Posted on 06/17/2004 7:05:22 AM PDT by Valin
The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers.
The 9/11 Commission's staff has come down decidedly on the side of the naysayers about operational ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. This development is already being met with unbridled joy by opponents of the Iraq war, who have been carping for days about recent statements by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that reaffirmed the deposed Iraqi regime's promotion of terror.
The celebration is premature. The commission's cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq confederated is puzzling. Given that the panel had three hours for Richard Clarke, one might have hoped for more than three minutes on Iraq. More to the point, though, the staff statements released Wednesday — which seemed to be contradicted by testimony at the public hearing within minutes of their publication — raise more questions than they answer, about both matters the staff chose to address and some it strangely opted to omit.
The staff's sweeping conclusion is found in its Statement No. 15 ("Overview of the Enemy"), which states:
Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.
Just taken on its own terms, this paragraph is both internally inconsistent and ambiguously worded. First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no "ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." If the first proposition is so, then the "[t]wo senior Bin Laden associates" who are the sources of the second are either lying or misinformed.
In light of the number of elementary things the commission staff tells us its investigation has been unable to clarify (for example, in the very next sentence after the Iraq paragraph, the staff explains that the question whether al Qaeda had any connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the 1995 plot to blow U.S. airliners out of the sky "remains a matter of substantial uncertainty"), it is fair to conclude that these two senior bin Laden associates may not be the most cooperative, reliable fellows in town regarding what bin Laden was actually up to. Moreover, we know from press reports and the administration's own statements about the many al Qaeda operatives it has captured since 9/11 that the government is talking to more than just two of bin Laden's top operatives. That begs the questions: Have we really only asked two of them about Iraq? If not, what did the other detainees say?
Inconvenient Facts
The staff's back-of-the-hand summary also strangely elides mention of another significant matter — but one that did not escape the attention of Commissioner Fred Fielding, who raised it with a panel of law-enforcement witnesses right after noting the staff's conclusion that there was "no credible evidence" of cooperation. It is the little-discussed original indictment of bin Laden, obtained by the Justice Department in spring 1998 — several weeks before the embassy bombings and at a time when the government thought it would be prudent to have charges filed in the event an opportunity arose overseas to apprehend bin Laden. Paragraph 4 of that very short indictment reads:
Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.
(Emphasis added.) This allegation has always been inconvenient for the "absolutely no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda" club. (Richard Clarke, a charter member, handles the problem in his book by limiting the 1998 indictment to a fleeting mention and assiduously avoiding any description of what the indictment actually says.)
It remains inconvenient. As testimony at the commission's public hearing Wednesday revealed, the allegation in the 1998 indictment stems primarily from information provided by the key accomplice witness at the embassy bombing trial, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl. Al-Fadl told agents that when al Qaeda was headquartered in the Sudan in the early-to-mid-1990s, he understood an agreement to have been struck under which the jihadists would put aside their antipathy for Saddam and explore ways of working together with Iraq, particularly regarding weapons production.
On al Qaeda's end, al-Fadl understood the liaison for Iraq relations to be an Iraqi named Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. "Abu Hajer al Iraqi"), one of bin Laden's closest friends. (There will be a bit more to say later about Salim, who, it bears mention, was convicted in New York last year for maiming a prison guard in an escape attempt while awaiting trial for bombing the embassies.) After the embassies were destroyed, the government's case, naturally, was radically altered to focus on the attacks that killed over 250 people, and the Iraq allegation was not included in the superseding indictment. But, as the hearing testimony made clear, the government has never retracted the allegation.
Neither have other important assertions been retracted, including those by CIA Director George Tenet. As journalist Stephen Hayes reiterated earlier this month, Tenet, on October 7, 2002, wrote a letter to Congress, which asserted:
Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank. We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.
Tenet, as Hayes elaborated, has never backed away from these assessments, reaffirming them in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee as recently as March 9, 2004.
Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has provided faulty information to Congress? That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."
Kabul...Baghdad...
The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.
I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?
Of course, we may yet find that Saddam was a participant in the specific 9/11 plot. In that regard, the commission staff's report is perplexing, and, again, raises — or flat omits — many more questions than it resolves.
