Bush to veto timetable bill, surpise! - Page 4

Shipwreck · 05-11-2007, 16:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ray

Wow!

My favorite : Richard Perle's December 2001 Op-Ed in the NY Times

(bold emphasis is mine)

Quote:

The U.S. Must Strike at Saddam Hussein

by Richard Perle
New York Times
December 28, 2001

Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush said, "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." From that first statement, Mr. Bush shaped a grand strategy for the war on terrorism that is as transforming of American policy as was Ronald Reagan's pledge to consign an "evil empire" to the "ash heap of history." It breaks with the past by taking aim at states harboring terrorists as well as at terrorists themselves. It is why we have destroyed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan even as we hunt down Osama bin Laden himself. It is why the war against terrorism cannot be won if Saddam Hussein continues to rule Iraq.

Three things about Saddam Hussein make the destruction of his regime essential to the war against terrorism.

First, like Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein hates the United States with a vengeance he expresses at every opportunity. It is hatred intensified by a tribal culture of the blood feud - one that he has embraced since Mr. Bush's father defeated him on the field of battle.

Second, Saddam Hussein has an array of chemical and biological weapons and has been willing to absorb the pain of a decade-long embargo rather than allow international inspectors to uncover the full magnitude of his program. The expulsion of inspectors from Iraq three years ago has rendered future inspections worthless; everything that could be relocated has been moved and hidden in mosques, schools, hospitals, farms, private homes. These programs - now involving dozens, perhaps hundreds, of clandestine sites - will prove even more difficult to find than Osama bin Laden.

Alone among heads of state, he has actually used chemical weapons against his own people, killing thousands of unarmed citizens in northern Iraq. We know that he has produced quantities of anthrax sufficient to kill millions of people, as well as other biological agents. Disseminated to would-be martyrs from Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other terrorist groups, Saddam Hussein's biological arsenal could kill very large numbers of Americans.

With each passing day, he comes closer to his dream of a nuclear arsenal. We know he has a clandestine program, spread over many hidden sites, to enrich Iraqi natural uranium to weapons grade. We know he has the designs and the technical staff to fabricate nuclear weapons once he obtains the material. And intelligence sources know he is in the market, with plenty of money, for both weapons material and components as well as finished nuclear weapons. How close is he? We do not know. Two years, three years, tomorrow even? We simply do not know, and any intelligence estimate that would cause us to relax would be about as useful as the ones that missed his nuclear program in the early 1990's or failed to predict the Indian nuclear test in 1998 or to gain even a hint of the Sept. 11 attack.

Third, we know that Saddam Hussein has engaged directly in acts of terror and given sanctuary and other support to terrorists. In 1993 he planned the assassination of George H. W. Bush during the former president's visit to Kuwait. He operates a terrorist training facility at Salman Pak complete with a passenger aircraft cabin for training in hijacking.

His collaboration with terrorists is well documented. Evidence of a meeting in Prague between a senior Iraqi intelligence agent and Mohamed Atta, the Sept. 11 ringleader, is convincing. More important is his long, continuing collaboration with a number of terrorist groups, some of whose leaders live in and operate from Iraq. He openly, defiantly pays the families of suicide bombers and praises the attacks on Sept. 11. If anyone fits the profile of support for terror, it is Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein's removal from office, we are told privately, would be cheered in the Persian Gulf. The conventional wisdom that an attack on him would be seen as an attack against Islam is an insult to Islam, and it is wrong. To most Muslims, his reign of terror is an abomination. In Iraq itself, his downfall would be met with dancing in the streets. A decent successor regime would be very likely to encourage peace in the region.

The charter of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of Saddam Hussein's opponents, calls for eradicating weapons of mass destruction and renouncing terrorism. Those opponents need our political and financial support today, and when the time is ripe, they will need our precision air power.

In 1981 the Israelis faced an urgent choice: Should they allow Saddam Hussein to fuel a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad - or destroy it? Once fuel was placed in the reactor, it could not be bombed without releasing lethal radioactive material. Allowing the fueling to go forward meant that the Baghdad regime could eventually get the plutonium to build a nuclear weapon. The Israelis decided to strike pre-emptively, before it was too late: in a spectacular display of precision bombing, the reactor at Osirak was destroyed.

