To hell with it. I´m not gonna discuss this any more. Please look and respond to my new thread where I try to se forward. Lets leave this old discussion behind us.
Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad...
Zaphod: And Powell said from the UN that the trucks certain building were used for WoMD production. He even gave sattelite pictures as proofs. All that was quickly shown to be wrong information...
How does this address my posts? I've confined myself to the claim made here that there were no links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. This claim is without merit.
The peace movement was right -- and still is -- about Iraq.
The fact that the Bush Administration was lying about virtually every justification for invading Iraq was something any inquiring reporter could have exposed months before, not after, the invasion began. No ties to Al-Qaeda. No weapons of mass destruction. No danger to U.S. security. Dated, wildly exaggerated, or simply forged ?intelligence.? An invasion that was illegal under any and every conceivable legal authority. And peaceniks have continued to be right: the anonymous (and, in the U.S., almost entirely unreported) death of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Many thousands more, including U.S. soldiers, will die from the radioactive munitions. And now the country?s being looted by the same bullies who overran it. Saddam isn?t the only government leader who deserves to stand trial."
1. The "peace" movement has almost never been right. About anything.
2. There is no evidence that the Bush administration lied about anything....anything at all. There are some questions..."where are the weapons", "why is it taking so long", "why were there so many different reasons given", "why did they focus so much on WMD when there were a million other reasons to go in".....but there is NO EVIDENCE.
3. No Ties to Al-Qaeda: That can't be proven either. We know there were ties to other terrorist organizations. We know Saddam made payments to suicide bombers. But he had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda? Please. We may not know for sure, but the evidence surely doesn't point in the direction of there being "no ties".
4. No WMD: That's not really true either. We have found components. We have found hard evidence of intent to develop them further. We haven't found the weapons, which concerns me as much as it does you. We have found loads of WMD related items, gas masks, etc. Again, this is a valid question...but to come out and say there weren't any or aren't any WMD...that's off base.
5. Intelligence: Show me where you can prove that the Bush Administration knowingly lied about any intelligence. Show me.
6. Illegal Invasion: Again, show me how this statement is supported. Show me the international law the prohibited invasion. Show me the congressional act or part of the Constitution that prohibited it. Bush got Congressional approval. The UN had declared the "serious consequneces" would follow if Iraq did not comply with inspections. Are you telling me they DID comply? Please. And what else would "serious consequences" mean, given that we'd already tried sanctions, inspections, more sanctions, limited military strikes, and then...wait for it...more sanctions?!?! The old "this war was illegal" line is a favorite...but it has no basis in fact.
7. Unreported Deaths: Show me. Someone has to know.
8: Risk to US military: What is the point here? Is there risk? Yes, of course.
9. Country being looted by bullies: So we're there for the money? Unlikely and unsupported...as is the whole article. If we wanted cheap oil, we would have simply PURCHASED it. It would have been one hell of a lot easier than invading, pouring $100 Billion into a war and reconstruction, losing hundreds of lives, and spending years there straightening out the goddamn mess that the regime made the country...don't you think?
Try thinking before you post. We don't have to agree, but don't take some left-wing, Anti-American propoganda rag and splash bold faced print all over the place proclaiming your ridiculous opinion is justified and vindicated.
How does this address my posts? I've confined myself to the claim made here that there were no links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. This claim is without merit.
It adress your post in the way the intelligent community works and the information floating from it. The claims in the letter you posted is more ambiguous than the more presice claim that this truck and that building were used for WoMDs. As long as they don´t give hard evidence how are we to determine if they pulled another Powell on us?
The (UK) Daily Telegraph is a conservative publication, btw.
No matter which way a newspaper is aligned...all they have to do is report some truth and reality: it will automatically sound anti-Bush by default.
Yes but SJO since you're unable to tell opinion and conjecture from hard news reporting I'll let you know that that article is filled the former not that latter. Newspapers tend to label their opinion and op-eds clearly. Something I noticed the European papers seem to fail at. I can only think they either do it intentionally or can't tell the difference between the two.
It adress your post in the way the intelligent community works and the information floating from it. The claims in the letter you posted is more ambiguous than the more presice claim that this truck and that building were used for WoMDs. As long as they don't give hard evidence how are we to determine if they pulled another Powell on us?
Well, precise claims HAVE been made with respect to the videos and and the Atta-Nidal memo. And the existence of the Salman Pak terrorist training camp isn't a matter of conjecture. It's a fact. Two Iraqi defectors have described the kind of training that went on there.
Quote:
Two Iraqi Military defectors, an unnamed former Lt. General and a Captain Sabah Khodada recently gave details of an Iraqi school at Salman Pak which includes training for the hijacking of passenger airliners and other modes of transportation. The former Iraqi General said that there was a old Boeing 707 resting next to rail tracks on edge of Salman Pak being used in terrorist training, the existence of this aircraft has been confirmed by UN. Inspectors.
