Ya Gotta read this.

[Hugh Jardon]

Ya gotta read this one.
Why hasn't Al Qaida hit us harder since 9/11? If I was Osama there would be at least one tanker sunk in either the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal preferably both. The Middle East would be a natural disaster area. Saddams tactical move of blowing the oil wells in Kuwait would look like childs play. I also question the reasons why say the Chechens don't seem to be cooperating more closely with their brotheren to the south.

I really think that this is a very big blown out of proportion boondoggle.

Sound off please.

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
By Robert Scheer
The Los Angeles Times

Tuesday 11 January 2005

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?

To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media."

Stern stuff, indeed. But consider just a few of the many questions the program poses along the way:

If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?
How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?
Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?
Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?

Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered, well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden helped finance various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that have engaged in terror, including the 9/11 attacks. Nor does it challenge the notion that a terrifying version of fundamentalist Islam has led to gruesome spates of violence throughout the world. But the film, both more sober and more deeply provocative than Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda.

Terrorism is deeply threatening, but it appears to be a much more fragmented and complex phenomenon than the octopus-network image of Al Qaeda, with Bin Laden as its head, would suggest.

While the BBC documentary acknowledges that the threat of terrorism is both real and growing, it disagrees that the threat is centralized:

"There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist ideas and who will use the techniques of mass terror - the attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear. But the nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells' in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy."

The fact is, despite the efforts of several government commissions and a vast army of investigators, we still do not have a credible narrative of a "war on terror" that is being fought in the shadows.

Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission nor any court of law has been able to directly take evidence from the key post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States. Everything we know comes from two sides that both have a great stake in exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda: the terrorists themselves and the military and intelligence agencies that have a vested interest in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy.

Such a state of national ignorance about an endless war is, as "The Power of Nightmares" makes clear, simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy.







http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...08,print.column

[SEALInTheMaking]

Propaganda at it's most senseless. :roll:

[usa320]

Why hasn't Al Qaida hit us harder since 9/11?

They cant. 3/4 of their leadership is toast.


All they can do is carry out attacks on lightly defended targets. I doubt they will ever have the resources or capabilities or coordination to launch something the scale of 9-11 ever again.

[Brozozo]

Don't dismiss Al-Q yet...

[walford]

Al Qaeda has been degraded significantly. The phenomenon of 17 people being convicted in Britain indicates nothing about the strength of the organization. Thousands of terrorists have been killed. Their finances have been depleted. They have no country to claim as a safe haven. Perhaps that is why they have not been as dangerous.

Consider what al Qaeda's strength would be right now if Al Gore had been sworn in 4 years ago. His boss already demonstrated the type of reaction to expect terrorism to bring. Why should we expect his reaction to have been any different? Above all else, considerations of fleeting public opinion would have trumped the need to do what needs to be done. If you recall, there were protest marches against 'the war' in DC on the very first weekend after 9/11 -- even before any such decision was taken.

There was also a great deal of hand-wringing about 'why do they hate us' and other such drivel. Remember, we have a cadre in the West who automatically see a willingness to resort to violence as evidence of justifiable desperation, not evil. These people would have been listened to much more by a Gore administration. Perhaps some sort of concessions would have been offered to the Wahabbis in order to address their ‘grievances.’

At his most strident, a President Gore would have launched yet another volley of cruise missile strikes and would have had OBL tried and convicted in absentia -- as was done with other terrorists before. The Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan and OBL's bases would be largely intact with his prestige greatly enhanced.

Who knows how many more terrorist attacks would have taken place since then on American soil under such circumstances?

[Hugh Jardon]

Who gives a tinkers dam about Al Gore? rofl

All politicians are morons and equally worthless.

All the ballwasher in office now has gotten us is a bill to pay the likes of which we haven't seen in decades with no end in sight.

The whole thing has been screwed from the start and it's getting worse.


Consider what al Qaeda's strength would be right now if Al Gore had been sworn in 4 years ago.

I will bet that there are a lot more "terrorists" now than in 2000, and they are a lot more experienced. In an insurgency that lasts for any length of time there is a learning process.


Who knows how many more terrorist attacks would have taken place since then on American soil under such circumstances?

I'll bet none, just like now. Maybe Gore would have shut down the hemmorage Mexico has on our southern border. Maybe we would really be doing something about our dependance on oil (our real problem)
and our inability to get off the Saudi oil tit.

Numbnut Americans are not capable of thinking about this in depth, all they do is follow tha ass in front of them.

The theme of the article is about manipulation by fear, and it sure works on Americans. At least most of us.

[walford]

Numbnut Americans are not capable of thinking about this in depth, all they do is follow tha ass in front of them.Considering your post in juxtaposition to mine, the comparative depth in thinking is obvious indeed.

[Virus]

So, your saying that america is the only people to ever been lead around by the nose? Not everyone buys into a lot of the bull****, but some people do believe that these muther****ers had to be taken out, but yes i do agree on the oil dependecy thing, we need to get of that ****, its like crack.

[Ratman]

Why hasn't Al Qaida hit us harder since 9/11?

They cant. 3/4 of their leadership is toast.


All they can do is carry out attacks on lightly defended targets. I doubt they will ever have the resources or capabilities or coordination to launch something the scale of 9-11 ever again.

For your lips to God's ears.

[Tate]

Why hasn't Al Qaida hit us harder since 9/11?

AQ has tried, but they have been stopped. People from all over the world are working tirelessly to stop AQ. God only knows why the following doesn't get more press:

AQ has tried to strike the US more than once since 9/11, but has been stopped. Active AQ cells have been found and broken up in the US. The combined effort of international law enforcement, government agencies, & military along w/the US law enforcement, government agencies, & military have worked together to foil AQ attacks on US soil. One example off the top of my head: I think it started with alert Italian intelligence agents, and ended with SEALs sinking a merchant ship headed to the US with radioactive material smuggled aboard. Another one off the top of my head: SEALs destroying an AQ chemical weapons facility in Baja, Mexico. The SEALsfound an AQ surveillance video tape in the facility of a California pro football stadium. An AQ leader was recognized on the tape and was later apprehended with a couple more AQ in LA.

[Ratman]

Al Qaeda has been degraded significantly. The phenomenon of 17 people being convicted in Britain indicates nothing about the strength of the organization. Thousands of terrorists have been killed. Their finances have been depleted. They have no country to claim as a safe haven. Perhaps that is why they have not been as dangerous.

Consider what al Qaeda's strength would be right now if Al Gore had been sworn in 4 years ago. His boss already demonstrated the type of reaction to expect terrorism to bring. Why should we expect his reaction to have been any different? Above all else, considerations of fleeting public opinion would have trumped the need to do what needs to be done. If you recall, there were protest marches against 'the war' in DC on the very first weekend after 9/11 -- even before any such decision was taken.

There was also a great deal of hand-wringing about 'why do they hate us' and other such drivel. Remember, we have a cadre in the West who automatically see a willingness to resort to violence as evidence of justifiable desperation, not evil. These people would have been listened to much more by a Gore administration. Perhaps some sort of concessions would have been offered to the Wahabbis in order to address their ‘grievances.’

