with whom Goldberg spoke, said that his own involvement in Islamic radicalism began in 1992 in Baghdad, when he met Ayman al-Zawahiri after being assigned to help guard him.

After reports surfaced that Abu Wa'el had been captured by American agents, Qassem says, he was sent by the Mukhabarat to Kurdistan to find out what was going on. "That's when I was captured," he said. Asked if he was sure that Abu Wa'el was on Saddam's side, Qassem said, "He's an employee of the Mukhabarat. He's the actual decision-maker in the group -- Ansar al-Islam -- but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat."

In the prison, Goldberg also spoke to a young Iraqi Arab named Haqi Ismail, whom Kurdish officials described as a middle-to high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, who was captured as he tried to get into Kurdistan three weeks after the start of the American attack on Afghanistan.

Jawad, a twenty-nine-year-old Iranian Arab who is a smuggler and bandit from the city of Ahvaz, and whom Kurdish intelligence officials said was most recently employed by bin Laden, told Goldberg that he began to smuggle for bin Laden in the late 1990s.

Liquid Might Be Bio-Weapon

In 2000, Jawad's al-Qaeda contact told him to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into Afghanistan for the Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad told Goldberg that he had no idea what liquid was inside the motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or biological weapon.

"There's been a relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of al-Qaeda since 1992," Jawad said.

In the articel,"The Great Terror," Goldberg also provided a comprehensive account of Saddam's massive conventional, chemical, and possibly biological attacks on the Kurds in the late 1980s, during which as many as 200,000 Kurds in northern Iraq were killed, out of a population of about four million.

Christine Gosden, an English geneticist who has been studying the attacks on the Kurds since 1998, says, "The Iraqi government was using chemistry to reduce the population of Kurds. The Holocaust is still having its effect. The Jews are fewer in number now than they were in 1939. That's not natural. Now, if you take out 200,000 men and boys from Kurdistan, you've affected the population structure. There are a lot of widows who are not having children."

Gosden believes that it is quite possible that the countries of the West will soon experience serious chemical- and biological-weapons attacks. "Please understand," she said, "the Kurds were for practice."

Gosden told Goldberg that she cannot understand why the West has not been more eager to investigate the chemical attacks in Kurdistan. "It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest that the West would want to study the long-term effects of chemical weapons on civilians, on the DNA," she says, pointing out that, "for Saddam's scientists, the Kurds were a test population. They were the human guinea pigs. It was a way of identifying the most effective chemical agents for use on civilian populations, and the most effective means of delivery."

Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who was formerly a high official in Saddam's nuclear program, told Goldberg that he had direct knowledge of the Army's plans for Halabja. "The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as 'How far are the dead from the cannisters?'"

Fouad Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist in Kurdistan who led Goldberg on his tour of Halabja, and other experts "now believe that Halabja and other places in Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent."

Baban told Goldberg that the Iraqis could conceivably have used aflatoxin as well; aflatoxin is a biological agent that causes long-term liver damage. Baban said, "Here is a civilian population exposed to chemical and possibly biological weapons, and people are developing many varieties of cancers and congenital abnormalities."

In 1995, the Iraqis admitted that they had weaponized aflatoxin, Charles Duelfer, then the deputy executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection team in Iraq, told Goldberg. "This was the first time Iraq actually agreed to discuss the Presidential origins of these programs," Duelfer said.

Although "it is unclear what biological and chemical weapons Saddam possesses today," Goldberg wrote, August Hanning, the chief of the B.N.D., the German intelligence agency, provided information on another type of weapon. "It is our estimate," he said, "that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years."


All of this so called "evidence" was carefully examined by the bi-partisan 9/11 commision and determined to be inconclusive. The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that Osama bin Laden met with a top Iraqi official in 1994 but found “no credible evidence” of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States. The article quoted above is from 2002, during the reality distortion campaign designed to support the war. This is nothing new.

[djb123]

I've been posting those very articles for the past couple years.

I see you are receiving the same indifference from liberals that I did.

I think I hear crickets chirping.

*chirp* *chirp* *chirp* *chirp*


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/10/1055010937064.html

"Al-Qaeda did not work with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, two of the terrorist network's senior leaders have told the CIA, intelligence officials say.

Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda planner and recruiter who was captured in March 2002, told interrogators last year that such co-operation had been discussed among the group's leaders, but was rejected by Osama bin Laden."

*chirp* *chirp* *chirp*

[djb123]

Still don't see anyone in here that needs to be in here yet! :wall:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

"The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Along with the contention that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

But the report of the commission's staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation. In yesterday's hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding. "

[rhetorician]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/10/1055010937064.html

"Al-Qaeda did not work with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, two of the terrorist network's senior leaders have told the CIA, intelligence officials say.

Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda planner and recruiter who was captured in March 2002, told interrogators last year that such co-operation had been discussed among the group's leaders, but was rejected by Osama bin Laden."

*chirp* *chirp* *chirp*

Yes, well, I hadn't seen them, and I am not a liberal. Now, my ever-so-ignorant students will see them. I just created a new assignment for my freshman rhetoric classes: they will use these reports to practice summarization and source citation (and learn a thing or two on the side?) Give me more!

[Long Island Bob]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

"The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Along with the contention that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

But the report of the commission's staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation. In yesterday's hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding. "

Yes we all know how the Washingon Post characterized the 9-11 Commission's findings.

The parts I read made it clear that the 9-11 commission was looking into 9-11 (of all thingsand found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda regarding 9-11. Of course bush never made such claim not a reason for war in Iraq or at any other time.

It was not looking into "Bush's claims about the war in iraq."
The report also incldued pretty much all the information that is posted here, showing a nacient but growing relationship beteen the Iraq and al Qaeda.

As for Bush's actual claims:
Between the president's address to the United Nations, Sept 12, 2002 through The President's 2003 State of the Union and continuing to the "48 hour ultimatium" (on the eve of the war), the president outlined Saddam's ties to non-al qaeda terrorists 72 times in 28 separate statements and speeches.

Apparently the Post (and you) missed all 72.

I can post them for you if you wish.
Still, The Post found it necessary to mischaracterize the President's position. It's called a straw man fallacy. When the Post found that the facts (the president's actual statements) made their opinion untenable they made up new facts.

[rle29464]

All of this so called "evidence" was carefully examined by the bi-partisan 9/11 commision and determined to be inconclusive. The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that Osama bin Laden met with a top Iraqi official in 1994 but found “no credible evidence” of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States. The article quoted above is from 2002, during the reality distortion campaign designed to support the war. This is nothing new.

just like the Able Danger evidence? hmm not sure i am willing to hang my hat on how effective that commision was

[rhetorician]

All of this so called "evidence" was carefully examined by the bi-partisan 9/11 commision and determined to be inconclusive. The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that Osama bin Laden met with a top Iraqi official in 1994 but found “no credible evidence” of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States. The article quoted above is from 2002, during the reality distortion campaign designed to support the war. This is nothing new.

Oh, you mean the "cover-Billy's-rear" commission! Gotcha. :))

[RedStatePaPa]

All of this so called "evidence" was carefully examined by the bi-partisan 9/11 commision and determined to be inconclusive. The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that Osama bin Laden met with a top Iraqi official in 1994 but found “no credible evidence” of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States. The article quoted above is from 2002, during the reality distortion campaign designed to support the war. This is nothing new.
Yeah we're hearing some interesting things about the 9/11 commission. Able Danger anyone?

[rhetorician]

just like the Able Danger evidence? hmm not sure i am willing to hang my hat on how effective that commision was

Excuse me. It was very effective: mission accomplished--Billy gets off the hook.

[RedStatePaPa]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/10/1055010937064.html

"Al-Qaeda did not work with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, two of the terrorist network's senior leaders have told the CIA, intelligence officials say.

Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda planner and recruiter who was captured in March 2002, told interrogators last year that such co-operation had been discussed among the group's leaders, but was rejected by Osama bin Laden."

*chirp* *chirp* *chirp*
"two of the terrorist network's senior leaders have told the CIA, intelligence officials say"
Very trustworthy sources you have there.

[djb123]

Oh, you mean the "cover-Billy's-rear" commission! Gotcha. :))

Yeah, when you disagree with the facts, it is best to ridicule the source.

[djb123]

"two of the terrorist network's senior leaders have told the CIA, intelligence officials say"
Very trustworthy sources you have there.

Right. We can't believe anything that is written by anyone ever. Therefore, all the posts and quotes at the beginning of this thread must be discounted as well.

[djb123]

Excuse me. It was very effective: mission accomplished--Billy gets off the hook.

Yes. The Republican controlled congress and the Bush administration created a bi-partisan commission with unfettered access to classified information in order to relieve Clinton of all responsibility for 9/11. That's surely what happened.

[djb123]

As predicted, this thread went over like a lead ballon.

If any of them do comment, it will be along the lines of 'the 9/11 commision said there was no link' or 'if its true, why doesn't Bush say so?'

Those are the two most common denials of what everyone with functioning brains already know, that Saddam was a major player in terror circles.

No one in the know has ever denied that Saddam was a "player" in "terror circles". The gassing of the Kurds in the 80s is proof enough of that.

What "everyone with a functioning brain" also knows is that the role Saddam played in 9/11 was grossly exaggerated by the Bush adminstration in the months leading up to the invasion specifically to justify the war and avoid the real debate over a policy of regime change.

[Long Island Bob]

What "everyone with a functioning brain" also knows is that the role Saddam played in 9/11 was grossly exaggerated by the Bush adminstration in the months leading up to the invasion specifically to justify the war and avoid the real debate over a policy of regime change.

Frankly I do not recall Bush claiming Iraq was involved in 9-11.
I do remember him investigating the matter.
It smells like another straw man to me.

I also remember him stating clearly that the goal of the war on terror includes every terrorist group of global reach and every state that sponsors them.

I remember him describing 70 or more times Iraq's long history of (non al qaeda) terrorist sponsorship and his arguments about WMD's etc.

[RedStatePaPa]

night shift bump

[wiley8425]

Yes. The Republican controlled congress and the Bush administration created a bi-partisan commission with unfettered access to classified information in order to relieve Clinton of all responsibility for 9/11. That's surely what happened.

Yep. That would be all those members of the administration who were members of the administration during the Clinton years as well. You would be asbolutely right on that one.

:cool:

[djb123]

Frankly I do not recall Bush claiming Iraq was involved in 9-11.

Well, Cheney certainly implied it:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/

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

[djb123]

Yep. That would be all those members of the administration who were members of the administration during the Clinton years as well. You would be asbolutely right on that one.

:cool:


Like the Chair of the committee, Thomas H. Kean (former Republican governor of New Jersey), or Fred F. Fielding (Republican lawyer under Nixon and Reagan), or Governor James R. Thompson (former Republican governor of Illinois). These are clearly "member of the administration during the Clinton years".

[KJonz]

Of course Cheney implied it. They wouldn't have the public backing to invade if they didnt scare the **** out of everyone.
The fact is, this war was planned a long time ago. I suggest everyone do a little research on the Committee for a New American Century.
This Washington "think tank" wrote an open letter to the president in 1998 pleading with him to take action in Iraq. The mission statement of said "think tank" includes increasing the military budget to %75 of the the total budget, increasing military presence in Southern Europe, Middle East, and Indochina, and also "demanding" that other nations fall in line with the US.

Signatories and founding members include: Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle.

:think:

[wiley8425]

Like the Chair of the committee, Thomas H. Kean (former Republican governor of New Jersey), or Fred F. Fielding (Republican lawyer under Nixon and Reagan), or Governor James R. Thompson (former Republican governor of Illinois). These are clearly "member of the administration during the Clinton years".

Richard Ben-Veniste
Commissioner

From May 1995 to June 1996, Mr. Ben-Veniste was chief counsel (minority) of the Senate Whitewater Committee.

Jamie S. Gorelick
Commissioner

Prior to joining Fannie Mae in May 1997, Gorelick was deputy attorney general of the United States, a position she assumed in March 1994.

Christopher Kojm
Deputy Executive Director

He served previously in the Congress on the staff of the House International Relations Committee, under Ranking Member Lee Hamilton as Deputy Director of the Democratic staff (1997-98), as Coordinator for Regional Issues (1993-1997) and under Chairman Hamilton on the Europe and Middle East subcommittee staff (1984-92).

[djb123]

Richard Ben-Veniste
Commissioner



Jamie S. Gorelick
Commissioner



Christopher Kojm
Deputy Executive Director


Just proves my point - it was bi-partisan. Or does that violate the "fair and balanced" rule - "It is only fair and balanced if I agree with it"?

[wiley8425]

Just proves my point - it was bi-partisan. Or does that violate the "fair and balanced" rule - "It is only fair and balanced if I agree with it"?

I'm surprised that it doesn't bother you that Jamie Gorelick was put on the commission in and of itself, when she should have been on the other side, answering questions. That, in and of itself, invalidates any findings as a result of said commission.

[KJonz]

I'm surprised that it doesn't bother you that Jamie Gorelick was put on the commission in and of itself, when she should have been on the other side, answering questions. That, in and of itself, invalidates any findings as a result of said commission.

TALKING POINT ALERT

[wiley8425]

TALKING POINT ALERT

Common sense. You wouldn't put Bill or Hillary Clinton in charge of or on the panel investigating the facts behind WhiteWater. Or would you? :rolleyes:

[rhetorician]

No one in the know has ever denied that Saddam was a "player" in "terror circles". The gassing of the Kurds in the 80s is proof enough of that.

What "everyone with a functioning brain" also knows is that the role Saddam played in 9/11 was grossly exaggerated by the Bush adminstration in the months leading up to the invasion specifically to justify the war and avoid the real debate over a policy of regime change.

Bush never claimed that he had a direct role in 9/11, only that he had WND or was trying to get WMD and that it was time to act on all the UN resolutions. Congress agreed with him--only two dissenting votes. If you take down Bush, take down Congress too--including Clinton, please!

[rhetorician]

Well, Cheney certainly implied it:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/

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

And why do you think the m-goons are swarming? Could it be that Iraq is situated to become a major base of operations aimed straight at Syria and Iran?

[rhetorician]

Of course Cheney implied it. They wouldn't have the public backing to invade if they didnt scare the **** out of everyone.
The fact is, this war was planned a long time ago. I suggest everyone do a little research on the Committee for a New American Century.
This Washington "think tank" wrote an open letter to the president in 1998 pleading with him to take action in Iraq. The mission statement of said "think tank" includes increasing the military budget to %75 of the the total budget, increasing military presence in Southern Europe, Middle East, and Indochina, and also "demanding" that other nations fall in line with the US.

Signatories and founding members include: Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle.

:think:
If you are not terrified of Islam--which is dedicated to your destruction, friend--you are a bigger nut than this post indicates.

[rhetorician]

war for oil

Prove this assertion! No more sweeping generalizations without substantiation!

[rhetorician]

But wait. Where are the Budcar and ON to intelligently refute this glaring propaganda with brilliant facts and analysis? ;)

Yeah, where is Budcar? He owes our guys a full retraction. Haven't forgotten. He's just escaped for a bit while I earned my paycheck. I am still seriously ticked.

[rhetorician]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

"The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Along with the contention that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

But the report of the commission's staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation. In yesterday's hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding. "

Sure. the biggest coverup in the history of the US--how's Able-Baker doing by the way?

[KJonz]

If you are not terrified of Islam--which is dedicated to your destruction, friend--you are a bigger nut than this post indicates.


its merely fact sir....its not my doing.....

Just think of what 200 billion dollars ( what we have spent so far in Iraq ) could have supplied us here, at home in this great country you love so much, for security ( ie protecting the borders, the harbors, and actually fixing the airline security facade)?

just think :think:

[rhetorician]

Yes we all know how the Washingon Post characterized the 9-11 Commission's findings.

The parts I read made it clear that the 9-11 commission was looking into 9-11 (of all thingsand found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda regarding 9-11. Of course bush never made such claim not a reason for war in Iraq or at any other time.

It was not looking into "Bush's claims about the war in iraq."
The report also incldued pretty much all the information that is posted here, showing a nacient but growing relationship beteen the Iraq and al Qaeda.

As for Bush's actual claims:
Between the president's address to the United Nations, Sept 12, 2002 through The President's 2003 State of the Union and continuing to the "48 hour ultimatium" (on the eve of the war), the president outlined Saddam's ties to non-al qaeda terrorists 72 times in 28 separate statements and speeches.

Apparently the Post (and you) missed all 72.

I can post them for you if you wish.
Still, The Post found it necessary to mischaracterize the President's position. It's called a straw man fallacy. When the Post found that the facts (the president's actual statements) made their opinion untenable they made up new facts.

Yes! Real data.

[rhetorician]

Yes. The Republican controlled congress and the Bush administration created a bi-partisan commission with unfettered access to classified information in order to relieve Clinton of all responsibility for 9/11. That's surely what happened.

Get this straight. Iraq is not political--if Bush screwed up, so did Congress, including all but two dissenters. They go to prison right along with him if this was the major foulup you guys claim--and have yet to prove. And I'll put both Clintons and Gore--who aggitated for this war long before Bush announced he war running against Gore--in matching uniforms right beside him. Congress declared the war--Congress is guilty if anyone is. Get off this tack, my friend, or you'll see a demand for accountability that will shake the entire Beltway all the way down to its rotten liver--I'd say "heart" but it hasn't got one.

[rhetorician]

Yep. That would be all those members of the administration who were members of the administration during the Clinton years as well. You would be asbolutely right on that one.

:cool:

And, if we're going to hold Bush accountable, I'm going to scream for the heads of every member of Congress who voted for the war, too. And I want the CIA and other goons who came up with the WMD "misinformation"--in fact, I want the entire Beltway corporate schmuck at the same time.

[wiley8425]

And, if we're going to hold Bush accountable, I'm going to scream for the heads of every member of Congress who voted for the war, too. And I want the CIA and other goons who came up with the WMD "misinformation"--in fact, I want the entire Beltway corporate schmuck at the same time.

Start with Kerry and Edwards. They were screaming the loudest about WMDs.

[rhetorician]

Like the Chair of the committee, Thomas H. Kean (former Republican governor of New Jersey), or Fred F. Fielding (Republican lawyer under Nixon and Reagan), or Governor James R. Thompson (former Republican governor of Illinois). These are clearly "member of the administration during the Clinton years".

Good. More screwups to add to both Clintons, McCain, Liberman, Boxer, etc. In fact, the more I read of your accusations, the more I realize we can destroy the entire federal government, including both political parties. This garbage will not cut it. Hundreds on both sides go down over this, if the war was illegal and immoral as you persist in claiming--but have yet to prove.

[rhetorician]

Just proves my point - it was bi-partisan. Or does that violate the "fair and balanced" rule - "It is only fair and balanced if I agree with it"?

It was about as fair and balanced as any other political dog hunt. No one in the American populace believes otherwise. Joe Citizen is not as stupid as you guys claim. Able-Baker will blow and your side is going down for the 9/11 coverup.

[rhetorician]

I'm surprised that it doesn't bother you that Jamie Gorelick was put on the commission in and of itself, when she should have been on the other side, answering questions. That, in and of itself, invalidates any findings as a result of said commission.

Amen! I would love to see her investigated for her own attempts at coverup--right along with George Tennant. The entire State and CIA is riddled with corruption and inefficiency dating from the Carter administration--and Congress has blocked any attempt to clean it up. Only job in the universe where total ineptitude is rewarded by permanent job security!

[rhetorician]

its merely fact sir....its not my doing.....

Just think of what 200 billion dollars ( what we have spent so far in Iraq ) could have supplied us here, at home in this great country you love so much, for security ( ie protecting the borders, the harbors, and actually fixing the airline security facade)?

just think :think:

Pure selfish unAmericanism, sir. What, you need your big screen tvs more than Iraqi kids need to keep breathing? Crawl in the deepest darkest hole you can find and cement up the doors. The hyenas will still find a way to dig you out.

[rhetorician]

TALKING POINT ALERT

Answer: Gorelick and Tennant both need to stand charges for deliction of duty.

[rhetorician]

Start with Kerry and Edwards. They were screaming the loudest about WMDs.

Yes! Good point. This is not Bush's war--every political leader we've got started this thing--except the two who had the guts to vote their consciences instead of what they thought would get the most votes.

[rhetorician]

Yeah, when you disagree with the facts, it is best to ridicule the source.

Just calling it by its most common name in my part of the country.

[coaster]

I just glanced at all of the posts without reading each in depth but I wanted to ask one question that I think has been missed here.
Why is Bush being blamed for adopting the Regime Change policy towards Iraq??

[wiley8425]

I just glanced at all of the posts without reading each in depth but I wanted to ask one question that I think has been missed here.
Why is Bush being blamed for adopting the Regime Change policy towards Iraq??



YYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!! !!!!!!!!!!!

[djb123]

It was about as fair and balanced as any other political dog hunt. No one in the American populace believes otherwise. Joe Citizen is not as stupid as you guys claim. Able-Baker will blow and your side is going down for the 9/11 coverup.

I think you mean Able Danger. That's a tempest in a teapot. At worst, it is another example of how intelligence gathering prior to 9/11 failed to recognize and prevent the threat (the infamous "determined to attack" memo being another). Able Danger is not about any left wing conspiracies or cover ups, so cut the cloak-and-dagger stuff already.

BTW - I'm in "the American populace" and I believe otherwise, so you're proven wrong again. You're batting 1000.

[rhetorician]

I just glanced at all of the posts without reading each in depth but I wanted to ask one question that I think has been missed here.
Why is Bush being blamed for adopting the Regime Change policy towards Iraq??

Because a bunch of propagandists are trying to ride this into the White House and are ignoring the incredible damage withdrawal from Iraq would do to the United States: for one, Tony Blair and the Prime in Australia go down; two, the Islamafascists get hard core proof that Americans are soft, spoiled, cowardly dogs; three, France, Germany, Russian get to wave their fingers and say, "see, we told you not to count on the US"; four, China gets to wag its finger and yammer, "If you can't count on them for something this important, you can't count on them to honor their trade agreements, either." And that's only the start. Domestic damage gets even worse. But the Dems. get to flush toilets in the White House--while it still exists.

[rhetorician]

I think you mean Able Danger. That's a tempest in a teapot. At worst, it is another example of how intelligence gathering prior to 9/11 failed to recognize and prevent the threat (the infamous "determined to attack" memo being another). Able Danger is not about any left wing conspiracies or cover ups, so cut the cloak-and-dagger stuff already.

BTW - I'm in "the American populace" and I believe otherwise, so you're proven wrong again. You're batting 1000.

No--Able Danger were the intelligence guys that spotted the problem and were gagged by a Democratic bureaucracy! The gag-sters go down! And Congress goes down if it voted for a war that was either illegal or ill-advised.

[coaster]

The reason I asked the question about the Regime Change policy is that it was not Bush that got it passed through the Congress. It was the prior administration that adopted it. He just made it happen. So why is everyone complaining about him carring out a Clinton policy?

[Phil McKracken]

Drill Sgt????!!!!!

Is this information going to be on the EOCT?

Phil<~~~~~~ pushing Ft. Leonardwood to China for asking dumb question.

[KJonz]

Pure selfish unAmericanism, sir. What, you need your big screen tvs more than Iraqi kids need to keep breathing? Crawl in the deepest darkest hole you can find and cement up the doors. The hyenas will still find a way to dig you out.


another citizen miguided with fear.....so sad :cry:

[coaster]

another citizen miguided with fear.....so sad :cry:
We could say that you are just another ostrich with head in the sand syndrom.

[djb123]

No--Able Danger were the intelligence guys that spotted the problem and were gagged by a Democratic bureaucracy! The gag-sters go down! And Congress goes down if it voted for a war that was either illegal or ill-advised.