The General, who had been the Security Officer in charge of the camp also reported that there were mixed nationality units including Saudi?s, Egyptians and Chechens at Salman Pak. Usually about 40 strong, these terrorist units received upto five months of intensive training. However the terrorist units were actually under the control of Iraq?s Al- Mukhabarat Intelligence Service and in particular a section called the Division of Special Operations. Much of this was also confirmed by Captain Khodada...
Here's another link that describes the possibility of a connection between one of the 9/11 hijackers and Abu Nidal. The hijacker's great-uncle was close to Nidal. Perhaps this was how Atta and Nidal came into contact with each other.
Quote:
When the London Telegraph reported last week that newly uncovered documents link 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta to Iraq-based Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, it wasn't the first time one of the 9/11 hijackers had been reported to have such ties.
In a development that adds evidence to the case that Iraq played a direct role in the worst attack ever on the U.S., reports show that Ziad Jarrah - who piloted the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers had discovered they were on a suicide mission - also had ties to Nidal.
Like Atta, Jarrah traveled to Hamburg, Germany, where three al-Qaeda operatives plotted their attack. The other member of the Hamburg cell was Marwan al Shehhi, who drove his plane into the World Trade Center's South Tower. Jarrah's assigned target: the White House.
"A constant figure in Jarrah's life in Germany was his great-uncle, Assem Omar Jarrah," reported the Wall Street Journal in August 2002. "According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Assem Jarrah worked for a long time as an informer for the Stasi, the East German secret service, while maintaining connections to [Abu] Nidal's terror group."
The Journal's Asla Aydintasbas - the only U.S.-based reporter to explore the Nidal-9/11 link in any depth - reported that the Palestinian terror kingpin spent much of his terrorism career as a hired hand, often in service to Iraq or Syria...
Hmmm, this... seem to shed light on the idea that Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction
Sorry, bud. Already discredited (you might want to actually read it) and he's an INC defector, which should have made you realize it was false.
Quote:
1: It's a BIG F***ing desert to hide stuff
and
That's not what the issue is. The fact is that it is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for Iraq to have had almost any WMD. I find it utterly amazing that you people continue to ignore this simple cold hard indisputable fact. For example, look at the famous VX. If the VX degrades in a couple weeks from when it is produced, and if there are no production facilities to make new VX, then you ain't got no VX.
Get up to speed.
Quote:
2: If they destroyed and dismantled their weapons program...why couldn't Iraq account for that dismantling and what did they have to hide when they refused to let UN inspectors into their country.
You might understand a little more if you bothered to look at what the actual discrepancies are. Then, if you could be bothered to, you could look up the MOUNTAIN of text that has been written on the subject in the past couple of months, a lot of which include explanations from former Iraqis involved.
Well, precise claims HAVE been made with respect to the videos and and the Atta-Nidal memo.
Oh my god, are you serious? It's already been exposed as clearly forged, including getting the timeline wrong, by everyone, and even reported in major media like Newsweek.
No wonder you people believe this garbage; you don't even bother to cross check stuff before putting faith in it.
I mean, get with the program already. INC defectors again? There credibility is and always has been ZERO. That's one of the main reasons the pentagon fought with the CIA and State, and why the pentagon eventually created the OSP. State and the CIA didn't want to invest anything in them, and they clearly were correct.
And Salman Pak? Hell, how long has this been discredited for? 6 or 7 months?
This from hersh's may selective intel article (from all the way back in May)
Quote:
Almost immediately after September 11th, the I.N.C. began to publicize the stories of defectors who claimed that they had information connecting Iraq to the attacks. In an interview on October 14, 2001, conducted jointly by the Times and ?Frontline,? the public-television program, Sabah Khodada, an Iraqi Army captain, said that the September 11th operation ?was conducted by people who were trained by Saddam,? and that Iraq had a program to instruct terrorists in the art of hijacking. Another defector, who was identified only as a retired lieutenant general in the Iraqi intelligence service, said that in 2000 he witnessed Arab students being given lessons in hijacking on a Boeing 707 parked at an Iraqi training camp near the town of Salman Pak, south of Baghdad.
__In separate interviews with me, however, a former C.I.A. station chief and a former military intelligence analyst said that the camp near Salman Pak had been built not for terrorism training but for counter-terrorism training. In the mid-eighties, Islamic terrorists were routinely hijacking aircraft. In 1986, an Iraqi airliner was seized by pro-Iranian extremists and crashed, after a hand grenade was triggered, killing at least sixty-five people. (At the time, Iran and Iraq were at war, and America favored Iraq.) Iraq then sought assistance from the West, and got what it wanted from Britain?s MI6. The C.I.A. offered similar training in counter-terrorism throughout the Middle East. ?We were helping our allies everywhere we had a liaison,? the former station chief told me. Inspectors recalled seeing the body of an airplane?which appeared to be used for counter-terrorism training?when they visited a biological-weapons facility near Salman Pak in 1991, ten years before September 11th. It is, of course, possible for such a camp to be converted from one purpose to another. The former C.I.A. official noted, however, that terrorists would not practice on airplanes in the open. ?That?s Hollywood rinky-dink stuff,? the former agent said. ?They train in basements. You don?t need a real airplane to practice hijacking. The 9/11 terrorists went to gyms. But to take one back you have to practice on the real thing.?