At his most strident, a President Gore would have launched yet another volley of cruise missile strikes and would have had OBL tried and convicted in absentia -- as was done with other terrorists before. The Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan and OBL's bases would be largely intact with his prestige greatly enhanced.

Who knows how many more terrorist attacks would have taken place since then on American soil under such circumstances?

I disagree with most of what you say. (You're not surprised, right? ;) ) I think it is more likely that we would be much further along in the war on international terrorism under Gore than under Bush.

First, I think that under Gore we would have attacked Afghanistan, would have deposed the Taliban and would have caught Mullah Omar, OBL and a number of other high-ranking terrorists that remain free today to plot again. Why? Because we wouldn't have gone to Iraq, where, incidentally, there were no Islamic fundamentalists. Gore would have been more likely to see A-stan through with purpose. Rummy got tired of A-stan because it was complicated and because they were not having any success finding OBL and the one-eyed butt-pirate on the motorcycle. That's what happens when your resources are diverted from the fight against terrorism to the fight against brutal dictators, who may butcher their own people, but who didn't attack the USA on 9/11 and who were never sponsors of Islamic international terrorism. Remember, we are doing OBL's work by getting rid of Saddam and not having a viable plan or alternative.

Second, the lack of expertise exhibited by Bush and his team in the fight against international terrorism has been the best recruiting drive for Islamic fundamentalists. And this is a war that can’t be won by just killing “them”; some have to be killed, others imprisoned. But really, the goal is to reduce the number of new recruits and in this area Bush et al has failed miserably. I believe there are exponentially more potential terrorists not than when Bush went to Iraq. The only evidence which led to Iraq being a threat to international peace that was fed to Rummy, Cheney, Condi, Bush, was from (1) Chalabi – a convicted snake oil salesman who was paid outrageous sums of money for the brilliant service of feeding the administration a menu of utter nonsense, but a meal they wanted to eat nevertheless and (2) Perle, Wolfiwitz, Feith triumvirate of neocon megalomaniacs. Their “intelligence” was as crap as Chalabi’s. I don’t think Gore would have gone to Iraq; he would have rightly determined that there was a better way to use our political, financial and military capital in the fight against international terrorism.

As for supporting the Wahabbis, again, these are your guys. Not Gore.

As for the article subject of thread, I think it is reasonable accurate. And until we see the “enemy” for what and who it is, it will be hard to defeat.

[walford]

First, I think that under Gore we would have attacked Afghanistan, would have deposed the Taliban and would have caught Mullah Omar, OBL and a number of other high-ranking terrorists that remain free today to plot again. Why? Because we wouldn't have gone to Iraq, where, incidentally, there were no Islamic fundamentalists. Gore would have been more likely to see A-stan through with purpose.Gore's history simply does not support this speculation.

As you may recall Saddam's ejected the inspectors in 1998. Saddam was permitted to retain his dictatorship on the condition that he cooperate fully with the inspections, so he was in violation. Being the inveterate Quixotic pursuer, I remember at the time writing a letter to the White House suggesting armed surprise inspections in response. The Clinton/Gore admin floated a trial balloon in front of an audience (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28025&highlight=) proposing military action. That was not well-recieved, so the idea was shelved. Every act screamed against the idea that they had the political courage to do what needs to be done even if it is not popular. Quite the contrary.

It likely would have prevented the current war by making it unnecessary. Saddam would not have been prepared for such action either.

Remember also that 9/11 was conceived and planned during the Clinton/Gore admin as well. It is now widely known that they turned down a chance to catch OBL. Their well-documented responses [FBI investigations, cruise missile strikes, aspirin factory bombings, etc.] to the terrorist attacks that occurred under their watch were so absurdly feckless they must have only served to embolden the terrorists to think they had nothing to fear from the Great Satan.
Rummy got tired of A-stan because it was complicated and because they were not having any success finding OBL and the one-eyed butt-pirate on the motorcycle. US forces had been deployed in Afghanistan for a year and a half before OIF started. They are still there. Have you looked at a topographical map of that country?

There are Americans who have remained on the Most Wanted list for decades without being caught. As I and others have explained before, OBL is but one man. Thousands of his buddies are dead or captured. Millions of dollars have been seized. His pledge to drive us to abandon the region has attained the opposite results. He is a complete and utter failure.

That's what happens when your resources are diverted from the fight against terrorism to the fight against brutal dictators, who may butcher their own people, but who didn't attack the USA on 9/11 and who were never sponsors of Islamic international terrorism. Remember, we are doing OBL's work by getting rid of Saddam and not having a viable plan or alternative.1. The US military has a history of being able to do more than one thing at a time.
2. He did indeed harbor, finance and arm terrorists.
3. The only way OBL's work will be done is if we leave a vacuum behind for his minions to fill. Advocating a precipitous withdrawal is to play right into the terrorists hands.
4. Insofar as this 'lack of a plan' canard is concerned, I am wondering how it is that you were privy to internal Pentagon documents that can give such an impression. Rumsfeld had cited von Clauswitz in the opening days of OIF, stating that any initial plans are superseded once hostilities are started. Many bad things [such as a huge humanitarian crisis] did not occur.

From the very beginning OIF has been a fluid situation. Our forces have had to adapt and the enemy has also modified tactics on an ongoing basis. The roadside bombs and IEDs are among the more recent adaptations.

Second, the lack of expertise exhibited by Bush and his team in the fight against international terrorism has been the best recruiting drive for Islamic fundamentalists. And this is a war that can’t be won by just killing “them”; some have to be killed, others imprisoned. This popular characterization is simply gratuitous. I have yet to see any alternative methods proposed by the armchair quarterbacks who are railing against our military’s incompetence. Expecations of mistake-free warfare (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28757&highlight=) always come from those who don't give a damn about the military enough to know what they're talking about.

The best that they can offer is that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. That is not a plan. Further, the implication that a Gore administration would have managed it better is even more of a stretch. I cannot think of one military deployment under Clinton/Gore that was not a disaster. They only believed that the purpose of our military is peacekeeping anyway – which degrades combat readiness.

But really, the goal is to reduce the number of new recruits and in this area Bush et al has failed miserably. I believe there are exponentially more potential terrorists not than when Bush went to Iraq.The goal was to remove Saddam Hussein. Your belief in more terrorists being ‘created’ is not substantiated. Thousands are dead. Leaving them alone and hoping that they’ll not hate us so much is simply not a workable solution.

The only evidence which led to Iraq being a threat to international peace that was fed to Rummy, Cheney, Condi, Bush, was from (1) Chalabi – a convicted snake oil salesman who was paid outrageous sums of money for the brilliant service of feeding the administration a menu of utter nonsense, but a meal they wanted to eat neverthelessAgain, I am not privy to these US intelligence reports that you have been browsing, but forgive my skepticism that our government relied upon one man for information. There is evidence that there was considerable uncertainty within Saddam's regime itself (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=26912&highlight=) as to its capabilities.

and (2) Perle, Wolfiwitz, Feith triumvirate of neocon megalomaniacs.Ah yes we couldn’t go too much farther without trotting out the advisors with Jewish names corrupting our government. I snapped this pic at an 'anti-war' rally (http://utopia-unmasked.us/Anti-War.htm) during OIF.
http://img143.exs.cx/img143/8625/posterlarouchesatanskidsmed3pr.jpg

Their “intelligence” was as crap as Chalabi’s. I don’t think Gore would have gone to Iraq; he would have rightly determined that there was a better way to use our political, financial and military capital in the fight against international terrorism. As for supporting the Wahabbis, again, these are your guys. Not Gore.Yes if Gore were president Saddam would still be filling mass graves, feeding his people feet first into plastic shredders, throwing infants against walls in front of their mothers, raping wives in front of their husbands, paying bounties to suicide bombers’ families, hosting Abu Abbas and his minions, keeping an airliner for hijacking practice etc. etc.