Everything we know about Saddam Hussein forces President Bush to make a similar choice: to take pre-emptive action or wait, possibly until it is too late. We waited too long before acting broadly against terrorism. We were too late to save the victims of Sept. 11. We should have taken terrorism seriously three years ago, when our embassies in East Africa were destroyed. To leave Saddam Hussein in place and hope for the best would repeat that mistake. And narrowing the war against terror to exclude his regime would drain a bold and courageous policy of its great and vital strength.

Link

JAD_333 · 05-11-2007, 21:02 PM

I have no doubt that Al Quida operatives had contact with Saddam's intelligence people. That is what intelligence people do. They may have even had contact with Muhamed Atta before the 9/11 attack; he may even have asked for some help, but I seriously doubt he told Saddam's intel people about 9/11 and the help he might have sought could have been connected to other Al Quida ops.

On another subject, it is interesting how any Administration statement that Al Quida had direct contacts with Saddam's gov't prior to 9/11 quickly morfs into insistence by critics that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

Notice for example in the 2004 article posted here a few posts back, Cheney is quoted as saying Saddam had contact with Al Quida before 9/11 and right away he is attacked for linking Saddam to 9/11. From apples come oranges.
At the end of the article he is reported having said he didn't know if Saddam had played a part in 9/11. That is pretty much what I have heard from the beginning.

Of course, no one knows the truth yet. My guess is that history will show that Saddam did not know about 9/11 ahead of time. The only possibility is that his intel folks gave help to Al Quida without knowing what for.

In any case, this is an interesting sidebar in the runup to the Iraq war, but hardly the main chance. It's fodder for politicians and froathing critics of Bush and the Iraq war.

Ray · 05-12-2007, 23:26 PM

I have doubt that the Iraqis had any collaborative contact with AQ.

My reasons are:

Had they had any serious collaborative contact, the US would not let go of the opportunity to highlight the same so that there was an open and shut case against Saddam.

Such a information blitz was required since there was, even before the war, a lot of scepticism about Iraq really having WMD. A proven nexus with ObL and AQ would have convinced many sceptics that at least there was good reasons to neutralise Iraq even if one was doubtful about the WMD conenction.

During the Congressional Hearing, such a fact with documentary proof would have surely been produced and emphasised with all power at the Administration's command, to indicate a collabortive nexus with ObL and AQ.

Even now, if such a collaborative nexus between Saddam and AQ can be established without doubt and beyond being speculative, it would calm the turbulent waters in the Congress and the world; especially so when the Administration is losing its unquestioned grip over dictating the terms of how to conduct the Iraq War and losing its hold over the US public and which is a serious problem for the Republicans in view of the looming Presidential elections.

If the so called neocons could be speculative then, any cognisable proof would make them jubilate as a Fourth of July parade and fireworks display.

In the field of disinformation the 'conjecture' factor is a very important one. The 'Maybe/ could be/ should be' plants a seed of doubt and that works and planted with seeds of doubt that are in the popular imagination, a lie gets the foundation of 'truth'. Saddam having been demonised, a 9/11 connection would not surprise anyone. Hence, a 'could be' statement would surely be converted to 'must be' in the popular imagination!

The point made by JAD that Intelligence people are always fishing with the most horrid and unscrupulous is very apt. It is from the underworld and the shady and those who can sell their souls that one gets the best of information, which when processed, becomes intelligence.

dalem · 05-13-2007, 05:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shipwreck

Yes

Oh you're still bubbling about that one? No link was made connecting Iraq to 9/11. Iraq to aQ, sure, everyone knows that. But 9/11? No.

-dale

Shipwreck · 05-13-2007, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalem

Iraq to aQ, sure, everyone knows that.

From Report Number 07-INTEL-04, dated February 9, 2007, "Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy", by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, US Department of Defense, Appendix G, page 35 :

(bold emphasis mine)

Quote:

Both the CIA and DIA acknowledged that they had evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida had sporadic contacts during the 1990s, however the CIA assessed the contacts as intermittent and lacking the information that showed the two had a long-term relationship similar to those that Iraq had fostered with other terrorist organizations.

The DIA assessment of contacts said that "Iraq and al-Qaida probably have initiated contact in the past and may communicate through a liaison arrangement, though available reporting us not firm enough to demonstrate and on-going relationship."

Sporadic contacts, however, hardly amount to a "mature", let alone "symbiotic relationship".

Garry · 05-13-2007, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalem

So since I disagree with you I'm against reality?