Don't Forget Shakir
For one thing, the staff has now addressed the crucial January 2000 Malaysia planning session in a few of its statements. As I have previously recounted, this was the three-day meeting at which Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, eventual hijackers of Flight 77 (the one that hit the Pentagon), met with other key 9/11 planners. The staff's latest report, Statement Number 16 ("Outline of the 9/11 Plot"), even takes time to describe how the conspirators were hosted in Kuala Lampur by members of a Qaeda-affiliated terror group, Jemaah Islamiah. But the staff does not mention, let alone explain, let alone explain away, that al Midhar was escorted to the meeting by Ahmed Hikmat Shakir.
Shakir is the Iraqi who got his job as an airport greeter through the Iraqi embassy, which controlled his work schedule. He is the man who left that job right after the Malaysia meeting; who was found in Qatar six days after 9/11 with contact information for al Qaeda heavyweights — including bin Laden's aforementioned friend, Salim — and who was later detained in Jordan but released only after special pleading from Saddam's regime, and only after intelligence agents concluded that he seemed to have sophisticated counter-interrogation training. Shakir is also the Iraqi who now appears, based on records seized since the regime's fall, to have been all along an officer in Saddam's Fedayeen.
Does all this amount to proof of participation in the 9/11 plot? Well, in any prosecutor's office it would be a pretty good start. And if the commission staff was going to get into this area of Iraqi connections to al Qaeda at all, what conceivable good reason is there for avoiding any discussion whatsoever of Shakir? At least tell us why he is not worth mentioning.
Prague Problem
One thing the staff evidently thought it was laying to rest was the other niggling matter of whether 9/11 major domo Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani in Prague in April 2001. The staff's conclusion is that the meeting is a fiction. To say its reasoning is less than satisfying would be a gross understatement. Here's the pertinent conclusion, also found in Statement Number 16:
We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9 [2001]. Based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred. The FBI's investigation places him in Virginia as of April 4, as evidenced by this bank surveillance camera shot of Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Atta was back in Florida by April 11, if not before. Indeed, investigation has established that, on April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call Florida phone numbers from cell sites within Florida. We have seen no evidence that Atta ventured overseas again or re-entered the United States before July, when he traveled to Spain under his true name and back under his true name.
This is ground, again, that I've recently covered. To rehearse: Czech intelligence has alleged that Atta was seen in Prague on April 8 or 9, 2001. Atta had withdrawn $8,000 cash from a bank in Virginia on April 4 and was not eyeballed again by a witness until one week later, on April 11. The new detail added by the staff is that Atta's cell phone was used in Florida on three days (April 6, 9 and 10) during that time frame. Does this tend to show he was in Florida rather than Prague? It could, but not very convincingly. Telling us Atta's cell phone was used is not the same as telling us Atta used the cell phone.
Atta almost certainly would not have been able to use the cell phone overseas, so it would have been foolish to tote it along to the Czech Republic — especially if he was traveling clandestinely (as the large cash withdrawal suggests). He would have left it behind. Atta, moreover, had a roommate (and fellow hijacker), Marwan al-Shehhi. It is certainly possible that Shehhi — whom the staff places in Florida during April 2001 — could have used Atta's cell phone during that time.
Is it possible that Atta was in Florida rather than Prague? Of course it is. But the known evidence militates strongly against that conclusion: an eyewitness puts Atta in Prague, meeting with al-Ani; we know Atta was a "Hamburg student" and represented himself as such in a visa application; it has been reported that the Czechs have al-Ani's appointment calendar and it says he was scheduled to meet on the critical day with a "Hamburg student"; and we know for certain that Atta was in Prague under very suspicious circumstances twice in a matter of days (May 30 and June 2, 2000) during a time the Czechs and Western intelligence services feared that Saddam, through al-Ani, might be reviving a plot to use Islamic extremists to bomb Radio Free Europe (a plot the State Department acknowledged in its annual global terror report notwithstanding that the commission staff apparently did not think the incident merited mention).
I am perfectly prepared to accept the staff's conclusion about Atta not being in Prague — if the commission provides a convincing, thoughtful explanation, which is going to have to get a whole lot better than a cell-phone record.