As for the article subject of thread, I think it is reasonable accurate. And until we see the “enemy” for what and who it is, it will be hard to defeat.They fancy themselves the Almighty's Chosen, acting to further Divine Will. Given that the afterlife is eternal while life is finite, life is cheap. If they have to kill the majority of the world's population in their quest to eradicate the abomination that is the Infidel they truly believe that Allah will be waiting to deliver them their 72 virgins.

Thus they blasphemously invoke Divine Will to bless their bloodlust. They are gang rapists, child-murderers, butchers and cowards. They are the very epitome of evil.

The enemy is not George Bush. It is al Qaeda, the Wahabbis, the Jihadists. Some of us seem to forget that.

[cut]

http://img143.exs.cx/img143/8625/posterlarouchesatanskidsmed3pr.jpg

I wouldn't label the Larouche nuts left-wing, more like far-right, a load of brainwashed kids.

They set up a table on campus at my university, I thought they where anti-war liberals so me and a friend went up to pokes some fun, not realising that they are completly off the wall nuts ( apparently the Queen of England is the worlds biggest drug dealer). They have a load of ultra conservative ideas, with leaflets saying how the west is corrupted by *** and drugs, which they claim is because of jews. They are anti-semitic right-wing anti-war protestors a bit f*cked up if you ask me. But please don't associate them with liberal anti-war protestors.

[NicNZ]

I never really felt that there was serious doubt that 'Al Qaeda' as it is widely publicised does not really exist. 'Al Qaeda' has become a blanket term to include a massive number of terrorists and terrorist organisations, some of which may not exist.

[walford]

They set up a table on campus at my university, I thought they where anti-war liberals so me and a friend went up to pokes some fun, not realising that they are completly off the wall nuts ( apparently the Queen of England is the worlds biggest drug dealer). They have a load of ultra conservative ideas, with leaflets saying how the west is corrupted by *** and drugs, which they claim is because of jews. They are anti-semitic right-wing anti-war protestors a bit f*cked up if you ask me. But please don't associate them with liberal anti-war protestors.1. And yet LaRouche-kies were allowed to set up at an anti-war rally. They were not asked to leave. [If some self-proclaimed neo-nazis or Klansmen tried to attend a support the troops rally, they would have been ejected, ****to.] I know, because I was there also and interviewed people [I should have asked about them, but was distracted by the much weirder people who were also in attendance]. Click the link in my above post. We conservatives and Libertarians don't want LaRouche either.

2. I was pointing out that those who throw around the 'neo-con' label are always careful to cite administration officials with Jewish names -- just like LaRouche.

[Ratman]

First, I think that under Gore we would have attacked Afghanistan, would have deposed the Taliban and would have caught Mullah Omar, OBL and a number of other high-ranking terrorists that remain free today to plot again. Why? Because we wouldn't have gone to Iraq, where, incidentally, there were no Islamic fundamentalists. Gore would have been more likely to see A-stan through with purpose.Gore's history simply does not support this speculation.

As you may recall Saddam's ejected the inspectors in 1998. Saddam was permitted to retain his dictatorship on the condition that he cooperate fully with the inspections, so he was in violation. Being the inveterate Quixotic pursuer, I remember at the time writing a letter to the White House suggesting armed surprise inspections in response. The Clinton/Gore admin floated a trial balloon in front of an audience (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28025&highlight=) proposing military action. That was not well-recieved, so the idea was shelved. Every act screamed against the idea that they had the political courage to do what needs to be done even if it is not popular. Quite the contrary.

It likely would have prevented the current war by making it unnecessary. Saddam would not have been prepared for such action either.

Remember also that 9/11 was conceived and planned during the Clinton/Gore admin as well. It is now widely known that they turned down a chance to catch OBL. Their well-documented responses [FBI investigations, cruise missile strikes, aspirin factory bombings, etc.] to the terrorist attacks that occurred under their watch were so absurdly feckless they must have only served to embolden the terrorists to think they had nothing to fear from the Great Satan.
Rummy got tired of A-stan because it was complicated and because they were not having any success finding OBL and the one-eyed butt-pirate on the motorcycle. US forces had been deployed in Afghanistan for a year and a half before OIF started. They are still there. Have you looked at a topographical map of that country?

There are Americans who have remained on the Most Wanted list for decades without being caught. As I and others have explained before, OBL is but one man. Thousands of his buddies are dead or captured. Millions of dollars have been seized. His pledge to drive us to abandon the region has attained the opposite results. He is a complete and utter failure.

That's what happens when your resources are diverted from the fight against terrorism to the fight against brutal dictators, who may butcher their own people, but who didn't attack the USA on 9/11 and who were never sponsors of Islamic international terrorism. Remember, we are doing OBL's work by getting rid of Saddam and not having a viable plan or alternative.1. The US military has a history of being able to do more than one thing at a time.
2. He did indeed harbor, finance and arm terrorists.
3. The only way OBL's work will be done is if we leave a vacuum behind for his minions to fill. Advocating a precipitous withdrawal is to play right into the terrorists hands.
4. Insofar as this 'lack of a plan' canard is concerned, I am wondering how it is that you were privy to internal Pentagon documents that can give such an impression. Rumsfeld had cited von Clauswitz in the opening days of OIF, stating that any initial plans are superseded once hostilities are started. Many bad things [such as a huge humanitarian crisis] did not occur.

From the very beginning OIF has been a fluid situation. Our forces have had to adapt and the enemy has also modified tactics on an ongoing basis. The roadside bombs and IEDs are among the more recent adaptations.

Second, the lack of expertise exhibited by Bush and his team in the fight against international terrorism has been the best recruiting drive for Islamic fundamentalists. And this is a war that can’t be won by just killing “them”; some have to be killed, others imprisoned. This popular characterization is simply gratuitous. I have yet to see any alternative methods proposed by the armchair quarterbacks who are railing against our military’s incompetence. Expecations of mistake-free warfare (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28757&highlight=) always come from those who don't give a damn about the military enough to know what they're talking about.

The best that they can offer is that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. That is not a plan. Further, the implication that a Gore administration would have managed it better is even more of a stretch. I cannot think of one military deployment under Clinton/Gore that was not a disaster. They only believed that the purpose of our military is peacekeeping anyway – which degrades combat readiness.

But really, the goal is to reduce the number of new recruits and in this area Bush et al has failed miserably. I believe there are exponentially more potential terrorists not than when Bush went to Iraq.The goal was to remove Saddam Hussein. Your belief in more terrorists being ‘created’ is not substantiated. Thousands are dead. Leaving them alone and hoping that they’ll not hate us so much is simply not a workable solution.