__Salman Pak was overrun by American troops on April 6th. Apparently, neither the camp nor the former biological facility has yielded evidence to substantiate the claims made before the war.
Guess what. When you bother to do adequate research and not invest so much of your position in famously forged documents, then you will be taken seriously.
1. The "peace" movement has almost never been right. About anything.
2. There is no evidence that the Bush administration lied about anything....anything at all. There are some questions..."where are the weapons", "why is it taking so long", "why were there so many different reasons given", "why did they focus so much on WMD when there were a million other reasons to go in".....but there is NO EVIDENCE.
3. No Ties to Al-Qaeda: That can't be proven either. We know there were ties to other terrorist organizations. We know Saddam made payments to suicide bombers. But he had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda? Please. We may not know for sure, but the evidence surely doesn't point in the direction of there being "no ties".
4. No WMD: That's not really true either. We have found components. We have found hard evidence of intent to develop them further. We haven't found the weapons, which concerns me as much as it does you. We have found loads of WMD related items, gas masks, etc. Again, this is a valid question...but to come out and say there weren't any or aren't any WMD...that's off base.
5. Intelligence: Show me where you can prove that the Bush Administration knowingly lied about any intelligence. Show me.
6. Illegal Invasion: Again, show me how this statement is supported. Show me the international law the prohibited invasion. Show me the congressional act or part of the Constitution that prohibited it. Bush got Congressional approval. The UN had declared the "serious consequneces" would follow if Iraq did not comply with inspections. Are you telling me they DID comply? Please. And what else would "serious consequences" mean, given that we'd already tried sanctions, inspections, more sanctions, limited military strikes, and then...wait for it...more sanctions?!?! The old "this war was illegal" line is a favorite...but it has no basis in fact.
7. Unreported Deaths: Show me. Someone has to know.
8: Risk to US military: What is the point here? Is there risk? Yes, of course.
9. Country being looted by bullies: So we're there for the money? Unlikely and unsupported...as is the whole article. If we wanted cheap oil, we would have simply PURCHASED it. It would have been one hell of a lot easier than invading, pouring $100 Billion into a war and reconstruction, losing hundreds of lives, and spending years there straightening out the goddamn mess that the regime made the country...don't you think?
Try thinking before you post. We don't have to agree, but don't take some left-wing, Anti-American propoganda rag and splash bold faced print all over the place proclaiming your ridiculous opinion is justified and vindicated.
Once again it's you who are alomost never right about anything!
You pad your posts with half truths ( at best ). No we haven't found any WOMD. Tell me if you were doing a project for your boss would he accept it if you said " I've completed 25% of the work that's good enough isn't it? "
It was an illegal invasion because the UN approved this based on the idea that Iraq was a direct threat to us. That they had those same WOMD.
So what if they found components? We know he had an arsenal at one time. I'd be surprised if we didn't find some remnants of that.
Your arguments are weak and rhetorical.
Give it up. Geez!
A relevent side note. In typical republican fashion....
The Iraq-al qaeda "link" is a red herring, even if there was a proven one, (which there isn't). Al qaeda has far stronger links to plenty of other countries including Britain, France and Germany..... Including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, UAE, Sudan....Including Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines..... Bush II even said it himself...
Quote:
al qaeda may have agents and cells in up to 60 different nations
. (Whether that's true or not though is anyone's guess, he has lied enough times for me to never, ever again trust anything else that comes out of his mouth).
Iraq is physically close to the al qaeda homeland of Saudi Arabia... right next door in fact: they share a long, remote and largely unmanned border. The fact that al qaeda was more absent than present in Iraq underscores fundamentalist Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda's and the former secular Iraqi regime's deep and mutual distrust of each other. Bin laden referred to Saddam's regime as "anti-islamic godless heathen" and the paranoid Saddam was obsessed his own power and glory... no way was he going to permit a possible rival space on his stage, especially a bunch of deranged fundamentalists.
Is Al Qaeda in Iraq now? You bet they are. They're converging like wasps to a jamjar. The ongoing terrorism in Iraq (and Saudi Arabia, and Turkey and elsewhere in the region which were relatively stable), the inevitable and much warned-about fallout of the war, has the hallmarks of Al Qaeda and other fundie groups. I wonder how long it will be before the growing ranks of furious, angry vengeful people in the Mid east, now boiling with rage will make it over here to America and start bombing shopping malls and train stations and hotels...just like the Provisional IRA did in the U.K. from 1969 onwards, after London sent the British Army onto the streets of Northern Ireland...and just like bin Laden and Al Qaeda did in the 1990s to US facilities as a result of US forces being stationed on "Mohammed's sacred soil".
