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Post by Beady’s Here Now on Nov 25, 2005 21:52:30 GMT -5
COMMENTARY No hype needed: Saddam, al-Qaida linked
By Victor Davis Hanson
As American casualties mount in Iraq, politicians at home now fight over who said what and when about weapons of mass destruction and the need for going to war. One of the most frequent charges is that President Bush hyped a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida — and that as a result, we diverted our efforts from finishing off the real terrorists to start a new and costly war to replace a secular dictator.
This charge is false for several reasons — and illogical for even more. Almost every responsible U.S. government body had long warned about Saddam's links to al-Qaida terrorists. In 1998, for example, when the Clinton Justice Department indicted bin Laden, the writ read: "In addition, al-Qaida reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al-Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaida would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."
Then in October 2002, George Tenet, the Clinton-appointed CIA director, warned the Senate in similar terms: "We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade." Seventy-seven senators apparently agreed — including a majority of Democrats — and cited just that connection a few days later as a cause to go to war against Saddam: " ... Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq."
The bipartisan consensus about this unholy alliance was not based on intriguing but unconfirmed rumors of meetings between Saddam's intelligence agents and al-Qaida operatives such as Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Nor did the senators or the president ever claim that Saddam himself planned the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead, the Justice Department, the Senate and two administrations were alarmed by terrorist groups like Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida affiliate that established bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.
More importantly, one of the masterminds of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Baghdad to find sanctuary with Saddam after the attack. And after the U.S.'s successful war against the Taliban, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the present murderous al-Qaida leader in Iraq, reportedly escaped from Afghanistan to gain a reprieve from Saddam.
All of this is understandable since Saddam had a long history of promoting and sheltering anti-Western terrorists. That's why both Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas — terrorist banes of the 1970s and 1980s — were in Baghdad prior to the U.S. invasion and why the families of West Bank suicide bombers were given $25,000 rewards by the Iraqi government.
Saddam worried little over the agendas of these diverse terrorist groups, only that they shared his own generic hatred of Western governments. This kind of support from leaders such as Saddam has proven crucial to radical, violent Islamicists' efforts.
After Sept. 11, it became clear that these enemies can only resort to terrorism to weaken American resolve and gain concessions — and can't even do that without the clandestine help of illegitimate regimes (from Saddam in Iraq to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the theocracy in Iran, Bashar Assad in Syria and others) who provide money and sanctuary while denying culpability.
Middle Eastern terrorists and tyrants feed on one another. The Saddams and Assads of the region — and to a less extent the Saudi royal family and the Mubarak dynasty — deflected popular anger over their own failures onto the United States by allowing terrorists to scapegoat the Americans.
Yet, for a quarter-century, oil, professed anti-communism and loud promises to "fight terror" earned various reprieves from the West for these dictatorships, who were deathly afraid that one day America might catch on and do something other than shoot a cruise missile at enemies while sternly lecturing "friends."
That day came after Sept. 11. To end the old pathology, we took out the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, pressured the Syrians to leave Lebanon, encouraged Lebanese democracy, hectored the Egyptians about elections, told Libya's Moammar Gaddafi to come clean about his nuclear plans, and risked oil supplies by jawboning the Persian Gulf monarchies to liberalize.
The theory behind all these messy and often caricatured efforts was not the desire for endless war — we removed by force only the two worst regimes, in Afghanistan and Iraq — but to allow Middle Easterners a third alternative between Islamic radicalism and secular dictatorship. No wonder that wherever there are elections in the Middle East — Afghanistan and Iraq — legitimate governments there have the moral authority and the desire to fight Islamic terrorism.
Americans can blame one another all we want over the cost in lives and treasure in Iraq. But the irony is that not long ago everyone from Bill Clinton to George Bush, senators, CIA directors and federal prosecutors all agreed that Saddam had offered assistance to al-Qaida, the organization that murdered 3,000 Americans. That was one of the many reasons we went into Iraq, why Zarqawi and ex-Baathists side-by-side now attack American soldiers — and why an elected Iraqi government is fighting with us.
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Post by caro on Nov 26, 2005 2:48:15 GMT -5
saddam was never a religious man... al qaida fight for the suppremacy of islam...
you're going too far IMO
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Post by DixonHill on Nov 26, 2005 9:48:49 GMT -5
No. You want some people on this forum to believe that the war in Iraq was justified. Saddam hated Osama and vice versa. who says it wasn't justified? aren't they doing what you're saying live3evr is doing?
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Post by Beady’s Here Now on Nov 26, 2005 10:45:31 GMT -5
stick with the article...noone has countered the facts in it...so atm, the link stands....