They were gagged by DoD lawyers, not Democratic bureaucrats. And what possible motive could the Democrats - even if you hate them - have for gagging Able Danger? Okay - if the full Able Danger story proves true (and it has already been investigated and largely dismissed), it just proves another set of incompetence in our intelligence agencies. This is neither a right or left issue - it's a perfect example of an issue we should all be united on.

[djb123]

The reason I asked the question about the Regime Change policy is that it was not Bush that got it passed through the Congress. It was the prior administration that adopted it. He just made it happen. So why is everyone complaining about him carring out a Clinton policy?

It wasn't a Clinton policy - it was driven through the Republican controlled Congress. Clinton supported the policy, but did not originate or drive it.

[djb123]

Pure selfish unAmericanism, sir. What, you need your big screen tvs more than Iraqi kids need to keep breathing? Crawl in the deepest darkest hole you can find and cement up the doors. The hyenas will still find a way to dig you out.


I wish people were sacrificing their big screen tvs. Bush has managed to borrow all the money from abroad so that our grandkids will pay for this war rather than us. And BTW - now the war in Iraq is to keep Iraqi kids breathing???? What will you think of next?

[SFC(R)L]

As predicted, this thread went over like a lead ballon.

If any of them do comment, it will be along the lines of 'the 9/11 commision said there was no link' or 'if its true, why doesn't Bush say so?'

Those are the two most common denials of what everyone with functioning brains already know, that Saddam was a major player in terror circles.

Maybe, one day, they will be as smart as me.

[SFC(R)L]

But wait. Where are the Budcar and ON to intelligently refute this glaring propaganda with brilliant facts and analysis? ;)

Both are on ignore anyway.

[SFC(R)L]

All of this so called "evidence" was carefully examined by the bi-partisan 9/11 commision and determined to be inconclusive. The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that Osama bin Laden met with a top Iraqi official in 1994 but found “no credible evidence” of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States. The article quoted above is from 2002, during the reality distortion campaign designed to support the war. This is nothing new.

Thank you for proving my point.

Your continued willful ignorance as to the extent of the problem is the source of your poorly formed opinion.

The fact that your referenced the bogus "9-11 commission" is sufficient to dismiss your views.

The evidence, still breaking, indicates that the "9-11 commission" was as incompetent and ineffective as I said it would be, and continued to ignore well-known ties between Al Qaeda, Iraq, adn the 9-11 attackers.

Wake up.

[SFC(R)L]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

"The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Along with the contention that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

But the report of the commission's staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation. In yesterday's hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding. "

The "9-11 commission" could not find its own ass with both hands and a compass.

The members owe the people an apology, a complete retraction of their ridiculous reports, and a reimbursement for the valuable resources (Taxpayer CASH) they WASTED doing nothing.

If I could jail them, I would.

[SFC(R)L]

No one in the know has ever denied that Saddam was a "player" in "terror circles". The gassing of the Kurds in the 80s is proof enough of that.

What "everyone with a functioning brain" also knows is that the role Saddam played in 9/11 was grossly exaggerated by the Bush adminstration in the months leading up to the invasion specifically to justify the war and avoid the real debate over a policy of regime change.

All evidence to the contrary.

Try the shark theory.

[SFC(R)L]

They were gagged by DoD lawyers, not Democratic bureaucrats. And what possible motive could the Democrats - even if you hate them - have for gagging Able Danger? Okay - if the full Able Danger story proves true (and it has already been investigated and largely dismissed), it just proves another set of incompetence in our intelligence agencies. This is neither a right or left issue - it's a perfect example of an issue we should all be united on.

Incorrect.

[keller]

just like the Able Danger evidence? hmm not sure i am willing to hang my hat on how effective that commision was

I'll help, the commision was a total useless fluke! Of no relevance whatsoever.

[H-minus]

I'll help, the commision was a total useless fluke! Of no relevance whatsoever.It did give the left another level of useless paper pushing to quote when confronted with uncomfortable facts, like Saddam and OBL working together.

[Sneaky SF Dude]

Well, Cheney certainly implied it:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/

"...we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11"
So you think Iraq is not in the geographic base of Al Qaeda? Where do you think Iraq is? South America? Bordering Cambodia?

[Sneaky SF Dude]

TALKING POINT ALERT
Truth Alert!

She should have been testifying under oath, not judging.

[Sneaky SF Dude]

I think you mean Able Danger. That's a tempest in a teapot. At worst, it is another example of how intelligence gathering prior to 9/11 failed to recognize and prevent the threat (the infamous "determined to attack" memo being another). Able Danger is not about any left wing conspiracies or cover ups, so cut the cloak-and-dagger stuff already.

BTW - I'm in "the American populace" and I believe otherwise, so you're proven wrong again. You're batting 1000.
Yes, it is.

[Sneaky SF Dude]

They were gagged by DoD lawyers, not Democratic bureaucrats. And what possible motive could the Democrats - even if you hate them - have for gagging Able Danger? Okay - if the full Able Danger story proves true (and it has already been investigated and largely dismissed), it just proves another set of incompetence in our intelligence agencies. This is neither a right or left issue - it's a perfect example of an issue we should all be united on.
No it hasn't been dismissed.

[Sneaky SF Dude]

It wasn't a Clinton policy - it was driven through the Republican controlled Congress. Clinton supported the policy, but did not originate or drive it.
Utter and complete revisionist crap.

[Sneaky SF Dude]

"Rice recalled the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She said that if the attacks were merely the result of 19 terrorists supported by a network called al Qaeda, working from a failed state, Afghanistan, then a limited response would have been appropriate."

"But if you believe, as I do and as President Bush does, that the root cause of Sept. 11 was the violent expression of a global extremist ideology, an ideology rooted in the oppression and despair of the modern Middle East, Rice said, then we must seek to remove the very source of this terror by transforming that troubled region. If you believe as we do, then it cannot be denied that we are standing at an extraordinary moment in history."

"The notion that the global war on terror makes the world less stable by rocking the boat and wrecking the status quo presumes the existence of a stable status quo that does not threaten global security, Rice said. This is not the case, she said. A regional order that produced an ideology of hatred so savage as the one we now confront is not serving any civilized interests."

--John Banusiewicz, Rice Applies Historical Perspective to Situation in Iraq
American Forces Press Service



I too believe, Madam Secretary...

[RedStatePaPa]

bump

[Loyal American]

Sneaky are you having fun in here educating the left? :razz:
Looks like they haven't returned to learn yet? :snooty:
Keep up the good work! :clap:

[SFC(R)L]

A new session is now requested by yet another appeaser.

bumpity bumpity BUMP

[SFC(R)L]

Iraqi Terrorists Detail Ties To Bin Laden
Dave Eberhart,
Monday, March 18, 2002

A terrorist group operating in northern Iraq told the New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg that their organization "has received funds directly from al-Qaeda."
In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory, captured members of Ansar al-Islam also alleged:


The intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam.

Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.

A number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam.

Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
If these charges are true," Goldberg writes in the current issue, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."

The prisoners Goldberg spoke to last month are kept in a jail that is run by the intelligence service of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose director told Goldberg that American intelligence officials had not visited the site. "The FBI and the CIA haven't come out yet," the director said.

According to Kurdish officials, Goldberg reported, "Ansar al-Islam grew out of an idea spread by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former chief of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now Osama bin Laden's deputy in al-Qaeda."

One official explained, "Zawahiri's philosophy is that you should fight the infidel even in the smallest village, that you should try to form Islamic armies everywhere. The Kurdish fundamentalists were influenced by Zawahiri."

The group has between five hundred and six hundred members, according to Kurdish officials, including Arab Afghans and at least thirty Iraqi Kurds who were trained in Afghanistan.

Last September, the officials said, representatives of Osama bin Laden gave Ansar al-Islam $300,000. These officials added that the real leader of Ansar al-Islam is an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, who has spent a great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps but is also, they said, an officer of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's principal intelligence service.


"A man named Abu Agab is in charge of the northern bureau of the Mukhabarat," one official told Goldberg. "And he is Abu Wa'el's control officer."

Smuggling Al-Qaeda Members


Kurdish intelligence officials said that there is no proof that Ansar al-Islam has ever been involved in international terrorism or that Saddam Hussein's agents were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. But they claimed that several men associated with al-Qaeda have been smuggled over the Iranian border into an Ansar al-Islam stronghold near the city of Halabja.

Two of these men, who go by the names Abu Yasir and Abu Muzaham, are high-ranking al-Qaeda members, they say. An Iraqi intelligence officer, Qassem Hussein Muhammad, one of the prisoners with whom Goldberg spoke, said that his own involvement in Islamic radicalism began in 1992 in Baghdad, when he met Ayman al-Zawahiri after being assigned to help guard him.

After reports surfaced that Abu Wa'el had been captured by American agents, Qassem says, he was sent by the Mukhabarat to Kurdistan to find out what was going on. "That's when I was captured," he said. Asked if he was sure that Abu Wa'el was on Saddam's side, Qassem said, "He's an employee of the Mukhabarat. He's the actual decision-maker in the group -- Ansar al-Islam -- but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat."

In the prison, Goldberg also spoke to a young Iraqi Arab named Haqi Ismail, whom Kurdish officials described as a middle-to high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, who was captured as he tried to get into Kurdistan three weeks after the start of the American attack on Afghanistan.

Jawad, a twenty-nine-year-old Iranian Arab who is a smuggler and bandit from the city of Ahvaz, and whom Kurdish intelligence officials said was most recently employed by bin Laden, told Goldberg that he began to smuggle for bin Laden in the late 1990s.

Liquid Might Be Bio-Weapon

In 2000, Jawad's al-Qaeda contact told him to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into Afghanistan for the Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad told Goldberg that he had no idea what liquid was inside the motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or biological weapon.

"There's been a relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of al-Qaeda since 1992," Jawad said.

In the articel,"The Great Terror," Goldberg also provided a comprehensive account of Saddam's massive conventional, chemical, and possibly biological attacks on the Kurds in the late 1980s, during which as many as 200,000 Kurds in northern Iraq were killed, out of a population of about four million.

Christine Gosden, an English geneticist who has been studying the attacks on the Kurds since 1998, says, "The Iraqi government was using chemistry to reduce the population of Kurds. The Holocaust is still having its effect. The Jews are fewer in number now than they were in 1939. That's not natural. Now, if you take out 200,000 men and boys from Kurdistan, you've affected the population structure. There are a lot of widows who are not having children."

Gosden believes that it is quite possible that the countries of the West will soon experience serious chemical- and biological-weapons attacks. "Please understand," she said, "the Kurds were for practice."

Gosden told Goldberg that she cannot understand why the West has not been more eager to investigate the chemical attacks in Kurdistan. "It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest that the West would want to study the long-term effects of chemical weapons on civilians, on the DNA," she says, pointing out that, "for Saddam's scientists, the Kurds were a test population. They were the human guinea pigs. It was a way of identifying the most effective chemical agents for use on civilian populations, and the most effective means of delivery."

Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who was formerly a high official in Saddam's nuclear program, told Goldberg that he had direct knowledge of the Army's plans for Halabja. "The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as 'How far are the dead from the cannisters?'"

Fouad Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist in Kurdistan who led Goldberg on his tour of Halabja, and other experts "now believe that Halabja and other places in Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent."

Baban told Goldberg that the Iraqis could conceivably have used aflatoxin as well; aflatoxin is a biological agent that causes long-term liver damage. Baban said, "Here is a civilian population exposed to chemical and possibly biological weapons, and people are developing many varieties of cancers and congenital abnormalities."

In 1995, the Iraqis admitted that they had weaponized aflatoxin, Charles Duelfer, then the deputy executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection team in Iraq, told Goldberg. "This was the first time Iraq actually agreed to discuss the Presidential origins of these programs," Duelfer said.

Although "it is unclear what biological and chemical weapons Saddam possesses today," Goldberg wrote, August Hanning, the chief of the B.N.D., the German intelligence agency, provided information on another type of weapon. "It is our estimate," he said, "that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years."

WOW PROOF

[IhateCNN]

"Rice recalled the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She said that if the attacks were merely the result of 19 terrorists supported by a network called al Qaeda, working from a failed state, Afghanistan, then a limited response would have been appropriate."

"But if you believe, as I do and as President Bush does, that the root cause of Sept. 11 was the violent expression of a global extremist ideology, an ideology rooted in the oppression and despair of the modern Middle East, Rice said, then we must seek to remove the very source of this terror by transforming that troubled region. If you believe as we do, then it cannot be denied that we are standing at an extraordinary moment in history."

"The notion that the global war on terror makes the world less stable by rocking the boat and wrecking the status quo presumes the existence of a stable status quo that does not threaten global security, Rice said. This is not the case, she said. A regional order that produced an ideology of hatred so savage as the one we now confront is not serving any civilized interests."

--John Banusiewicz, Rice Applies Historical Perspective to Situation in Iraq
American Forces Press Service



I too believe, Madam Secretary...

As do I

Bump!

[SFC(R)L]

Seemore?!

Oh, Seemore?!

Hello?

No pithy retorts?

[rhetorician]

Seemore?!

Oh, Seemore?!

Hello?

No pithy retorts?

Yeah, Bud-bud, Marky, and Northy seem to also be missing.

[Loyal American]

Still don't see anyone in here that needs to be in here yet! :wall:


Hey rhe, your right none of the routine gang has been here to bloviate yet!
We are missing such an opportunity to educate! :angel:

[H-minus]

No one in the know has ever denied that Saddam was a "player" in "terror circles". The gassing of the Kurds in the 80s is proof enough of that.You need to be here a while before making such a comment, its denied here on a daily basis.

What "everyone with a functioning brain" also knows is that the role Saddam played in 9/11 was grossly exaggerated by the Bush adminstration in the months leading up to the invasion specifically to justify the war and avoid the real debate over a policy of regime change.Bush never said he was involved in 9/11, so it appears you are one of those who's brain is set to malfunction.

[SFC(R)L]

Yeah, Bud-bud, Marky, and Northy seem to also be missing.

They're also on my ignore list.

[Loyal American]

They're also on my ignore list.


LOL, who did you create this thread for? If they post you won't see it?
How ya gonna educated them then! You are priceless, I love it! :D

[rhetorician]

Nope...got a whole new crop of uninformed who need tutoring.

Just trying to help out.

And doing a marvelous job. :clap:

Though I'd seen them, I was not yet "edicated 'nuff ta figger Ah'd need 'em agin." They are now safely nestled in my files for the next time some idiot tries to argue that Hussein was a nice, sweet little ol' man who would have seen the error of his ways had we just waited a little longer. :twisted:

[Loyal American]

And doing a marvelous job. :clap:

Though I'd seen them, I was not yet "edicated 'nuff ta figger Ah'd need 'em agin." They are now safely nestled in my files for the next time some idiot tries to argue that Hussein was a nice, sweet little ol' man who would have seen the error of his ways had we just waited a little longer. :twisted:

LOL, they can give ya a headache when the B/P goes WAY up, huh? Maybe
SFC is on to something, put the info out and ignore them when they post to it. :cool:

[rhetorician]

LOL, they can give ya a headache when the B/P goes WAY up, huh? Maybe
SFC is on to something, put the info out and ignore them when they post to it. :cool:

Yes, but have you noticed how they seem to be breeding, crawling out of the political cesspool two and three at a time? Sheesh, I want a giant can of Raid. I hate roaches. :eek:

[seemore]

Seemore?!

Oh, Seemore?!

Hello?

No pithy retorts?

Just happened upon this thread tonight, didn't see it before.
Next time you want a personal response, please, send me a personal message and i will get to it ASAP.

Along those lines, please see this post with my offer to you from a couple days ago, on basically the same topic:
http://www.hannity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=982547#post982547

I was concerned that you had chickened out, but probably you just hadn't been back to check.

Okay, now i've read some more of this thread, and you write 'they are on my IGNORE LIST'. Am I on your IGNORE LIST ?
IF so, i guess you did chicken out, permanently, to my request.
And yet you bait me, very cool. Anyway, I'll repeat my offer to you in full text, so that you might see it, and any passers by will see it as well:


Sarge, you seem to like to play professor.
One thing i'm sure you learned along your scholarly way: the person making the claim is the one obligated to offer the proof.
This administration is the one that originally made the claim of an Iraq/AlQaeda alliance before 9/11. This administration wasn't able to muster proof and has pretty much moved on to other rationalizations.

YOU are the one clinging to the claim, therefore YOU are holding the ball.
So, offer up the proof. Asking me or anyone to prove the negative is a smokescreen for a desperate position.

Since you consider yourself a scholar, i'd like to make a proposal:
You provide me with a few paragraphs outlining your argument for the historic (pre-9/11) Hussien/OBL alliance, give me references to your top supporting documents, and i'll examine it. I'll give you a scholarly-level paper evaluating the argument. It will be focused, with references, and impersonal. Whadda say?

Well, whadda say?

[seemore]

"Rice recalled the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She said that if the attacks were merely the result of 19 terrorists supported by a network called al Qaeda, working from a failed state, Afghanistan, then a limited response would have been appropriate."

"But if you believe, as I do and as President Bush does, that the root cause of Sept. 11 was the violent expression of a global extremist ideology, an ideology rooted in the oppression and despair of the modern Middle East, Rice said, then we must seek to remove the very source of this terror by transforming that troubled region. If you believe as we do, then it cannot be denied that we are standing at an extraordinary moment in history."

"The notion that the global war on terror makes the world less stable by rocking the boat and wrecking the status quo presumes the existence of a stable status quo that does not threaten global security, Rice said. This is not the case, she said. A regional order that produced an ideology of hatred so savage as the one we now confront is not serving any civilized interests."

--John Banusiewicz, Rice Applies Historical Perspective to Situation in Iraq
American Forces Press Service



I too believe, Madam Secretary...

A dateline should include a DATE, folks. It does sometimes matter when, plus or minus a few years, when something was said.

In any case, Mdm. Rices' words sound fine, as is usually the case.
But her phrase, that we ought to "remove the very source of this terror by transforming that troubled region." begs the question: how best to do that?

One choice is to invade and occupy Iraq. That may have seemed like the best idea to the Bush group, at the time. I wonder if they actually still feel that way; i wonder if they have regrets.
Many people, myself included, thought the best way to proceed in the summer of 2003 was to:

0. Keep the military and reconstruction focus on Afghanistan, find & capture OBL and his crew, keep the Taliban on the run; pressure Pakistan to help there;
1. Keep the pressure on Iraq to allow UN inspections to proceed, including the use of the THREAT of military action;
2. Pressure and cajole and threaten and entice Israel and the Palestinians to acheive a settlement;
3. Pressure Saudi Arabia to crack down on its internal terrorist networks.

THink what we could have accomplished with 100's of BILLIONS of dollars and thousands of American soldiers lives (including the gravely wounded).
Kind of staggers the imagination, doesn't it.
But this crew thought there would be very few causulties (documented by Pat RObertson, among others), and cost very little (as stated by Paul Wolfwowitz).

So it turns out they made a decsion that - a. hasn't really helped the overall situation, b. has generally hurt the overall war on terror (as much through opportunity cost as anything else, and - c. has been EXTREMELY expensive, both in monetary and human terms (and again, opportunities lost).

Overall, a bad deal. Now, we are kind of stuck with it, genie's out the bottle and all that. But for Rice to proclaim how now we've got to proceed in Iraq is like saying 'we must stay with this noble cause of cleaning the milk up off the kitchen floor!' after she clumsily dropped the bottle.
Yeah, we've got to, she's right about that. But i don't think this group knows how to do even that.

[foxgurrrl]

A dateline should include a DATE, folks. It does sometimes matter when, plus or minus a few years, when something was said.

In any case, Mdm. Rices' words sound fine, as is usually the case.
But her phrase, that we ought to "remove the very source of this terror by transforming that troubled region." begs the question: how best to do that?

One choice is to invade and occupy Iraq. That may have seemed like the best idea to the Bush group, at the time. I wonder if they actually still feel that way; i wonder if they have regrets.
Many people, myself included, thought the best way to proceed in the summer of 2003 was to:

0. Keep the military and reconstruction focus on Afghanistan, find & capture OBL and his crew, keep the Taliban on the run; pressure Pakistan to help there;
1. Keep the pressure on Iraq to allow UN inspections to proceed, including the use of the THREAT of military action;
2. Pressure and cajole and threaten and entice Israel and the Palestinians to acheive a settlement;
3. Pressure Saudi Arabia to crack down on its internal terrorist networks.

THink what we could have accomplished with 100's of BILLIONS of dollars and thousands of American soldiers lives (including the gravely wounded).
Kind of staggers the imagination, doesn't it.
But this crew thought there would be very few causulties (documented by Pat RObertson, among others), and cost very little (as stated by Paul Wolfwowitz).

So it turns out they made a decsion that - a. hasn't really helped the overall situation, b. has generally hurt the overall war on terror (as much through opportunity cost as anything else, and - c. has been EXTREMELY expensive, both in monetary and human terms (and again, opportunities lost).

Overall, a bad deal. Now, we are kind of stuck with it, genie's out the bottle and all that. But for Rice to proclaim how now we've got to proceed in Iraq is like saying 'we must stay with this noble cause of cleaning the milk up off the kitchen floor!' after she clumsily dropped the bottle.
Yeah, we've got to, she's right about that. But i don't think this group knows how to do even that.
:))

[rhetorician]

Just happened upon this thread tonight, didn't see it before.
Next time you want a personal response, please, send me a personal message and i will get to it ASAP.

Along those lines, please see this post with my offer to you from a couple days ago, on basically the same topic:
http://www.hannity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=982547#post982547

I was concerned that you had chickened out, but probably you just hadn't been back to check.

Okay, now i've read some more of this thread, and you write 'they are on my IGNORE LIST'. Am I on your IGNORE LIST ?
IF so, i guess you did chicken out, permanently, to my request.
And yet you bait me, very cool. Anyway, I'll repeat my offer to you in full text, so that you might see it, and any passers by will see it as well:



Well, whadda say?

Well, here's one oldie you seem to have missed:
'Proof' of Iraq/Bin Laden links
Weekend Austrailian ^ | November 04, 2001 | From AFP


Posted on 11/04/2001 7:33:53 PM PST by concerned about politics


'Proof' of Iraq/Bin Laden links

A FORMER Iraqi special forces officer has given new proof of links between Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden and Iraq, according to a report.

The newspaper said that it was told by a leading member of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Nabeel Musawi, of the testimony of the 36-year-old former officer, identified only as A.S.

The INC is one of the main opposition groups to Saddam Hussein's government.

The newspaper said that the former officer told of a training camp called Salman Pak in Iraq where members of bin Laden's terror network had trained as pilots and on how to seize control of aircraft.

Musawi said that the former officer told him: "There were also women pilots who were trained and I believe that the next time, if there is a next time, it could be a woman who takes over an airplane."

The source also told of a meeting on the Pakistani border in December 1998 between an Iraqi diplomat working in Turkey and Osama bin Laden.

He further claimed that Iraq had sent a tonne of anthrax bacteria to bin Laden.

The former officer was said to have been in a poor physical state after being tortured and poisoned while in prison.

[rhetorician]

Just happened upon this thread tonight, didn't see it before.
Next time you want a personal response, please, send me a personal message and i will get to it ASAP.

Along those lines, please see this post with my offer to you from a couple days ago, on basically the same topic:
http://www.hannity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=982547#post982547

I was concerned that you had chickened out, but probably you just hadn't been back to check.

Okay, now i've read some more of this thread, and you write 'they are on my IGNORE LIST'. Am I on your IGNORE LIST ?
IF so, i guess you did chicken out, permanently, to my request.
And yet you bait me, very cool. Anyway, I'll repeat my offer to you in full text, so that you might see it, and any passers by will see it as well:



Well, whadda say?

And here's another oldie:

Iraqi Terrorists Detail Ties To Bin Laden
Dave Eberhart,
Monday, March 18, 2002

A terrorist group operating in northern Iraq told the New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg that their organization "has received funds directly from al-Qaeda."
In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory, captured members of Ansar al-Islam also alleged:


The intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam.

Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.

A number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam.

Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
If these charges are true," Goldberg writes in the current issue, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."

The prisoners Goldberg spoke to last month are kept in a jail that is run by the intelligence service of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose director told Goldberg that American intelligence officials had not visited the site. "The FBI and the CIA haven't come out yet," the director said.

According to Kurdish officials, Goldberg reported, "Ansar al-Islam grew out of an idea spread by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former chief of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now Osama bin Laden's deputy in al-Qaeda."

One official explained, "Zawahiri's philosophy is that you should fight the infidel even in the smallest village, that you should try to form Islamic armies everywhere. The Kurdish fundamentalists were influenced by Zawahiri."

The group has between five hundred and six hundred members, according to Kurdish officials, including Arab Afghans and at least thirty Iraqi Kurds who were trained in Afghanistan.

Last September, the officials said, representatives of Osama bin Laden gave Ansar al-Islam $300,000. These officials added that the real leader of Ansar al-Islam is an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, who has spent a great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps but is also, they said, an officer of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's principal intelligence service.


"A man named Abu Agab is in charge of the northern bureau of the Mukhabarat," one official told Goldberg. "And he is Abu Wa'el's control officer."

Smuggling Al-Qaeda Members


Kurdish intelligence officials said that there is no proof that Ansar al-Islam has ever been involved in international terrorism or that Saddam Hussein's agents were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. But they claimed that several men associated with al-Qaeda have been smuggled over the Iranian border into an Ansar al-Islam stronghold near the city of Halabja.

Two of these men, who go by the names Abu Yasir and Abu Muzaham, are high-ranking al-Qaeda members, they say. An Iraqi intelligence officer, Qassem Hussein Muhammad, one of the prisoners with whom Goldberg spoke, said that his own involvement in Islamic radicalism began in 1992 in Baghdad, when he met Ayman al-Zawahiri after being assigned to help guard him.

After reports surfaced that Abu Wa'el had been captured by American agents, Qassem says, he was sent by the Mukhabarat to Kurdistan to find out what was going on. "That's when I was captured," he said. Asked if he was sure that Abu Wa'el was on Saddam's side, Qassem said, "He's an employee of the Mukhabarat. He's the actual decision-maker in the group -- Ansar al-Islam -- but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat."

In the prison, Goldberg also spoke to a young Iraqi Arab named Haqi Ismail, whom Kurdish officials described as a middle-to high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, who was captured as he tried to get into Kurdistan three weeks after the start of the American attack on Afghanistan.

Jawad, a twenty-nine-year-old Iranian Arab who is a smuggler and bandit from the city of Ahvaz, and whom Kurdish intelligence officials said was most recently employed by bin Laden, told Goldberg that he began to smuggle for bin Laden in the late 1990s.

Liquid Might Be Bio-Weapon

In 2000, Jawad's al-Qaeda contact told him to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into Afghanistan for the Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad told Goldberg that he had no idea what liquid was inside the motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or biological weapon.

"There's been a relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of al-Qaeda since 1992," Jawad said.

In the articel,"The Great Terror," Goldberg also provided a comprehensive account of Saddam's massive conventional, chemical, and possibly biological attacks on the Kurds in the late 1980s, during which as many as 200,000 Kurds in northern Iraq were killed, out of a population of about four million.

Christine Gosden, an English geneticist who has been studying the attacks on the Kurds since 1998, says, "The Iraqi government was using chemistry to reduce the population of Kurds. The Holocaust is still having its effect. The Jews are fewer in number now than they were in 1939. That's not natural. Now, if you take out 200,000 men and boys from Kurdistan, you've affected the population structure. There are a lot of widows who are not having children."

Gosden believes that it is quite possible that the countries of the West will soon experience serious chemical- and biological-weapons attacks. "Please understand," she said, "the Kurds were for practice."

Gosden told Goldberg that she cannot understand why the West has not been more eager to investigate the chemical attacks in Kurdistan. "It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest that the West would want to study the long-term effects of chemical weapons on civilians, on the DNA," she says, pointing out that, "for Saddam's scientists, the Kurds were a test population. They were the human guinea pigs. It was a way of identifying the most effective chemical agents for use on civilian populations, and the most effective means of delivery."

Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who was formerly a high official in Saddam's nuclear program, told Goldberg that he had direct knowledge of the Army's plans for Halabja. "The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as 'How far are the dead from the cannisters?'"

Fouad Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist in Kurdistan who led Goldberg on his tour of Halabja, and other experts "now believe that Halabja and other places in Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent."

Baban told Goldberg that the Iraqis could conceivably have used aflatoxin as well; aflatoxin is a biological agent that causes long-term liver damage. Baban said, "Here is a civilian population exposed to chemical and possibly biological weapons, and people are developing many varieties of cancers and congenital abnormalities."

In 1995, the Iraqis admitted that they had weaponized aflatoxin, Charles Duelfer, then the deputy executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection team in Iraq, told Goldberg. "This was the first time Iraq actually agreed to discuss the Presidential origins of these programs," Duelfer said.

Although "it is unclear what biological and chemical weapons Saddam possesses today," Goldberg wrote, August Hanning, the chief of the B.N.D., the German intelligence agency, provided information on another type of weapon. "It is our estimate," he said, "that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years."

[rhetorician]

A dateline should include a DATE, folks. It does sometimes matter when, plus or minus a few years, when something was said.

In any case, Mdm. Rices' words sound fine, as is usually the case.
But her phrase, that we ought to "remove the very source of this terror by transforming that troubled region." begs the question: how best to do that?

One choice is to invade and occupy Iraq. That may have seemed like the best idea to the Bush group, at the time. I wonder if they actually still feel that way; i wonder if they have regrets.
Many people, myself included, thought the best way to proceed in the summer of 2003 was to:

0. Keep the military and reconstruction focus on Afghanistan, find & capture OBL and his crew, keep the Taliban on the run; pressure Pakistan to help there;
1. Keep the pressure on Iraq to allow UN inspections to proceed, including the use of the THREAT of military action;
2. Pressure and cajole and threaten and entice Israel and the Palestinians to acheive a settlement;
3. Pressure Saudi Arabia to crack down on its internal terrorist networks.

THink what we could have accomplished with 100's of BILLIONS of dollars and thousands of American soldiers lives (including the gravely wounded).
Kind of staggers the imagination, doesn't it.
But this crew thought there would be very few causulties (documented by Pat RObertson, among others), and cost very little (as stated by Paul Wolfwowitz).

So it turns out they made a decsion that - a. hasn't really helped the overall situation, b. has generally hurt the overall war on terror (as much through opportunity cost as anything else, and - c. has been EXTREMELY expensive, both in monetary and human terms (and again, opportunities lost).

Overall, a bad deal. Now, we are kind of stuck with it, genie's out the bottle and all that. But for Rice to proclaim how now we've got to proceed in Iraq is like saying 'we must stay with this noble cause of cleaning the milk up off the kitchen floor!' after she clumsily dropped the bottle.
Yeah, we've got to, she's right about that. But i don't think this group knows how to do even that.

I must be losing it to even bother, but here's my response to your proposal for winning the WoT:

"Keep the military and reconstruction focus on Afghanistan, find & capture OBL and his crew, keep the Taliban on the run; pressure Pakistan to help there":

First, you assume that Afghanistan is the sole base of operations for AlQueda. You also assume that UBL spends all his time there. Wrong: AlQuaeda is a world-wide network of operations, and UBL has always traveled a lot from one part of the world to another.
Second, you assume that capturing or killing UBL and removing the Taliban from power would have ended the WoT. Wrong: WoT has multiple operative units, including AlQuaeda, but also including Hamas and Hezbollah, and dozens of jihadist groups just like AQ. AQ is only one part of the entire problem.
Third, pressure Pakistan how? They are helping, as much as Islam permits, that is. First, you ignore the fact that the Taliban were Pakistan's answer to the Iranian backed northern warlords, so P. actually has more reason to keep the Taliban alive than wipe them out. Second, you ignore the political situation that confronts P.: Iran wants P's hide, in toto; India wants P's hide, in toto; and Musharaf needs to take Kashmir in order to keep his own people from whacking him, which may happen any day now anyway, because most of Musharaf's people--including substantial numbers of his own military, are radical Islamists. So, just how much flipping help can Musharaf really give us without getting his own throat slit?

"Keep the pressure on Iraq to allow UN inspections to proceed, including the use of the THREAT of military action":

We did "keep the pressure on" for 12 blinking years, while Hussein repeatedly violated every single sanction. In fact, as late as March just before OIF began, according to testimony from Tariq Azziz, Hussein was boasting to his cabinet that UN sanctions would crumble by August, so they didn't need to worry about US military threats--which we had been making for 12 blinking years. The Duelfer Report concluded that Hussein had successfully hidden the necessary equipment to begin nuclear and chemical and biological weapons development as soon as UN inspections ended. In fact, a substantial amount of yellow cake nuclear material was recovered from one of Saddam's stashes.
Further, you obviously have not been following the Food-for-Oil and UN procurement investigations: the UN had been taking bribes from Hussein since 1991; they were hip deep in Hussein's pocket. There was ZERO chance of effective UN response to the Iraq problem. In fact, in 1998, Clinton and Gore and the Democratic leadership in Congress said so themselves.


"Pressure and cajole and threaten and entice Israel and the Palestinians to acheive a settlement":
I think we've been trying that since 1948. HOW MANY BLINKING TREATY AGREEMENTS DO THE PALESTINIANS HAVE TO BREAK BEFORE YOU FIGURE OUT THEIR LIARS AND CHEATS AND HAVE ZERO INTENTION OF DOING ANYTHING EXCEPT MURDERING EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD IN ISRAEL? This has to be the most totally bust policy ever in the history of international diplomacy. And you bitch that Rice shouldn't hold on in Iraq for the sake of holding onto a failed policy? What in the name of all that's holy did you yourself just propose? The only difference is that the policy in Iraq is three years old; the policy in Palestine is 47 years old--even older if you go back to its origination at the end of WW1 with the final capitulation of the Ottoman Empire (1928).

"Pressure Saudi Arabia to crack down on its internal terrorist networks":
Duh. What the heck do you think we've been trying to do? This is a whole lot easier said than done when a substantial portion of our economy depends on Arabian oil imports. Plus, a substantial portion of what little political pull we do have with Arabic Islam in other countries is because a large number of the Saudi royal family do support the US. Of course, there's the other part of the family that has converted to Wahabism--including, maybe, the aging and possibly senile king of Arabia. Plus the fact that Wahabism has enough power in Arabia to bring down the government, should the Islamic radicals get the idea that Arabia is really working with the US and not just stringing us along to keep us from whacking the radicals in Arabia. Ready to destabilize and occupy Arabia, are you? Plus, give it a couple of years. Take a look at Iraq's geopolitical location. Does "gateway to Mecca" mean anything to you?

[seemore]

I must be losing it to even bother, but here's my response to your proposal for winning the WoT:

"Keep the military and reconstruction focus on Afghanistan, find & capture OBL and his crew, keep the Taliban on the run; pressure Pakistan to help there":

First, you assume that Afghanistan is the sole base of operations for AlQueda. You also assume that UBL spends all his time there.
No, that was not my assumption. Remember, this set of proposals is pre-Iraq invasion, which was the question at hand. By invading and not controlling the state we have removed control of Iraq and allowed AlQaeda a lot of room to manuever. We have facilitated to some extent the expansion of AlQaeda, in part by inflaming further nationalistic / regionalistic passions. As we did by setting up military operations in Saudi Arabia. Of course AlQaeda had wide operations, but by not staying focused in Afghanistan, by not putting long-term and intense effort into capturing OBL and as many of his crew as possible, we allowed their organization more opportunity to metastasize.

Second, you assume that capturing or killing UBL and removing the Taliban from power would have ended the WoT. Wrong: WoT has multiple operative units, including AlQuaeda, but also including Hamas and Hezbollah, and dozens of jihadist groups just like AQ. AQ is only one part of the entire problem.
Now, i don't assume that. I don't believe capturing OBL in 2002/2003 would have ended the WoT. WHat i am stating is that doing so would have been one the MOST HELPFUL steps we could have taken. If we had remained focused, and accomplished that, it would have been a very good blow, at the time. Actually, that time has passed, it would no longer be all that helpful, in my estimation, although still worth doing.
Third, pressure Pakistan how? They are helping, as much as Islam permits, that is. We have pressured Pakistan, that's how. My four points above are what i considered the most important steps, and i don't claim that we have completely failed on all of them, and in dealing with Pakistan i think we've done a reasonably decent job. I agree with your general points, that Musharaf can only do so much, and has done a fair amount. I think we've failed to engage them adequately on a clandestine level, but yes there are limits to what we can obtain from the government.


"Keep the pressure on Iraq to allow UN inspections to proceed, including the use of the THREAT of military action":

We did "keep the pressure on" for 12 blinking years, while Hussein repeatedly violated every single sanction. In fact, as late as March just before OIF began, according to testimony from Tariq Azziz, Hussein was boasting to his cabinet that UN sanctions would crumble by August, so they didn't need to worry about US military threats--which we had been making for 12 blinking years.
What Hussien was "boasting about" and reality were two different worlds entirely. The fact is that we had significant military control of the country, by virtue of a lockdown on the airspace and embargo of ports, among other points. Hussiens boasts about the sanctions crumbling don't mean anything ? Why would you even quote that as support?
The Duelfer Report concluded that Hussein had successfully hidden the necessary equipment to begin nuclear and chemical and biological weapons development as soon as UN inspections ended. In fact, a substantial amount of yellow cake nuclear material was recovered from one of Saddam's stashes. SO, UN inspections didn't have to end. We could have kept inspectors in the country for a long long time. We had Hussien under our thumb to such a great extent that he couldn't have 'aided terrorists'. I think you are assuming that we had to remove Hussien from power in order to render him impotent. I think that is a faulty assumption.
And you talk about his being able to 'restart his nuclear program'. As i said, we could have prevented that without owning Iraq.
And, it brings up the larger question about priorities. If we are so concerned about nuclear weapons in the wrong hands, we should have and should now devote WAY more resources to securing the weapons, materials, and knowledge that were cast adrift after the disintegration of the USSR. We should be devoting a lot of resources to following up on the Pakistani nuclear proliferation.
Further, you obviously have not been following the Food-for-Oil and UN procurement investigations: the UN had been taking bribes from Hussein since 1991; they were hip deep in Hussein's pocket. There was ZERO chance of effective UN response to the Iraq problem. That's quite debatable. WIth paying greater attention to Iraq in post 9/11 world, we did the right thing, and the increased scrutiny of Iraq, the UN, and getting inspectors back in were all positive and effective policies. We should have followed through with those. Perhaps there would have come a time when it made sense to invade Iraq. But it was rushed, and done sooner than necessary, if it would have ever been necessary. THe haste has since showed up in the huge difference between what this administration thought was going to happen and what has actually happened, so far.

"Pressure and cajole and threaten and entice Israel and the Palestinians to acheive a settlement":
I think we've been trying that since 1948. HOW MANY BLINKING TREATY AGREEMENTS DO THE PALESTINIANS HAVE TO BREAK BEFORE YOU FIGURE OUT THEIR LIARS AND CHEATS AND HAVE ZERO INTENTION OF DOING ANYTHING EXCEPT MURDERING EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD IN ISRAEL? This has to be the most totally bust policy ever in the history of international diplomacy. So what do you propose as an alternative? Bush's policy of backing away from the whole situation certainly hasn't produced good results.
And you bitch that Rice shouldn't hold on in Iraq for the sake of holding onto a failed policy? What in the name of all that's holy did you yourself just propose? The only difference is that the policy in Iraq is three years old; the policy in Palestine is 47 years old--even older if you go back to its origination at the end of WW1 with the final capitulation of the Ottoman Empire (1928). ANd how many American soldiers have perished since 1947 in Israel, as a result of that policy ? Not too many. This is a very difficult problem, and it may take longer still.
As for Iraq - i'm not 'bitching' about holding on there, necessarily. i'm saying two things: this admin including Rice made very poor decisions, and i don't think they have even half a clue as to how to resolve it now in the best possible way.

"Pressure Saudi Arabia to crack down on its internal terrorist networks":
Duh. What the heck do you think we've been trying to do?
Again, i was giving a plan of what needed to be done, not saying that NONE of it was being done. We have been working on Saudi Arabian leadership, the royals, to reform and to root out terrorists; their family is generally on our side, because the terrorists consider the royal family enemies as well.
Take a look at Iraq's geopolitical location. Does "gateway to Mecca" mean anything to you?[/QUOTE]
The fact of Iraq as the center of Middle Eastern culture is well-known. THe consequences of invading and occupying it, as a Western country, were unfortunately not carefully considered by our largely ignorant leadership, in 2003. Therefore they committed a double blunder: first, deciding to invade and conquer, and second, doing a very poor job of securing the country in the aftermath of 'victory'. Meanwhile, by focusing attention and resources on this, they (meaning we) were sucked into a power vacuum that made persuing other, more productive, goals in the interest of our national security, all but impossible.
Other than that though, Bush, Condi, Cheney, they've done GREAT!

[SFC(R)L]

I wouldn't send seemore a personal message if my life depended upon it.

And, after briefly reviewing these completely unsourced, uninformed and unsubstantiated comments, I deem them no longer worthy of my attention.

Nor will I expend any more energy upon them.

The simple facts are that Iraq trained Al-Qaeda terrorists, Iraq was involved with 9-11, Iraq had a deal with Bin Laden, Al Qaeda attacked us in 1993, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001, the clinton administration bears full and complete responsibility for all these attacks, france, russia, germany and saudi arabia were involved with Iraq, Joe Wilson lied about the entire thing to protect himself and his wife and his saudi buddies, and we have struck a major blow against terorism by planting a representative governemtn in the middle of the caliphate.

And that's that.

P.S. Might want to lighten up with "chickening out" comments. Not a good policy.

[rhetorician]

I wouldn't send seemore a personal message if my life depended upon it.

And, after briefly reviewing these completely unsourced, uninformed and unsubstantiated comments, I deem them no longer worthy of my attention.

Nor will I expend any more energy upon them.

The simple facts are that Iraq trained Al-Qaeda terrorists, Iraq was involved with 9-11, Iraq had a deal with Bin Laden, Al Qaeda attacked us in 1993, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001, the clinton administration bears full and complete responsibility for all these attacks, france, russia, germany and saudi arabia were involved with Iraq, Joe Wilson lied about the entire thing to protect himself and his wife and his saudi buddies, and we have struck a major blow against terorism by planting a representative governemtn in the middle of the caliphate.

And that's that.

P.S. Might want to lighten up with "chickening out" comments. Not a good policy.

Advise taken, will follow your lead. I'm tired of the twit. He can come up with something solid or stay ignored. :)

Question: have I been inadvertently making "chickening out" comments? I hope not, but would appreciate an example so I make sure not to do so any more in future.

[SFC(R)L]

Just happened upon this thread tonight, didn't see it before.
Next time you want a personal response, please, send me a personal message and i will get to it ASAP.

I was concerned that you had chickened out, but probably you just hadn't been back to check.

Okay, now i've read some more of this thread, and you write 'they are on my IGNORE LIST'. Am I on your IGNORE LIST ?
IF so, i guess you did chicken out, permanently, to my request.
And yet you bait me, very cool. Anyway, I'll repeat my offer to you in full text, so that you might see it, and any passers by will see it as well:



This is what I meant.

[rhetorician]

This is what I meant.

Thanks. I was hoping that's what you meant, but I wasn't really quite sure. YOUR opinion I respect--a lot.

[SFC(R)L]

bump?

[rhetorician]

bump?
Total bump. You are one whom I could follow into hell if needed, because I'm pretty sure you could get us back out again.

[E7ALR]

The fact is that we had significant military control of the country, by virtue of a lockdown on the airspace and embargo of ports, among other points. Hussiens boasts about the sanctions crumbling don't mean anything ?

SO, UN inspections didn't have to end. We could have kept inspectors in the country for a long long time. We had Hussien under our thumb to such a great extent that he couldn't have 'aided terrorists'.

You do not have military control of a country or have that country under your thumb when you have active and uncontrolled two way traffic of materials across two borders, ie... Syrian and Iranian borders with Iraq. And we did not have any type of control over Syria's or Iran's air space or ports. Saddam smuggled large quanities of oil through officials in both countries and smuggled weapons and banned materials and equipment back in along the same overland routes (think commercial trucks on the roads).

As for supporting terrorism, one of Saddam's methods of supporting terrorism was to allow the movement of terrorist personnel and supplies from Iran, through Iraq and on to Syria and eventually into the Beka Valley in Lebannon and points further south. He also allowed the movement from these locations back to Iran, through Iraq. This land route was preferable to sea movement, because there was absolutely no chance of interdiction.

Since the under control and contained thesis no longer holds up, how do any of your other complaints based on this broken foundation have any credibility?

[SFC(R)L]

Total bump. You are one whom I could follow into hell if needed, because I'm pretty sure you could get us back out again.

Only if I could get an accurate map from the POS S2.

[SFC(R)L]

"The fact is that we had significant military control of the country, by virtue of a lockdown on the airspace and embargo of ports, among other points. Hussiens boasts about the sanctions crumbling don't mean anything ?

SO, UN inspections didn't have to end. We could have kept inspectors in the country for a long long time. We had Hussien under our thumb to such a great extent that he couldn't have 'aided terrorists'. "

This would explain the terrorist training camps we found around Baghdad, including one with an airliner fuselage on it with the specific intent of training Al Qaeda terrorists how to hijack a commercial aircraft.

Uh-huh...yup, YOU need to be in charge....

[SFC(R)L]

You do not have military control of a country or have that country under your thumb when you have active and uncontrolled two way traffic of materials across two borders, ie... Syrian and Iranian borders with Iraq. And we did not have any type of control over Syria's or Iran's air space or ports. Saddam smuggled large quanities of oil through officials in both countries and smuggled weapons and banned materials and equipment back in along the same overland routes (think commercial trucks on the roads).

As for supporting terrorism, one of Saddam's methods of supporting terrorism was to allow the movement of terrorist personnel and supplies from Iran, through Iraq and on to Syria and eventually into the Beka Valley in Lebannon and points further south. He also allowed the movement from these locations back to Iran, through Iraq. This land route was preferable to sea movement, because there was absolutely no chance of interdiction.

Since the under control and contained thesis no longer holds up, how do any of your other complaints based on this broken foundation have any credibility?

Nice analysis....this would explain how phrance was able to import military parts and supplies right up to the liberation, and the well-known evacuation of WMD technology and supplies into Syria just before the liberation.

Seems you CAN'T fence a desert....

[SFC(R)L]

April 6, 2003, 9:33AM

U.S. finds terrorist camp for foreigners in Iraq
Reuters News Service

AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar - The U.S. military said today it had captured or killed fighters from Sudan, Egypt and other countries in Iraq, and some of those captured had led its members to a terrorist training camp.

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told a briefing at Central Command in Qatar that the camp, found at Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad, demonstrated "a linkage between this regime and terrorism."

But he said there was nothing to tie the camp to specific organizations.

The United States, Britain and their allies went to war against Iraq on March 20, accusing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of hiding chemical and other weapons of mass destruction and vowing to topple him.

Before the conflict, Washington sought to convince doubters in the United Nations that there were links between Baghdad and al-Qaida, the network it accuses of carrying out the September 11, 2001, suicide attacks on America.

Since invading, U.S. military officials have accused Iraq of using "terrorist" tactics.

"Some of these fighters come from Sudan, some from Egypt, some from other places," Brooks said of the foreigners.

"We've killed a number of them and we've captured a number of them, and that's where some of this information came from. It does say an awful lot about the approach the regime is taking to what's going on the battlefield right now."