Bush's war on terrorism is designed to get "tough" on the one hand (cheap electoral lip-service to yahoos), while at the same time enraging unstable religious lunatic-fringe groups, sparking more terrorism in the process...a self perpetuating cycle of violence in which the only winners are the ones who profit from warfare. For the maintenance of the status quo, they feel there has to be a public bogeyman in the absence of (for example) the USSR and the global "communist threat": Al qaeda and terrorism is a convenient scapegoat to neatly fill the vacuum. It's so convenient because it can't be easily indentified and encapsulated, as can an actual nation. Instead the whole thing remains a nebulous set of shadowy phantoms and dire probabilities, fueled by a cowardly media that is limited to parrotting administration-friendly propaganda. Al Qaeda doesn't even have to do anything "terroristic" these days...all they have to do is chatter on the airwaves...and the US admin. does the rest...terrifying everyone sh¡tless with dire warnings and orange alerts which never pan out, and nobody is ever caught doing anything untoward...
Answer me this, why was that government that you defend keeping these components?
Was if for posterity?
Answer me this : Why not? I'm not being obtuse. It's just that when you have an arsenal of any size and you've gotten rid of it. If some stuff's lying around left what differnce does it make? It's not complete.
As to the rest.....THE PROOF IS IN THE NOT FINDING!
The Iraq-al qaeda "link" is a red herring, even if there was a proven one, (which there isn't).
Talk about spin. No, isn't that a waffle.
Quote:
Originally posted by sammi jo
Iraq is physically close to the al qaeda homeland of Saudi Arabia... right next door in fact: they share a long, remote and largely unmanned border. The fact that al qaeda was more absent than present in Iraq underscores fundamentalist Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda's and the former secular Iraqi regime's deep and mutual distrust of each other. Bin laden referred to Saddam's regime as "anti-islamic godless heathen" and the paranoid Saddam was obsessed his own power and glory... no way was he going to permit a possible rival space on his stage, especially a bunch of deranged fundamentalists.
You know i have been looking for someone that could read SH's mind. Where were you when Powell went to the UN?
Quote:
Originally posted by sammi jo
Bush's war on terrorism is designed to get "tough" on the one hand (cheap electoral lip-service to yahoos), while at the same time enraging unstable religious lunatic-fringe groups, sparking more terrorism in the process...a self perpetuating cycle of violence in which the only winners are the ones who profit from warfare.
Designed by who?
Quote:
Originally posted by sammi jo
For the maintenance of the status quo, they feel there has to be a public bogeyman in the absence of (for example) the USSR and the global "communist threat": Al qaeda and terrorism is a convenient scapegoat to neatly fill the vacuum. It's so convenient because it can't be easily indentified and encapsulated, as can an actual nation.
When you are on a plane and a guy is threatening to blow it up because his religious leaders told him to, will you be able to Identify your enemy then?
When you saw palestinians dancing in the streets along with other large groups of fundamentalists cheering the deaths of innocent people, you meen to tell me, you did not see who the enemy possibly was?
Quote:
Originally posted by sammi jo
Instead the whole thing remains a nebulous set of shadowy phantoms and dire probabilities, fueled by a cowardly media that is limited to parrotting administration-friendly propaganda. Al Qaeda doesn't even have to do anything "terroristic" these days...all they have to do is chatter on the airwaves...and the US admin. does the rest...terrifying everyone sh?tless with dire warnings and orange alerts which never pan out, and nobody is ever caught doing anything untoward...
........but keep on shopping.
I saw a million people celebrating NYD in NY despite being the biggest target on the map! You call that scared?
Answer me this : Why not? I'm not being obtuse. It's just that when you have an arsenal of any size and you've gotten rid of it. If some stuff's lying around left what differnce does it make? It's not complete.
You are clearly not thinking this through.
It was precisely hidden in homes and who know where else. Why go through all of that for a piece of scrap?
To say it was 'just lying around" is spin to the max.
You know i have been looking for someone that could read SH's mind. Where were you when Powell went to the UN?
Designed by who?
When you are on a plane and a guy is threatening to blow it up because his religious leaders told him to, will you be able to Identify your enemy then?
When you saw palestinians dancing in the streets along with other large groups of fundamentalists cheering the deaths of innocent people, you meen to tell me, you did not see who the enemy possibly was?
I saw a million people celebrating NYD in NY despite being the biggest target on the map! You call that scared?
Your replies are getting weak and desperate here.
You have an absolute talent for not seeing the facts and when someone explains them you want them to explain them again. Just like you didn't hear anything. That's getting really old.
Comments
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 14/12/2003)
Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad...
Originally posted by Anders
Oh no here we go again.
Zaphod: And Powell said from the UN that the trucks certain building were used for WoMD production. He even gave sattelite pictures as proofs. All that was quickly shown to be wrong information...
How does this address my posts? I've confined myself to the claim made here that there were no links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. This claim is without merit.
The peace movement was right -- and still is -- about Iraq.