*waiting to be flamed again*
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Post by giggergrl on Nov 26, 2005 13:13:35 GMT -5
stick with the article...noone has countered the facts in it...so atm, the link stands.... *waiting to be flamed again* tAM TYPING.. ~ aye.. nice little retrospective "diddy" someone put together.. well done.. YES... sadaam has supported people who are "anti-Isreal" pro Islam.. ALONG WITH THE REST OF ISLAMIC WORLD...or for other reasons that weRE in his "best interest" so he cld remain a tyrant in his own country.. nothing new in the world of intelligence.. Iraq- there was NOT ANY state funded terrorist organizations in iraq listed with the state dept. YES, there have been lower level military officials FOR EX. who had meetings in Libya etc. (looking for some uranium ?) blah blah blah.. nothing new in the world of intel..ALL THESE COUNTRIES DO THIS SHIT AND ALL WANT NUCLEAR POWER IF THEY DONT HAVE IT OR EXPAND ON WHAT THEY ALREADY HAVE.. BUT THEN LET"S GO FOR ALL THE POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS COUNTRIES WHILE WE'RE AT IT LET'S GO ! .SAUDI, SYRIA , Pakistan, ETC ETC.. TO NAME A FEW.. who have DIRECT LINKS TO AL-QUEDA.. The point of the iraq war was that Iraq was out of compliance with the UN... THEN THEY PUT COLIN POWELL UP THERE TO SELL THE WAR TO US.. WE HAD THE WORLD ON OUR SIDE POST 9/11.... BUT THEN AND WE CHOSE TO GO TO WAR UNILATERALLY AND PRE-EMPTIVELY WITH THE PICK OF THE YEAR - IRAQ.... THAT IS WHAT OUTRAGES/BEWILDERS PEOPLE... AND THE iNTELL THAT WAS "STRETCHED.." AND THE DODGINESS AND ARROGANCE OF THE ADMIN. (IN CAHOOTS WITH THE MEDIA..) THEY MANAGES TO CONFUSE AND DIVERT US SEVERAL TIMES OVER.. THIS IS WAR WE ARE TALKING HERE ! THE MILITARY IS NOW FALLING APART, ENERGY IS DIVERTED FROM THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN AND THE POST WAR PLANNING WAS PISS POOR AT BEST.. AND WE'LL BE A NATION 4EVER IN DEBT.. AND YEAH WE SHOULD STAY THERE NOW.. WAR ON TERROR IS LIKE THE WAR ON DRUGS.. AL-QUEADA AS YOU KNOW IS A HYDRA NOW.. ALL i HAVE TO SAY AT THE mo.. YOU CAN GO AHEAD AND BELIEVE WHAT YOU WANT.. AND VICE VERSA..
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Post by DixonHill on Nov 26, 2005 13:21:28 GMT -5
who is pro war?
what is pro war, in fact? a desire to see the destruction of another country?
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Post by giggergrl on Nov 26, 2005 13:31:30 GMT -5
who is pro war? what is pro war, in fact? a desire to see the destruction of another country ? evil people around the world ? people who profit from it ?
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Post by wankinginthebushes on Nov 26, 2005 15:09:52 GMT -5
who is pro war? what is pro war, in fact? a desire to see the destruction of another country? A taste for the killing of other human beings? A desire to conquer, to bloodshed, to destroy, to humiliate, to be the strongest? The Nazis for eg?
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Post by Currian on Nov 27, 2005 6:11:25 GMT -5
A taste for the killing of other human beings? A desire to conquer, to bloodshed, to destroy, to humiliate, to be the strongest? The Nazis for eg? Indeed.
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Post by Moorish on Nov 28, 2005 5:10:26 GMT -5
From MSNBC:
Magazine says administration refused to give key docs to Senate committee
Ten days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush was advised that U.S. intelligence found no credible connection linking the attacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein, or evidence suggesting linkage between Saddam and the al-Qaida terrorist network, according to a published report.
The report, published Tuesday in The National Journal, cites government records, as well as present and former officials with knowledge of the issue. The information in the story, written by National Journal contributor Murray Waas, points to an abiding administration concern for secrecy that extended to keeping information from the Senate committee charged with investigating the matter.
In one of the Journal report's more compelling disclosures, Saddam is said to have viewed al-Qaida as a threat, rather than a potential ally.
Presidential brief The president's daily brief, or PDB, for Sept. 21, 2001, was prepared at the request of President Bush, the Journal reported, who was said to be eager to determine whether any linkage between the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraqi regime existed.
And a considerable amount of the Sept. 21 PDB found its way into a longer, more detailed Central Intelligence Agency assessment of the likelihood of an al-Qaida-Iraq connection.
The Journal story reports that that assessment was released to Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other senior policy-makers in the Bush administration.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested from the White House the detailed CIA assessment, as well as the Sept. 21 PDB and several other PDBs, as part of the committee's continuing inquiry into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the months before the start of the war with Iraq in March 2003.
The Bush administration has refused to surrender these documents.
“Indeed,” the Journal story reported, citing congressional sources, “the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004.”
Long-alleged connection After Sept. 11, the administration insisted that a connection existed between Iraq and al-Qaida. President Bush, in an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, said the United States had “learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and gas.”
And Vice President Cheney, in a September 2003 appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” alleged there was “a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s.”
But the National Journal report said that the few believable reports of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida “involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group.”
Saddam considered al-Qaida “as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime,” the Journal reported. “At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks” of al-Qaida with Iraqi intelligence operatives as a way to get more information about how the organization worked, the Journal said.
Journal: Little has changed The Journal story asserts that little has changed to refute the initial absence of information linking Saddam and the al-Qaida network.
“In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed” between Iraq and al-Qaida, the Journal reported.
Reporter Waas quotes one former administration official, whose assessment is a problematic contradiction of the administration’s longstanding assertions:
“What the President was told on September 21 was consistent with everything he has been told since — that the evidence was just not there.”
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Post by giggergrl on Nov 28, 2005 17:17:46 GMT -5
you can read the 9/11 reports as well...
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Post by Superguiller. on Nov 30, 2005 7:18:01 GMT -5
live4evr, you be trippin' man.
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