Baghdad had appealed to sympathizers in other countries to join its forces in the battle against U.S.-led forces and in recent days there have been reports of many people from Arab countries traveling to Iraq to do just that.

Brooks gave sketchy details of what convinced the U.S. forces they had uncovered a terrorist camp, referring only the work being done by those captured and "inferences to the type of training they received."

He said some tanks, a small number of personnel carriers plus buildings used for command, control, morale and welfare were all destroyed at the camp.

"All of that -- when you roll together the reports, where they're from, why they might be here -- tells us that there's still a linkage clearly between this regime and terrorism, and that's something we want to make sure we break."

[E7ALR]

Only if I could get an accurate map from the POS S2.
Hey! I resemble that remark, thank you very much.

[SFC(R)L]

Hey! I resemble that remark, thank you very much.

You are welcome very much.

[SFC(R)L]

Iraqi Terrorists Detail Ties To Bin Laden
Dave Eberhart
Monday, March 18, 2002

A terrorist group operating in northern Iraq told the New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg that their organization "has received funds directly from al-Qaeda."

In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory, captured members of Ansar al-Islam also alleged:

The intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam.

Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.

A number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam.

Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
If these charges are true," Goldberg writes in the current issue, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."

[Loyal American]

Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
If these charges are true," Goldberg writes in the current issue, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."


Look at the date on our post SFC and we are still trying to provide evidence to defend the relationship............wild! :rolleyes:

Hard to sell, huh? OR an impossible sell? :(( :(( :(( Some refuse to learn as it doesn't fit with their political rant! :hand:

[SFC(R)L]

Just trying to help out....

and this information is available in the open...

it is unclassified.....

[Talismen]

*bump*

[SFC(R)L]

Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties
By Scott Wheeler
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 04, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

[PaleoPaul]

Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties
By Scott Wheeler
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 04, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.
You neo-con kool-aid drinker you;):razz:

[SFC(R)L]

UAE says Saddam accepted exile offer before invasion

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saddam Hussein accepted an 11th-hour offer to flee into exile weeks ahead of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion, but Arab League officials scuttled the proposal, officials in this Gulf state claimed.
The exile initiative was spearheaded by the late president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, at an emergency Arab summit held in Egypt in February 2003, Sheik Zayed's son said in an interview aired by Al-Arabiya TV during a documentary. The U.S.-led coalition invaded on March 19 that year.

[Loyal American]

Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties
By Scott Wheeler
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 04, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.



If it wasn't TONS and TONS of it it doesn't count, ya know! :rolleyes:
And we know about the UN, don't we? :rolleyes:

[SFC(R)L]

If it wasn't TONS and TONS of it it doesn't count, ya know! :rolleyes:
And we know about the UN, don't we? :rolleyes:

The main stockpiles are in Syria

[SFC(R)L]

Tue, November 1, 2005
World warned
Iran's frightening words let us see enemy for what it really is

By Paul Jackson

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn't taken long to show his true colours and now in the words of poet W. H. Auden in September 1, 1939, the clever hopes of a low dishonest decade are expiring.

We are finally seeing the enemy for what it is. As President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech warned, and as did Auden 65 years ago, appeasement of evildoers doesn't work.

Ahmadinejad last week declared Israel is a "disgraceful blot" on the world and must be "wiped off" the map.

He and his fanatics may soon have the means to obliterate Israel, too, for Iran is in a rush to grab nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad's words were backed up by Seyed Massoud Jazihiri, of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, who described Israel as a "cancerous tumour" on the world. Frankly, most decent individuals would describe Iran itself, under its current mad regime, as a "cancerous tumour" alongside, North Korea, under its equally mad leader Kim Jong-il, who also plans a nuclear arsenal and is threatening the world.

The Iranian president's threat -- no, it's not just a threat, it's a promise -- has even stirred Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Martin's and Jean Chretien's Liberal government, faced with 113 anti-Israeli motions in the UN, supported 78 of them, and simply abstained on the other 35.


Not once, until now, have the Liberals felt for Israel's plight.

Now, a flabbergasted Martin says: "This is the 21st century and Canada will never accept such such hatred, such intolerance and anti-Semitism of this kind."

He added: "We vigorously condemn what the Iranian president said."

That's a bit hypocritical, since the stance of both Martin and his predecessor Chretien has been to ignore time-after-time and year-after-year those similar expressions of hatred against Israel in the UN.

Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew also appears to have woken from his slumbers in his apartment in Paris to threats Arab sheikdoms have been making against Israel are real.

"This is becoming just too dangerous," he said. "It's a very explosive combination. Racist ideology and nuclear weapons."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government certainly doesn't have Canada's shameful anti-Israeli record in the UN, and whose words therefore are surely not hypocritical, expressed "a real sense of revulsion" at Ahmadinejad's plots to see Israel annihilated.

"Their attitude towards Israel, their attitude towards terrorism, their attitude towards the nuclear weapons issue isn't acceptable," said Blair, who also added the western democracies may be forced to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Actually, that's exactly what Israel itself did in 1981 when its air force performed an incredible feat, flying hundreds of miles at low level, and wiped out Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor, sabotaging his plans for an atomic arsenal.

At the time, the UN condemned Israel for its action.

One can't even imagine the grotesque scenario that would have unfolded but for the Israeli assault.

Yet now, the world's democratically elected leaders are finally beginning to imagine what a world would look like with a radical Islamic bomb. Or rather, after an radical Islamic bomb had been launched at some innocent nation.

Even that fawning old fraud, French President Jacques Chirac, found Ahmadinejad's words "senseless and irresponsible" and said Iran "runs the risk of his country being left on the outside by other nations."

So, frighteningly, all that Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been warning about the three rogue nations -- Iraq until being liberated being one of them -- becomes ever more clearly true.

And, as in the 1930s, when the weak western democracies, led by the Liberal-Left, tried to appease Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler at every touch and turn, including letting him carve up Czechoslovakia in the hope, as Auden noted, he would leave the rest of us alone, our appeasement of radical and rogue nations is coming back to haunt us.

A final word from Ahmadinejad to those of us who will still support Israel: "Anyone who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nations' fury."

Well, just let's see who stands firm in support of decency and the tiny democratic state of Israel, and who runs for their perceived own safety.

[RedStatePaPa]

The main stockpiles are in Syria
According to Monstro and AngryCalifornian, ON, Bud and others they never existed. :wall:

They simply refuse to look at the proof.

[IhateCNN]

Tue, November 1, 2005
World warned
Iran's frightening words let us see enemy for what it really is

By Paul Jackson

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn't taken long to show his true colours and now in the words of poet W. H. Auden in September 1, 1939, the clever hopes of a low dishonest decade are expiring.

We are finally seeing the enemy for what it is. As President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech warned, and as did Auden 65 years ago, appeasement of evildoers doesn't work.

Ahmadinejad last week declared Israel is a "disgraceful blot" on the world and must be "wiped off" the map.

He and his fanatics may soon have the means to obliterate Israel, too, for Iran is in a rush to grab nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad's words were backed up by Seyed Massoud Jazihiri, of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, who described Israel as a "cancerous tumour" on the world. Frankly, most decent individuals would describe Iran itself, under its current mad regime, as a "cancerous tumour" alongside, North Korea, under its equally mad leader Kim Jong-il, who also plans a nuclear arsenal and is threatening the world.

The Iranian president's threat -- no, it's not just a threat, it's a promise -- has even stirred Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Martin's and Jean Chretien's Liberal government, faced with 113 anti-Israeli motions in the UN, supported 78 of them, and simply abstained on the other 35.


Not once, until now, have the Liberals felt for Israel's plight.

Now, a flabbergasted Martin says: "This is the 21st century and Canada will never accept such such hatred, such intolerance and anti-Semitism of this kind."

He added: "We vigorously condemn what the Iranian president said."

That's a bit hypocritical, since the stance of both Martin and his predecessor Chretien has been to ignore time-after-time and year-after-year those similar expressions of hatred against Israel in the UN.

Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew also appears to have woken from his slumbers in his apartment in Paris to threats Arab sheikdoms have been making against Israel are real.

"This is becoming just too dangerous," he said. "It's a very explosive combination. Racist ideology and nuclear weapons."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government certainly doesn't have Canada's shameful anti-Israeli record in the UN, and whose words therefore are surely not hypocritical, expressed "a real sense of revulsion" at Ahmadinejad's plots to see Israel annihilated.

"Their attitude towards Israel, their attitude towards terrorism, their attitude towards the nuclear weapons issue isn't acceptable," said Blair, who also added the western democracies may be forced to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Actually, that's exactly what Israel itself did in 1981 when its air force performed an incredible feat, flying hundreds of miles at low level, and wiped out Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor, sabotaging his plans for an atomic arsenal.

At the time, the UN condemned Israel for its action.

One can't even imagine the grotesque scenario that would have unfolded but for the Israeli assault.

Yet now, the world's democratically elected leaders are finally beginning to imagine what a world would look like with a radical Islamic bomb. Or rather, after an radical Islamic bomb had been launched at some innocent nation.

Even that fawning old fraud, French President Jacques Chirac, found Ahmadinejad's words "senseless and irresponsible" and said Iran "runs the risk of his country being left on the outside by other nations."

So, frighteningly, all that Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been warning about the three rogue nations -- Iraq until being liberated being one of them -- becomes ever more clearly true.

And, as in the 1930s, when the weak western democracies, led by the Liberal-Left, tried to appease Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler at every touch and turn, including letting him carve up Czechoslovakia in the hope, as Auden noted, he would leave the rest of us alone, our appeasement of radical and rogue nations is coming back to haunt us.

A final word from Ahmadinejad to those of us who will still support Israel: "Anyone who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nations' fury."

Well, just let's see who stands firm in support of decency and the tiny democratic state of Israel, and who runs for their perceived own safety.

What's even scarier is those freaking Libtoids being so wraped up in trying to destroy the President, and throwing hissy fits like they did today, that our government has to be focused on all their bull ****, instead of them all getting together and saying " what are WE as the Leaders of this Country going to do about the threat that has been made against us".

Oh I guess after another attack on our soil kills thousands more of our innocent citzens they will all want to stand on the steps of the capitol and hold hands and sing Cum by Ya...... and act like they are so concerned. YEAH RIGHT. 6 months later they will draw their political daggers and start stabbing away again.

I say we should wright these son's of bitches and tell them if they don't put their childish games away, and start acting like the Leaders they are supposed to be, and worry about security.... That the next time a 9-11 happens, WE THE PEOPLE are going to have them all tried for treason, and acessories to Murder.

WAKE UP.... WE ARE AT WAR.... AND NOT JUST IN IRAQ... BUT WITH TERROIST ALL OVER THIS WORLD WHO WANT TO KILL US JUST BECAUSE TO THEM WE ARE INFIDELS... CAN'T YOU STUPID IDIOTS SEE THIS..... WE MIGHT CAN TRY TO EXCUSE OURSELVES FOR 9-11 ..... BUT WHEN IT HAPPENS AGAIN... THERE WILL BE NO EXCUSE !!! BLOOD WILL BE ON ALL WHO HAVE STOOD BACK AND SAID, WE SHOULD NOT FIGHT.

Now sleep on that one. :mad:

Good post SFC(R)L Sorry to go off, but I have children..... and I take their saftey and future very serious. Please forgive my ranting.

[Loyal American]

The main stockpiles are in Syria


:think: :think: Yup, that's how I see it too!:cool:

[Loyal American]

According to Monstro and AngryCalifornian, ON, Bud and others they never existed. :wall:

They simply refuse to look at the proof.


LOL, they get really honked at me when I suggest that the WMD were
carted off to Syria while we sat on our butts waiting for the UN to give us
an okay! Oh well, they have to have it their way, ya know!:rolleyes:

[Loyal American]

President Ahmadinejad scares the day lights out of me!:eek:
He is one red hot tomato!:cry:

[rhetorician]

What's even scarier is those freaking Libtoids being so wraped up in trying to destroy the President, and throwing hissy fits like they did today, that our government has to be focused on all their bull ****, instead of them all getting together and saying " what are WE as the Leaders of this Country going to do about the threat that has been made against us".

Oh I guess after another attack on our soil kills thousands more of our innocent citzens they will all want to stand on the steps of the capitol and hold hands and sing Cum by Ya...... and act like they are so concerned. YEAH RIGHT. 6 months later they will draw their political daggers and start stabbing away again.

I say we should wright these son's of bitches and tell them if they don't put their childish games away, and start acting like the Leaders they are supposed to be, and worry about security.... That the next time a 9-11 happens, WE THE PEOPLE are going to have them all tried for treason, and acessories to Murder.

WAKE UP.... WE ARE AT WAR.... AND NOT JUST IN IRAQ... BUT WITH TERROIST ALL OVER THIS WORLD WHO WANT TO KILL US JUST BECAUSE TO THEM WE ARE INFIDELS... CAN'T YOU STUPID IDIOTS SEE THIS..... WE MIGHT CAN TRY TO EXCUSE OURSELVES FOR 9-11 ..... BUT WHEN IT HAPPENS AGAIN... THERE WILL BE NO EXCUSE !!! BLOOD WILL BE ON ALL WHO HAVE STOOD BACK AND SAID, WE SHOULD NOT FIGHT.

Now sleep on that one. :mad:

Good post SFC(R)L Sorry to go off, but I have children..... and I take their saftey and future very serious. Please forgive my ranting.

That's okay, coz. I feel exactly the same way. :wall: Just remember: our ancestors had to put up with the same bs in the 1st and 2nd Continental Congresses, and "We the People" managed just fine without them. They clean up their act and get with it, or we do what great-granddad did--ignore them and get on with getting the cesspool drained.

[Cweb85]

No one in the know has ever denied that Saddam was a "player" in "terror circles". The gassing of the Kurds in the 80s is proof enough of that.

What "everyone with a functioning brain" also knows is that the role Saddam played in 9/11 was grossly exaggerated by the Bush adminstration in the months leading up to the invasion specifically to justify the war and avoid the real debate over a policy of regime change.
I have a question for you-not a troll question just a question- Since you obviously don't think the war is justified what do you think happened?
-Do you think 9/11 was staged by Bush
-or that Bush used the attacks to justify a war for oil
-do you think Saddam/Iraq had plans to attack America or encourage ppl to hurt us
-there are many accusations made by teh left and i'm not trolling i jus twanted to hear what you think

[The Libertarian Guy]

Who was the guy on O'Reilly's radio show today, the one who said many of the insurgents are being PAID to be, well, insurgent? And why isn't it news?

[Cweb85]

Who was the guy on O'Reilly's radio show today, the one who said many of the insurgents are being PAID to be, well, insurgent? And why isn't it news?
paid by whom? can you get a link?

[IhateCNN]

paid by whom? can you get a link?
This probably isn't the one O'Reilly was talking about... but it's one story regarding that. http://www.timesfreepress.com/iwwl/pitts03260501.html

"This is the hottest thing going right now," said Capt. Rick Walters, information operations officer with the 278th Regimental Combat Team, which is stationed here. "It's the 'Survivor' and 'American Idol' of Iraq."

The show fleshes out to the average Iraqi a portrait of the typical bomb maker or gunman. Their comments break the stereotypes many Iraqis held about the roots and motivations behind the insurgency, the translators said.

"Before the show we didn't know who was doing all of this," Ali said.

About a dozen translators gathered around a small television inside a tent to watch the program here Friday night. The show's introduction includes images of soldiers running, explosions and children crying, all unfolding to beat-heavy music.

The rest of the program showed the faces of several men answering questions such as, "Why were you doing these killings?" and "Who paid you for these killings?"

One man, after giving his name and hometown, recounted the details of a mission to kill Iraqi police officers.

The Iraqi viewers are learning many of the insurgents are committing their acts for selfish reasons and not over a holy war or to defend Iraq, according to Saad, a translator from Baghdad.

"People thought they were fighting against the Americans to make Iraq free again," he said. "But now they are learning they are just working for the money."

The program reveals that insurgents get paid about $200 for setting a roadside bomb, $200 to $500 for a car bomb and as much as $5,000 for detonating a car bomb near a mosque, according to Ali from Baghdad.

The translators said captured suspects frequently admit to receiving alcohol, drugs and sex as additional rewards given to them for a successful attack.

"They are not working according to our religion, and that is making the people mad," Saad said.

Ali said the show refutes a common claim that insurgents are trying to liberate Iraq from U.S. forces by revealing how insurgents mainly target Iraqis.

"People know that the coalition is not the enemy now," Ali said. "These people are the enemy now, and they have to fight them."

Officers with the 278th recently admitted to getting better intelligence from Iraqis since the elections.

[The Libertarian Guy]

paid by whom? can you get a link?

I heard it in passing. The guest on O'Reilly had written a book about the Iraq war, or the GWOT, and that was the only part I really caught - that some insurgents are being paid a thousand bucks or so to BE insurgent.

[Curator]

The "9-11 commission" could not find its own ass with both hands and a compass.

Yet you post information from a solid newsworthy source like the Weekend Austrailian.:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[Curator]

Gary Leupp who is an associate professor in the Department of History at Tufts University states:

Iraq for its part has acknowledged an al-Qaeda presence in a region outside of Baghdad's control, and says it has provided the local Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, with arms, at his request, to fight the outsiders. Those knowledgeable about the Iraqi government and its secular Ba'ath Party very much doubt that it would have any common doings with a movement that hates them nearly as much as they do the U.S

More from

Nice try. All that work for nothing.

[SFC(R)L]

Gary Leupp who is an associate professor in the Department of History at Tufts University states:



More from

Nice try. All that work for nothing.

Nice try..all that liberal appeasement for nothing...

Ansar Al-Islam: Iraq's Al-Qaeda Connection
By Jonathan Schanzer
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy | January 17, 2003


Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliate active in Iraqi Kurdistan since September 2001, is a prototype of America's enemies in the "war on terror." The group serves as a testament to the global spread of al-Qaeda affiliates, achieved through exploitation of weak central authorities and a utilitarian willingness to work with seemingly differing ideologies for a common cause. Lengthy reports on Ansar have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and Kurdish leaders have given Washington a plethora of intelligence on the group. Nevertheless, Ansar has yet to appear on official U.S. terrorism lists. Meanwhile, political complexities would make military action against the group difficult, at best. Hence, this small force of 650 fighters is a textbook example of the ongoing challenges posed by the war on terror.

Northern Iraq's al-Qaeda

In August 2001, leaders of several Kurdish Islamist factions reportedly visited the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan with the goal of creating an alternate base for the organization in northern Iraq. Their intentions were echoed in a document found in an al-Qaeda guest house in Afghanistan vowing to "expel those Jews and Christians from Kurdistan and join the way of Jihad, [and] rule every piece of land . . . with the Islamic Shari'a rule." Soon thereafter, Ansar al-Islam was created using $300,000 to $600,000 in al-Qaeda seed money, in addition to funds from Saudi Arabia.

Today, Ansar operates in fortified mountain positions along the Iran-Iraq border known as "Little Tora Bora" (after the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan). There, the group's Kurdish, Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian, Moroccan, Syrian, Palestinian, and Afghan members train in a wide array of guerrilla tactics. Approximately 30 al-Qaeda members reportedly joined Ansar upon the group's inception in 2001; that number is now as high as 120. Armed with heavy machine guns, mortars, and antiaircraft weaponry, the group fulfills al-Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri's vision of a global jihad. Ansar's goal is to disrupt civil society and create a Taliban-like regime in northern Iraq. To that end, it has already banned music, alcohol, photographs, and advertising in its stronghold. Girls are prevented from studying; men must grow beards and pray five times daily.

[SFC(R)L]

Exhibit F - As early as 1992, AL QAEDA terrorists established close working relations with IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agents in the Sudan, Afghanistan, IRAQ and elsewhere. Soon thereafter, IRAQI INTELLIGENCE decided to support AL QAEDA and to employ AL QAEDA terrorists to carry out IRAQ’s terror attacks. The IRAQ-AL QAEDA relationship benefited IRAQ because it provided that state with trained terrorists willing to die in terror attacks. As a secular state, IRAQ does not have a large number of citizens wishing to become martyr warriors. Additionally, by using AL QAEDA suicide terrorists, IRAQ, could disavow involvement in attacks and avoid retribution. The relationship benefited AL QAEDA who received support, funding, facilities and training that it needed to carry out its terror campaigns.

Exhibit G - During the mid 1990's IRAQ began actively supporting AL QAEDA operations by providing intelligence, training, weapons, supplies, passports, travel documents and financial support to co-conspirators. Significantly, one of IRAQ’s training camps contained the fuselage of a Boeing 707 used to train AL QAEDA terrorists in hijacking commercial aircraft.

[Cav Scout]

Not too mention exhibit H. In 1998 Saddam offered outright on international t.v. the equivilant of 25,000 american dollars too the family of any suicide bomber. Now since a majority of them belong too one of two groups, either al queda or hamas, I would say thats a link, as would any reasonable non-brainwashed libberal.

[Loyal American]

Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties
By Scott Wheeler
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 04, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.



Ahhhhhh, just a friendly bump for those who don't seem to have it straight yet! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[rhetorician]

Ahhhhhh, just a friendly bump for those who don't seem to have it straight yet! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Double the "friendly bump."

And a great big "thumbs up" bump for those taking the time and spending the energy to "edi-cate" us all! Thanks, gals and guys.

[ICRed]

Just trying to help out....

and this information is available in the open...

it is unclassified..... That is what really blows my mind. All this stuff is available for everyone and anyone. Yet, the Dems still are on Fox, pulling ignorant stunts like shutting down the Senate to STILL scream that we went to war under false pretenses. How can they get away with this crap, when all this stuff is out there? How can they possibly claim that the administration lied to everyone, when these reports are open to the public? How can anyone possibly believe what Dems are saying, or why they are acting like this? Are Americans that gullible and stupid to not check into anything?:rolleyes: :rolleyes: I just don't get it !!!

[SFC(R)L]

That is what really blows my mind. All this stuff is available for everyone and anyone. Yet, the Dems still are on Fox, pulling ignorant stunts like shutting down the Senate to STILL scream that we went to war under false pretenses. How can they get away with this crap, when all this stuff is out there? How can they possibly claim that the administration lied to everyone, when these reports are open to the public? How can anyone possibly believe what Dems are saying, or why they are acting like this? Are Americans that gullible and stupid to not check into anything?:rolleyes: :rolleyes: I just don't get it !!!

Their complete lack of awareness is inexplicable.

[E7ALR]

Their complete lack of awareness is inexplicable.
There are people in this world who can never let the facts get in the way of their agenda. And, if you tell a lie enough times you begin to believe it yourself.

[SFC(R)L]

There are people in this world who can never let the facts get in the way of their agenda. And, if you tell a lie enough times you begin to believe it yourself.

I know you mean "themselves"...

[rhetorician]

Their complete lack of awareness is inexplicable.

Oh, they know the truth. And they don't believe their lies anymore than we do.

What they don't perceive is that Mainstream America isn't buying their lies.

They actually believe that the loud squalling by Moore, Sheehan, et al., represents a substantial number of voters who will elect them instead of Republicans because Americans are too ignorant to understand realities.

What happens is that most Americans are simply too swamped by the demands of day-to-day existence to really study the issues until just before the next election.

Then, those who do vote actually start paying some attention to issues--and they hear the right blasting away at what the left has been saying. Like Kerry spouting off for months, and then being shown to be the lying whishy-washy untrustworthy goofball he is. Kerry got splashed down because Mainstream America knows a used car salesman when they see one.

Everything we're writing about now will come into major play from Sept.-Oct. '06--when we show exactly what liars the Democrats have been since 2003.

Unless of course we get hit with another 9/11 type of attack, or if the enemy tries the same crud they're playing in Europe, or the same ploy they tried in Canada with the shari'a legalization move.

In which case, the Silent Majority will almost instantly transform into a very loud, very angry, very anti-liberal demand for federal and state action. And become a very well-armed and mean-tempered militia.

This is a repeated pattern in American history.