The fact that the Bush Administration was lying about virtually every justification for invading Iraq was something any inquiring reporter could have exposed months before, not after, the invasion began. No ties to Al-Qaeda. No weapons of mass destruction. No danger to U.S. security. Dated, wildly exaggerated, or simply forged ?intelligence.? An invasion that was illegal under any and every conceivable legal authority. And peaceniks have continued to be right: the anonymous (and, in the U.S., almost entirely unreported) death of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Many thousands more, including U.S. soldiers, will die from the radioactive munitions. And now the country?s being looted by the same bullies who overran it. Saddam isn?t the only government leader who deserves to stand trial."
1. The "peace" movement has almost never been right. About anything.
2. There is no evidence that the Bush administration lied about anything....anything at all. There are some questions..."where are the weapons", "why is it taking so long", "why were there so many different reasons given", "why did they focus so much on WMD when there were a million other reasons to go in".....but there is NO EVIDENCE.
3. No Ties to Al-Qaeda: That can't be proven either. We know there were ties to other terrorist organizations. We know Saddam made payments to suicide bombers. But he had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda? Please. We may not know for sure, but the evidence surely doesn't point in the direction of there being "no ties".
4. No WMD: That's not really true either. We have found components. We have found hard evidence of intent to develop them further. We haven't found the weapons, which concerns me as much as it does you. We have found loads of WMD related items, gas masks, etc. Again, this is a valid question...but to come out and say there weren't any or aren't any WMD...that's off base.
5. Intelligence: Show me where you can prove that the Bush Administration knowingly lied about any intelligence. Show me.
6. Illegal Invasion: Again, show me how this statement is supported. Show me the international law the prohibited invasion. Show me the congressional act or part of the Constitution that prohibited it. Bush got Congressional approval. The UN had declared the "serious consequneces" would follow if Iraq did not comply with inspections. Are you telling me they DID comply? Please. And what else would "serious consequences" mean, given that we'd already tried sanctions, inspections, more sanctions, limited military strikes, and then...wait for it...more sanctions?!?! The old "this war was illegal" line is a favorite...but it has no basis in fact.
7. Unreported Deaths: Show me. Someone has to know.
8: Risk to US military: What is the point here? Is there risk? Yes, of course.
9. Country being looted by bullies: So we're there for the money? Unlikely and unsupported...as is the whole article. If we wanted cheap oil, we would have simply PURCHASED it. It would have been one hell of a lot easier than invading, pouring $100 Billion into a war and reconstruction, losing hundreds of lives, and spending years there straightening out the goddamn mess that the regime made the country...don't you think?
Try thinking before you post. We don't have to agree, but don't take some left-wing, Anti-American propoganda rag and splash bold faced print all over the place proclaiming your ridiculous opinion is justified and vindicated.
Originally posted by zaphod_beeblebrox
How does this address my posts? I've confined myself to the claim made here that there were no links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. This claim is without merit.
It adress your post in the way the intelligent community works and the information floating from it. The claims in the letter you posted is more ambiguous than the more presice claim that this truck and that building were used for WoMDs. As long as they don´t give hard evidence how are we to determine if they pulled another Powell on us?
Originally posted by sammi jo
The (UK) Daily Telegraph is a conservative publication, btw.
No matter which way a newspaper is aligned...all they have to do is report some truth and reality: it will automatically sound anti-Bush by default.
Yes but SJO since you're unable to tell opinion and conjecture from hard news reporting I'll let you know that that article is filled the former not that latter. Newspapers tend to label their opinion and op-eds clearly. Something I noticed the European papers seem to fail at. I can only think they either do it intentionally or can't tell the difference between the two.
Originally posted by Anders
It adress your post in the way the intelligent community works and the information floating from it. The claims in the letter you posted is more ambiguous than the more presice claim that this truck and that building were used for WoMDs. As long as they don't give hard evidence how are we to determine if they pulled another Powell on us?
Well, precise claims HAVE been made with respect to the videos and and the Atta-Nidal memo. And the existence of the Salman Pak terrorist training camp isn't a matter of conjecture. It's a fact. Two Iraqi defectors have described the kind of training that went on there.
Two Iraqi Military defectors, an unnamed former Lt. General and a Captain Sabah Khodada recently gave details of an Iraqi school at Salman Pak which includes training for the hijacking of passenger airliners and other modes of transportation. The former Iraqi General said that there was a old Boeing 707 resting next to rail tracks on edge of Salman Pak being used in terrorist training, the existence of this aircraft has been confirmed by UN. Inspectors.
The General, who had been the Security Officer in charge of the camp also reported that there were mixed nationality units including Saudi?s, Egyptians and Chechens at Salman Pak. Usually about 40 strong, these terrorist units received upto five months of intensive training. However the terrorist units were actually under the control of Iraq?s Al- Mukhabarat Intelligence Service and in particular a section called the Division of Special Operations. Much of this was also confirmed by Captain Khodada...