What is the staff's reason for rejecting the eyewitness identification? Is the "Hamburg student" entry bogus? Since the staff is purporting to provide a comprehensive explanation of the 9/11 plot — the origins of which it traces back to 1999 — what is their explanation for what Atta was doing in Prague in 2000? Why, when the staff went into minute detail about the travels of other hijackers (even when it conceded it did not know the relevance of those trips), was Atta's trip to Prague not worthy of even a passing mention? Why was it so important for Atta to be in Prague on May 30, 2000 that he couldn't delay for one day, until May 31, when his visa would have been ready? Why was it so important for him to be in Prague on May 30 that he opted to go despite the fact that, without a visa, he could not leave the airport terminal? How did he happen to find the spot in the terminal where surveillance cameras would not capture him for nearly six hours? Why did he go back again on June 2? Was he meeting with al-Ani? If so, why would it be important for him to see al-Ani right before entering the United States in June 2000? And jumping ahead to 2001, if Atta wasn't using cash to travel anonymously, what did he do with the $8000 he suddenly withdrew before disappearing on April 4? If his cell phone was used in Florida between April 4 and April 11, what follow-up investigation has been done about that by the 9/11 Commission? By the FBI? By anybody? Whom was the cell phone used to call? Do any of those people remember speaking to Atta at that time? Perhaps someone would remember speaking with the ringleader of the most infamous attack in the history of the United States if he had called to chat, no?
Are these questions important to answer? You be the judge. According to the 9/11 Commission staff report, bin Laden originally pressed the operational supervisor of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), "that the attacks occur as early as mid-2000," even though bin Laden "recognized that Atta and the other pilots had only just arrived in the United States to begin their flight training[.]" Well I'll be darned: mid-2000 is exactly when Atta made his two frenetic trips to Prague immediately before heading to the United States to begin that flight training.
The commission staff next says, "[i]n 2001, Bin Laden apparently pressured KSM twice more for an earlier date. According to KSM, Bin Laden first requested a date of May 12, 2001," and then proposed a date in June or July. Well, what do you know: all those dates are only weeks after Atta may have had some reason to drop everything and secretly run to Prague for a meeting with al-Ani. Or maybe it's just a coincidence.
Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is an NRO contributor.
We know Saddam worked with the PLO and other terrorists, he funded them. He at LEAST knew that 9/11 was coming.
Less than two months before 9/11/01, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper “Al-Nasiriya” carried a column headlined, “American, an Obsession called Osama Bin Ladin.” (July 21, 2001)
In the piece, Baath Party writer Naeem Abd Muhalhal predicted that bin Laden would attack the US “with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.”
The same state-approved column also insisted that bin Laden “will strike America on the arm that is already hurting,” and that the US “will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs” – an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, “New York, New York”.
(Link below)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1106657/posts?page=1
List of newspaper article in the 90's which mention the world's concern regarding the growing relationship between OBL and Saddam: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/946809/posts?page=1
Son of Saddam coordinates OBL activities:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/951911/posts
The AQ connection (excellent):http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/944617/posts?page=2
Western Nightmare: http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,798270,00.html
Saddam's link to OBL: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/866105/posts
NYT: Iraq and AQ agree to cooperate: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/985906/posts
Document linking them: http://tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/03/06/34908297.shtml?Element_ID=34908297
Iraq and terrorism - no doubt about it: http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins091903.asp
A federal judge rules there are links:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/986293/posts
Wall Street Journal on Iraq and AQ:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/987129/posts
Iraq and Iran contact OBL: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/981055/posts
More evidence: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F04%2F27%2Fwalq27.xml
Saddam's AQ connection: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/969032/posts
Further connections: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1007969/posts
What a court of law said about the connections:
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/98110402.htm
Some miscellaneous stuff on connections:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/989201/posts
Saddam's Ambassador to Al Qaeda: (February 2004, Weekly Standard)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1083778/posts
Yes - it's NewsMax but loaded with interesting bullet points.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1097521/posts?page=1
Saddam's Fingerprints on NY Bombing (Wall Street Journal, June 1993)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1115387/posts
Colin Powell: Iraq and AQ Partners for Years (CNN, February 2003)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.alqaeda.links/
The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connections (September 2003, Richard Miniter)
http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html
Oil for Food Scandal Ties Iraq and Al Qaeda (June 2003)
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1125899/posts
Saddam and OBL Make a Pact (The New Yorker, February 2003):
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030210fa_fact