[E7ALR]

I know you mean "themselves"...
Yes, I was referring to those with the agenda.:)

[Loyal American]

I know you mean "themselves"...


"Yourself/themselves" the scary thing is..........some begin to believe it and it's like a disease out of control, drives me NUTS!:wall:

[E7ALR]

"Yourself/themselves" the scary thing is..........some begin to believe it and it's like a disease out of control, drives me NUTS!:wall:
This is what happens when individuals forget the meaning of truth, honor and integrity. When you have a group whose whole way of life is based on selfserving behavior and situational ethics, nothing is worth fighting to preserve.

[rhetorician]

This is what happens when individuals forget the meaning of truth, honor and integrity. When you have a group whose whole way of life is based on selfserving behavior and situational ethics, nothing is worth fighting to preserve.

Yes, me too. :wall:

But we have to "keep the faith": I refuse to believe that a significant number of Americans are so lost to common sense that they won't recognize a political sell-out when they see one.

The group whose "whole way of life is based on selfserving behavior and situational ethics" is the minority. The problem is, this minority has the loudest mouth--at the moment--and I talk to a whole lot of people every day who are getting more and more hacked off about the multiple "sell outs" they're seeing.

For example, they're furious about the LMSM--and have stopped even turning on garbage like CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC. More and more know about Hannity and listen whenever they can.

When I mention pro-Iraq data like the reduction in the number of terrorist attacks, they get really hacked off that this isn't being reported. When I mention the 5+ tons of uranium found in Iraq, they blanch and get a real hard look around the mouth and eyes.

Then, they start mentioning stuff like that utterly insideous Appeals Court ruling that "parents do not have an inherent right to control the way their children learn about sex"--I think more Americans really do see how liberalism is destroying the US and their own way of life.

[SFC(R)L]

Oh, they know the truth. And they don't believe their lies anymore than we do.



Incorrect.

They believe every word of their dogma.

Trust me.

This is the first step in opposing them; you have to understand that they actually believe their own nonsense, while truth is plain for all to see.

[rhetorician]

Incorrect.

They believe every word of their dogma.

Trust me.

This is the first step in opposing them; you have to understand that they actually believe their own nonsense, while truth is plain for all to see.

Ah, yes, when you're talking about idiots like Northwoods and company. But, when you're talking about Madame Clintoon? or Kerry? or Kennedy? or Reid?--okay, maybe Reid's so far gone he really is that gullible. But the others, the leaders of this filth--they know they're lying. They know they're playing on the utter gullibility of Sheehan and her ilk. The leaders lie; the followers are just swallowed up in their own emotional self-deceptions, which makes them perfect stooges for the leaders.

[SFC(R)L]

A brief review of the Geneva Conventions indicates that chem-lites and their batteries are NOT WMD.

[Loyal American]

Bumping to the top for those who don't seem to have it all figured out yet!
God love ya, I am sure the break of day will come soon!:pray: :pray: :pray:

[rhetorician]

Bumping to the top for those who don't seem to have it all figured out yet!
God love ya, I am sure the break of day will come soon!:pray: :pray: :pray:

Thanks, love. Was just about to go fetch the thread myself, and, as always, you're two steps ahead. :pray: right along with you.

[SFC(R)L]

A fresh set of trollsters require training.

Where's Sallow?

[rhetorician]

A fresh set of trollsters require training.

Where's Sallow?
Indeed. They are multiplying with astonishing rapidity.

[Loyal American]

Indeed. They are multiplying with astonishing rapidity.

Wow, rhe I am gonna lose my cool today. Yup, I think so!:think:
Even took it to the Mod section and that is totally out character
for me! :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :((

[SFC(R)L]

Bump bumpity bump bump bump bumpity frickin bump

NOW READ THIS

[Cav Scout]

Sallow wont come over here anymore.

[SFC(R)L]

bump

hello?

[rhetorician]

bump

hello?

The faithful few are still here, dude. And, no, Shallow Swallow won't show--he doesn't want to run the risk of losing his illusions. But WE love you! :hug:

[IhateCNN]

Iraqi Terrorists Detail Ties To Bin Laden
Dave Eberhart,
Monday, March 18, 2002

A terrorist group operating in northern Iraq told the New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg that their organization "has received funds directly from al-Qaeda."In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory, captured members of Ansar al-Islam also alleged:


The intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam.

Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.

A number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam.

Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
If these charges are true," Goldberg writes in the current issue, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."

The prisoners Goldberg spoke to last month are kept in a jail that is run by the intelligence service of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose director told Goldberg that American intelligence officials had not visited the site. "The FBI and the CIA haven't come out yet," the director said.

According to Kurdish officials, Goldberg reported, "Ansar al-Islam grew out of an idea spread by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former chief of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now Osama bin Laden's deputy in al-Qaeda."

One official explained, "Zawahiri's philosophy is that you should fight the infidel even in the smallest village, that you should try to form Islamic armies everywhere. The Kurdish fundamentalists were influenced by Zawahiri."

The group has between five hundred and six hundred members, according to Kurdish officials, including Arab Afghans and at least thirty Iraqi Kurds who were trained in Afghanistan.

Last September, the officials said, representatives of Osama bin Laden gave Ansar al-Islam $300,000. These officials added that the real leader of Ansar al-Islam is an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, who has spent a great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps but is also, they said, an officer of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's principal intelligence service.


"A man named Abu Agab is in charge of the northern bureau of the Mukhabarat," one official told Goldberg. "And he is Abu Wa'el's control officer."

Smuggling Al-Qaeda Members


Kurdish intelligence officials said that there is no proof that Ansar al-Islam has ever been involved in international terrorism or that Saddam Hussein's agents were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. But they claimed that several men associated with al-Qaeda have been smuggled over the Iranian border into an Ansar al-Islam stronghold near the city of Halabja.

Two of these men, who go by the names Abu Yasir and Abu Muzaham, are high-ranking al-Qaeda members, they say. An Iraqi intelligence officer, Qassem Hussein Muhammad, one of the prisoners with whom Goldberg spoke, said that his own involvement in Islamic radicalism began in 1992 in Baghdad, when he met Ayman al-Zawahiri after being assigned to help guard him.

After reports surfaced that Abu Wa'el had been captured by American agents, Qassem says, he was sent by the Mukhabarat to Kurdistan to find out what was going on. "That's when I was captured," he said. Asked if he was sure that Abu Wa'el was on Saddam's side, Qassem said, "He's an employee of the Mukhabarat. He's the actual decision-maker in the group -- Ansar al-Islam -- but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat."

In the prison, Goldberg also spoke to a young Iraqi Arab named Haqi Ismail, whom Kurdish officials described as a middle-to high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, who was captured as he tried to get into Kurdistan three weeks after the start of the American attack on Afghanistan.
Jawad, a twenty-nine-year-old Iranian Arab who is a smuggler and bandit from the city of Ahvaz, and whom Kurdish intelligence officials said was most recently employed by bin Laden, told Goldberg that he began to smuggle for bin Laden in the late 1990s.

Liquid Might Be Bio-Weapon

In 2000, Jawad's al-Qaeda contact told him to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into Afghanistan for the Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad told Goldberg that he had no idea what liquid was inside the motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or biological weapon.

"There's been a relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of al-Qaeda since 1992," Jawad said.

In the articel,"The Great Terror," Goldberg also provided a comprehensive account of Saddam's massive conventional, chemical, and possibly biological attacks on the Kurds in the late 1980s, during which as many as 200,000 Kurds in northern Iraq were killed, out of a population of about four million.
Christine Gosden, an English geneticist who has been studying the attacks on the Kurds since 1998, says, "The Iraqi government was using chemistry to reduce the population of Kurds. The Holocaust is still having its effect. The Jews are fewer in number now than they were in 1939. That's not natural. Now, if you take out 200,000 men and boys from Kurdistan, you've affected the population structure. There are a lot of widows who are not having children."

Gosden believes that it is quite possible that the countries of the West will soon experience serious chemical- and biological-weapons attacks. "Please understand," she said, "the Kurds were for practice."

Gosden told Goldberg that she cannot understand why the West has not been more eager to investigate the chemical attacks in Kurdistan. "It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest that the West would want to study the long-term effects of chemical weapons on civilians, on the DNA," she says, pointing out that, "for Saddam's scientists, the Kurds were a test population. They were the human guinea pigs. It was a way of identifying the most effective chemical agents for use on civilian populations, and the most effective means of delivery."

Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who was formerly a high official in Saddam's nuclear program, told Goldberg that he had direct knowledge of the Army's plans for Halabja. "The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as 'How far are the dead from the cannisters?'"

Fouad Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist in Kurdistan who led Goldberg on his tour of Halabja, and other experts "now believe that Halabja and other places in Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent."

Baban told Goldberg that the Iraqis could conceivably have used aflatoxin as well; aflatoxin is a biological agent that causes long-term liver damage. Baban said, "Here is a civilian population exposed to chemical and possibly biological weapons, and people are developing many varieties of cancers and congenital abnormalities."

In 1995, the Iraqis admitted that they had weaponized aflatoxin, Charles Duelfer, then the deputy executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection team in Iraq, told Goldberg. "This was the first time Iraq actually agreed to discuss the Presidential origins of these programs," Duelfer said.

Although "it is unclear what biological and chemical weapons Saddam possesses today," Goldberg wrote, August Hanning, the chief of the B.N.D., the German intelligence agency, provided information on another type of weapon. "It is our estimate," he said, "that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years."

WoW:eek: You would think this would wake up everyone.
hope you don't mind that I highlighted some of the really good parts.

[SFC(R)L]

Yes, I am wide awake....and appreciate the love.

[RedStatePaPa]

WoW:eek: You would think this would wake up everyone.
hope you don't mind that I highlighted some of the really good parts.
You'd think....

[Loyal American]

Pulling to the top for our newest trainee!

[SFC(R)L]

09 March 1999

TRANSCRIPT: SECDEFENSE COHEN PRESS CONFERENCE IN DOHA MARCH 9
(US, Qatar agree to establish telephone link, early-warning info)
(4060)
Doha -- The United States and Qatar on March 9 took two steps to make
their close relationship even closer, says Secretary of Defense
William Cohen. "We agreed to establish a telephone link to facilitate
communications between our two governments. The United States also
offered to share early-warning information about missile launches in
Iraq or Iran."
Communicating with Qatar on a regular basis "is in the interest of
promoting security and stability in the region. And we will continue
to do that," Cohen said.
"Sheikh Hamad, the Amir, and I have had very successful meetings,"
Cohen reported during a joint press conference with Qatari Foreign
Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al-Thani. "We are working
together to bring peace and stability to the region, and we very much
appreciate the support that we get from Qatar," he said.
The Secretary congratulated Qatar on the March 8 elections, in which
women ran for office and voted for the first time, and said: "This is
a sign of Qatar's leadership in the region."
Cohen said he discussed with the Amir programs in Iraq and Iran to
maintain weapons of mass destruction and the threat that these weapons
pose to the region.
"Since the end of last year, Iraq has violated the no-fly zones more
than 100 times; they have fired more than 20 surface-to-air missiles
at coalition aircraft; and they continually fired anti-aircraft guns
and rockets in an effort to shoot down our planes. In response to
Iraqi aggression, our aircraft have fired back in self-defense; and we
will continue to target Iraq's air-attack network as long as it
continues to threaten our planes," he said.
Cohen stressed that the U.S. has "nothing but respect and sympathy for
the people of Iraq and the conditions that they endure under Saddam
Hussein," and noted that the United States sponsored the oil-for-food
program for Iraq to import food and medicine.
"... Last month, the Security Council reported that in central and
southern Iraq, Saddam is storing in warehouses 275 million dollars in
medicine and medical supplies, more than half the amount purchased
under the oil-for-food program. And so it is clear that Saddam Hussein
cares more about weapons than the welfare of his people. If Saddam
cared about his people, he would help them by complying with Security
Council resolutions. So the United States will continue to work for an
Iraq that is unified, peaceful, and prosperous," he said.

[IhateCNN]

I hope you don't mind SFC(R)L, but I put your info on another thread too.
Too good not to spread around.

It was a good answer to a stupid statement on there, and you posted it at just the right time. You must have ESP.

[rhetorician]

I hope you don't mind SFC(R)L, but I put your info on another thread too.
Too good not to spread around.

It was a good answer to a stupid statement on there, and you posted it at just the right time. You must have ESP.

I think he does, yes. Plus a whole lot of basic, sound, fact-based wisdom. He's taught me a lot.

[Loyal American]

I hope you don't mind SFC(R)L, but I put your info on another thread too.
Too good not to spread around.

It was a good answer to a stupid statement on there, and you posted it at just the right time. You must have ESP.


I agree, this is an awesome thread! Thank YOU SFC! :clap:

[SFC(R)L]

My compliments to all.

By all means, let the word go forth from this time and place.

Gerard Baker
The Times November 18, 2005

You don't have to be an amnesiac to be a Democrat, buddy, but it helps
Gerard Baker

PERHAPS THE biggest weapon in the arsenal of America’s critics is carefully selective amnesia. Conveniently forgetting important historical facts enables tactical amnesiacs to make claims about US policy that seem to support their contention that the country’s government is uniquely evil.

The latest evidence that George Bush is a war criminal has apparently come this week with the acknowledgment that the US military used white phosphorus (WP) on enemy positions in Fallujah. This is deemed an outrage, something decent countries never do, yet more proof that the Bush-Cheney cabal is sedulously destroying the very foundations of American civilisation.

The discovery that American soldiers refer to WP cavalierly as “shake and bake” seems to have come as an additional shock to the easily agitated sensibilities of the critics. Can you believe men can be so callous as to refer to something so horrible in such a jocular fashion? They must be Nazis.

In fact, WP is not a chemical weapon, not even banned by any treaty to which the US is signatory. It has been used by the armed forces in all countries in wars for decades. Indeed, if you look up the roll of US Congressional Medal of Honour winners, you will discover that quite a few received this highest military decoration precisely because they used “shake and bake” to such successful effect.

The weapon’s purpose is to create a smokescreen that flushes the enemy out of foxholes, so that the attacker can get a better chance of shooting them or blowing them up with high explosives. I wait with resigned anticipation for the reports of shocking new evidence that the US has used “bullets” and “bombs” in its attacks on the enemy.

There is useful amnesia too on the issue of torture. The White House is in the dock over this one because it wants Congress to refrain from imposing a complete ban on anything that might resemble mistreatment of prisoners. No one wants to make torture an everyday tool of military tactics. But does anyone honestly think that, in the course of the many honorable wars America and its allies have fought, some pretty brutal techniques have not been used now and again to extract information?

It has become fashionable for opponents to add pragmatism to principle and say that torture never yields any useful information, since a suffering prisoner will say anything to stop the pain. Really? Never? Not a single one? You mean every hapless soul who ever fell into Torquemada’s hands never gave up any information that led to the capture of one heretic?

Again, I repeat, to head off the correspondence I will get from angry readers saying I’m advocating pulling the fingernails out of innocent Muslims: no one is suggesting torture should ever be used except in the most extreme cases of imminent peril. But if a US interrogator in such extremes pursued an opportunity to save thousands of lives and then wound up in jail, that would strike me as an injustice.

These outbreaks of amnesia are, I suppose, forgivable, since they require a bit of genuine historical memory. Much less tolerable is the memory loss that seems to have gripped Democrats in the past few weeks. This is the “I’ve completely forgotten I once believed Saddam Hussein was a monstrous threat to our security” amnesia.

As the unpopular war in Iraq rumbles on, opportunistic Democrats are eagerly embracing the argument that opponents of the war used all along: Bush and Blair lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. This was objectionable enough when used by the charter members of the anti-war crowd. Remember that the evidence of Saddam’s accumulation of WMD in the past, his dissembling to international inspectors, the independent intelligence from other countries’ agencies that corroborated US and British claims is well documented, going way back to the times when peace-and love-promoting multilateralist Democrats were in the White House.

But the “Bush lied to us” whine is much worse when it comes from the mouths of those who insisted only three years ago, in voting for the war, that they were taking a heroic stand in defence of national security. Half the Democratic members of the Senate — oddly enough, including all those with serious presidential aspirations — John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden — voted for the war in 2002. The awful truth about many of these people is that their cynicism in distancing themselves from their support for the war is only matched by their cynicism in originally supporting it.

Let me be clear: some Democrats — Joe Lieberman springs to mind — supported the war for the right reasons, and continue to do so. Others — Ted Kennedy, Russell Feingold — opposed it all along. But most of those now recanting made a straight political calculation in voting to authorise force in the first place.

These were the ambitious Democrats who thought they had learnt the lessons of 1991. Then you may recall, the vast majority of the party’s senators voted against the first Iraq war. The arguments then were not about right but might, or America’s perceived lack of it. There was talk of hundreds of thousands of body bags. Most of the Democrats, fearing the country was still in the grip of Vietnam syndrome, wanted nothing to do with it. They wanted to be able to say afterwards “ We told you so”, and to reap the political rewards.

In the eventfewer than 200 Americans died, and all those Democrats who had voted against the war were suddenly political carrion. So, confronted with a similar choice in October 2002, they did not want to be on the losing side again. If it was another cakewalk, and they had voted against it, the damage to their credibility as presidential candidates would be irreparable. Best to vote for it to burnish their national security credentials.

But it wasn’t a cakewalk. And now they’re trapped. So they resort to the defence of the coward throughout history: “He made me do it.” Most Americans have better memories.

[Loyal American]

Man, SFC good post. The Dem's are really standing on my last nerve lately. Yes, I do think they are suffering from amnesia on countless issues too!:evil:

[IhateCNN]

These were the ambitious Democrats who thought they had learnt the lessons of 1991. Then you may recall, the vast majority of the party’s senators voted against the first Iraq war. The arguments then were not about right but might, or America’s perceived lack of it. There was talk of hundreds of thousands of body bags. Most of the Democrats, fearing the country was still in the grip of Vietnam syndrome, wanted nothing to do with it. They wanted to be able to say afterwards “ We told you so”, and to reap the political rewards.

In the eventfewer than 200 Americans died, and all those Democrats who had voted against the war were suddenly political carrion. So, confronted with a similar choice in October 2002, they did not want to be on the losing side again. If it was another cakewalk, and they had voted against it, the damage to their credibility as presidential candidates would be irreparable. Best to vote for it to burnish their national security credentials.

But it wasn’t a cakewalk. And now they’re trapped. So they resort to the defence of the coward throughout history: “He made me do it.” Most Americans have better memories.

They were all standing around Cheering when we were busting ass and taking names going in.

Just like that butt wipe Gen. (I wanted to be President) Wesley Clark who sat there night after night on CNN commenting on what an awesome job. But as soon as we took Baghdad and he felt he had established himself as some sort of " Political Anal-ist " He immediatly stated his Well this is what I would have done.... This is wrong.... I could have done that better.... Blah Blah Blah, (PUKE) Now he's hanging around trying to get his sorry face on Fox every time he gets a chance. I guess he didn't get the message in 04.

[SFC(R)L]

I happened upon this article and what timing tonight.

Just as I had a meltdown listening to that kucinich prattle on with his treasonous nonsense.

[IhateCNN]

I happened upon this article and what timing tonight.

Just as I had a meltdown listening to that kucinich prattle on with his treasonous nonsense.


Everytime I see him on TV I get the Urge to drive to Little Rock and spit.

[SFC(R)L]

Iran supporting
al-Qaida terror
U.S. military, intelligence services now certain Tehran backing Iraq Islamists tied to bin Laden
Posted: November 8, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com – a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for almost 30 years.

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com


Iran is covertly supporting al-Qaida-aligned terrorists in Iraq, not just anti-American Shiite insurgents, U.S. defense and intelligence sources say with certainty.

The acknowledgment of the long-held suspicion as certainty raises the stakes in Iraq and the Persian Gulf as President Bush begins his second term and Iran, with its nuclear aspirations, moves to the front burner as an international crisis in the making.

According to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, al-Qaida-linked terrorists have been observed moving supplies and new recruits from Iran to Iraq, say the sources. While it has long been known Iran was backing the uprising led by Moqtada al-Sadr in the southern Shiite region of Iraq, the Iranian ties to Sunni Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist leader who has pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, has not been certain.

[SFC(R)L]

October 21, 2003, 9:34 a.m.
Saddam’s Terror Ties
Iraq-war critics ignore ample evidence.

As President Bush more robustly promotes his Iraq policy, he should confront directly those who dismiss Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism and, thus, belittle a key rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bush's critics employ a flimsy argument that nonetheless enjoys growing appeal among a largely hostile press corps. Since Hussein did not order the September 11 attacks — the fuzzy logic goes — he has no ties to terrorists, especially al Qaeda. Therefore, the Iraq war was bogus, and Bush should be defeated.

"Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorism. Our invasion has made it one," said Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) on October 16. "We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from al Qaeda. It was not...We should never have gone to war in Iraq when we did, in the way we did, for the false reasons we were given."

West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq's alleged al Qaeda ties were "tenuous at best and not compelling." In a September 16 editorial, the Times slammed Vice President Dick Cheney for making "sweeping, unproven claims about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism." On August 7, former vice president Al Gore stated reassuringly: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all."

Bush and his national-security team should repeatedly devote entire speeches and publications — complete with documents, names, and visuals, including photographs of terrorists and their innocent victims — to remind Americans and the world that Baathist Iraq was a general store for terrorists, complete with cash, training, lodging, and even medical attention.

The evidence for Hussein's cooperation with and support for global terrorists is abundant and increasing. Recall, for instance:

Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. "President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of the Palestinian political office, Faroq al-Kaddoumi, his decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000," Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, declared at a Baghdad meeting of Arab politicians and businessmen on March 11, 2002, Reuters reported two days later. Mahmoud Besharat, who the White House says dispensed these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said: "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue." Between Aziz's announcement and the March 20 launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and killed 223 more, including at least eight Americans.

According to the State Department's May 21, 2002 "Patterns of Global Terrorism," the Abu Nidal Organization, the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, the Kurdistan Worker's party, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization and the Palestinian Liberation Front all operated offices or bases in Hussein's Iraq. Hussein's hospitality towards these mass murderers placed him in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which prohibited him from giving safe harbor to or otherwise supporting terrorists.

Coalition forces have found alive and well key terrorists who enjoyed Hussein's hospitality. Among them was Abu Abbas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Manhattan retiree who Abbas's men rolled, wheelchair and all, into the Mediterranean. Khala Khadr al-Salahat, accused of designing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 (259 killed on board, 11 dead on the ground), also lived in Baathist Iraq.

Before fatally shooting himself four times in the head on August 16, 2002, as Baghdad claimed, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal had resided in Iraq since 1999. As the AP's Sameer N. Yacoub reported on August 21, 2002, the Beirut office of the Abu Nidal Organization said he entered Iraq "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities." Nidal's attacks in 20 countries killed at least 275 people and wounded some 625 others. Among other atrocities, ANO henchmen bombed a TWA airliner over the Aegean Sea in 1974, killing all 88 people on board.

Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps including a base near Baghdad called Salman Pak. It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where numerous Iraqi defectors reported that foreign terrorists were instructed how to hijack airliners with utensils. (The Bush administration should bus a few dozen foreign correspondents and their camera crews from the bar of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel to Salman Pak for a guided tour. Network news footage of that ought to open a few eyes.)

[SFC(R)L]

As for Hussein's supposedly imaginary ties to al Qaeda, consider these disturbing facts:

The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell-phone records indicate that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City. Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40. As Dan Murphy wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last February 26, those phone records bolster Sali's claim in a November 2002 TV interview that the Iraqi diplomat had offered these Muslim extremists Baghdad's help with joint missions.

Journalist Stephen F. Hayes reported in July that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper published by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, ran what it called a "List of Honor." The paper's November 14, 2002, edition gave the names and titles of 600 leading Iraqis, including this passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." That name, Hayes wrote, matches that of Iraq's then-ambassador to Islamabad.