The only evidence which led to Iraq being a threat to international peace that was fed to Rummy, Cheney, Condi, Bush, was from (1) Chalabi – a convicted snake oil salesman who was paid outrageous sums of money for the brilliant service of feeding the administration a menu of utter nonsense, but a meal they wanted to eat neverthelessAgain, I am not privy to these US intelligence reports that you have been browsing, but forgive my skepticism that our government relied upon one man for information. There is evidence that there was considerable uncertainty within Saddam's regime itself (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=26912&highlight=) as to its capabilities.

and (2) Perle, Wolfiwitz, Feith triumvirate of neocon megalomaniacs.Ah yes we couldn’t go too much farther without trotting out the advisors with Jewish names corrupting our government. I snapped this pic at an 'anti-war' rally (http://utopia-unmasked.us/Anti-War.htm) during OIF.
http://img143.exs.cx/img143/8625/posterlarouchesatanskidsmed3pr.jpg

Their “intelligence” was as crap as Chalabi’s. I don’t think Gore would have gone to Iraq; he would have rightly determined that there was a better way to use our political, financial and military capital in the fight against international terrorism. As for supporting the Wahabbis, again, these are your guys. Not Gore.Yes if Gore were president Saddam would still be filling mass graves, feeding his people feet first into plastic shredders, throwing infants against walls in front of their mothers, raping wives in front of their husbands, paying bounties to suicide bombers’ families, hosting Abu Abbas and his minions, keeping an airliner for hijacking practice etc. etc.

As for the article subject of thread, I think it is reasonable accurate. And until we see the “enemy” for what and who it is, it will be hard to defeat.They fancy themselves the Almighty's Chosen, acting to further Divine Will. Given that the afterlife is eternal while life is finite, life is cheap. If they have to kill the majority of the world's population in their quest to eradicate the abomination that is the Infidel they truly believe that Allah will be waiting to deliver them their 72 virgins.

Thus they blasphemously invoke Divine Will to bless their bloodlust. They are gang rapists, child-murderers, butchers and cowards. They are the very epitome of evil.

The enemy is not George Bush. It is al Qaeda, the Wahabbis, the Jihadists. Some of us seem to forget that.

I wish I had time to respond to your message in full. Alas, I'll leave it here, with the exception that you've got Al-Qaeda and Iraq so mixed up your narrative doesn't make much sense to someone trying to connect the dots logically. But please, don't ever insinuate that I am an anti-Semitic racist by trotting out the name of the three neocons who engineered the Iraqi clusterf*ck. Would you say that I was anti Irish if their names were Murphy, Kennedy and O'Donnell? Get an f-in grip. And by the way, I consider myself a reasonably patriotic American and I also believe that Dubya is part of the problem and not the solution. You can disagree, but I'm not forgetting anything.

[cut]

They set up a table on campus at my university, I thought they where anti-war liberals so me and a friend went up to pokes some fun, not realising that they are completly off the wall nuts ( apparently the Queen of England is the worlds biggest drug dealer). They have a load of ultra conservative ideas, with leaflets saying how the west is corrupted by *** and drugs, which they claim is because of jews. They are anti-semitic right-wing anti-war protestors a bit f*cked up if you ask me. But please don't associate them with liberal anti-war protestors.1. And yet LaRouche-kies were allowed to set up at an anti-war rally. They were not asked to leave. [If some self-proclaimed neo-nazis or Klansmen tried to attend a support the troops rally, they would have been ejected, ****to.] I know, because I was there also and interviewed people [I should have asked about them, but was distracted by the much weirder people who were also in attendance]. Click the link in my above post. We conservatives and Libertarians don't want LaRouche either.

2. I was pointing out that those who throw around the 'neo-con' label are always careful to cite administration officials with Jewish names -- just like LaRouche.

1. a lot of people don't haves a clue who/what LaRouche-kies are, they see the anti-war/anti-bush signs and assume they are another left-wing group.
I know conservatives and libertarians don't want LaRouche either, no-one does once they know what they stand for.

2. pointing out that those who throw neo-con names cite jewish names is because there are high-profile neo-con politians with jewish names. Saying that anti-war protesters are in some way anti-semitic and using a Larouche poster as an example is misrepresentation. Liberals would not cite Libermann as a neo-con, because he isn't , Larouche-kies would call him satan's kid because they are anti-semitic.

By all means cite LaRouche-kies as anti-war anti-semites but don't label them as liberal or associated with liberals.

[walford]

I wish I had time to respond to your message in full. Alas, I'll leave it here, with the exception that you've got Al-Qaeda and Iraq so mixed up your narrative doesn't make much sense to someone trying to connect the dots logically.Any gratuitous assertion can just as gratuitously be denied.

But please, don't ever insinuate that I am an anti-Semitic racist by trotting out the name of the three neocons who engineered the Iraqi clusterf*ck. Would you say that I was anti Irish if their names were Murphy, Kennedy and O'Donnell? Get an f-in grip. The problem is, when the buzzword 'neo-con' is trotted out, it often is accompanied by the mention of Jewish names, never Irish ones. Never anything but Jewish names. Ever.

And by the way, I consider myself a reasonably patriotic American and I also believe that Dubya is part of the problem and not the solution. You can disagree, but I'm not forgetting anything.You may think that Bush is the problem. I think it is al Qaeda. I have yet to see any better solutions offered by others. The other arguments rest upon 'containment' and the UN. 12 years of that only made it worse.

[walford]

1. a lot of people don't haves a clue who/what LaRouche-kies are, they see the anti-war/anti-bush signs and assume they are another left-wing group.Well they should get a clue about with whom they are associating. Just because you have the same enemies, doesn't mean you want to be associated with their values. I have often said you have to be more careful about those on your side than on the other. A majority of the anti-war rallies in the US are sponsored by the Workers World Party-affilliated International ANSWER. Here's a little story of what they did near the Washington Monument while I was giving a speech (http://utopia-unmasked.us/speech2003.10-25.htm) at a Support the Troops rally on the other side of the Mall: Violent Behavior Gives Lie to Anti-War Message (http://utopia-unmasked.us/counter-demo2003.10-25.htm)

By all means cite LaRouche-kies as anti-war anti-semites but don't label them as liberal or associated with liberals.You will notice that I did not label LaRouche as liberal -- I honestly don't know what the f*ck he is. What I was pointing out is that people should be careful with the terms they bandy about. You will notice in my posts, I generally try to avoid buzzwords. Instead will be substituted very specific definitions. That is why my missives tend to be a bit...long. :oops:

[cut]

1. a lot of people don't haves a clue who/what LaRouche-kies are, they see the anti-war/anti-bush signs and assume they are another left-wing group.