Al Qaeda's Poison Gas (Wall Street Journal, April 2004):
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005016
Wolfowitz Says Saddam behind 9/11 Attacks:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/921398/posts
Saddam behind first WTC attack - PBS, Laurie Mylroie:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/mylroie.html
Growing Evidence of Saddam and Al Qaeda Link, The Weekly Standard, July 2003:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/946997/posts
Qusay Hussein Coordinated Iraq special operations with Bin Laden Terrorist Activities, Yossef Bodansky, National Press Club
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/951911/posts
The Western Nightmare: Saddam and Bin Laden vs. the Rest of the World, The Guardian Unlimited:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,798270,00.html
Saddam Link to Bin Laden, Julian Borger, The Guardian, February 1999
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/866105/posts
The Al Qaeda Connection, The Weekly Standard, July 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/944617/posts?page=2
Cheney lectures Russert on Iraq/911 Link, September 2003:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/982713/posts
No Question About It, National Review, September 2003
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins091903.asp
Iraq: A Federal Judges Point of View
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/986293/posts
Mohammed's Account links Iraq to 9/11 and OKC:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/987075/posts
Free Republic Thread that mentions so me books Freepers might be interested in on this topic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/977221/posts?page=8
The Proof that Saddam Worked with AQ, The Telegraph, April 2003:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F04%2F27%2Fwalq27.xml
Saddam's AQ Connection, The Weekly Standard, September 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/969032/posts
September 11 Victims Sue Iraq:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2237332.stm
Osama's Best Friend: The Further Connections Between Al Qaeda and Saddam, The Weekly Standard, November 2003
Terrorist Behind 9/11 Attacks Trained by Saddam, The Telegraph, December 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1007969/posts
James Woolsey Links Iraq and AQ, CNN Interview, March 2004, Also see Posts #34 and #35
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1104121/posts
A Geocities Interesting Web Site with maps and connections:
http://www.geocities.com/republican_strategist/Iraq-Bin-Laden.html
Bin Laden indicted in federal court, read down to find information that Bin Laden agreed to not attack Iraq and to work cooperatively with Iraq:
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/98110402.htm
Case Closed, The Weekly Standard, November 03
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp
CBS - Lawsuit: Iraq involved in 9/11:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/05/september11/main520874.shtml
Exploring Iraq's Involvement in pre-9/11 Acts, The Indianapolis Star:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/746225/posts
The Iraq/AQ Connection: Richard Minister again
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/989201/posts
Militia Defector says Baghdad trained Al Qaeda fighters in chemical weapons, July 2002
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/743892/posts
The Clinton View of Iraq/AQ Ties, The Weekly Standard, December 2003
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/527uwabl.asp
Saddam Controlled the Camps (Iraq/AQ Ties): The London Observer, November 01
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/741676/posts
Saddam's Terror Ties that Critics Ignore, National Review, October 2003:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1005579/posts
Tape Shows General Wesley Clark linking Iraq and AQ:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1056113/posts
Freeper list of links between AQ and Iraq:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/850346/posts
Salman Pak (Aviation Weekly)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/865435/posts
Another freeper resource - list of links between OBL and Saddam:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/838309/posts
Saddam/911 Link (FrontPage Magazine, Laurie Mylroie, May 2004):
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1133317/posts
Bush says Zarqawi killed Berg, cites Saddam ties (Reuters, May 2004)
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1136076/posts
The Connections (May 2004, The Weekly Standard)
New Information:http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1144123/posts?page=11
Saddam's role in 9/11. (Freeper book, May 2004)
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1144699/posts?page=5
Entire link and Post #5 - Clinton mentioned how AQ was developing a relationship with Iraq.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1145787/posts
The House of Representatives read into the congressional record the ties that Saddam had to Osama bin Laden (read down and open links in the record): June 2004
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/B?r108:@FIELD(FLD003+h)+@FIELD(DDATE+20040601)
Exploring the links between 9/11 and Iraq (Richard Miniter, June 2004)
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1146319/posts?page=1
The Terrorist behind 9/11 was trained by Saddam (The Telegraph, 12/03)
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1146356/posts?page=1
New Iraqi Chief Links 9/11 to Saddam (June 2004, NewsMax)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1146579/posts?page=1
Increasing evidence of Saddam's ties to 9/11 and AQ (National Review, June 2004)
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1146984/posts
Pre Bush Timeline of Saddam/OBL Ties (Freeper research):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1152923/posts?page=1
Cheney claims Iraq/AQ connections (June 2004)
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1153781/posts?page=20
The 911 Commission is a blatant waste of time and money and any conclusions they reach should be dismissed. Whom did I hear quoted on the news last night? Partisan hack Richard BenVeniste. 'Nuff said!