-dale

Dale, we can fall into long dispute... Bush told a lot of lies about WMD/ A-Q ties with Iraq etc... his people too. Americans were sold war based on 9/11 which had NOTHING to do with that. And they bought it thinking that they respond to 9/11. No they come to understanding that they were WRONG..... and that is why public support is going away....

This is reality....

Answer just one question - DO YOU THINK THAT WAR IN IRAQ WAS POSSIBLE WITHOUT 9/11? DO YOU THINK PEOPLE KNEW THAT SADDAM IS NOT LINKED IN 2003?

If you come to the same answers as I did you will know what I think

JAD_333 · 05-13-2007, 19:50 PM

[quote=Ray;373561]

Quote:

I have doubt that the Iraqis had any collaborative contact with AQ.

Ray, so far so good.

Quote:

My reasons are:

Had they had any serious collaborative contact, the US would not let go of the opportunity to highlight the same so that there was an open and shut case against Saddam.

Here we diverge. You're correct to the extent that had the US possesed any documentary evidence of collaboration or contact with Al Quida, they would have played it for all it's worth. But that does not mean there were no contacts.

To reiterate, any intel organization worth its salt would have sought contact with AQ if only to gather information. Playing up normal ops might be disingenuous. Intel people wouldn't have found it conspiratorial, but the public might.

As an "open and shut" case against Saddam, the standards of jurisprudence don't apply in making a case for war. The court of public opinion operates on moral and strategic grounds. A dispassionate view of the threat posed by terrorism on the US and its vital interests formed a solid basis for taking out Saddam. In war, as you well know, General, a country which poses a latent threat combined with continuing hostility is subject to preemptive attack by its enemies.

Despite that principle, it is often better to let the evidence mount before attacking. In that sense, the US may have gone to war too quickly. History will settle that question, and it may well settle it on the side of the US, but that is a long way off.

Quote:

Such a information blitz was required since there was, even before the war, a lot of scepticism about Iraq really having WMD. A proven nexus with ObL and AQ would have convinced many sceptics that at least there was good reasons to neutralise Iraq even if one was doubtful about the WMD conenction.

You may recall that I consider the WMD pretext a sideshow to the real reason for attacking Saddam's Iraq. WMD was the only one the USG believed had legs. When it came up a dry hole, public opinion went south. The real reason was far too complex for the average citizen to understand, and what the public doesn't understand, it does not support.

[

Quote:

During the Congressional Hearing, such a fact with documentary proof would have surely been produced and emphasised with all power at the Administration's command, to indicate a collabortive nexus with ObL and AQ.

Even now, if such a collaborative nexus between Saddam and AQ can be established without doubt and beyond being speculative, it would calm the turbulent waters in the Congress and the world; especially so when the Administration is losing its unquestioned grip over dictating the terms of how to conduct the Iraq War and losing its hold over the US public and which is a serious problem for the Republicans in view of the looming Presidential elections.

I agree, with the stipulation that while traces of evidence do not constitute hard evidence, they may indicate there is evidence yet to be found.

Quote:

If the so called neocons could be speculative then, any cognisable proof would make them jubilate as a Fourth of July parade and fireworks display.

In the field of disinformation the 'conjecture' factor is a very important one. The 'Maybe/ could be/ should be' plants a seed of doubt and that works and planted with seeds of doubt that are in the popular imagination, a lie gets the foundation of 'truth'. Saddam having been demonised, a 9/11 connection would not surprise anyone. Hence, a 'could be' statement would surely be converted to 'must be' in the popular imagination!

Time to bury that neocon term--they're mostly gone--, but, yes, if documents or unimpeachable testimony surfaces to establish that Saddam's people were consorting with AQ or other terrorists organizations, there will be a media "parade" in the US.

**Shek** · 05-13-2007, 21:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Garry

Dale, we can fall into long dispute... Bush told a lot of lies about WMD/ A-Q ties with Iraq etc... his people too. Americans were sold war based on 9/11 which had NOTHING to do with that. And they bought it thinking that they respond to 9/11. No they come to understanding that they were WRONG..... and that is why public support is going away....

This is reality....

Answer just one question - DO YOU THINK THAT WAR IN IRAQ WAS POSSIBLE WITHOUT 9/11? DO YOU THINK PEOPLE KNEW THAT SADDAM IS NOT LINKED IN 2003?

If you come to the same answers as I did you will know what I think

Garry,

Americans may have conflated 9/11 and Iraq, but the war wasn't based on 9/11. Sorry, I paid attention to the build up to the war, and other than the Atta - Prague link which was never sold as a definite contact in my mind, there was no Saddam supported 9/11 case being made.