Here's another link that describes the possibility of a connection between one of the 9/11 hijackers and Abu Nidal. The hijacker's great-uncle was close to Nidal. Perhaps this was how Atta and Nidal came into contact with each other.
When the London Telegraph reported last week that newly uncovered documents link 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta to Iraq-based Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, it wasn't the first time one of the 9/11 hijackers had been reported to have such ties.
In a development that adds evidence to the case that Iraq played a direct role in the worst attack ever on the U.S., reports show that Ziad Jarrah - who piloted the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers had discovered they were on a suicide mission - also had ties to Nidal.
Like Atta, Jarrah traveled to Hamburg, Germany, where three al-Qaeda operatives plotted their attack. The other member of the Hamburg cell was Marwan al Shehhi, who drove his plane into the World Trade Center's South Tower. Jarrah's assigned target: the White House.
"A constant figure in Jarrah's life in Germany was his great-uncle, Assem Omar Jarrah," reported the Wall Street Journal in August 2002. "According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Assem Jarrah worked for a long time as an informer for the Stasi, the East German secret service, while maintaining connections to [Abu] Nidal's terror group."
The Journal's Asla Aydintasbas - the only U.S.-based reporter to explore the Nidal-9/11 link in any depth - reported that the Palestinian terror kingpin spent much of his terrorism career as a hired hand, often in service to Iraq or Syria...
Post using your real name, you pussy"
Nice. Name-calling by one of the mods.
Originally posted by filmmaker2002
Hmmm, this... seem to shed light on the idea that Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction
Sorry, bud. Already discredited (you might want to actually read it) and he's an INC defector, which should have made you realize it was false.
1: It's a BIG F***ing desert to hide stuff
and
That's not what the issue is. The fact is that it is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for Iraq to have had almost any WMD. I find it utterly amazing that you people continue to ignore this simple cold hard indisputable fact. For example, look at the famous VX. If the VX degrades in a couple weeks from when it is produced, and if there are no production facilities to make new VX, then you ain't got no VX.
Get up to speed.
2: If they destroyed and dismantled their weapons program...why couldn't Iraq account for that dismantling and what did they have to hide when they refused to let UN inspectors into their country.
You might understand a little more if you bothered to look at what the actual discrepancies are. Then, if you could be bothered to, you could look up the MOUNTAIN of text that has been written on the subject in the past couple of months, a lot of which include explanations from former Iraqis involved.
Originally posted by zaphod_beeblebrox
Well, precise claims HAVE been made with respect to the videos and and the Atta-Nidal memo.
Oh my god, are you serious? It's already been exposed as clearly forged, including getting the timeline wrong, by everyone, and even reported in major media like Newsweek.
No wonder you people believe this garbage; you don't even bother to cross check stuff before putting faith in it.
Originally posted by zaphod_beeblebrox
Two Iraqi defectors have described the kind of training that went on there.
I mean, get with the program already. INC defectors again? There credibility is and always has been ZERO. That's one of the main reasons the pentagon fought with the CIA and State, and why the pentagon eventually created the OSP. State and the CIA didn't want to invest anything in them, and they clearly were correct.
And Salman Pak? Hell, how long has this been discredited for? 6 or 7 months?
This from hersh's may selective intel article (from all the way back in May)
Almost immediately after September 11th, the I.N.C. began to publicize the stories of defectors who claimed that they had information connecting Iraq to the attacks. In an interview on October 14, 2001, conducted jointly by the Times and ?Frontline,? the public-television program, Sabah Khodada, an Iraqi Army captain, said that the September 11th operation ?was conducted by people who were trained by Saddam,? and that Iraq had a program to instruct terrorists in the art of hijacking. Another defector, who was identified only as a retired lieutenant general in the Iraqi intelligence service, said that in 2000 he witnessed Arab students being given lessons in hijacking on a Boeing 707 parked at an Iraqi training camp near the town of Salman Pak, south of Baghdad.
__In separate interviews with me, however, a former C.I.A. station chief and a former military intelligence analyst said that the camp near Salman Pak had been built not for terrorism training but for counter-terrorism training. In the mid-eighties, Islamic terrorists were routinely hijacking aircraft. In 1986, an Iraqi airliner was seized by pro-Iranian extremists and crashed, after a hand grenade was triggered, killing at least sixty-five people. (At the time, Iran and Iraq were at war, and America favored Iraq.) Iraq then sought assistance from the West, and got what it wanted from Britain?s MI6. The C.I.A. offered similar training in counter-terrorism throughout the Middle East. ?We were helping our allies everywhere we had a liaison,? the former station chief told me. Inspectors recalled seeing the body of an airplane?which appeared to be used for counter-terrorism training?when they visited a biological-weapons facility near Salman Pak in 1991, ten years before September 11th. It is, of course, possible for such a camp to be converted from one purpose to another. The former C.I.A. official noted, however, that terrorists would not practice on airplanes in the open. ?That?s Hollywood rinky-dink stuff,? the former agent said. ?They train in basements. You don?t need a real airplane to practice hijacking. The 9/11 terrorists went to gyms. But to take one back you have to practice on the real thing.?