Ping.
The problem is, it's complicated ... it's much easier to say "There's no connection".
Do you have any links? :-)
Thanks!
LOL!
Sorry about slamming the threads with the same info over and over...
Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others....
Good questions, stubborn facts, and Peach's links.
Thanx for the references - I just spent 10 minutes on a radio talk show (until the host - losing - cut me off!) I was trying to think of all that from memory ... a losing cause there! :>)
Right, and anyone expecting a "smoking gun" in the form of a video of OBL and Saddam sitting down playing X-Box together will never be satisfied.
Good for you!
I wish more people would call/write letters, etc. and get the word out.
I found my article. It's on its way to my mom. All I asked her to do is judge for herself if the commission and the press are after the truth, or advancing an agenda. Great article.
I read yesterday's 20 page report and this brief sentence is sole crux of the media's headline "The commission concludes there is no link." This part of the report was clearly written by an attorney well schooled in the "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" technicalities which allows the commission to purposefully mislead the media and the public.
This article brings up a outstanding point which I hadn't even thought of before. Most cell phones purchased in America don't work at all overseas, as anyone who travels outside the country well knows. Therefore, if Atta did in fact go overseas, he would have no reason to bring his cell phone with him, and quite likely would have left it with his associate.
So, um, is there any evidence of a connection? ;^)
Impressive collection.
I don't see a large neon sign saying "al Qaeda barracks and massage parlor". Therefore there's no connection!
Bump!
BTTT for a later perusal . . . .
Were there a Dumbocrat in the WH everyone would know all about it of course.
The fact is the Czechs have an eyewitness account of Atta being in Prague at the time questioned while the commission only has a record of Atta's cell-phone being used...which he could very well have given to an associate. No one saw Atta in Florida at the time questioned. The panel simply was derelict in it's duty and obviously out to get the Bush admin.
bookmark
There's no question about that. The new book just out by Stephen Hayes claims that both George Tenet and Condoleeza Rice privately say that they believe Atta in fact made the trip which the "commission" says never took place.
911 Commission---better known as the Gorelick Hatchet job.
BTT
Well .. I agree with what Rush said yesterday .. as long as Gorelick is on the commission, it has no credibility .. PERIOD!
What happened to the ledger David Kay's group found showing years of training of terrorist groups in Iraqi training camps .. including Salmon Pak.
This commission is NOTHING MORE THAN A HIT GROUP against the President and nothing they say has any weight in my opinion of the Bush admin's actions.
Oh you can't trust anything David Kay has to say, he thought it was a good idea we toppled sadam.
Why such silence?
"Do you have any links? :-)"
Took the words right out of my mouth. Perhaps a Cliff Notes version would do.
"Right, and anyone expecting a "smoking gun" in the form of a video of OBL and Saddam sitting down playing X-Box together will never be satisfied."
I disagree. If there was a video of Osama and Saddam playing xbox together and that was brought before the 9/11 commission, the commission would report back that they weren't playing together, they were playing against each other.
Cliff notes version (hah!):
1. The Clinton administration repeatedly mentioned the relationship between OBL and Saddam.
2. The Clinton administration's justice department in federal court indicted OBL in 1998 and mentioned his relationship with Saddam.