Instead, it was built upon the WMD that Saddam possessed and never accounted for, resulting in over a dozen UN resolutions, blah, blah, blah.

Now, the case for the war was seen through the lens of 9/11, but this is different than it being built upon 9/11. Feel free to conflate this if you like, as many Americans did, but that doesn't make it correct.

Also, care to explain why every intel agency got the WMD thing wrong?

Shipwreck · 05-14-2007, 04:33 AM

From the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States ("The 9/11 Commission Report"), US Government Printing Office, pp. 335-336 :

(bold emphasis mine)

Quote:

Rice told us the the administration was concerned that Iraq would take advantage of the 9/11 attacks. She recalled that in the first Camp David session chaired by the President, Rumsfeld asked what the administration should do about Iraq. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz made the case for striking Iraq during "this round" of the war on terrorrism.

(snip)

Secretary Powell recalled that Wolfowitz, - not Rumsfeld -, argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of the terrorist problem and should therefore be attacked. Powell said that Wolfowitz was not able to justify his belief that Iraq was behind 9/11. "Paul was always of the view that Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with", Powell told us, "And he saw this as one way of using this event as a way to deal with the Iraq problem".

(snip)

Within the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz continued to press the case for dealing with Iraq. Writing to Rumsfeld on September 17 (2001) in a memo headlined "Preventing More Events", he argued that if there was even a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack, maximum priority should be placed on eliminating that threat.

Wolfowitz contended that the odds were "far more" than 1 in 10, citing Saddam's praise for the attack, his long record of involvement in terrorism, and theories that Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi agent and Iraq was behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

The next day, Wolfowitz renewed the argument, writing to Rumsfeld about the interest of Yousef's co-conspirator in the 1995 Manilla air plot in crashing an explosives-laden plane into CIA headquarters, and about information from a foreign government regarding Iraqi's involvement in the attempted hijacking of a Gulf Air flight.

Shipwreck · 05-14-2007, 04:53 AM

Dick Cheney again

Quote:

The Vice President Appears on NBC's Meet the Press

December 9, 2001

(snip)

RUSSERT : Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?

CHENEY : Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.

(snip)

Link

Shipwreck · 05-14-2007, 05:41 AM

William Safire's November 2001 Op-Ed in the NY Times

(bold emphasis mine)

Quote:

Prague Connection

By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The New York Times
Published: November 11, 2001

SAN DIEGO -- The undisputed fact connecting Iraq's Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks is this: Mohamed Atta, who died at the controls of an airliner-missile, flew from Florida to Prague to meet on April 8 of this year with Ahmed al-Ani, the Iraqi consul.

Al-Ani was known to the B.I.S., the Czech counterintelligence service, as a "case officer" of Iraqi intelligence working under diplomatic cover. "A case officer is not merely an agent," notes Edward Jay Epstein, the espionage analyst and my fellow Angletonian. "An agent executes assignments, but a case officer serves as the intermediary between an agent and the state intelligence service controlling that agent."

Saddam has long been infuriated by the ability of Radio Free Europe to foment dissent inside Iraq. Wiretaps of Saddam's Prague consulate led the B.I.S. to suspect al-Ani of enlisting agents to blow up R.F.E.'s Prague headquarters.

Al-Ani usually met agents at his consular office, where he could plausibly appear to be issuing them visas. But in Atta's case, the case officer took pains to avoid showing any direct link to Iraq. Why did the case officer meet Atta away from the Iraqi consulate? Surely the Iraqi, under round-the-clock surveillance, knew the B.I.S. would follow him.

Epstein has a "false flag" theory: "A remote location in Prague, not connected to Iraq, would allow al-Ani to misidentify himself to Atta. Such an alias, or false flag, could both aid the recruitment by appealing to Atta's ideological interest and conceal Iraq's involvement. False flags are a common tool of recruitment by intelligence services."

Perhaps Saddam, hardly a devout Muslim, did not want to show his hand to bin Laden's mid-level religious fanatics. The B.I.S. followed al- Ani to a clandestine meeting at a hotel with Atta, who had just come to the city. After that meeting, the Czechs shadowed Atta to the airport for his flight to the U.S.