Carter-appointed federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt discovered this document in Baghdad while helping Iraq rebuild its legal system. He wrote in the June 25 Tennessean that two of his Iraqi colleagues remember secret police agents removing that embarrassing edition from newsstands and confiscating copies of it from private homes. The paper was not published for the next ten days. Judge Merritt theorized that the "impulsive and somewhat unbalanced" Uday may have showcased these dedicated Baathists to "make them more loyal and supportive of the regime" as war loomed.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad. He then opened a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.

While Iraqi Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot, fled the U.S. on a Pakistani passport, he arrived here on an Iraqi passport.

Author Richard Miniter reported September 25 on TechCentralStation: "U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and a monthly salary." Indiana-born, Iraqi-reared al Qaeda member Abdul Rahman Yasin was indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that exploded beneath the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring some 1,000 New Yorkers.

Along Iraq's border with Syria, U.S. troops captured Farouk Hijazi, Hussein's former ambassador to Turkey and suspected liaison to al Qaeda. Under interrogation, Hijazi "admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994."

While sifting through the Mukhabarat's bombed ruins last April 26, the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, the London Daily Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore and their translator discovered a memo in the intelligence service's accounting department. Dated February 19, 1998 and marked "Top Secret and Urgent," it said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The memo's three references to bin Laden were obscured crudely with correction fluid.

Despite the White House's inexplicable insistence to the contrary, tantalizing clues suggest Saddam Hussein might not have shared the world's shock when fireballs erupted from the Twin Towers.

Recall that his Salman Pak terror camp taught terrorists air piracy on an actual jet fuselage.

On January 5, 2000, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir — an Iraqi airport greeter reportedly dispatched from Baghdad's embassy in Malaysia — welcomed Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to Kuala Lampur and escorted them to a local hotel where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared. He was arrested in Qatar on September 17, 2001, six days after al Midhar and al Hamzi slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 216 people. On his person and in his apartment, authorities discovered papers tying him to the 1993 WTC plot and "Operation Bojinka," al Qaeda's 1995 plan to blow up 12 jets over the Pacific at once.

The Czech Republic stands by its claim that 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim an-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat/intelligence agent. He was expelled two weeks after the suspected meeting with Atta for apparently hostile surveillance of Radio Free Europe's Prague headquarters, from which American broadcasts to Iraq emanate.

Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge Harold Baer ordered Hussein and his ousted regime to pay $104 million in damages to the families of George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas, both killed in the Twin Towers along with 2,790 others. "I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, 'by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda," Baer ruled. An airtight case? No, but sufficient evidence tied Hussein to 9/11 and secured a May 7 federal judgment against him.

If one has the time or professional duty to connect these dots, a portrait emerges of Saddam Hussein as sugar daddy to global terrorists, including al Qaeda and perhaps the 9/11 conspirators. Why won't Team Bush paint this picture? One administration communications specialist told me the government is bashful on this front because these links are difficult to prove. Yes, but prosecuting the informational battle in the war on terror is not like prosecuting a Mafia don, with wiretaps, hidden cameras and deep-cover "stool pigeons." Evidence of terrorist ties can be even more shadowy than a Cosa Nostra whack job. While this makes metaphysical proof elusive, the White House and relevant agencies owe it to America's national security to highlight what they know about Saddam Hussein and terrorism, even if some of the evidence against him is only circumstantial.

Assuming he wishes to sway domestic and global opinion, President Bush and his administration should guide Americans and the world through the sometimes-murky data and identify the patterns and conclusions that arise. While Saddam Hussein never may endure a courtroom cross-examination, plenty already exists in the public record (and surely more should be declassified) to confirm that his ouster, the liberation of Iraq and its current rehabilitation were and are necessary phases of the war on terror. The president and his top advisers should present the case, not haphazardly, but systematically and in as comprehensive, well-documented, and well-illustrated a fashion as their vast resources will allow.

[SFC(R)L]

Have War Critics Even Read the Duelfer Report?
By Richard Spertzel - October 14, 2004
The Wall Street Journal

Richard Spertzel, a former member of UNSCOM and a member of the Iraq Survey Group, writes in today's WSJ, "It is asserted that Iraq was not supporting terrorists. Really? Documentation indicates that Iraq was training non-Iraqis at Salman Pak in terrorist techniques, including assassination and suicide bombing. In addition to Iraqis, trainees included Palestinians, Yemenis, Saudis, Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese."

Where are the President and the National Security Council on this? Iraq and the legitimacy of this war is, arguably, the key issue of the presidential race.

Why don't they say the ISG found documents that show Iraq was training terrorists? The same thing happened with Iraqi documents recently detailed by Scott Wheeler for Cybercast News Service. Without the backing of the administration, the information falls into a black hole and disappears.

That is so, even as this issue is relevant to understanding the ongoing war in Iraq. Who is the enemy? Do the foreign terrorists operate independently of the Baathists; in conjunction with them; or somewhere in between? We can't fight this war properly, unless we have the best possible answers to those questions, while the result of not having those answers is unnecessary casualties, both American and Iraqi.

After the release of the Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer report, the headlines
blazed "No WMD Found." Most stories continued by saying that Iraq did not
constitute an imminent threat to the U.S. and thus the U.S. was wrong to
eliminate that threat. This reflects the notion that Iraq was only a threat
if it had military munitions filled with WMD. The claim "Iraq was not an
imminent threat" was also expounded by pundits that seemingly crawled out of
the woodwork as well as those opposed to President Bush. But have these
individuals read carefully the report before engaging in such anti-Bush
rhetoric?

While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a
large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi
Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale production of
chemical nerve agents, sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, ricin, aflatoxin,
and other unspecified biological agents. These laboratories were also
evaluating whether various poisons would change the texture, smell or
appearance of foodstuffs. These aspects of the ISG report have been ignored
by the pundits and press. Did these constitute an imminent threat? Perhaps
it depends how you define "threat."

The chemical section reports that the M16 Directorate "had a plan to produce
and weaponize nitrogen mustard in rifle grenades and a plan to bottle sarin
and sulfur mustard in perfume sprayers and medicine bottles which they would
ship to the United States and Europe." Are we to believe this plan existed
because they liked us? Or did they wish to do us harm? The major threat
posed by Iraq, in my opinion, was the support it gave to terrorists in
general, and its own terrorist activity.

The ISG was also told that "ricin was being developed into stable liquid to
deliver as an aerosol" in various munitions. Such development was not just
for assassination. If Iraq was successful in developing an aerosolizable
ricin, it made a significant step forward. The development had to be for
terrorist delivery. Even on a small scale this must be considered as a WMD.
Biological agents, delivered on a small scale (terrorist delivery) can maim
or kill a large number of people. The Iraqi Intelligence organizations had a
history of conducting tests on humans with chemical and biological
substances that went beyond assassination studies. While many of these were
in the 1970s and 1980s, multiple documents and testimony indicate that such
testing continued through the 1990s and into the next millennium, perhaps as
late as 2002. Do we wait until such weapons are used against our domestic
population before we act? Is that the way that some people wish to have the
U.S. protected from terrorist activity?

It is asserted that Iraq was not supporting terrorists. Really?
Documentation indicates that Iraq was training non-Iraqis at Salman Pak in
terrorist techniques, including assassination and suicide bombing. In
addition to Iraqis, trainees included Palestinians, Yemenis, Saudis,
Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese.

As for the U.N. inspection system preventing such R&D, why did Iraq not
declare these clandestine laboratories to Unscom and Unmovic and why did
these inspection agencies not discover these laboratories? Might it have
been that there were multiple informants working inside Unscom and Unmovic
that kept the Iraqi Intelligence Service informed as to what sites were to
be inspected? Information collected by ISG indicates that this was the case.
In late 2002 and early 2003, equipment and materials were removed from
several sites 24 hours before U.N. inspections. Such informants were said to
be active since 1993. Ergo, no surprise inspections.

Furthermore, sanctions were rapidly eroding. Unscom was aware of this
erosion but not to the degree that apparently developed post 1998. The
accounts of bribery of officials from several countries that were pushing
for lifting or weakening sanctions are legend and have been extensively
reported this past week. Inspections can not be effective without the full
support of the U.N. Security Council. Such full support did not exist from
late 1996 onward. Perhaps, now we know why. Iraq exploited the power of
wealth in the form of oil to buy influence in the Security Council and
within governments throughout the World. This has now been well documented.

Was Iraq an imminent threat? With the regime's intention and the activity of
its intelligence organizations, and with the proven futility of uncovering
its clandestine laboratory operations by the U.N. inspectors, it is hard to
draw any other conclusion. Regretfully, terrorism is the wave of the future.
The report by Charles Duelfer is unclassified and makes very interesting
reading for those who really want to know. For those with a closed mind, it
will be a waste of time.

Mr. Spertzel, head of the biological-weapons section of Unscom from 1994-99,
just returned from Iraq, where he has been a member of the Iraq Survey Group
(ISG).

[SFC(R)L]

U.S. says Iran harbors al Qaeda 'associate'
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A top al Qaeda associate in Iraq has fled to neighboring Iran, where he and several senior al Qaeda leaders apparently remain under the protection of the Iranian government, U.S. intelligence officials say.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi fled Iraq within the past several weeks and is in Iran, the officials told The Washington Times.

Al-Zarqawi was identified in a U.N. briefing given in February by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as an "associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants."

That link was a key element in the U.S. case that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was tied to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, a stance repeated yesterday by President Bush in response to a New York Times report that said two al Qaeda captives had said the group did not cooperate with Saddam.

"I guess the people that wrote that article forgot about al-Zarqawi's network inside of Baghdad that ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen named [Laurence] Foley," Mr. Bush said. "And history in time will prove that the United States made the absolute right decision in freeing the people of Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein."

U.S. intelligence officials believe that al-Zarqawi helped the terrorists who killed Mr. Foley, a U.S. diplomat, in Amman, Jordan, in October.

Iran's government have denied Bush administration assertions that Tehran was harboring al Qaeda terrorists. But the Iranian government has recently stated that it had detained several al Qaeda members, although it has not identified any.

American intelligence officials said Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and the Qods Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a unit of hard-line Islamist shock troops, are deeply involved in supporting terrorists, including al Qaeda.

A U.S. official said the Bush administration wants Iran to turn over al-Zarqawi to the United States because of his connection to the Foley killing, although it could not be learned whether the State Department has made a formal request.

The U.S. official said any approach is likely to be carried out through a friendly third party, such as Jordan or Saudi Arabia. The official said al-Zarqawi is not a member of al Qaeda but "worked with them when it was convenient."

"He's a real bad actor," said the official, who cautioned that al-Zarqawi's presence in Iran is not a certainty. "There are reports he's washed up in Iran." Another intelligence official said al-Zarqawi might be among the al Qaeda members that the government of Iran said it had detained, although other officials doubted this.

Other officials said recent intelligence reports circulated within the U.S. government stated that al-Zarqawi moved to Iran from Iraq after Mr. Powell identified him in the Feb. 5 briefing to the Security Council.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last month that he is convinced that senior al Qaeda leaders are in Iran. Asked whether the United States would go to war with Iran if Tehran is sheltering al Qaeda, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "Well, those are decisions not for me. Those are decisions for the president."

"It is worrisome that that country clearly is not being helpful in Iraq today," Mr. Rumsfeld said on May 29. "It is also clear that they have permitted senior al Qaeda to operate in their country, and that is something that creates a danger to the world, because we know what the al Qaeda can do in terms of killing innocent men, women and children."

Defense and intelligence officials said the senior al Qaeda members the secretary has mentioned include at least two hiding in Iran — including Sayf al-Adl, who is believed to be the official in charge of al Qaeda's military operations and has been linked to the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Al-Adl has been in Iran since 2002 and is on the FBI's list of most-wanted international terrorists.

A second top al Qaeda leader in Iran is Osama bin Laden's oldest son, Saad bin Laden, who also arrived in Iran in 2002. Many U.S. intelligence analysts say they believe he took over al Qaeda's leadership after the U.S. military's destruction of al Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan in October 2001.

The Washington Times disclosed Saad bin Laden's presence in Iran in February. Al-Zarqawi is the leader of the Islamist terror group Jund al-Shams, which is linked to al Qaeda and has operated in Syria and Jordan.

After U.S. forces disrupted al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan, al-Zarqawi fled that country and ended up with the Ansar al-Islam, which operated a terrorist camp in northern Iraq.

The camp was bombed by U.S. warplanes and attacked on the ground by Special Forces troops during the Iraq war. Mr. Powell said in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council that the Ansar al-Islam camp was run by al-Zarqawi agents. He said the camp was operated with the help of a top Iraqi agent "in the most senior levels of the radical organization."

Iran's government said last month that it had arrested several al Qaeda members. Hamid Reza Asefi, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on May 25 that of the several people being detained "we don't know who these people are to be able to say whether they are senior or not."

Mr. Powell said during the February briefing that al-Zarqawi's terrorist network was a "potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network."

He said the network "combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder," including a "poison and explosive training-center camp" in an area of northern Iraq controlled by Saddam's government. Al-Zarqawi, Mr. Powell said, traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical care and stayed for two months.

"During his stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," he said. "These al Qaeda affiliates based in Baghdad now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months."

[Loyal American]

Man, you got on a roll last night SFC! :clap: Sure hope the one's who need these post(s) read them. I keep directing them to this thread. Thank you for all your effort to educate..........well, you know who! ;) I know you have trained me well......thanks again!:angel:

[SFC(R)L]

In spite of all this, liberals STILL will not admit they are wrong.

[SFC(R)L]

US: Proof of Iraq's terrorist ties
16/04/2003 20:17 - (SA)

Baghdad - The US military says it has produced substantial evidence linking Saddam Hussein with international terrorist networks but acknowledges that iron-clad proof of the ousted leader's ties with al-Qaeda is proving elusive.

Their most prized scalp is Abu Abbas, a factional head of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) who masterminded the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985 and was captured by special forces in Baghdad on Tuesday.

The arrest was trumpeted by US officials as vindication of their campaign to oust Saddam as a sponsor of terrorism in addition to a stockpiler of suspected chemical and biological arms.

[SFC(R)L]

Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Saddam's Terrorist Ties

Saddam's Terrorist Ties
By Laurie Mylroie The New York Sun October 19, 2004
www.nysun.com/article/3413
The central issue in the presidential race is, arguably, the legitimacy of
the Iraq War. Is this conflict a necessary part of the war on terrorism? The
answer is decidedly yes, although this seems to be a fight the White House
would rather duck, even as documents now trickling out of Baghdad suggest
Saddam Hussein had extensive ties with terrorists, including with Islamic
militants.

One source for this claim is the widely discussed, but scarcely read, report
of the Iraq Survey Group, the coalition intelligence team that went into
Iraq after the war. As Richard Spertzel, an Iraq Survey Group member who
also had served with the United Nations Iraq weapons inspections team,
explained in the Wall Street Journal, "Documentation indicates that Iraq was
training non-Iraqis at Salman Pak in terrorist techniques, including
assassination and suicide bombing. In addition to Iraqis, trainees included
Palestinians, Yemenis, Saudis, Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese."

Soon after September 11, 2001, two Iraqi defectors came forward, explaining
that Iraqi intelligence had trained non-Iraqi Arab militants at itsextensive
compound at Salman Pak, an area south of Baghdad. Among the skills taught
there was hijacking airplanes. One defector even drew a sketch of the area,
showing a passenger plane parked in the southwest corner of a large
compound.

When American marines took over Salman Pak in early April 2003, they indeed
found the terrorist training camp, the airplane, and the foreign terrorists.
An American military spokesman affirmed, "The nature of the work being done
by some of those people we captured. ..gives us the impression that there is
terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak." The marines "inferred"
that the airplane "was used to practice hijacking," the Associated Press
reported. Saddam's apologists claim the camp was for counterterrorism
training, but that seems highly improbable.

Iraqi documents, dating from January to May 1993, suggest that Baghdad's
training of terrorists goes back over a decade - at least to the period
following Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. That training was
interrupted by the 1991 war, but appears to have resumed not long
afterwards.

[rhetorician]

:clap: good posts as always! Thanks.

[IhateCNN]

Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Saddam's Terrorist Ties

Saddam's Terrorist Ties
By Laurie Mylroie The New York Sun October 19, 2004
www.nysun.com/article/3413
The central issue in the presidential race is, arguably, the legitimacy of
the Iraq War. Is this conflict a necessary part of the war on terrorism? The
answer is decidedly yes, although this seems to be a fight the White House
would rather duck, even as documents now trickling out of Baghdad suggest
Saddam Hussein had extensive ties with terrorists, including with Islamic
militants.

One source for this claim is the widely discussed, but scarcely read, report
of the Iraq Survey Group, the coalition intelligence team that went into
Iraq after the war. As Richard Spertzel, an Iraq Survey Group member who
also had served with the United Nations Iraq weapons inspections team,
explained in the Wall Street Journal, "Documentation indicates that Iraq was
training non-Iraqis at Salman Pak in terrorist techniques, including
assassination and suicide bombing. In addition to Iraqis, trainees included
Palestinians, Yemenis, Saudis, Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese."

Soon after September 11, 2001, two Iraqi defectors came forward, explaining
that Iraqi intelligence had trained non-Iraqi Arab militants at itsextensive
compound at Salman Pak, an area south of Baghdad. Among the skills taught
there was hijacking airplanes. One defector even drew a sketch of the area,
showing a passenger plane parked in the southwest corner of a large
compound.

When American marines took over Salman Pak in early April 2003, they indeed
found the terrorist training camp, the airplane, and the foreign terrorists.
An American military spokesman affirmed, "The nature of the work being done
by some of those people we captured. ..gives us the impression that there is
terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak." The marines "inferred"
that the airplane "was used to practice hijacking," the Associated Press
reported. Saddam's apologists claim the camp was for counterterrorism
training, but that seems highly improbable.

Iraqi documents, dating from January to May 1993, suggest that Baghdad's
training of terrorists goes back over a decade - at least to the period
following Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. That training was
interrupted by the 1991 war, but appears to have resumed not long
afterwards.

It baffles the mind how people can read these reports, and the one about where the UN had Satelite photos of his facilities just a couple of weeks before we went in, and then a couple of days after we took Baghdad, the images showed it had been stripped to the ground. And yet they will still say that Saddam had no ties with Terrorist and posed no threat. :wall:

[SFC(R)L]

Chapter 3: The current position: 1998-2002

1. This chapter sets out what we know of Saddam's chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, drawing on all the available evidence. While it takes account of the results from UN inspections and other publicly available information, it also draws heavily on the latest intelligence about Iraqi efforts to develop their programmes and capabilities since 1998. The main conclusions are that:

Iraq has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability, in breach of UNSCR 687, which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents;
Saddam continues to attach great importance to the possession of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, which he regards as being the basis for Iraq's regional power. He is determined to retain these capabilities;
Iraq can deliver chemical and biological agents using an extensive range of artillery shells, free-fall bombs, sprayers and ballistic missiles;
Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons, in breach of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in breach of UNSCR 687. Uranium has been sought from Africa that has no civil nuclear application in Iraq;
Iraq possesses extended-range versions of the SCUD ballistic missile in breach of UNSCR 687, which are capable of reaching Cyprus, Eastern Turkey, Tehran and Israel. It is also developing longer range ballistic missiles;
Iraq's current military planning specifically envisages the use of chemical and biological weapons;
Iraq's military forces are able to use chemical and biological weapons, with command, control and logistical arrangements in place. The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within forty five minutes of a decision to do so;
Iraq has learnt lessons from previous UN weapons inspections and is already taking steps to conceal and disperse sensitive equipment and documentation in advance of the return of inspectors;
Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles programmes are well-funded.
CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) Assessment: 1999-2002

2. Since the withdrawal of the inspectors the JIC has monitored evidence, including from secret intelligence, of continuing work on Iraqi offensive chemical and biological warfare capabilities. In the first half of 2000 the JIC noted intelligence on Iraqi attempts to procure dual-use chemicals; and on the reconstruction of civil chemical production at sites formerly associated with the chemical warfare programme. Iraq had also been trying to procure dual-use materials and equipment which could be used for a biological warfare programme. Personnel known to have been connected to the biological warfare programme up to the Gulf War had been conducting research into pathogens. There was intelligence that Iraq was starting to produce biological warfare agents in mobile production facilities. Planning for the project had begun in 1995 under Dr Rihab Taha, known to have been a central player in the pre-Gulf War programme. The JIC concluded that Iraq had sufficient expertise, equipment and material to produce biological warfare agents within weeks using its legitimate biotechnology facilities.

[SFC(R)L]

Posted on: Friday, November 25, 2005

No hype needed: Saddam, al-Qaida linked
By Victor Davis Hanson

As American casualties mount in Iraq, politicians at home now fight over who said what and when about weapons of mass destruction and the need for going to war. One of the most frequent charges is that President Bush hyped a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida — and that as a result, we diverted our efforts from finishing off the real terrorists to start a new and costly war to replace a secular dictator.

This charge is false for several reasons — and illogical for even more. Almost every responsible U.S. government body had long warned about Saddam's links to al-Qaida terrorists. In 1998, for example, when the Clinton Justice Department indicted bin Laden, the writ read: "In addition, al-Qaida reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al-Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaida would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."

Then in October 2002, George Tenet, the Clinton-appointed CIA director, warned the Senate in similar terms: "We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade." Seventy-seven senators apparently agreed — including a majority of Democrats — and cited just that connection a few days later as a cause to go to war against Saddam: " ... Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq."

The bipartisan consensus about this unholy alliance was not based on intriguing but unconfirmed rumors of meetings between Saddam's intelligence agents and al-Qaida operatives such as Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Nor did the senators or the president ever claim that Saddam himself planned the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead, the Justice Department, the Senate and two administrations were alarmed by terrorist groups like Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida affiliate that established bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.

More importantly, one of the masterminds of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Baghdad to find sanctuary with Saddam after the attack. And after the U.S.'s successful war against the Taliban, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the present murderous al-Qaida leader in Iraq, reportedly escaped from Afghanistan to gain a reprieve from Saddam.

All of this is understandable since Saddam had a long history of promoting and sheltering anti-Western terrorists. That's why both Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas — terrorist banes of the 1970s and 1980s — were in Baghdad prior to the U.S. invasion and why the families of West Bank suicide bombers were given $25,000 rewards by the Iraqi government.

Saddam worried little over the agendas of these diverse terrorist groups, only that they shared his own generic hatred of Western governments. This kind of support from leaders such as Saddam has proven crucial to radical, violent Islamicists' efforts.

After Sept. 11, it became clear that these enemies can only resort to terrorism to weaken American resolve and gain concessions — and can't even do that without the clandestine help of illegitimate regimes (from Saddam in Iraq to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the theocracy in Iran, Bashar Assad in Syria and others) who provide money and sanctuary while denying culpability.

Middle Eastern terrorists and tyrants feed on one another. The Saddams and Assads of the region — and to a less extent the Saudi royal family and the Mubarak dynasty — deflected popular anger over their own failures onto the United States by allowing terrorists to scapegoat the Americans.

Yet, for a quarter-century, oil, professed anti-communism and loud promises to "fight terror" earned various reprieves from the West for these dictatorships, who were deathly afraid that one day America might catch on and do something other than shoot a cruise missile at enemies while sternly lecturing "friends."

That day came after Sept. 11. To end the old pathology, we took out the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, pressured the Syrians to leave Lebanon, encouraged Lebanese democracy, hectored the Egyptians about elections, told Libya's Moammar Gaddafi to come clean about his nuclear plans, and risked oil supplies by jawboning the Persian Gulf monarchies to liberalize.

The theory behind all these messy and often caricatured efforts was not the desire for endless war — we removed by force only the two worst regimes, in Afghanistan and Iraq — but to allow Middle Easterners a third alternative between Islamic radicalism and secular dictatorship. No wonder that wherever there are elections in the Middle East — Afghanistan and Iraq — legitimate governments there have the moral authority and the desire to fight Islamic terrorism.