3. The press wrote 100's of articles in the 90's about the world's alarm at the growing relationship between OBL and Iraq. Newsweek and the NYT are among the mainstream press who wrote about this extensively.
4. 9/11 families have won a verdict in federal court blaming IRAQ for 9/11.
5. Saddam knew 9/11 was coming and mentioned in his state run newspaper in July 2001 that OBL was going to hit the US and we'd never sing New York, New York again without crying.
6. Hundreds of other links but they aren't in Cliff Note version.
Not if you're a Democrat.
Good point!
"Cliff notes version (hah!):"
Thank you, now even those of us with short attention spans and ingrained aversion to reading long lists know your salient points (I did before anyhow).:)
Okay doke.
I know it's a loooong list and wasn't sure if you were serious or not. Sorry.
le bump
Yeah, I know .. such a radical! LOL!!
9/11 Panel Denies Al-Qaeda-Iraq Links
by Jim Lobe
In a direct challenge to recent assertions by both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the special bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon has found "no credible evidence" of any operational link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
While the commission, which has had access to highly classified U.S. intelligence, said that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had sought contacts with and support from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after his expulsion from Sudan in 1994, those appeals were ignored.
Contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda after bin Laden moved to Afghanistan "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," according to the commission's report, which was released Wednesday morning. It added that two senior al-Qaeda officials now in U.S. custody "have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq."
The report is the first of a series expected to be released over the coming months as the commission winds up its work.
Most of it deals with al-Qaeda's evolution beginning in the 1980s. Echoing the administration, it warns that "al-Qaeda is actively striving to attack the United States and inflict mass casualties."
Its conclusion about the absence of any operational link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein not only further undermines the administration's case for going to war against Iraq, but also deals a sharp blow to the already-strained credibility of Cheney, who Monday asserted without elaboration during a speech to a right-wing institute in Florida that the Iraqi leader had "long-established ties" to the group.
Cheney insisted as recently as last January that Washington had obtained "conclusive" evidence that Hussein had biological weapons in the form of two customized truck trailers that he said was for their production.
The claim, which he has not repeated since, was discredited by, among others, outgoing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet, as well as the head of the U.S. task force in charge of searching for alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in Iraq, David Kay.
Asked about Cheney's most recent remarks at a Tuesday press conference, Bush declined to answer directly, insisting instead that Hussein had ties with "terrorist organizations," of which he cited only the late Abu Nidal, a Palestinian who split from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the 1970s and created his own terrorist group.
Bush also suggested that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is identified by U.S. officials as a leader of resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, might also have had ties to Hussein and al-Qaeda.
"Zarqawi is the best evidence of (Hussein's) connection to al-Qaeda affiliates and al-Qaeda," Bush said. "He's the person who's still killing."
The commission's conclusion on the absence of ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda is also certain to further discredit the so-called neoconservatives both inside and outside the administration who led the march to war. Many of them were behind what appeared to be an orchestrated campaign to implicate Hussein in the 9/11 attacks themselves.
Within the administration, the principals appear to have included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney and his national security adviser, I. Lewis Libby, among others in key posts in the National Security Council (NSC) and the State Department.
Outside the administration, key figures included close friends of both Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, including Richard Perle, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief James Woolsey – both members of Rumsfeld's Defence Policy Board (DPB); Frank Gaffney, head of the arms-industry-funded Centre for Security Policy; and William Kristol, editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), among others.
A close examination of the public record indicates that all of these individuals were actively preparing the ground within days, even hours, after the 9/11 attacks for an eventual strike on Iraq, whether or not it had any role in the attacks or any connection to al-Qaeda.
A hint of a deliberate campaign to connect Iraq with 9/11 and al-Qaeda surfaced one year ago in a televised interview of General Wesley Clark on the popular public-affairs program, Meet the Press. In answer to a question, Clark asserted, "there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."
"It came from the White House, it came from other people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'you got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.'"
While Clark has not yet identified who called him, Perle, Woolsey, Gaffney and Kristol were using the same language in their media appearances on 9/11 and over the following weeks.