Why didn't the B.I.S. inform the U.S. about Atta at that time? Here was a suspected plot against a large U.S.-financed facility; within two weeks, the Czechs declared his case officer, al-Ani, persona non grata and shipped him back to Baghdad. Were the C.I.A. and F.B.I. kept in the dark about his agent flying back and forth to America under his own name of Atta, or were our counterspies informed but did nothing?

Last week, the Czech prime minister, Milos Zeman, confirmed to CNN that al-Ani and Atta met in Prague (which Czech officials had at first denied). But Zeman was eager to dissociate that meeting from planning to destroy New York's twin towers: "Atta contacted some Iraq agent [sic] . . . to prepare a terrorist attack on just the building of Radio Free Europe."

Really? How does the Czech prime minister know what the Iraqi spymaster and Atta discussed? He could know only if the meeting were bugged or if al-Ani talked before being thrown out of Prague. Was the C.I.A. or F.B.I. informed about the U.S. interest in why al-Ani was ejected, and what travelers to America had recently been in secret contact with him?

After all, Atta had flown from Virginia Beach, Fla., the day before and returned the following day. That shows urgency: one does not back and forth across the Atlantic within 72 hours to meet secretly with a known Iraqi intelligence officer for no reason.

We since have learned that Atta, who had made at least one earlier trip to Prague, returned to the U.S. to open a bank account at the Sun Bank in Florida and received $100,000 to finance his mission through an Arab emirate money changer. But before that money to finance his Sept. 11 attack could pass, Atta apparently needed to stop in Prague first, where Iraq's al-Ani was running agents.

The Prague connection links Saddam and bin Laden at the agent level. Now here is an unpublished report that suggests Saddam helps the terrorist leader on a personal level:

In mid-May, two of Saddam's secret service agents arrived at the clinic of Dr. Mohammed Khayal, Baghdad's leading kidney specialist. The doctor hurriedly packed a bag and was escorted to a government car. Three days later, he was returned, and the building was soon abuzz with the word that Saddam's Dr. Khayal had been to Afghanistan where his patient was Osama bin Laden.

Link

Shipwreck · 05-14-2007, 06:06 AM

Another William Safire's Op-Ed in the NY Times (March 2002)

(bold emphasis mine)

Quote:

Protecting Saddam

by WILLIAM SAFIRE
The New York Times
March 18, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Soviet propagandists used to touch up photographs to remove the face of a Kremlin official who had fallen from favor, making him a "nonperson."

The same disinformation technique is now being used to wipe out the fact of a meeting in Prague in April, 2001 -- five months before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. -- between Mohamed Atta, the leading Qaeda hijacker, and Ahmed al-Ani, the Iraqi consul in Prague, who was Saddam Hussein's intelligence case officer there.

On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister (like his boss, a former K.G.B. disinformation specialist) said of this widely reported Iraqi-Qaeda connection: "That is wrong information."

That denial of an observed connection between bin Laden's suicide bomber and Saddam's spymaster was preceded by a David Ignatius column in The Washington Post last week deriding such reports by me and by James Woolsey, former C.I.A. chief, in The Wall Street Journal. Pooh-poohing the notion of a meeting that "supposedly took place," Ignatius asserted "there is no solid evidence" of such a link. On the contrary, he opined, "hard intelligence to support the Baghdad-bin Laden connection is somewhere between `slim' and `none.' "

My colleague in columny, a respected commentator with a fine writing style, bases his conclusion on recent interviews with "senior European officials." (He also wears another hat as executive editor of The International Herald Tribune and I am buttering him up in the hope he will not kill my column therein.)

These unidentified Europeans tell him that "the C.I.A. now shares their skepticism about the Atta-al Ani connection. . . . Even the Czechs . . . have gradually backed away."

Let us now depart from the line that Ivanov and "senior European officials" and supposedly backing-away Czechs are peddling to gullible commentators. (Couldn't help it; you can cut that line in the Trib.)

On solid evidence: The Czech intelligence agency, B.I.S., had the Iraqi embassy spy in Prague under constant visual and wiretap surveillance, especially after a threat to the Radio Free Europe headquarters there. Three months ago, after the absolve-Saddam campaign began to cast doubt on the report of the Atta-al Ani meeting at the Prague airport, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross issued a statement that "B.I.S. guarantees the information, so we stick by that information." No backing away; on the contrary, strong reaffirmation.