__Salman Pak was overrun by American troops on April 6th. Apparently, neither the camp nor the former biological facility has yielded evidence to substantiate the claims made before the war.
Originally posted by zaphod_beeblebrox
This claim is without merit.
Guess what. When you bother to do adequate research and not invest so much of your position in famously forged documents, then you will be taken seriously.
Originally posted by SDW2001
Oh, and since I can't let anything go:
1. The "peace" movement has almost never been right. About anything.
2. There is no evidence that the Bush administration lied about anything....anything at all. There are some questions..."where are the weapons", "why is it taking so long", "why were there so many different reasons given", "why did they focus so much on WMD when there were a million other reasons to go in".....but there is NO EVIDENCE.
3. No Ties to Al-Qaeda: That can't be proven either. We know there were ties to other terrorist organizations. We know Saddam made payments to suicide bombers. But he had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda? Please. We may not know for sure, but the evidence surely doesn't point in the direction of there being "no ties".
4. No WMD: That's not really true either. We have found components. We have found hard evidence of intent to develop them further. We haven't found the weapons, which concerns me as much as it does you. We have found loads of WMD related items, gas masks, etc. Again, this is a valid question...but to come out and say there weren't any or aren't any WMD...that's off base.
5. Intelligence: Show me where you can prove that the Bush Administration knowingly lied about any intelligence. Show me.
6. Illegal Invasion: Again, show me how this statement is supported. Show me the international law the prohibited invasion. Show me the congressional act or part of the Constitution that prohibited it. Bush got Congressional approval. The UN had declared the "serious consequneces" would follow if Iraq did not comply with inspections. Are you telling me they DID comply? Please. And what else would "serious consequences" mean, given that we'd already tried sanctions, inspections, more sanctions, limited military strikes, and then...wait for it...more sanctions?!?! The old "this war was illegal" line is a favorite...but it has no basis in fact.
7. Unreported Deaths: Show me. Someone has to know.
8: Risk to US military: What is the point here? Is there risk? Yes, of course.
9. Country being looted by bullies: So we're there for the money? Unlikely and unsupported...as is the whole article. If we wanted cheap oil, we would have simply PURCHASED it. It would have been one hell of a lot easier than invading, pouring $100 Billion into a war and reconstruction, losing hundreds of lives, and spending years there straightening out the goddamn mess that the regime made the country...don't you think?
Try thinking before you post. We don't have to agree, but don't take some left-wing, Anti-American propoganda rag and splash bold faced print all over the place proclaiming your ridiculous opinion is justified and vindicated.
Once again it's you who are alomost never right about anything!
You pad your posts with half truths ( at best ). No we haven't found any WOMD. Tell me if you were doing a project for your boss would he accept it if you said " I've completed 25% of the work that's good enough isn't it? "
It was an illegal invasion because the UN approved this based on the idea that Iraq was a direct threat to us. That they had those same WOMD.
So what if they found components? We know he had an arsenal at one time. I'd be surprised if we didn't find some remnants of that.
Your arguments are weak and rhetorical.
Give it up. Geez!
A relevent side note. In typical republican fashion....
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe....ap/index.html
This could have been on someone's mind for sometime.
[i]It was an illegal invasion because the UN approved this based on the idea that Iraq was a direct threat to us. That they had those same WOMD. [/B]
Prove just that statement, If you can.
[i]
So what if they found components? We know he had an arsenal at one time. I'd be surprised if we didn't find some remnants of that.
[/B]
Answer me this, why was that government that you defend keeping these components?
Was if for posterity?
al qaeda may have agents and cells in up to 60 different nations
. (Whether that's true or not though is anyone's guess, he has lied enough times for me to never, ever again trust anything else that comes out of his mouth).
Iraq is physically close to the al qaeda homeland of Saudi Arabia... right next door in fact: they share a long, remote and largely unmanned border. The fact that al qaeda was more absent than present in Iraq underscores fundamentalist Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda's and the former secular Iraqi regime's deep and mutual distrust of each other. Bin laden referred to Saddam's regime as "anti-islamic godless heathen" and the paranoid Saddam was obsessed his own power and glory... no way was he going to permit a possible rival space on his stage, especially a bunch of deranged fundamentalists.
Is Al Qaeda in Iraq now? You bet they are. They're converging like wasps to a jamjar. The ongoing terrorism in Iraq (and Saudi Arabia, and Turkey and elsewhere in the region which were relatively stable), the inevitable and much warned-about fallout of the war, has the hallmarks of Al Qaeda and other fundie groups. I wonder how long it will be before the growing ranks of furious, angry vengeful people in the Mid east, now boiling with rage will make it over here to America and start bombing shopping malls and train stations and hotels...just like the Provisional IRA did in the U.K. from 1969 onwards, after London sent the British Army onto the streets of Northern Ireland...and just like bin Laden and Al Qaeda did in the 1990s to US facilities as a result of US forces being stationed on "Mohammed's sacred soil".