"This could not have been done without help of one or more governments," Perle told The Washington Post on Sept. 11. "Someone taught these suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don't think that can be done without the assistance of large governments."
While Kristol and company were trying to implicate Hussein in the public debate, their friends in the administration were pushing hard in the same direction. Cheney, according to published accounts, had already confided to friends before Sept. 11 that he hoped the Bush administration would remove Hussein from power.
But the evidence about Rumsfeld is even more dramatic. According to an account by veteran CBS newsman David Martin in September 2002, Rumsfeld was "telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks" five hours after an American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon.
Martin attributed his account in part to notes taken at the time by a Rumsfeld aide. They quote the defense chief asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at the same time, not only UBL (Usama bin Laden). The administration should "go massive ... sweep it all up, things related and not," the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying.
Wolfowitz shared those views, according to an account of the meeting Sept. 15-16 of the administration's war council at Camp David, provided by the Post's Bill Woodward and Dan Balz. In the "I-was-there" style for which Woodward, whose access to powerful officials since his investigative role in the Watergate scandal almost 30 years ago is unmatched, is famous:
"Wolfowitz argued (at the meeting) that the real source of all the trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of Sep. 11 created an opportunity to strike. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: 'Is this the time to attack Iraq?'"
"Powell objected," the Woodward and Balz account continued, citing Secretary of State Colin Powell's argument that U.S. allies would not support a strike on Iraq. "If you get something pinning Sep. 11 on Iraq, great," Powell is quoted as saying. "But let's get Afghanistan now. If we do that, we will have increased our ability to go after Iraq – if we can prove Iraq had a role."
Despite the secretary of state's reservations, the neocon campaign was remarkably successful. As recently as eight weeks ago, a survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found that 57 percent of the U.S. public believed Iraq was either "directly involved" in carrying out the 9/11 attacks or had provided "substantial support" to al-Qaeda. Fifty-two percent said they believed that concrete evidence of a Hussein-al-Qaeda link had been uncovered by U.S. investigators since the war.
Retired senior U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials have long doubted any operational link between al-Qaeda and Hussein, as noted by former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman, who signed a statement by former top-ranking diplomats and military officials that was released here Tuesday, denouncing U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle East.
"(Hussein) and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were mortal enemies during this period," Freeman told reporters, adding that administration assertions that the two had such links before the war were regarded by specialists in the region as "ludicrous."
"Why the vice president continues to make that claim beats me," said another former top diplomat, Ambassador Robert Oakley. "I have no idea."
June 17, 2004
Wow.
Bump!
Whom did I hear quoted on the news last night? Partisan hack Richard BenVeniste. 'Nuff said!
May I pls. add one more? Jamie Gorelick! Why wasn't she BEFORE the (C)ommission AS A WITNESS (regarding Oklahoma City, WTC-1993, and TWA # 800)? Let us home that in her case, time wounds all heels.
es
I notice you seem to be going out of your way to side with the 9/11 Commission, and are trying to get people here to not vote in the election.
I'm smelling a troll, and be assured I'll be keeping a close eye on you.
I'm just a person who believes in small government... you know, the way you "conservatives" used to.
To Freepers, anyone who disagrees with them is a troll; so, yes, I guess that makes me one.
This may well be true, but color me skeptical.
...you know, the way you "conservatives" used to.
I don't agree with every single policy of the adminstration, but I'm voting for Bush whether you like it or not, and putting conservatives in quotation marks isn't going to change that.
To Freepers, anyone who disagrees with them is a troll; so, yes, I guess that makes me one.
Your not-so-subtle attack on all Freepers and reference to us as "them" shows that clearly you don't agree with us. So if that's the case, what exactly are you doing here? By the way, what you say isn't true, we have a couple of honest and open liberals that are permitted to post here. A troll is a faker, a poser, someone who's just here to antagonize others, or someone who's playing games such as posting under multiple identities and user names.
After your last response, I'm even more convinced now that you're probably someone who's been banned before in the past and is back to cause more trouble. I'm going to politely suggest to you that you just go away and don't come back.
Ping
Whatever, troll. Like I said, I'll be keeping a close eye on you.
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