Well they should get a clue about with whom they are associating. Just because you have the same enemies, doesn't mean you want to be associated with their values. I have often said you have to be more careful about those on your side than on the other. A majority of the anti-war rallies in the US are sponsored by the Workers World Party-affilliated International ANSWER. Here's a little story of what they did near the Washington Monument while I was giving a speech (http://utopia-unmasked.us/speech2003.10-25.htm) at a Support the Troops rally on the other side of the Mall: Violent Behavior Gives Lie to Anti-War Message (http://utopia-unmasked.us/counter-demo2003.10-25.htm)

Of course they should know who they are associating with but that is very much a case of 'easier said then done'. You can hardly expect an anti-war protestor going round finding everyones political ideologies to see whether they should be taking part in the same protest.

Another thing is that LaRouche-kies are very deceptive in the way that they talk to people, they are effectively trained to induct people into their "movement", and they are very good at it. When I spoke to them (for about 3 hours!) they were constantly giving mixed signals trying to find out what I thought so they could latch on to it and get me to give a donation and go to their meetings. I knew that wasn't going to happen from the start when they were going on about how Cherie Blair controled her husband and Bush through the Fabian Society (http://www.fabian-society.org.uk/). LaRouche gets his funding from gullible students and pensioners and has been rightfully accused of using LaRouche-kies to induct and brainwash (http://www.pcc-courieronline.com/news/111501/larouche.html) students at universities.

My point being that if they are skilled enough to convince people to this extent then left-wing protesters "associating" with them will hardly be able to realise what they stand for after talking to them for an hour let alone 5 mins.





By all means cite LaRouche-kies as anti-war anti-semites but don't label them as liberal or associated with liberals.You will notice that I did not label LaRouche as liberal -- I honestly don't know what the f*ck he is. What I was pointing out is that people should be careful with the terms they bandy about. You will notice in my posts, I generally try to avoid buzzwords. Instead will be substituted very specific definitions. That is why my missives tend to be a bit...long. :oops:

The good thing about this site is that you can elaborate on a post unlike with an article so you don't have to spend ages writing drawn out definitions.

and here's some info on LaRouche:

Lyndon LaRouche: Fascist Demagogue: A '60's Socialist Takes a Hard Right (http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/Wohlforth.html)



The cult and the candidate

Lyndon LaRouche is a convicted fraudster and virulent anti-Semite. Now he's campaigning for the American presidency. Terry Kirby investigates his sinister global network - and his conspiracy theories about Tony Blair

21 July 2004

He has warned that the international monetary system is about to collapse and that five billion people will die in the ensuing chaos. The Royal Family and MI6 are, he claims, responsible for the international drugs trade. Welcome to the weird world of Lyndon LaRouche, the 81-year-old who is campaigning as an "independent Democratic candidate" for president of the United States in this November's election, for the fifth time. A millionaire who describes himself as "the world's leading economic forecaster", LaRouche is also a convicted fraudster and conspiracy theorist par excellence.

from the Independent


No Joke (the effect LaRouche has on young recruits) – Washington Post, October 2004 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46883-2004Oct20.html)

[Ratman]

I wish I had time to respond to your message in full. Alas, I'll leave it here, with the exception that you've got Al-Qaeda and Iraq so mixed up your narrative doesn't make much sense to someone trying to connect the dots logically.Any gratuitous assertion can just as gratuitously be denied.

But please, don't ever insinuate that I am an anti-Semitic racist by trotting out the name of the three neocons who engineered the Iraqi clusterf*ck. Would you say that I was anti Irish if their names were Murphy, Kennedy and O'Donnell? Get an f-in grip. The problem is, when the buzzword 'neo-con' is trotted out, it often is accompanied by the mention of Jewish names, never Irish ones. Never anything but Jewish names. Ever.

And by the way, I consider myself a reasonably patriotic American and I also believe that Dubya is part of the problem and not the solution. You can disagree, but I'm not forgetting anything.You may think that Bush is the problem. I think it is al Qaeda. I have yet to see any better solutions offered by others. The other arguments rest upon 'containment' and the UN. 12 years of that only made it worse.

Again, mixing up Al Qaeda and Iraq. I wonder why that is?

And look I think Bush and Al Qaeda are both problems. They are not mutually exclusive. It's not a better "solution" we need - look we aren't even close to talking about solutions. It's a better approach, and ostracizing the entire world to go after Saddam Hussein instead of pressing the fight on international terror was, IMO, a stupid idea.

[2Sheds_Jackson]

The concept of the original posted article - that AQ is not nearly the threat that we imagine - is a dangerous and seductive idea, and is in fact the same idea that got us 9/11 in the first place.

It is human nature to minimize threats, to want to go about business as usual, to try to forget the bad things that have happened and move on. It's one of the first things that Bush warned about, after 9/11 - saying that we will all try to forget this and put it behind us as some kind of fluke.

The sad fact is that we don't all want to play nice.

In addition, the article's proposition that AQ is dead because they haven't pulled off any more spectacular attacks is non sequitur at this point. By that I mean that they have not been left alone - we have been hounding and destroying them. If we had done nothing post-9/11 that argument could be valid. But we have done our best to kill them - and it has only been through this pursuit that they have been brought to heel. If we let up the pressure, they come back.

As far as LaRouche - I met that guy back in ...what 1986? And he was a nutball even then.

[Laworkerbee]

Robert Scheer

I can't stand him, the LA Times poster boy, a total prick who writes the most vile, divisive things I've seeen in print

[walford]

Again, mixing up Al Qaeda and Iraq. I wonder why that is?The Wahabbis were against Saddam, but they shared the same enemy. So they colloborated in financing, training and equipping terrorists who targeted the West.
And look I think Bush and Al Qaeda are both problems. They are not mutually exclusive. It's not a better "solution" we need - look we aren't even close to talking about solutions. It's a better approach, and ostracizing the entire world to go after Saddam Hussein instead of pressing the fight on international terror was, IMO, a stupid idea.The 'entire world' -- or more specifically Kofi and his sychophants -- ostracized the Bush admin for having the temerity to assert that the ultimate arbiter of American foreign policy is the US Constitution, not the UN Charter. Kofi's son and others were making too much money from Saddam to allow its resolution to allow weapons inspections or face the consequences to actually be enforced. It was meant as an empty threat and Bush spoiled the party by actually taking action to enforce it when it became clear that Saddam would never voluntarily cooperate.

Removing Saddam is not a diversion from the War on Terror. He was a facilitator who had to go. Leaving him in power indefinitely to brutalize his own people and enable terrorism abroad was not workable. The only option was to take him out then or wait until he got stronger -- which was another proposal that was being floated at the time.

[NicNZ]

The concept of the original posted article - that AQ is not nearly the threat that we imagine - is a dangerous and seductive idea...
I agree, more so in the United States than anywhere else. I suggest that this is because US political and social cultures have developed over the last fifty years in response to a specific threat. That threat, be it Nazis, Communism, Middle Easterners, has lapsed in and out of being real and imagined but has always remained a specific "bad guy" enemy. As such, it is no surprise that Al Qaeda became a specific threat. 'Al Qaeda' as a term, and Bin Laden as a specific enemy, became synonymous with terrorism in all forms, thereby creating a specific, managable enemy.


it has only been through this pursuit that they have been brought to heel. If we let up the pressure, they come back.
That is, of course, arguable. I have not seen or heard of any reliable and persuasive evidence to suggest that Al Qaeda, as it is popularly described, has collapsed or undergone a significant change since 2001. I suggest that such evidence will never be forthcoming simply because Al Qaeda does not exist in the form described by the media and US politics, and thus could not have suffered the kind of blows that are suggested.