Bush's war on terrorism is designed to get "tough" on the one hand (cheap electoral lip-service to yahoos), while at the same time enraging unstable religious lunatic-fringe groups, sparking more terrorism in the process...a self perpetuating cycle of violence in which the only winners are the ones who profit from warfare. For the maintenance of the status quo, they feel there has to be a public bogeyman in the absence of (for example) the USSR and the global "communist threat": Al qaeda and terrorism is a convenient scapegoat to neatly fill the vacuum. It's so convenient because it can't be easily indentified and encapsulated, as can an actual nation. Instead the whole thing remains a nebulous set of shadowy phantoms and dire probabilities, fueled by a cowardly media that is limited to parrotting administration-friendly propaganda. Al Qaeda doesn't even have to do anything "terroristic" these days...all they have to do is chatter on the airwaves...and the US admin. does the rest...terrifying everyone sh¡tless with dire warnings and orange alerts which never pan out, and nobody is ever caught doing anything untoward...
........but keep on shopping.
May your tanks swim in a sea of eyeballs
!!!!!
Originally posted by NaplesX
Prove just that statement, If you can.
Answer me this, why was that government that you defend keeping these components?
Was if for posterity?
Answer me this : Why not? I'm not being obtuse. It's just that when you have an arsenal of any size and you've gotten rid of it. If some stuff's lying around left what differnce does it make? It's not complete.
As to the rest.....THE PROOF IS IN THE NOT FINDING!
Originally posted by sammi jo
The Iraq-al qaeda "link" is a red herring, even if there was a proven one, (which there isn't).
Talk about spin. No, isn't that a waffle.
Originally posted by sammi jo
Iraq is physically close to the al qaeda homeland of Saudi Arabia... right next door in fact: they share a long, remote and largely unmanned border. The fact that al qaeda was more absent than present in Iraq underscores fundamentalist Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda's and the former secular Iraqi regime's deep and mutual distrust of each other. Bin laden referred to Saddam's regime as "anti-islamic godless heathen" and the paranoid Saddam was obsessed his own power and glory... no way was he going to permit a possible rival space on his stage, especially a bunch of deranged fundamentalists.
You know i have been looking for someone that could read SH's mind. Where were you when Powell went to the UN?
Originally posted by sammi jo
Bush's war on terrorism is designed to get "tough" on the one hand (cheap electoral lip-service to yahoos), while at the same time enraging unstable religious lunatic-fringe groups, sparking more terrorism in the process...a self perpetuating cycle of violence in which the only winners are the ones who profit from warfare.
Designed by who?
Originally posted by sammi jo
For the maintenance of the status quo, they feel there has to be a public bogeyman in the absence of (for example) the USSR and the global "communist threat": Al qaeda and terrorism is a convenient scapegoat to neatly fill the vacuum. It's so convenient because it can't be easily indentified and encapsulated, as can an actual nation.
When you are on a plane and a guy is threatening to blow it up because his religious leaders told him to, will you be able to Identify your enemy then?
When you saw palestinians dancing in the streets along with other large groups of fundamentalists cheering the deaths of innocent people, you meen to tell me, you did not see who the enemy possibly was?
Originally posted by sammi jo
Instead the whole thing remains a nebulous set of shadowy phantoms and dire probabilities, fueled by a cowardly media that is limited to parrotting administration-friendly propaganda. Al Qaeda doesn't even have to do anything "terroristic" these days...all they have to do is chatter on the airwaves...and the US admin. does the rest...terrifying everyone sh?tless with dire warnings and orange alerts which never pan out, and nobody is ever caught doing anything untoward...
........but keep on shopping.
I saw a million people celebrating NYD in NY despite being the biggest target on the map! You call that scared?
Originally posted by jimmac
Answer me this : Why not? I'm not being obtuse. It's just that when you have an arsenal of any size and you've gotten rid of it. If some stuff's lying around left what differnce does it make? It's not complete.
You are clearly not thinking this through.
It was precisely hidden in homes and who know where else. Why go through all of that for a piece of scrap?
To say it was 'just lying around" is spin to the max.
Originally posted by NaplesX
Talk about spin. No, isn't that a waffle.
You know i have been looking for someone that could read SH's mind. Where were you when Powell went to the UN?
Designed by who?
When you are on a plane and a guy is threatening to blow it up because his religious leaders told him to, will you be able to Identify your enemy then?
When you saw palestinians dancing in the streets along with other large groups of fundamentalists cheering the deaths of innocent people, you meen to tell me, you did not see who the enemy possibly was?
I saw a million people celebrating NYD in NY despite being the biggest target on the map! You call that scared?
Your replies are getting weak and desperate here.
You have an absolute talent for not seeing the facts and when someone explains them you want them to explain them again. Just like you didn't hear anything. That's getting really old.