Americans can blame one another all we want over the cost in lives and treasure in Iraq. But the irony is that not long ago everyone from Bill Clinton to George Bush, senators, CIA directors and federal prosecutors all agreed that Saddam had offered assistance to al-Qaida, the organization that murdered 3,000 Americans. That was one of the many reasons we went into Iraq, why Zarqawi and ex-Baathists side-by-side now attack American soldiers — and why an elected Iraqi government is fighting with us.

[Loyal American]

Bump for those who aren't connecting the dots yet!:rolleyes:

[SFC(R)L]

Helloooooo...gregor?

[Gregor]

Helloooooo...gregor?
Hi. I already told you I'm not going to read your biased sources. I won't create threads using commondreams as my source, and I expect you to do the same-- use unbiased sources, and we'll talk. It's pretty obvious that you choose not to include links because you know your sources are biased. Am I supposed to think you're smart because you did a google search? :rolleyes:

Post away. I won't be back.

[rhetorician]

Hi. I already told you I'm not going to read your biased sources. I won't create threads using commondreams as my source, and I expect you to do the same-- use unbiased sources, and we'll talk. It's pretty obvious that you choose not to include links because you know your sources are biased. Am I supposed to think you're smart because you did a google search? :rolleyes:

Post away. I won't be back.

Figures.

[PaleoPaul]

Bump for truth.

[SFC(R)L]

November 29th, 2005, 8:18 pm
Remove user from ignore listGregor
This message is hidden because Gregor is on your ignore list.

[SFC(R)L]

Pentagon spying on anti-war groups - Report
12/17/2005 7:00:00 PM GMT

The U.S. army is monitoring and collecting information on anti-war activists

A Pentagon document shows that the U.S. army is monitoring and collecting information on anti-war activists across the United States, NBC reported.

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=10263

[rhetorician]

Pentagon spying on anti-war groups - Report
12/17/2005 7:00:00 PM GMT

The U.S. army is monitoring and collecting information on anti-war activists

A Pentagon document shows that the U.S. army is monitoring and collecting information on anti-war activists across the United States, NBC reported.

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=10263

Lord, I don't know which was more ignorant and hyped to death, the AlJazeera article, or Barbara's comments later.

Obviously, she's never applied for a credit card or a bank loan, if she thinks the DoD "spying" is all that evil. :))

Lord love her, Bank America knows more about me that DoD ever will!

Dolts. :cry:

[SFC(R)L]

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/index.html

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/agm-88.htm

:)

[PaleoPaul]

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/index.html

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/agm-88.htm

:)
So these are weapons for ALL military branches?

This is interesting.

[SFC(R)L]

So these are weapons for ALL military branches?

This is interesting.

capability, stealth, and decisive action

[SFC(R)L]

TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER I > § 1801

§ 1801. Definitions

As used in this subchapter:
(a) “Foreign power” means—
(1) a foreign government or any component thereof, whether or not recognized by the United States;
(2) a faction of a foreign nation or nations, not substantially composed of United States persons;
(3) an entity that is openly acknowledged by a foreign government or governments to be directed and controlled by such foreign government or governments;
(4) a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor;
(5) a foreign-based political organization, not substantially composed of United States persons; or
(6) an entity that is directed and controlled by a foreign government or governments.
(b) “Agent of a foreign power” means—
(1) any person other than a United States person, who—
(A) acts in the United States as an officer or employee of a foreign power, or as a member of a foreign power as defined in subsection (a)(4) of this section;
(B) acts for or on behalf of a foreign power which engages in clandestine intelligence activities in the United States contrary to the interests of the United States, when the circumstances of such person’s presence in the United States indicate that such person may engage in such activities in the United States, or when such person knowingly aids or abets any person in the conduct of such activities or knowingly conspires with any person to engage in such activities; or
(2) any person who—
(A) knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power, which activities involve or may involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;
(B) pursuant to the direction of an intelligence service or network of a foreign power, knowingly engages in any other clandestine intelligence activities for or on behalf of such foreign power, which activities involve or are about to involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;
(C) knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism, or activities that are in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power;
(D) knowingly enters the United States under a false or fraudulent identity for or on behalf of a foreign power or, while in the United States, knowingly assumes a false or fraudulent identity for or on behalf of a foreign power; or
(E) knowingly aids or abets any person in the conduct of activities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) or knowingly conspires with any person to engage in activities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C).
(c) “International terrorism” means activities that—
(1) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any State;
(2) appear to be intended—
(A) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(B) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(C) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping; and
(3) occur totally outside the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to coerce or intimidate, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.
(d) “Sabotage” means activities that involve a violation of chapter 105 of title 18, or that would involve such a violation if committed against the United States.
(e) “Foreign intelligence information” means—
(1) information that relates to, and if concerning a United States person is necessary to, the ability of the United States to protect against—
(A) actual or potential attack or other grave hostile acts of a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power;
(B) sabotage or international terrorism by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power; or
(C) clandestine intelligence activities by an intelligence service or network of a foreign power or by an agent of a foreign power; or
(2) information with respect to a foreign power or foreign territory that relates to, and if concerning a United States person is necessary to—
(A) the national defense or the security of the United States; or
(B) the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.
(f) “Electronic surveillance” means—
(1) the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person who is in the United States, if the contents are acquired by intentionally targeting that United States person, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes;
(2) the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire communication to or from a person in the United States, without the consent of any party thereto, if such acquisition occurs in the United States, but does not include the acquisition of those communications of computer trespassers that would be permissible under section 2511 (2)(i) of title 18;
(3) the intentional acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any radio communication, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes, and if both the sender and all intended recipients are located within the United States; or
(4) the installation or use of an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device in the United States for monitoring to acquire information, other than from a wire or radio communication, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes.
(g) “Attorney General” means the Attorney General of the United States (or Acting Attorney General) or the Deputy Attorney General.
(h) “Minimization procedures”, with respect to electronic surveillance, means—
(1) specific procedures, which shall be adopted by the Attorney General, that are reasonably designed in light of the purpose and technique of the particular surveillance, to minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of nonpublicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons consistent with the need of the United States to obtain, produce, and disseminate foreign intelligence information;
(2) procedures that require that nonpublicly available information, which is not foreign intelligence information, as defined in subsection (e)(1) of this section, shall not be disseminated in a manner that identifies any United States person, without such person’s consent, unless such person’s identity is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance;
(3) notwithstanding paragraphs (1) and (2), procedures that allow for the retention and dissemination of information that is evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be committed and that is to be retained or disseminated for law enforcement purposes; and
(4) notwithstanding paragraphs (1), (2), and (3), with respect to any electronic surveillance approved pursuant to section 1802 (a) of this title, procedures that require that no contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 72 hours unless a court order under section 1805 of this title is obtained or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.
(i) “United States person” means a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in section 1101 (a)(20) of title 8), an unincorporated association a substantial number of members of which are citizens of the United States or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a corporation which is incorporated in the United States, but does not include a corporation or an association which is a foreign power, as defined in subsection (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this section.
(j) “United States”, when used in a geographic sense, means all areas under the territorial sovereignty of the United States and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.
(k) “Aggrieved person” means a person who is the target of an electronic surveillance or any other person whose communications or activities were subject to electronic surveillance.
(l) “Wire communication” means any communication while it is being carried by a wire, cable, or other like connection furnished or operated by any person engaged as a common carrier in providing or operating such facilities for the transmission of interstate or foreign communications.
(m) “Person” means any individual, including any officer or employee of the Federal Government, or any group, entity, association, corporation, or foreign power.
(n) “Contents”, when used with respect to a communication, includes any information concerning the identity of the parties to such communication or the existence, substance, purport, or meaning of that communication.
(o) “State” means any State of the United States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and any territory or possession of the United States.

The covert actions of the NSA are completely LEGAL

[SFC(R)L]

TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER I > § 1802

§ 1802. Electronic surveillance authorization without court order; certification by Attorney General; reports to Congressional committees; transmittal under seal; duties and compensation of communication common carrier; applications; jurisdiction of court

(a)
(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that—
(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at—
(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;
(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; and
(C) the proposed minimization procedures with respect to such surveillance meet the definition of minimization procedures under section 1801 (h) of this title; and
if the Attorney General reports such minimization procedures and any changes thereto to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at least thirty days prior to their effective date, unless the Attorney General determines immediate action is required and notifies the committees immediately of such minimization procedures and the reason for their becoming effective immediately.
(2) An electronic surveillance authorized by this subsection may be conducted only in accordance with the Attorney General’s certification and the minimization procedures adopted by him. The Attorney General shall assess compliance with such procedures and shall report such assessments to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence under the provisions of section 1808 (a) of this title.
(3) The Attorney General shall immediately transmit under seal to the court established under section 1803 (a) of this title a copy of his certification. Such certification shall be maintained under security measures established by the Chief Justice with the concurrence of the Attorney General, in consultation with the Director of Central Intelligence, and shall remain sealed unless—
(A) an application for a court order with respect to the surveillance is made under sections 1801 (h)(4) and 1804 of this title; or
(B) the certification is necessary to determine the legality of the surveillance under section 1806 (f) of this title.
(4) With respect to electronic surveillance authorized by this subsection, the Attorney General may direct a specified communication common carrier to—
(A) furnish all information, facilities, or technical assistance necessary to accomplish the electronic surveillance in such a manner as will protect its secrecy and produce a minimum of interference with the services that such carrier is providing its customers; and
(B) maintain under security procedures approved by the Attorney General and the Director of Central Intelligence any records concerning the surveillance or the aid furnished which such carrier wishes to retain.
The Government shall compensate, at the prevailing rate, such carrier for furnishing such aid.
(b) Applications for a court order under this subchapter are authorized if the President has, by written authorization, empowered the Attorney General to approve applications to the court having jurisdiction under section 1803 of this title, and a judge to whom an application is made may, notwithstanding any other law, grant an order, in conformity with section 1805 of this title, approving electronic surveillance of a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information, except that the court shall not have jurisdiction to grant any order approving electronic surveillance directed solely as described in paragraph (1)(A) of subsection (a) of this section unless such surveillance may involve the acquisition of communications of any United States person.

Completely legal

[SFC(R)L]

TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER I > § 1807

§ 1807. Report to Administrative Office of the United States Court and to Congress

In April of each year, the Attorney General shall transmit to the Administrative Office of the United States Court and to Congress a report setting forth with respect to the preceding calendar year—
(a) the total number of applications made for orders and extensions of orders approving electronic surveillance under this subchapter; and
(b) the total number of such orders and extensions either granted, modified, or denied.

Liberals need to do their homework and get as smart as me

[SFC(R)L]

TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER I > § 1808

§ 1808. Report of Attorney General to Congressional committees; limitation on authority or responsibility of information gathering activities of Congressional committees; report of Congressional committees to Congress

(a)
(1) On a semiannual basis the Attorney General shall fully inform the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concerning all electronic surveillance under this subchapter. Nothing in this subchapter shall be deemed to limit the authority and responsibility of the appropriate committees of each House of Congress to obtain such information as they may need to carry out their respective functions and duties.
(2) Each report under the first sentence of paragraph (1) shall include a description of—
(A) each criminal case in which information acquired under this chapter has been passed for law enforcement purposes during the period covered by such report; and
(B) each criminal case in which information acquired under this chapter has been authorized for use at trial during such reporting period.
(b) On or before one year after October 25, 1978, and on the same day each year for four years thereafter, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence shall report respectively to the House of Representatives and the Senate, concerning the implementation of this chapter. Said reports shall include but not be limited to an analysis and recommendations concerning whether this chapter should be
(1) amended,
(2) repealed, or
(3) permitted to continue in effect without amendment.

[Loyal American]

SFC,what got all this surveillance authorization business going?? I tried to find more information and only came up with the below article. Plus I keep getting knock off line here in Germany. Is the below what got this all started?

http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/18/221452.shtml

[SFC(R)L]

No, not really.

Click on "Finally, some sense" and read the base article.

[rhetorician]

No, not really.

Click on "Finally, some sense" and read the base article.

Thanks for the real deal, AGAIN.

This law was written to block spies--insurgents--enemies smuggled into the US to kill and destroy the US.

Gee, think there might be Al Quaeda operatives in the US? Maybe even a few (gasp!) citizens like Lind and Bagby and Malcolm X who would like to help kill and destroy the US?

[SFC(R)L]

Thanks for the real deal, AGAIN.

This law was written to block spies--insurgents--enemies smuggled into the US to kill and destroy the US.

Gee, think there might be Al Quaeda operatives in the US? Maybe even a few (gasp!) citizens like Lind and Bagby and Malcolm X who would like to help kill and destroy the US?

You are welcome.

The part of the US Code marked "Definitions" is particularly cogent.

[Loyal American]

Rhe, have you sent letters or e-mails out about this yet? If so who did you sent to?

[SFC(R)L]

(h) “Minimization procedures”, with respect to electronic surveillance, means—
(1) specific procedures, which shall be adopted by the Attorney General, that are reasonably designed in light of the purpose and technique of the particular surveillance, to minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of nonpublicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons consistent with the need of the United States to obtain, produce, and disseminate foreign intelligence information;

(2) procedures that require that nonpublicly available information, which is not foreign intelligence information, as defined in subsection (e)(1) of this section, shall not be disseminated in a manner that identifies any United States person, without such person’s consent, unless such person’s identity is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance;

(3) notwithstanding paragraphs (1) and (2), procedures that allow for the retention and dissemination of information that is evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be committed and that is to be retained or disseminated for law enforcement purposes; and

(4) notwithstanding paragraphs (1), (2), and (3), with respect to any electronic surveillance approved pursuant to section 1802 (a) of this title, procedures that require that no contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 72 hours unless a court order under section 1805 of this title is obtained or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.


This is not law enforcement, this is intelligence collection.

Using the procedures above, information can be collected electronically from US Entities as described in the Code as all courtas have ruled that the priority of collecting intelligence supercedes the privacy of the US entity if the circumstances warrant.

We do not want to arrest them and try them in court; they are by definition war criminals as they are illegal combatants and we are looking to detain them and try them by tribunal, provided we don't KILL THEM first.

We are at WAR...GET IT?

If we wish to enforce civil law at some point, we must obtain a warrant and the matter is one for the FBI, not the NSA.

[SFC(R)L]

Who Armed Iraq? Myth vs. Fact
March 17, 2003 | Charles R. Smith

Name one weapon in the Iraqi arsenal that was made in the United States.

I have offered that challenge to dozens of so-called anti-war activists who claim that the U.S. armed Iraq. According to these protesters for "peace," George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan supplied Iraq with tons of weapons.

None have been able to name the specific weapon – missile, bomb, fighter, tank or shell – that is U.S.-made or has U.S. equipment installed in it. None have been able to name any specific weapon system.

All of them have failed the challenge, providing no more than allegations that U.S. parts are in Iraqi missiles or U.S. electronics are being used by the Iraqi military. One protester even claimed that Iraq was armed with U.S.-made trucks.

Since when is a truck a weapon? Are the Iraqis going to drive backwards, fuel tank first, into the U.S. Army?

Time to separate the myth from the reality. The propaganda spun by the far left is false. The facts show that Iraq is armed with a wide range of weapons – none of which came from the U.S.

Iraqi Air Force

The Iraqi air force does not fly Falcons or Eagles. The majority of the Iraqi air force is made in Russia. The Russian MiG and Sukhoi design bureaus supplied Iraq with hundreds of advanced strike-fighters and the Mach 3 Foxbat interceptor.

Saddam could field a force of advanced MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters if they had not chickened out of combat during the Gulf War, flying to Iran for asylum. The Iranians, who love Saddam even less than we do, never returned the MiGs.

The remainder of the Iraqi air force comes from France and China. The Chinese supplied Saddam with the Chengdu F-7, a copy of the Russian MiG-21. The F-7 can fly from unimproved runways and is known to be a vicious in-close dog fighter.

However, the French Mirage F-1 is reportedly the best jet fighter in Iraqi hands. You can view an Iraqi F-1 in action on the State Department Web site, testing a chemical spraying system.

If you still believe that the Iraqis have no chemical weapons, think again. Iraq did not modify its best multimillion-dollar fighter jet to spray for fruit flies.

Anyone with half of a brain knows that you cannot keep a modern jet fighter in the air without spare parts. Thus the Russian, Chinese and French jets should be museum pieces after 12 years of a so-called U.N. ban on weapons sales to Iraq. Yet somehow Saddam has his air force flying over 1,000 sorties a month.

Thanks to excellent reporting by Bill Gertz we now know that France has been supplying spare parts for Saddam's Mirage fighters. The French spare parts arrived in Baghdad not 20 years ago during the Cold War but last year, just in time to face our forces today.

Merci! With friends like, that who needs enemies?

Iraqi Missiles

Perhaps the Iraqi missile force has some U.S.-made weapons? Not. The primary Iraqi missile is the Russian-made Scud. Other missiles include the FROG-7 from Russia, the Exocet from France and the Silkworm from China.

The Iraqi air defense has plenty of missiles ... from Russia, China and France. The SA-2 Guideline, SA-3 Goa and SA-6 Gainful SAM missiles are all of Russian or Chinese manufacture. The French also supplied Baghdad with a number of Roland air defense missile systems.

Even the missile parts are from Chinese, German and French sources. Israeli authorities know full well what is inside Iraqi-made Scud missiles since many of them fell on Tel Aviv during the Gulf War. The Israelis found that the Scud warhead electronics were made in Germany – not the U.S.A.

In addition, William Safire recently wrote a column noting that a Chinese chemical company had supplied rocket fuel to Iraq through a French front company. Safire identified the fuel, the companies and the Iraqi missile facility where it was mixed into new Iraqi rockets. Again, the missile fuel sale was made within the last year, just in time to make new Iraqi missiles pointed at Kuwait, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Saddam sends his love to Paris and Beijing. Without your help he certainly could not threaten his neighbors with nerve gas and anthrax.

Iraqi Army

Okay, if not jet fighters and missiles, then how about tanks? Certainly the biggest weapons seller in the world, the U.S.A., sold tanks to Iraq.

The Iraqi armor force is made up of Chinese and Russian models familiar to any "cold" warrior. The Iraqi T-72 and T-55 tanks are all of Russian manufacture. The Iraqis also have a large number of Type-59 Chinese tanks and Russian-made BMP armored troop carriers. No M-1 Abrams here.

How about attack helicopters? The Iraqis have a number of choppers they used against the Kurds and Shiites.

So sorry, the Iraqi attack chopper force is Russian and French. The Russians supplied Iraq with a large number of the Mil-24 Hind attack helicopters, armed to the teeth with cannon, missiles and even chemical weapon sprayers.

The French supplied Saddam with a large number of Gazelle attack helicopters. The same French also managed to keep Saddam's attack helicopter force flying today with spare parts.

Guns, then? Surely the U.S. supplied Saddam with guns?

Nope. The main Iraqi artillery is the French 155mm howitzer. The remainder of Iraq's artillery is 122mm Russian-made cannons and Russian-made short-range rocket launchers. Even the Iraqi foot soldier is armed with the venerable AK-47 of Russian and Chinese make.

Iran-Iraq War

The facts are that during the Iran-Iraq war the U.S. supplied Iraq with something much more valuable than guns: satellite information on when and where the Iranians were going to attack.

Of course, current anti-war activists seize this piece of information without putting it into historical context. The information was supplied during the height of the Cold War. The main threat to America was the Soviet Union and the biggest fear in the Gulf was the Ayatollah Khomeini.

You remember the chant "death to America"? It almost seems that the ayatollah invented it. Ironically, the Ayatollah made his way to Tehran from his home in exile – Paris.

The Reagan administration, aware that the Iranian ayatollah had threatened to turn the Gulf into a sea of fire, assisted Saddam so that he would not lose the war. The assistance stopped short of helping Saddam win the war.

In fact, when it appeared the Iraqis were on the verge of victory, the Reagan administration transferred real weapons to the Iranians. The infamous Iran-Contra scandal involved a large number of badly needed U.S. TOW anti-tank missiles that were sold to Iran.

The U.S. missiles proved to be critical to the Iranian defense against Iraq's superior Russian tank force. The result was a stalemate and the war ended.

France/Russia/China

The fact is that Saddam owes billions to France, Russia and China for weapons purchases. Clearly, Iraq is buying more weapons from Paris and Beijing despite a U.N. arms embargo. Perhaps one reason why Paris, Moscow and Beijing oppose a war in Iraq is because they would lose their best customer.

The propaganda spun by the far left that the U.S. armed Iraq is false and backed by no facts. The so-called anti-war types are more interested in slamming Bush than stopping a war. None have been able to name one American-made weapon in the Iraqi arsenal.

More importantly, none of them can give one good reason why Saddam should stay in power.

[SFC(R)L]

Chirac says no proof of Iraq weapons [AXIS OF WEASEL ALERT]
Reuters ^ | February 10, 2003 | Reuters

Chirac says no proof of Iraq weapons

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac, presenting a joint stand with Russia and Germany against U.S. pressure for military action in Iraq, has said there is no irrefutable proof that Iraq possesses banned weapons.

"We are ready to envisage all that is possible to do in the framework of the U.N. resolution 1441. This resolution does not include sending U.N. troops," Chirac told a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin after bilateral talks on Iraq on Monday.

"All possibilities of the resolution must be explored and that still leaves a lot of room for manoeuvre to achieve the goal of eliminating any weapons of mass destruction that Iraq may possess. On this issue, I do not have undisputed proof," Chirac said.

Chirac read out a joint declaration from France, Russia and Germany calling for arms inspections in Iraq to be reinforced and for all possible peaceful methods to eliminate any banned weapons to be tried rather than immediately resorting to war.

[SFC(R)L]

The Iraqi Tribes and the Post-Saddam System

Iraq Memo #18, July 8, 2003

Amatzia Baram, Professor of Middle East History, University of Haifa, Israel

Outside of Iraq, the common wisdom holds that Saddam Hussein's power base in the Sunni Arab community was both monolithic and loyal to his regime and so is likely to prove entirely uncooperative in post-Saddam Iraq. In truth, important elements of Iraqi tribal society harbored grudges toward the defunct regime because they, like many others, were the victims of its atrocities, and so may prove willing to cooperate with the new political system. The support of such tribal groups is particularly important in the countryside, but it may also be helpful in the large towns. Such support could be extremely useful as coalition forces face growing agitation from a few influential radical Shiite clergy and daily armed attacks coming from Sunni Arab supporters of the Baath regime embittered by the loss of their privileges and hoping to bring Saddam back to power.

http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/fellows/baram20030708.htm

[Loyal American]

SFC, good post.....we were just talking about who armed Iraq last night. :D

[SFC(R)L]

Outside Balad, I touched french Mirage jets unearthed by our troops.

I have no illusions as to who the enemy is and what the aganda happens to be.

[lily100]

A dateline should include a DATE, folks. It does sometimes matter when, plus or minus a few years, when something was said.

In any case, Mdm. Rices' words sound fine, as is usually the case.
But her phrase, that we ought to "remove the very source of this terror by transforming that troubled region." begs the question: how best to do that?

One choice is to invade and occupy Iraq. That may have seemed like the best idea to the Bush group, at the time. I wonder if they actually still feel that way; i wonder if they have regrets.
Many people, myself included, thought the best way to proceed in the summer of 2003 was to:

0. Keep the military and reconstruction focus on Afghanistan, find & capture OBL and his crew, keep the Taliban on the run; pressure Pakistan to help there;
1. Keep the pressure on Iraq to allow UN inspections to proceed, including the use of the THREAT of military action;
2. Pressure and cajole and threaten and entice Israel and the Palestinians to acheive a settlement;
3. Pressure Saudi Arabia to crack down on its internal terrorist networks.