[walford]

I agree, more so in the United States than anywhere else. I suggest that this is because US political and social cultures have developed over the last fifty years in response to a specific threat. That threat, be it Nazis, Communism, Middle Easterners, has lapsed in and out of being real and imagined but has always remained a specific "bad guy" enemy. As such, it is no surprise that Al Qaeda became a specific threat. 'Al Qaeda' as a term, and Bin Laden as a specific enemy, became synonymous with terrorism in all forms, thereby creating a specific, managable enemy.Soon after 9/11, senior Bush admin officials began to describe AQ as a loose agglomeration of semi-independent cells. Analysts went on to say that the attacks themselves may not have been known to OBL until afterward because operations info is highly compartmentalized. It is not really an 'organization' at all in the traditional sense. It seems that they share a common hatred for the US, but can consist of small groups that will arise independantly, carry out a few attacks and then petition their group to be part of the Cause.

The Bush admin has expressed understanding of this. It is our media who are the ones who are ****e to describe AQ as a monolith and OBL as its irreplaceable head. There are some who argue that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. That is likely to be true, which is why no Bush admin officials have alleged that he did. It is also equally true that there is no more evidence tying OBL to those attacks either, other than his gloating about it afterward.
...I have not seen or heard of any reliable and persuasive evidence to suggest that Al Qaeda, as it is popularly described, has collapsed or undergone a significant change since 2001. I suggest that such evidence will never be forthcoming simply because Al Qaeda does not exist in the form described by the media and US politics, and thus could not have suffered the kind of blows that are suggested.I have seen no allegation that AQ has 'collapsed' either. What is certain is that thousands of them are dead and captured. Their financing has been depleated. No significant attacks have since been carried out on American soil since. Most importantly, OBL's stated objective of having America abandon Israel and withdraw from the Middle East has been completely foiled. US influence in the region is far greater than would have otherwise been the case if not for 9/11.

OBL's continued visibility is being touted as evidence that everything that has been done has been for naught. In fact he is an utter failure.

[pistol]

The Bush admin has expressed understanding...

Oh man, there are a few words that don't belong in the same sentence together... :cantbeli:

[Ratman]

Again, mixing up Al Qaeda and Iraq. I wonder why that is?The Wahabbis were against Saddam, but they shared the same enemy. So they colloborated in financing, training and equipping terrorists who targeted the West.
And look I think Bush and Al Qaeda are both problems. They are not mutually exclusive. It's not a better "solution" we need - look we aren't even close to talking about solutions. It's a better approach, and ostracizing the entire world to go after Saddam Hussein instead of pressing the fight on international terror was, IMO, a stupid idea.The 'entire world' -- or more specifically Kofi and his sychophants -- ostracized the Bush admin for having the temerity to assert that the ultimate arbiter of American foreign policy is the US Constitution, not the UN Charter. Kofi's son and others were making too much money from Saddam to allow its resolution to allow weapons inspections or face the consequences to actually be enforced. It was meant as an empty threat and Bush spoiled the party by actually taking action to enforce it when it became clear that Saddam would never voluntarily cooperate.

Removing Saddam is not a diversion from the War on Terror. He was a facilitator who had to go. Leaving him in power indefinitely to brutalize his own people and enable terrorism abroad was not workable. The only option was to take him out then or wait until he got stronger -- which was another proposal that was being floated at the time.

1. Give me one instance of Saddam financing, training and equipping international terrorists. That's unmitigated rubbish.

2. Saddam was not a facilitator of terror. Me was a cruel idiot who raped his country. Not unlike Dubya. Facilitators of terrorism abound - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran... But not Saddam. You've been hypnotized by the bright light of Fox News and White House talking points.

[walford]

1. Give me one instance of Saddam financing, training and equipping international terrorists. That's unmitigated rubbish.

2. Saddam was not a facilitator of terror. Me was a cruel idiot who raped his country. Not unlike Dubya. Facilitators of terrorism abound - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran... But not Saddam. You've been hypnotized by the bright light of Fox News and White House talking points.Sorry, none of these are from Le Monde or al-Jazeera:

Saddam Hussein - the terrorists' banker (http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1199302004)
...The UN’s oil-for-food programme was protecting him from the United States threat while helping him to bribe aides of Jacques Chirac, the French president, and the office of Vladimir Putin, then the Russian prime minister.

But to extend this to the PFLP was extraordinarily brazen. He was daring to bankroll international terrorists - with sums of money which could keep the cells financed for years.

Although this is the firmest proof of Saddam’s links with terrorists, it is by no means the only one. The bipartisan US Commission into the Iraq war found that "Osama bin Laden himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Sudan in late 1994 or early 1995". Another such meeting took place in Afghanistan, it said.

The absence of WMD seems to have eclipsed the fact that Saddam was hell-bent on acquiring them, and had the budget and the scientists to resume WMD programmes as soon as sanctions were lifted.

The absence of an al-Qaeda link to Saddam has obscured the examples of interaction.

And these are crucial. At the time of the 11 September attacks, Islamic terrorism took on a new lease of life because it was becoming fused together with rogue states which provided funds and shelter.

The six main hosts were: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria...

Saddam bankrolled Palestinian terrorists (http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1199662004)
SADDAM Hussein’s links to terrorism have been proven by documents showing he helped to fund the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The PFLP, whose history of terrorism dates back to the "black September" hijackings of 1970, was personally vetted by Saddam to receive oil vouchers worth £40 million.

The deal has been uncovered by US investigators, trawling millions of pages of documents showing a network of diplomats bribed by Saddam’s regimes, and political parties who qualified for backhanded payments from Baghdad.

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which is still working its way through 20,000 boxes of documents from Saddam’s Baath party discovered only recently, found a list of pressure groups bankrolled by Saddam.

Using the United Nations’ own oil-for-food scheme - ironically intended as a sanction to control the behaviour of his dictatorship - Saddam gave Awad Ammora & Partners, a Syrian company, two million barrels of oil.

Documents handed over to US authorities by a former Iraqi oil minister only four months ago show that this was a front for the PFLP - which was then embarked on a spate of car bombings aimed at Israeli officials.

The Iraqi records show only one six-month period - suggesting the payments could go on for much longer. While some allocations to the likes of Russian political parties were not cashed in, the PFLP oil deal was carried out in full.

Probable Causes (http://www.investors.com/editorial/issues.asp?v=1/14)
...It's been a common assertion, especially in the media, that President Bush went to war with Iraq simply to capture Saddam Hussein's WMD. This is not true.

Yes, WMD did play a role. After 9-11, Bush feared Saddam had them and worried he would use them or hand them to terrorists. Others — including the United Nations, President Clinton and many prominent Democrats in Congress — felt the same way.

There were other reasons, however. Iraq had frequent high-level contacts with all-Qaida and other terrorists. It also gave safe harbor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida-linked terrorist still operating in Iraq, and pan-Arab terrorists Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas, among others.