On corroboration of the evidence that Atta flew 7,000 miles, from Virginia Beach to Prague and back to Florida (his third trip to Prague in a year): The F.B.I. has car-rental and other records that Atta left for Prague on April 8, 2001, and returned on April 11. The B.I.S. report of the meeting that Saddam's case officer had with the suicide hijacker fell precisely within those dates. Czech intelligence, in identifying al-Ani's contact as Atta, had no knowledge of the F.B.I.'s evidence that independently corroborates Atta's brief presence in Prague.

On C.I.A. assessment of the evidence: James Risen reported in The New York Times last month that while not enough evidence ties Saddam specifically to Sept. 11, "senior American intelligence officials have concluded that the meeting between Mr. Atta and the Iraqi officer, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, did take place." Congressional intelligence committees could confirm that with one secure phone call.

Now let's walk back the cat, as the spooks say. What's behind the campaign to cast doubt on the meeting? It cannot be only posterior-covering by junior C.I.A. analysts and N.S.A. "Big Ear" monitors who should have known of a meeting about what was then believed to be the terrorist threat to Americans at R.F.E. in Prague.

The smooth Russian diplomat, "European officials" and Arab potentates seeking to erase the evidence have one purpose: to throw dust in our eyes about Saddam's clandestine support of international terrorism. They don't want the U.S. to have any reason to liberate the Iraqi people. They see great profit in doing oil business with Saddam and collecting tens of billions in debts.

The name of their game is delay -- to demand evidence of nuclear development while unfettered inspections are forbidden, and to dismiss as a non-meeting the hard evidence of a terrorist connection. Meanwhile, Iraqi scientists race to build the weapons that would blackmail into impotence any power daring to unseat Saddam.

Link

Shipwreck · 05-14-2007, 06:31 AM

Yet another William Safire's Op-Ed in the NY Times (November 2003)

(bold emphasis mine)

Quote:

Missing Links Found

By WILLIAM SAFIRE
New York Times
Published: November 24, 2003

WASHINGTON — Two blockbuster magazine articles last week revealed evidence that Saddam's spy agency and top Qaeda operatives certainly were in frequent contact for a decade, and that there is renewed reason to suspect an Iraqi spymaster in Prague may have helped finance the 9/11 attacks.

On weeklystandard.com, you can find chunks of a 16-page letter by Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, responding to a Senate Intelligence Committee request for evidence of Saddam-bin Laden collaboration. Fifty specific instances from C.I.A., N.S.A., F.B.I. and Pentagon files are described, many from "sensitive reporting" never made public.

The Defense Department acknowledged the Oct. 27 letter included a classified annex of "raw reports or products" of U.S. intelligence agencies on "the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," cautioning that it "drew no conclusions." But with so much connective tissue exposed — some the result of "custodial interviews" of prisoners — the burden of proof has shifted to those still grimly in denial.

Remember how anti-liberation politicians and journalists pooh-poohed Colin Powell's February 2003 speech to the U.N. about the presence in Iraq of a Qaeda associate, identified in this space as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Powell's assertion had this "sensitive reporting" basis: "As of Oct. 2002 al Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S. occupation of the city."

Deniers derogate as "cherry picking" Feith's intelligence summary available to senators: "The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, al Ani, on several occasions. During one of those meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS [Iraq Intelligence Service] finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office."

If true, that would implicate Saddam's regime in the murder of 3,000 Americans. Though the C.I.A. can confirm two Atta trips to Prague, in 1994 and 2000, it cannot confirm the two other visits the Czechs reported, including one on April 9, 2001, with Saddam's top European agent, al-Ani, then vice consul in Prague. C.I.A. chief George Tenet testified that the meeting reported by the Czech service was "possible," but the F.B.I. floated hints that car rental records showed Atta to be traveling between Virginia and Florida that week.

Enter the writer Edward Jay Epstein in the liberal online journal Slate: "All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license." You cannot rent a car without a driver's license.

Epstein went to Prague this month to interview Czech officials who want to cooperate with the U.S. to get to the bottom of the Atta-Iraqi story but have been stiffed by the F.B.I., whose bureaucracy is sensitive to charges of failed surveillance. Read his detailed Slate report and subsequent commentary on edwardjayepstein.com.

Since July, al-Ani has been in U.S. Department of Justice custody and I wonder how effectively he is being interrogated. Have we learned the whereabouts of his Prague and Baghdad aides and secretaries, and taken their testimony? Have we asked M.I.5 to let us speak to Jabir Salim, his Prague station-chief predecessor, who defected to Britain and may know which employees and which banks could transfer $100,000 to an account accessible to Atta?