THink what we could have accomplished with 100's of BILLIONS of dollars and thousands of American soldiers lives (including the gravely wounded).
Kind of staggers the imagination, doesn't it.
But this crew thought there would be very few causulties (documented by Pat RObertson, among others), and cost very little (as stated by Paul Wolfwowitz).

So it turns out they made a decsion that - a. hasn't really helped the overall situation, b. has generally hurt the overall war on terror (as much through opportunity cost as anything else, and - c. has been EXTREMELY expensive, both in monetary and human terms (and again, opportunities lost).

Overall, a bad deal. Now, we are kind of stuck with it, genie's out the bottle and all that. But for Rice to proclaim how now we've got to proceed in Iraq is like saying 'we must stay with this noble cause of cleaning the milk up off the kitchen floor!' after she clumsily dropped the bottle.
Yeah, we've got to, she's right about that. But i don't think this group knows how to do even that.

0. Funny how times change. When Bush first said he was going after the terrorists where they hide, starting with Afghanistan, most liberals were screaming and screeching no, no, give peace a chance. Yet, now, they say going into Afghanistan was what they supported all along. Your post indicates you are not one of those about-face liberals, but there were many. As to the substance of your comment, I disagree. I believe that Afghanistan is going fine and that mission was not impeded by going into Iraq. Granted, we have not gotten OBL (who could very well be dead), but we did get most of his crew, we did pressure Pakistan to the best of our ability, and we are aiding the Afghan people to keep the Taliban from regaining the power position there. We can fight multiple fronts in a war all at the same time, and IMO, that's what we've been doing. Did everything go perfectly? No, but wars never do. Crap occurs, no matter who is in charge.

1. This is absurd. C'mon, read your own words. Pressure Iraq with the UN? Puhleez! A threat of military action with no intent of carrying it out? Wow, that's powerful stuff.

2. Pressure and threaten the Palestinians with what, empty gestures and saber-rattling? Cajole and entice them? Ooh, yeah, that's an effective policy for the world's uber-power to use on terrorist thugs like Hezbollah. Cajoling. Enticing. LMAO.

3. I like the idea of pressuring the Saudis. But with WHAT? HOW? Details of your idea, please.

As to your other comments: There HAVE been relatively few casualties in this war, compared to any other war we've ever fought. As to the cost, it would have been a helluva lot cheaper to get Bin Laden while he was lounging around the Sudan desert, but oh, well. The POTUS then was a very busy man with his priorities in more southern regions, so to speak. And I disagree with you that the Iraq war hasn't helped the situation. I believe that history will look back on democratization of the ME, beginning with Iraq, as an extraordinary and effective policy for dealing with Islamic terrorism.

[lily100]

No, that was not my assumption. Remember, this set of proposals is pre-Iraq invasion, which was the question at hand. By invading and not controlling the state we have removed control of Iraq and allowed AlQaeda a lot of room to manuever. We have facilitated to some extent the expansion of AlQaeda, in part by inflaming further nationalistic / regionalistic passions. As we did by setting up military operations in Saudi Arabia. Of course AlQaeda had wide operations, but by not staying focused in Afghanistan, by not putting long-term and intense effort into capturing OBL and as many of his crew as possible, we allowed their organization more opportunity to metastasize.

Now, i don't assume that. I don't believe capturing OBL in 2002/2003 would have ended the WoT. WHat i am stating is that doing so would have been one the MOST HELPFUL steps we could have taken. If we had remained focused, and accomplished that, it would have been a very good blow, at the time. Actually, that time has passed, it would no longer be all that helpful, in my estimation, although still worth doing.
We have pressured Pakistan, that's how. My four points above are what i considered the most important steps, and i don't claim that we have completely failed on all of them, and in dealing with Pakistan i think we've done a reasonably decent job. I agree with your general points, that Musharaf can only do so much, and has done a fair amount. I think we've failed to engage them adequately on a clandestine level, but yes there are limits to what we can obtain from the government.


What Hussien was "boasting about" and reality were two different worlds entirely. The fact is that we had significant military control of the country, by virtue of a lockdown on the airspace and embargo of ports, among other points. Hussiens boasts about the sanctions crumbling don't mean anything ? Why would you even quote that as support?
SO, UN inspections didn't have to end. We could have kept inspectors in the country for a long long time. We had Hussien under our thumb to such a great extent that he couldn't have 'aided terrorists'. I think you are assuming that we had to remove Hussien from power in order to render him impotent. I think that is a faulty assumption.
And you talk about his being able to 'restart his nuclear program'. As i said, we could have prevented that without owning Iraq.
And, it brings up the larger question about priorities. If we are so concerned about nuclear weapons in the wrong hands, we should have and should now devote WAY more resources to securing the weapons, materials, and knowledge that were cast adrift after the disintegration of the USSR. We should be devoting a lot of resources to following up on the Pakistani nuclear proliferation.
That's quite debatable. WIth paying greater attention to Iraq in post 9/11 world, we did the right thing, and the increased scrutiny of Iraq, the UN, and getting inspectors back in were all positive and effective policies. We should have followed through with those. Perhaps there would have come a time when it made sense to invade Iraq. But it was rushed, and done sooner than necessary, if it would have ever been necessary. THe haste has since showed up in the huge difference between what this administration thought was going to happen and what has actually happened, so far.
So what do you propose as an alternative? Bush's policy of backing away from the whole situation certainly hasn't produced good results.
ANd how many American soldiers have perished since 1947 in Israel, as a result of that policy ? Not too many. This is a very difficult problem, and it may take longer still.
As for Iraq - i'm not 'bitching' about holding on there, necessarily. i'm saying two things: this admin including Rice made very poor decisions, and i don't think they have even half a clue as to how to resolve it now in the best possible way.

Again, i was giving a plan of what needed to be done, not saying that NONE of it was being done. We have been working on Saudi Arabian leadership, the royals, to reform and to root out terrorists; their family is generally on our side, because the terrorists consider the royal family enemies as well.
Take a look at Iraq's geopolitical location. Does "gateway to Mecca" mean anything to you?
The fact of Iraq as the center of Middle Eastern culture is well-known. THe consequences of invading and occupying it, as a Western country, were unfortunately not carefully considered by our largely ignorant leadership, in 2003. Therefore they committed a double blunder: first, deciding to invade and conquer, and second, doing a very poor job of securing the country in the aftermath of 'victory'. Meanwhile, by focusing attention and resources on this, they (meaning we) were sucked into a power vacuum that made persuing other, more productive, goals in the interest of our national security, all but impossible.
Other than that though, Bush, Condi, Cheney, they've done GREAT![/QUOTE]

Seemore, what facts support your claim that we have lost focus on Afghanistan? Because the media isn't talking about it? I know poeple in country right now, and believe me, they haven't lost their focus. I love how you assume that getting OBL was the main thing we needed to do (you must feel this way, becuase you keep harping on it). It's important, but it's not the only thing that counts. Try to expand your horizon a little.

I agree with you about Pakistan.

The issue of Saddam and what he had or didn't have and that everybody agreed ahead of time on what he had and the worthiness of saving innocent Iraqis has all been addressed ad nauseum, so I'm not even going there. We can just disagree about that.

What makes you think Bush is "backing away" from anything on Israel/Palestine? Condi just got back from that region not long ago and was doing a fine job there, BTW.

As to poor decisions, it's laughable that this administration is being accused of this when the previous admininstration was so lamentably lacking when it came to making ANY decisions to deal with terrorism.

[lily100]

Hi. I already told you I'm not going to read your biased sources. I won't create threads using commondreams as my source, and I expect you to do the same-- use unbiased sources, and we'll talk. It's pretty obvious that you choose not to include links because you know your sources are biased. Am I supposed to think you're smart because you did a google search? :rolleyes:

Post away. I won't be back.

Thank God.

[SFC(R)L]

The fact of Iraq as the center of Middle Eastern culture is well-known. THe consequences of invading and occupying it, as a Western country, were unfortunately not carefully considered by our largely ignorant leadership, in 2003. Therefore they committed a double blunder: first, deciding to invade and conquer, and second, doing a very poor job of securing the country in the aftermath of 'victory'.

We did not "invade" Iraq, nor did we "conquer" Iraq.

We liberated Iraq.

The Iraqis we counted on to police their newly free country took off or were saddam loyalists.

[skprtod914]

Iraqi Terrorists Detail Ties To Bin Laden
Dave Eberhart,
Monday, March 18, 2002

A terrorist group operating in northern Iraq told the New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg that their organization "has received funds directly from al-Qaeda."
In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory, captured members of Ansar al-Islam also alleged:


The intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam.

Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.

A number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam.

Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.
If these charges are true," Goldberg writes in the current issue, "it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought."

The prisoners Goldberg spoke to last month are kept in a jail that is run by the intelligence service of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose director told Goldberg that American intelligence officials had not visited the site. "The FBI and the CIA haven't come out yet," the director said.

According to Kurdish officials, Goldberg reported, "Ansar al-Islam grew out of an idea spread by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former chief of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now Osama bin Laden's deputy in al-Qaeda."

One official explained, "Zawahiri's philosophy is that you should fight the infidel even in the smallest village, that you should try to form Islamic armies everywhere. The Kurdish fundamentalists were influenced by Zawahiri."

The group has between five hundred and six hundred members, according to Kurdish officials, including Arab Afghans and at least thirty Iraqi Kurds who were trained in Afghanistan.

Last September, the officials said, representatives of Osama bin Laden gave Ansar al-Islam $300,000. These officials added that the real leader of Ansar al-Islam is an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, who has spent a great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps but is also, they said, an officer of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's principal intelligence service.


"A man named Abu Agab is in charge of the northern bureau of the Mukhabarat," one official told Goldberg. "And he is Abu Wa'el's control officer."

Smuggling Al-Qaeda Members


Kurdish intelligence officials said that there is no proof that Ansar al-Islam has ever been involved in international terrorism or that Saddam Hussein's agents were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. But they claimed that several men associated with al-Qaeda have been smuggled over the Iranian border into an Ansar al-Islam stronghold near the city of Halabja.

Two of these men, who go by the names Abu Yasir and Abu Muzaham, are high-ranking al-Qaeda members, they say. An Iraqi intelligence officer, Qassem Hussein Muhammad, one of the prisoners with whom Goldberg spoke, said that his own involvement in Islamic radicalism began in 1992 in Baghdad, when he met Ayman al-Zawahiri after being assigned to help guard him.

After reports surfaced that Abu Wa'el had been captured by American agents, Qassem says, he was sent by the Mukhabarat to Kurdistan to find out what was going on. "That's when I was captured," he said. Asked if he was sure that Abu Wa'el was on Saddam's side, Qassem said, "He's an employee of the Mukhabarat. He's the actual decision-maker in the group -- Ansar al-Islam -- but he's an employee of the Mukhabarat."

In the prison, Goldberg also spoke to a young Iraqi Arab named Haqi Ismail, whom Kurdish officials described as a middle-to high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, who was captured as he tried to get into Kurdistan three weeks after the start of the American attack on Afghanistan.

Jawad, a twenty-nine-year-old Iranian Arab who is a smuggler and bandit from the city of Ahvaz, and whom Kurdish intelligence officials said was most recently employed by bin Laden, told Goldberg that he began to smuggle for bin Laden in the late 1990s.

Liquid Might Be Bio-Weapon

In 2000, Jawad's al-Qaeda contact told him to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into Afghanistan for the Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad told Goldberg that he had no idea what liquid was inside the motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or biological weapon.

"There's been a relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of al-Qaeda since 1992," Jawad said.

In the articel,"The Great Terror," Goldberg also provided a comprehensive account of Saddam's massive conventional, chemical, and possibly biological attacks on the Kurds in the late 1980s, during which as many as 200,000 Kurds in northern Iraq were killed, out of a population of about four million.

Christine Gosden, an English geneticist who has been studying the attacks on the Kurds since 1998, says, "The Iraqi government was using chemistry to reduce the population of Kurds. The Holocaust is still having its effect. The Jews are fewer in number now than they were in 1939. That's not natural. Now, if you take out 200,000 men and boys from Kurdistan, you've affected the population structure. There are a lot of widows who are not having children."

Gosden believes that it is quite possible that the countries of the West will soon experience serious chemical- and biological-weapons attacks. "Please understand," she said, "the Kurds were for practice."

Gosden told Goldberg that she cannot understand why the West has not been more eager to investigate the chemical attacks in Kurdistan. "It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest that the West would want to study the long-term effects of chemical weapons on civilians, on the DNA," she says, pointing out that, "for Saddam's scientists, the Kurds were a test population. They were the human guinea pigs. It was a way of identifying the most effective chemical agents for use on civilian populations, and the most effective means of delivery."

Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector who was formerly a high official in Saddam's nuclear program, told Goldberg that he had direct knowledge of the Army's plans for Halabja. "The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as 'How far are the dead from the cannisters?'"

Fouad Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist in Kurdistan who led Goldberg on his tour of Halabja, and other experts "now believe that Halabja and other places in Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent."

Baban told Goldberg that the Iraqis could conceivably have used aflatoxin as well; aflatoxin is a biological agent that causes long-term liver damage. Baban said, "Here is a civilian population exposed to chemical and possibly biological weapons, and people are developing many varieties of cancers and congenital abnormalities."

In 1995, the Iraqis admitted that they had weaponized aflatoxin, Charles Duelfer, then the deputy executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection team in Iraq, told Goldberg. "This was the first time Iraq actually agreed to discuss the Presidential origins of these programs," Duelfer said.

Although "it is unclear what biological and chemical weapons Saddam possesses today," Goldberg wrote, August Hanning, the chief of the B.N.D., the German intelligence agency, provided information on another type of weapon. "It is our estimate," he said, "that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years."

No terrorist link? I think not!:))

[SFC(R)L]

The hits just keep on coming..........

[SFC(R)L]

Iran is the Root of Islamic Terrorism
www.CapitalismMagazine.com ^ | July 5, 2003 | Joseph Kellard

Following an overwhelming military victory in Iraq, the Bush administration has renewed its pursuit of creating a Palestinian terrorist state, instead of focusing on the premier sponsor of anti-American terrorism: Iran.

While the administration once again entangles itself in "peace" talks with Palestinian terrorists, freedom-loving rebels in Iran have stepped up the revolt against their Islamic fundamentalist rulers who enforce religious social decrees, impose strict censorship, and imprison or execute political opponents.

Iran remains the ideological center of the America-hatred pervading the Islamic Middle East. That theocracy began warring with America when its rulers took 52 Americans hostage in 1979. Highlights of Iran's terrorism on Americans include the bombing and murder of 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983 and the killing of 19 US servicemen bombed at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/942002/posts

[SFC(R)L]

Al-Qaida's Links to Iranian Security Services

Yael Shahar
ICT Researcher

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, terrorism has served the regime of the ayatollahs as a tool of both domestic and foreign policy. This policy was directed against Iranian citizens inside Iran, as well as against advocates of opposition views in exile. Iran's sponsorship of terrorism has bridged ideological gaps and political divides; Teheran has provided arms and training to such groups as the Gama'a al-Islamiyah, the Egyptian al-Jihad, and the Algerian G.I.A. Al-Qaida too, has benefited from Iranian support and expertise for more than a decade. More recently, this support has taken the form of free passage for al-Qaida activists seeking to establish a foothold in Lebanon. There are also signs that al-Qaida has sought the help of Iran in deepening it involvement in Palestinian terrorism against Israel.
http://joshuawoody.com/iran.htm

Iran has been a target all along.....

[crux]

Well, Cheney certainly implied it:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/

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

He meant many many years, http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~bvon/images/map3.gif

Great thread SFC(R)L !

+1

[SFC(R)L]

Wahhabi Islam – the Real Enemy of the West Wahhabi Islam
| 5/30/2003 | Robert G. Williscroft

Wahhabi Islam – the Real Enemy of the West

By Robert G. Williscroft

In the world most of us know, we have nothing analogous to Wahhabi Islam. This may explain why we appear to be ignoring this ominous threat, despite everything we have accomplished against international terrorism and radical regimes in Southwest Asia in the past two years.

Wahhabism flourishes in every Muslim country.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/924852/posts

time to wake up

[stoked]

To demonstrate IRAQ’s commitment to BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA, HIJAZI presented BIN LADEN with a pack of blank, official Yemeni passports, supplied to IRAQI INTELLIGENCE from their Yemeni contacts. HIJAZI’s visit to Kandahar was followed by a contingent of IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials who provided additional training and instruction to BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives in Afghanistan. These Iraqi officials included members of “Unit 999,” a group of elite IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials who provided advanced sabotage and infiltration training and instruction to AL QAEDA operatives.

I know, the silence is deafening, isn't it?

[Loyal American]

Iran is the Root of Islamic Terrorism
www.CapitalismMagazine.com ^ | July 5, 2003 | Joseph Kellard

Following an overwhelming military victory in Iraq, the Bush administration has renewed its pursuit of creating a Palestinian terrorist state, instead of focusing on the premier sponsor of anti-American terrorism: Iran.

While the administration once again entangles itself in "peace" talks with Palestinian terrorists, freedom-loving rebels in Iran have stepped up the revolt against their Islamic fundamentalist rulers who enforce religious social decrees, impose strict censorship, and imprison or execute political opponents.

Iran remains the ideological center of the America-hatred pervading the Islamic Middle East. That theocracy began warring with America when its rulers took 52 Americans hostage in 1979. Highlights of Iran's terrorism on Americans include the bombing and murder of 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983 and the killing of 19 US servicemen bombed at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/942002/posts


SFC, I know you won't agree but I have nearly come to a point where I just wish US would stay out of Israels way and let them do "whatever" they have to do to be safe. Giving up land doesn't work as we can all see and how do you make peace with someone who clearly doesn't want to do it in a friendly way without using a considerable amount of force. Now I sound like a war monger!:cry:

[Loyal American]

[QUOTE=SFC(R)L]Wahhabi Islam – the Real Enemy of the West Wahhabi Islam
| 5/30/2003 | Robert G. Williscroft

Wahhabi Islam – the Real Enemy of the West

By Robert G. Williscroft

In the world most of us know, we have nothing analogous to Wahhabi Islam. This may explain why we appear to be ignoring this ominous threat, despite everything we have accomplished against international terrorism and radical regimes in Southwest Asia in the past two years.

Wahhabism flourishes in every Muslim country.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/924852/posts

This is what causes me to have sleepless nights frequently. :cry: This is what is at the heart of our war on terror. It does seem like we aren't addressing it and some times it scares me because we have worked so hard in Iraq and if Wahhabism isn't snuffed out or gotten under control, .......well, I have my concerns! I know you can't wipe out an evil ideology and bring a hardened 7th century generation into the 21st Century over night but we need to be doing more, don't ya think? The heart of the problems needs to be brought to center stage and massive education needs to begin. Our troops can't fix everything SFC, why do we continue to be so friendly with Saudia Arabia.........why isn't our leaders calling the duck a duck.......okay, this is pretty negative for me but it really bothers me that we have our troops on the line and we aren't doing what we need to do to help!:mad:

[Loyal American]

SFC, this really has turned into an awesome thread with a great deal of information and facts. I can't tell you how many times I have come in to pull pieces of information out of it for e-mails I am sending to my sweetheart dearly elected!:cool:

THANKS!!!:clap:

[SFC(R)L]

SFC, this really has turned into an awesome thread with a great deal of information and facts. I can't tell you how many times I have come in to pull pieces of information out of it for e-mails I am sending to my sweetheart dearly elected!:cool:

THANKS!!!:clap:

With my compliments.....

[Curator]

Wow...every post has crap from 2001, 2002, 2003

Anything recent like maybe last year at least? Something from the DoD or Foggybottom that can be believed, or are you just going to post every neocon talking point you can find?

[SFC(R)L]

Wow...every post has crap from 2001, 2002, 2003

Anything recent like maybe last year at least? Something from the DoD or Foggybottom that can be believed, or are you just going to post every neocon talking point you can find?

Wow, every post of yours proves the eternal stupidity of liberals.

Read and learn, sweetcheeks.

[SFC(R)L]

Here you go, skippy.

Don't ever post a snotty message to me again.

Read and learn and then you might just, one day, be almost as smart as me.

Saddam's Terror Training Camps
What the documents captured from the former Iraqi regime reveal--and why they should all be made public.
by Stephen F. Hayes
01/16/2006, Volume 011, Issue 17

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/550kmbzd.asp

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

[Curator]

And when this gets reported on the main stream media or is on MTP I'll believe it. Until then I will gladly answer all your Reich-Wing crap with the same snotty attitude you deserve.

Tool

[SFC(R)L]

And when this gets reported on the main stream media or is on MTP I'll believe it. Until then I will gladly answer all your Reich-Wing crap with the same snotty attitude you deserve.

Tool

you're a moron, Biff

buzz off

Nazi references are a violation of forum rules

consider yourself warned

show respect for your betters

get out of my thread

[Ronin11208]

And when this gets reported on the main stream media or is on MTP I'll believe it. Until then I will gladly answer all your Reich-Wing crap with the same snotty attitude you deserve.

Tool

You mean these "mainstream media" outlets?

NY Times - Jayson Blair

Newsweek - Michael Isikoff Korans flushed down the toilet

CBS - Dan Rather/Mary Mapes forged documents

BBC - Andrew Gilligan

Yeah, that MSM is ironclad. :rolleyes:

[SFC(R)L]

Cheney Reiterates Iraq Terror Connection
By Petty Officer 3rd Class John R. Guardiano, USN
American Forces Press Service


WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 2006 – Saddam Hussein's sponsorship of terrorists and terrorism is a matter of open public record, Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday.
Cheney was a guest on nationally syndicated radio programs hosted by Sean Hannity and Tony Snow.

"The fact is we know that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were heavily involved with terror," Cheney told Snow. "They were carried as a terror-sponsoring state by our State Department for many, many years." He cited two terror organizations in particular -- Abu Nidal and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - that operated out of Saddam's Iraq. He also noted that Saddam was making payments to families of suicide bombers. "All of this is very well established," Cheney said.

Snow noted that critics of the Iraq war frequently assert exactly the opposite - namely, that there "there's no linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein."

Cheney acknowledged this criticism, but said it is factually incorrect and misleading. Prior to the Iraq War, he observed, then-CIA Director George Tenet testified during open session before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda dated back at least 10 years.

"What was never established," the vice president said, "was that there was a link between Iraq and the attacks of 9/11. ... So what some people have done is gotten very sloppy and ... then jumped to the conclusion that there was no relationship at all with respect to al Qaeda."

In fact, captured Iraqi documents, which only now are being reviewed, offer additional evidence of this relationship, Cheney said. But regardless of the exact reasons that the United States liberated Iraq, "significant progress" has been made there, he told Hannity.

The vice president admitted that it's hard sometimes to see this progress, given the continued level of violence. "But when you think of the fact they've made every single political deadline that's been set -- the January elections; (they) wrote a constitution in the summer, ratified it in October; national elections in December -- it has been, I think, a remarkable success story so far," he said.

Acknowledging that much remains to be done in Iraq, Cheney said it's a matter of having the will to do it. "The only way we lose," he said, "is if we pack it in and go home - and we're clearly not going to do that."

Cheney noted "significant progress" in both Iraq and Afghanistan, such as the liberation of 50 million people, the beginnings of democracy in both places and the establishment of indigenous security forces. "It's a remarkable achievement that's due primarily to the enormous capability and courage of the American military and the president's leadership," he said. "And I think history will judge it very favorably."

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2006/20060112_3914.html

[SFC(R)L]

Building Capabilities Key to Defense of Future, Rumsfeld Says
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 2006 – Building military capabilities is the heart of countering threats, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said during a Pentagon news conference today.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2006/20060112_3916.html

Troop levels are important, but capability is what drives our successes.

A bigger footprint in Iraq would have been a disaster.