And have we forgotten what a menace Saddam's Iraq was? Bush didn't. In the 1980s, Saddam used WMD against his people and against Iranian troops. He also invaded Kuwait, thus precipitating the 1990-91 Gulf War and the 12 years of U.N. sanctions that followed.

It's true the U.S. didn't find massive stockpiles of WMD, which were part of the rationale for war in Iraq. But that's not to say they didn't exist — or don't still. Last June, for instance, the U.S. secretly flew 1.8 tons of partially enriched uranium out of Iraq — material that could have been further refined into a bomb.

Also last year, the U.S. found sarin gas and mustard gas shells. And coalition troops found chemical plants filled with precursor chemicals that could, with minimal know-how, be turned into chemical agents.

European, Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies have all said it's likely Saddam shipped WMD or other weapons across the border into neighboring Syria — another country ruled by the brutal Baath Party.

So there was a threat, and it was real. Whatever qualms one might have with how the postwar occupation has been handled, or with U.S. intelligence failures, or the lack of WMD, Bush was right to go into Iraq...

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Acts of Terror: A Saddam friend dies. (https://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200403101426.asp)
...The hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities in exchange for safe passage. Abu Abbas then joined them on a flight to freedom aboard an Egypt Air jet. However, four U.S. fighter planes forced the airliner to land at the Sigonella NATO base in Sicily that October 11. Italian officials took the hijackers into custody. However, Abbas possessed the ultimate get-out-of-jail card.

''Abu Abbas was the holder of an Iraqi diplomatic passport,'' Italy's then-prime minister Bettino Craxi said. ''The plane was on an official mission, considered covered by diplomatic immunity and extra-territorial status in the air and on the ground.''

...Abbas resurfaced in 1994 when he is believed to have moved to Baghdad. He kept an apartment in Iraq and enjoyed the hospitality of Saddam Hussein and the Baathist regime. In appreciation, he praised Hussein's government on Iraqi state television in the autumn of 2001 for fomenting Arab outrage at Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Last April 14, with the assistance of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, Special Forces soldiers seized Abbas in a tree-lined compound in southern Baghdad. Two days later, Army Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters: "Abu Abbas is a terrorist...He was a terrorist. He remains a terrorist. And he will be viewed as such. Notwithstanding any declarations that have been made in recent years, his role in terrorism, his links to terrorist organizations, are abundantly clear."

Abbas was just one guest of Saddam Hussein, the Howard Johnson of global terrorism. Indiana-born, Iraqi-reared Abdul Rahman Yasin built the bomb that exploded under Manhattan's World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, killing six and injuring 1,042 individuals. As ABC News' Sheila MacVicar confirmed on July 27, 1994, Yasin returned to Baghdad where he made himself comfortable and often visited his father. Richard Miniter, author of the bestseller Losing bin Laden, cited documents U.S. forces found in Tikrit, Iraq. He reports that Yasin received "both a house and monthly salary" from Hussein's government.

Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal also lived pleasantly in Baathist Baghdad. Previously, he arranged attacks in 20 countries, killing 407 people, including at least 10 Americans, and wounding 788, among them, 58 Americans. His days under Hussein soured on August 16, 2002, when, as Iraqi officials then amazingly claimed, he committed suicide...by shooting himself four times in the head.

The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections (http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html)
Those who try to whitewash Saddam's record don't dispute this evidence; they just ignore it. So let's review the evidence, all of it on the public record for months or years:

* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.

* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam's mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.

* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.

* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.

* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the Guardian reported.

* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane's Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane's reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 2 man.

(Why are all of those meetings significant? The London Observer reports that FBI investigators cite a captured al Qaeda field manual in Afghanistan, which "emphasizes the value of conducting discussions about pending terrorist attacks face to face, rather than by electronic means.")

* As recently as 2001, Iraq's embassy in Pakistan was used as a "liaison" between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan -- who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks -- that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre," London's Independent reports.

* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden's fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad. At that vast compound run by Iraqi intelligence, Muslim militants trained to hijack planes with knives -- on a full-size Boeing 707. Col. Mohammed recalls his first visit to Salman Pak this way: "We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: 'You'll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden's group and the PKK and Mojahedin-e Khalq.'"

* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam's son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

*The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri's bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time and was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989.

* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Mr. Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda's global network.

* In 2001, an al Qaeda member "bragged that the situation in Iraq was 'good,'" according to intelligence made public by Mr. Powell.

* That same year, Saudi Arabian border guards arrested two al Qaeda members entering the kingdom from Iraq.

* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.

*Zarqawi met with military chief of al Qaeda, Mohammed Ibrahim Makwai (aka Saif al-Adel) in Iran in February 2003, according to intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post.

* Mohammad Atef, the head of al Qaeda's military wing until the U.S. killed him in Afghanistan in November 2001, told a senior al Qaeda member now in U.S. custody that the terror network needed labs outside of Afghanistan to manufacture chemical weapons, Mr. Powell said. "Where did they go, where did they look?" said the secretary. "They went to Iraq."

* Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden to purchase poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000. He called his relationship with Saddam's regime "successful," Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* Mohamed Mansour Shahab, a smuggler hired by Iraq to transport weapons to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces in May, 2000. He later told his story to American intelligence and a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.

* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London's Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" to be established in Baghdad.

* Mullah Melan Krekar, ran a terror group (the Ansar al-Islam) linked to both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Krekar admitted to a Kurdish newspaper that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan and other senior al Qaeda officials. His acknowledged meetings with bin Laden go back to 1988. When he organized Ansar al Islam in 2001 to conduct suicide attacks on Americans, "three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 'to undertake jihad,'" Newsday reported. Mr. Krekar is now in custody in the Netherlands. His group operated in portion of northern Iraq loyal to Saddam Hussein -- and attacked independent Kurdish groups hostile to Saddam. A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told a United Press International correspondent that Mr. Krekar's group was funded by "Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad."

* After October 2001, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have holed up in the Ansar al-Islam's strongholds inside northern Iraq.

The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp)
...bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in 1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions. According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes.A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993, when bin Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam.5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an "understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S. court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with Saddam's regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction for al Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime before mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified cooperation with the Iraqi government."

Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the mid-1990s comes from
a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and his dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the substantive talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided a "window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily involved with Iraq (and Iran).Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy, though multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting gets much more specific in the mid-1990s:8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti.

9. Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19 Jan. 1996), staying at the residence of a member of the Qatari ruling family. He discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and operations targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in Dammam, Dharan, and Khobar, using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. Upon his return, bin Laden met with Hijazi and Turabi, among others.And later more reporting, from the same "well placed" source:

10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.[/list]The analysis of those events follows:

The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials explicitly threatened retaliation.IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s, intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that "the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998 and met with Tariq Aziz."11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in Sudan and later in Afghanistan in 1999. . . .

14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular and reliable source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of Abdul Aziz.That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of the U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire agreement following the Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's presidential palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions mounted, President Bill Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the nation for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals" and said "there is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed in April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that, when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel and hotel costs 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 document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might provide "a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the Arabic-language daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Bin Laden urged his followers to act: "The ruling to kill all Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal brokered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998.