Did al-Ani order any payment to "the student from Hamburg" or his co-conspirators, as Czech intelligence believes, and did the paymaster carry out the order? To what superior in Baghdad did al-Ani report, and who worked most closely with him, and are they in custody and do their stories jibe? What have we offered al-Ani, in protection or immunity or plea bargain, to turn state's evidence?

F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller is duty-bound to examine the full transcript of the interrogation to see how seriously this is being pursued; same with Senate Intelligence. I'd also assign new agents to follow up leads in Prague.

Intrepid journalists will ultimately bring the full story of the Saddam-bin Laden connection to light. In the meantime, the F.B.I. should stop treating 9/11 as a cold case.

Link

Shipwreck · 05-14-2007, 06:36 AM

The aforementioned November 2003 article in the Weekly Standard :

Quote:

Case Closed
From the November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

by Stephen F. Hayes
11/24/2003,
The Weekly Standard, Volume 009, Issue 11

Editor's Note, 1/27/04: In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank reported that "Vice President Cheney . . . in an interview this month with the Rocky Mountain News, recommended as the 'best source of information' an article in The Weekly Standard magazine detailing a relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda based on leaked classified information."

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War. According to reporting in the memo, 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 equip

05-11-2007, 16:02 PM	#46 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 26,149 Country:	Wow! __________________ "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination." I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to. HAKUNA MATATA

05-12-2007, 23:26 PM	#49 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 26,149 Country:	I have doubt that the Iraqis had any collaborative contact with AQ. My reasons are: Had they had any serious collaborative contact, the US would not let go of the opportunity to highlight the same so that there was an open and shut case against Saddam. Such a information blitz was required since there was, even before the war, a lot of scepticism about Iraq really having WMD. A proven nexus with ObL and AQ would have convinced many sceptics that at least there was good reasons to neutralise Iraq even if one was doubtful about the WMD conenction. During the Congressional Hearing, such a fact with documentary proof would have surely been produced and emphasised with all power at the Administration's command, to indicate a collabortive nexus with ObL and AQ. Even now, if such a collaborative nexus between Saddam and AQ can be established without doubt and beyond being speculative, it would calm the turbulent waters in the Congress and the world; especially so when the Administration is losing its unquestioned grip over dictating the terms of how to conduct the Iraq War and losing its hold over the US public and which is a serious problem for the Republicans in view of the looming Presidential elections. If the so called neocons could be speculative then, any cognisable proof would make them jubilate as a Fourth of July parade and fireworks display. In the field of disinformation the 'conjecture' factor is a very important one. The 'Maybe/ could be/ should be' plants a seed of doubt and that works and planted with seeds of doubt that are in the popular imagination, a lie gets the foundation of 'truth'. Saddam having been demonised, a 9/11 connection would not surprise anyone. Hence, a 'could be' statement would surely be converted to 'must be' in the popular imagination! The point made by JAD that Intelligence people are always fishing with the most horrid and unscrupulous is very apt. It is from the underworld and the shady and those who can sell their souls that one gets the best of information, which when processed, becomes intelligence. Last edited by Ray : 05-12-2007 at 23:29 PM.

05-11-2007, 21:02 PM	#48 (permalink)
JAD_333 *Defense Professional* Join Date: 04-15-07 Location: Virginia Posts: 2,692 Country:	I have no doubt that Al Quida operatives had contact with Saddam's intelligence people. That is what intelligence people do. They may have even had contact with Muhamed Atta before the 9/11 attack; he may even have asked for some help, but I seriously doubt he told Saddam's intel people about 9/11 and the help he might have sought could have been connected to other Al Quida ops. On another subject, it is interesting how any Administration statement that Al Quida had direct contacts with Saddam's gov't prior to 9/11 quickly morfs into insistence by critics that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. Notice for example in the 2004 article posted here a few posts back, Cheney is quoted as saying Saddam had contact with Al Quida before 9/11 and right away he is attacked for linking Saddam to 9/11. From apples come oranges. At the end of the article he is reported having said he didn't know if Saddam had played a part in 9/11. That is pretty much what I have heard from the beginning. Of course, no one knows the truth yet. My guess is that history will show that Saddam did not know about 9/11 ahead of time. The only possibility is that his intel folks gave help to Al Quida without knowing what for. In any case, this is an interesting sidebar in the runup to the Iraq war, but hardly the main chance. It's fodder for politicians and froathing critics of Bush and the Iraq war.