Posted on 06/17/2004 8:26:45 AM PDT by dead
Americans were confronted yesterday with the unabridged horror of Osama bin Laden's original plans for September 11, and witnessed a devastating assault on the credibility of the White House campaign to justify war in Iraq by linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Americans will be chilled by an independent commission's reconstruction of what might have been - a Doomsday attack by 10 hijacked aircraft across the US, with the synchronised mid-air explosion of more aircraft over the Pacific.
The additional hijacked aircraft would have been crashed into nuclear power plants and symbolic buildings on both coasts. On one commercial jet all of the male passengers were to have been murdered before the plane was landed as a grotesque show-and-tell for the media at a big US airport.
The reconstruction, the damnation of the Bush effort to hold Saddam responsible, and the commission's detailed portrait of life and business in al-Qaeda were based on more than 1000 interviews, including records of the interrogation of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay since their capture by US forces in Afghanistan in the war that followed the September 11 attacks.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States is not scheduled to make its final report public until July 26, only three months before the US presidential vote.
But a report by its investigative staff concludes with conviction: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States."
The report kicked the legs from under another long-held White House justification for war when it declared that there was no evidence to support the theory that the lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta, had met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the attacks.
Going even further, it left the White House exposed by reporting that bin Laden had "explored possible co-operation with Iraq" while he was based in Sudan in the early 1990s.
He had requested space in Iraq for training camps and sought assistance in procuring weapons, but these efforts "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship".
The inquiry's investigators say that bin Laden apparently scaled back to a four-aircraft attack on September 11 because he worried that the original plan was too complex to pull off.
Estimating that the final plan cost no more than $US550,000 ($800,000), they portray in graphic detail how ragged its execution was.
"The 9/11 conspirators confronted operational difficulties, internal disagreements and even dissenting opinions within the leadership of al-Qaeda," the investigators say, detailing clashes over targets, timing and scope of the long-planned attacks.
Meanwhile, FBI and CIA officials giving evidence on the last hearing days of the inquiry, appointed by President George Bush, warned that al-Qaeda operatives were preparing fresh attacks inside the US.
While conceding that they knew little about al-Qaeda's capacity in the US, the officials insisted that functioning terrorist cells were still operating in the country.
Authorities had probably prevented a few aviation attacks since 2001, but "there are operatives involved in those plots that we still cannot account for", one of the officials told the 10-man commission.
An FBI special agent, Mary Deborah Doran, who has specialised in the al-Qaeda investigation, said the terrorist network could still look for help from sympathisers in the US.
But Ms Doran emphasised that any large-scale terrorist attack would require new operatives who had been infiltrated into the US. "The threat comes from outside," she said.
The Bush Administration is already under pressure over the failure of another of its justifications for the Iraq war - the supposed existence of weapons of mass destruction in the country that might have been channelled to terrorist groups.
In recent weeks it has also been criticised over the abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere.
Responding to the new disclosures, Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said that the Bush Administration had "misled America ... it had reached too far".
Tell a lie often enough - especially one that fits an agenda - and it gains the force of truth. It isn't just the domestic media who are attempting to sway the election, it's the world media, and if you're a Republican president in the U.S. that comes with the territory. The words "Fourth Estate" never had greater truth to them.
Hey, hey, you are forgetting that we only have short term memories.
I espeically like the part where they planned to go in the spring, that proves that GWB could not have stopped it and that Klinton let this go under the radar too long.
Darned straight they are. They have a double reason to make disrespectful noises at George W. Bush. He represents the US (which they hate already), and Bush is hated within America by a very vocal minority that does not like what America stands for. Besides, they do not stand in line for either reward or punishment for what they say about George Bush.
Did Saddam fund or participate in the 9/11 attack? No. Did he know about the plan beforehand? Probably only in a general manner, but he was not privy to details. Did Saddam try in any way to talk Osama out of the planned strike? Highly doubtful, and for sure, he did not betray what he knew to any intermediaries that might have passed it on to the US authorities.
What they assume, I think, is that WE are that dumb. They assume that NOBODY remembers ANYTHING the President said at the outset of all this.
And I must say, they have two terms of Bill Clinton, and his high approval ratings, in favor of their assumption.
Dan
If Bush said, "I don't drink coffee," the press would report that he drinks coffee because he used the word "coffee." That is the logic they use when claiming that Bush said Iraq helped plan 9/11
It isn't a matter of foreign journalists being stupid, just as it isn't a matter of domestic journalists suffering from the same defect. What they're engaged in is political propaganda.
I don't think the report will be nearly as dramatic as this article.
No they just have the hate Bush disease.
The world is entering a very precarious time. The terrorists want to kill all the infidels and the media is lying about everything terror related. Heck, half of them won't even call them terrorists.
Only F'n Kerry can save the world. Just like BJ did.
Yep. And so are all the liberal American ones which is why they support Effen Kerry.
Idiot. The report clearly says that the FIRST VERSION of the attack called for 10 hijacked planes, while the SECOND VERSION of the attack called for planes to be hijacked from SE Asia and blown up over the Pacific. If the reporter is unable to discern that these were two different plans, and not "synchronised," why should we trust anything else he says. What a freaking dumbass.
I'm beginning to believe they are.
In the days of the former British Empire they had a terribly un-PC saying: "Wogs begin at Calais." "Wogs" being a derogatory term implying lack of civilization and the enlightened condition that comes from it.
I'm starting to develop similar feelings about the anti-Americans who seem impenetrably unenlightened - even impervious to basic fact, despite any amount of wealth or education. Unfortunately for us, they don't begin at Calais. They begin at the New York Times.
I keep wondering over and over if these people heard the same speech I heard when President Bush said we were fighting a war against ALL terrorists. Not just the guys who were behind 9/11. ALL. Made sense to me.
"The report kicked the legs from under another long-held White House justification for war when it declared that there was no evidence to support the theory that the lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta, had met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the attacks. "
All this finding did was confirm that the 9/11 commission is a partisan attack machine and is irrelevant.
Bush probably knows this and is enjoying every minute of it.
Carolyn
Oh really?
This should come as no surprise to anyone whose been paying attention to world events over the last quarter century. The US has been under attack by international terrorists since the 1980`s. The Iran hostage crisis was the start of a serious Islamic fundamentalist uprising that fueled terrorism. The bombing of the Marine barracks in Beruit, was a prime example of terrorists declaring war on the US and western civilization. The Reagan administration was on constant guard against attacks on Americans and US interests. The Bush 41 administration fought a war against Saddam Hussien for invading Kuwait and further feeding the goals of international terrorism. The Clinton administration was basically weak on terrorism and ignored the numerous attacks on US interests worldwide throughout the 1990`s. The Bush43 administration has been telling the American people since 9-11 that the terrorists are capable of anything. Including the use of WMD against innocent people throughout the world.
Instead of blaming terrorism for the evil they've create throughout the world, the liberal establishment in the US and their Euro-socialist cohorts, keep attempting to convince Americans that the words and actions of the current Bush administration are to blame for all the evil in the world today. This is an insult to the intelligence of the American people and a huge lie concocted out of pure political desperation.
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