According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this meeting and relates two others.15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden in Afghanistan.

16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.

17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to Afghanistan to seek closer ties to bin Laden and the Taliban in late 1998. The source reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to broaden its cooperation with al Qaeda. Iraq was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to sabotage U.S. and U.K. interests. After a senior Iraqi intelligence officer met with Taliban leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements were made for a series of meetings between the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in Pakistan. The source noted Faruq Hijazi was in Afghanistan in late 1998.

18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with several other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source claimed that Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam's explicit direction.An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and an explanation of these reports:

Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.

Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was so widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press. A January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam + Bin Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source" with knowledge of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued, indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if formally."

INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, "said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July 1999. Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back from Saddam's office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that Saddam wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda."

The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this claim. One report states that "in late 1999" al Qaeda set up a training camp in northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin Laden throughout 1999.23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering offering safe haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of Iraqi intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in frequent contact and had good relations with bin Laden.Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network of terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur airport--a job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee.

One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole.25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."[list]26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training.The analysis of this report follows. CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that relations between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999:27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia.And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting on those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What's more, the memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by Iraqi intelligence.The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.And the commentary:CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April 2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross continues to stand by his information.

It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.

Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead hijacker's determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the spring 2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that the funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested the transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than simply return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused entry the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork, and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day after arriving in Prague for the second time.

Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda personnel.

The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the report fits the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration:References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained A that Iraqi support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by including weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of 9-11.

Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N. Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Reporting in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain some of the resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq.37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S. occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.

38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact with good access who does not have an established reporting record: An Iraqi intelligence service officer said that as of mid-March the IIS was providing weapons to al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq, including rocket propelled grenade (RPG)-18 launchers. According to IIS information, northern Iraq-based al Qaeda members believed that the U.S. intended to strike al Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault against Ansar al-Islam positions.

The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which "claimed that an Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it with $100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance."

CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely "exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public.

Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to look at the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence."

Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a connection between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis for that?"

There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not that you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements. Indeed, the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction." Really?

One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually be available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For one thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links. There is no Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be a slow process.

So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It contains the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.

One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have extensive reporting on his activities before and after the September 11 hijacking. That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo, extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda connections.

Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to work on January 9 and January 10, and never again.

Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged "diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his employer, controlled Shakir's schedule. He was detained in Qatar on September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact information for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11 hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been plotted.

The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On October 21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a flight to Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was detained in Jordan for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His interrogators concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained, according to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to "pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same time, Amnesty International complained that Shakir was being held without charge. The Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he is believed to have fled back to Iraq.

Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11? We don't know. We may someday find out.

But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.

[Ratman]

I don't find any of what you posted new or pursuasive. It has all been explained or debunked before. Even Bush and Rummy has admitted that there is no connection. How else can you explain the 10 other reasons they came up with to justify the invasion?

In Afghanistan, they said and established with hard evidence that the Taliban was supporting and received support from international terrorists. That was enough. Most of the world but the truly impaired supported the ousting of the Taliban and the destruction of terrorist training camps.

But Iraq. No. It's not like everybody but you and the adminsitration is "soft on Terrr". It's that the case for Iraq sponsoring terror or being a real threat were not made. The articles that you post don't change that. In fact I find them desperate.

[walford]

I don't find any of what you posted new or pursuasive. It has all been explained or debunked before. It is more persuasive than your gratuitous denials and comments like "you've been hypnotized by the bright light of Fox News and White House talking points." Where is this debunking? How is it that you know more than the CIA? America needs your help, then -- or al-Qaeda, depending upon your preference.

EDIT: Upon further reflection, As much as [and for the same reasons as] I want Hillary to lead the Democratic ticket in 2008, I want you to be a top intelligence officer for al-Qaeda. Please consider it.

[Ratman]

I don't find any of what you posted new or pursuasive. It has all been explained or debunked before. It is more persuasive than your gratuitous denials and comments like "you've been hypnotized by the bright light of Fox News and White House talking points." Where is this debunking? How is it that you know more than the CIA? America needs your help, then -- or al-Qaeda, depending upon your preference.

EDIT: Upon further reflection, As much as [and for the same reasons as] I want Hillary to lead the Democratic ticket in 2008, I want you to be a top intelligence officer for al-Qaeda. Please consider it.

eah, the US is up to its ears in accurate intelligence. Remember poor C. Powell out there at the UN doing the dirty work with that slide show full of "intelligence". Yeah, the CIA really did well there. Slam dunk, I think they called it. I respectfully have to turn done your nomination though - I don't think I could selectively vet the intelligence as well as the unnamed neo-cons can, and I'd have a hard time believing Chalabi - both of which were/are pre-requisites for the job.

[priccobe]

Walford and 2Sheds, well especially walford, you've done a great job of solidly backing up your response to that laughable Scheer article.

And your detractors? Desperate and laughable!

The fact that the best response they've given are nothing more than tired, pre-election DNC talking points and more thinly veiled "Bush is dumb" attacks proves they have nothing. It's amazing that the ones so obsessed with hating Bush think he's more of a problem than those who've stated their primary goal is the destruction of the Western way of life.

Sometimes the facts are a hard thing to swallow for those suffering from "Bush Derangement Syndrome" and "America is the Sole Real Problem Syndrome".

[walford]

The fact that the best response they've given are nothing more than tired, pre-election DNC talking points and more thinly veiled "Bush is dumb" attacks proves they have nothing. It's amazing that the ones so obsessed with hating Bush think he's more of a problem than those who've stated their primary goal is the destruction of the Western way of life.For the benefit of others [and for my own edification] I took the better part on an hour to compile that information that is based upon multiple sources -- many of which themselves are complilations from multiple sources.

There really are not much in the way of conclusions offered, so the only things that can be disputed are the facts. So what do we do when confronted with mountains of evidence that were gathered for years by hundreds of people? "I don't find any of what you posted new or pursuasive. It has all been explained or debunked before."

And that -- offering no cited support -- is supposed to defeat all of the evidence. Thus we have a clinical expose on the mentality involved here. A gut feeling trumps any and all evidence to the contrary. That is a dangerous way to live, especially for beings who must rely upon our consciousness to survive.

What makes it especially dangerous is that if they get their way, everyone stands to lose. As I explained earlier, if OBL manages to gain Iraq consequent to a precipitous withdrawal on our part, not only will the people there suffer as they never did before. [And leaving Saddam in power was dangerous also. His ties to terrorism, brutatlity and aggressive background did not serve toward stability either. He would have either gotten stronger and lauched yet another war or been overthrown by a Jihadist element -- the latter now seeming more likely.]

The majority of the world's petroleum reserves will be under peril. The mere threat of this would be enough to send the world economy into a tailspin. That will affect every man, woman and child on this planet.

It really is more than whether you wish to be on the side of the Right or Left. For my part, I am neither a conservative nor a liberal, but a Natural Law realist. The real issue is whether you wish to be on the side of those who do research, cite facts, change their conclusions as is necessary or those who 'just know' what is right. Mankind has been governed by the latter mentality long enough.

They postulate themselves as 'progressive' when in fact theirs is essentially a medieval mindset.