Posted on 07/18/2004 12:21:24 AM PDT by churchillbuff
AMONG the various rationales the Bush administration has given for invading Iraq 16 months ago, the most compelling to the American people was always the claim of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida. The September11 attacks left Americans angry, frightened, and ready for justified revenge.
If Saddam was in league with the al-Qa'ida terrorists who plotted and carried out the 9/11 attacks and a bad guy to begin with, surely it made eminent sense to take him out. As one White House adviser recently told The New York Times: "If you discount the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida, then you discount the proposition that [the Iraq war] is part of the war on terror. If it's not part of the war on terror, then what is it - some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush?"
Unfortunately for the Bush administration, the "cockeyed adventure" possibility is still on the table. We now know quite conclusively - from yesterday's Butler Commission in Britain and last week's release in Washington of the US Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence -- that both British and American intelligence overestimated Saddam's unconventional weapons (though no credible intelligence source concluded Saddam was near to possessing a nuclear weapon).
But what logic made Iraq an appropriate target? After all, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea - all hostile or potentially so - had nuclear weapons programs more advanced than Iraq's. The answer is not much, which is why soon after 9/11 the pro-war faction in Washington, within and outside the administration, began floating stories of Baghdad-Osama collaboration and meetings between hijacker Mohammad Atta and Iraqi agents. "Connect the dots," Americans were told.
Except that the dots couldn't be connected, at least honestly. One of the clear conclusions of the recent Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the run-up to war was that there was "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qa'ida co-operated against the United States". The report found evidence that bin Laden sought help from Baghdad in the mid 1990s and was rebuffed by Saddam's regime. Not a surprise. Saddam's regime was one the most secular in the Arab world. Al-Qa'ida thought it godless.
This refutation of its most popular rationale for war has put the Bush administration in an awkward spot. Its response has sometimes been outright denial. White House strategists have concluded that acknowledging error is not an effective political tactic.
Vice-President Richard Cheney has -- as recently as last month -- claimed before campaign audiences that Saddam and al-Qa'ida had a working relationship. Cheney is playing to an audience that is primed to believe the falsehood -- and relying perhaps on the fact that few people want to believe they have been deceived. It is a large audience: two years after 9/11, a Washington Post poll revealed that 70 per cent of Americans believed that Saddam played a direct role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
That belief is the fruit of one of the great bait-and-switch efforts of modern history, a collective endeavour by administration officials, hawkish television pundits and squads of neo-conservative columnists and editorialists. Their work should long be regarded as a case study in the manipulation of mass opinion -- comparable, though of course different, to what took place in the mass dictatorships of the 1930s.
For two years, phrases were poured into the American media echo chamber: "Saddam ... take the war to the terrorists ... 9/11 we can't wait for the smoking gun ... there could be a mushroom cloud." It would not be surprising if - despite the conclusions of the Senate Commission on Intelligence and Bush's own grudging acknowledgement that there are no Saddam-9/11 links - the majority of Americans still believed Saddam was implicated in 9/11.
And what has been the result? No weapons of mass destruction uncovered; no connection to al-Qa'ida. America's enemy Osama bin Laden allowed to escape from Afghanistan; the Iraq occupation turned into a huge recruiting poster for new terrorists throughout the Muslim world; a US military stretched to the breaking point.
A cockeyed idea of George W. Bush? No one who knows Bush, or his parents, can quite believe it. "He's just not capable of it," they say. No, this was a production that required a cast of hundreds and could not have occurred if the Bush administration had not been staffed with a coterie of individuals -- generally known as neo-conservatives -- who had an American invasion of Iraq at the top of their foreign policy agendas long before 9/11, since the mid 1990s, in fact.
The story of how they turned a terrorist attack on the US by one group into a rationale for an assault on an entirely different state will fascinate historians for many years to come.
I don't agree with all of this article, but I share the author's exasperation over an invasion that diverted us from the campaign against the culprits of 9-11.
Salman Pak.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/salman_pak.htm
Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility at Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.
The Salman Pak biological warfare facility was located on a peninsula caused by a bend in the Tigris river, approximately five kilometers (km) from the arch located in the town of Salman Pak. The facility area comprised more than 20 square km, and might have been known as a farmers (or agricultural) experimentation center. The peninsula was fenced off and patrolled by a large guard force. Immediately inside and to the east of the fence line were two opulent villas: the larger built for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the other for his half-brother, Barazan al-Tikriti. A main paved road ran through the center of the Salman Pak facility/peninsula.
Iraq told UN inspectors that Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces. However, two defectors from Iraqi intelligence stated that they had worked for several years at the secret Iraqi government camp, which had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. Training activities including simulated hijackings carried out in an airplane fuselage [said to be a Boeing 707] at the camp. The camp is divided into distinct sections. On one side of the camp young, Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam are trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage. The Islamic militants trained on the other side of the camp, in an area separated by a small lake, trees and barbed wire. The militants reportedly spent time training, usually in groups of five or six, around the fuselage of the airplane. There were rarely more than 40 or 50 Islamic radicals in the camp at one time.
More on Salman Pak.
http://cshink.com/salman_pak.htm
A few days before the Times report, the London Observer revealed that one of the defectors, a colonel with the Iraqi intelligence service, Mukhabarat, had drawn an even more direct link to 9/11.
The former Iraqi agent, codenamed Zeinab, told the paper that one of the highlights of Salman Pak's six-month curriculum was training to hijack aircraft using only knives or bare hands. Like the Sept. 11 hijackers, the students worked in groups of four or five, he explained.
Zeinab's story has since been corroborated by Charles Duelfer, the former vice chairman of UNSCOM, the U.N. weapons inspection team, which actually visited the Salman Pak camp several times.
"He saw the 707, in exactly the place described by the defectors," the Observer reported. "The Iraqis, he said, told UNSCOM it was used by police for counterterrorist training."
"Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter'," Duelfer explained. "I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. Like, derrrrrr! I mean, what, actually, do you expect?"
You'd better write or call the Senators - - including all of the Republicans on the committee (the report was unanimous) and tell them that you know much more than they and their investigators do.
More Bush Bashing ... You forgot to include the very large BARF Alert!
"no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qa'ida co-operated against the United States".
==
It depends on what they mean by "cooperated".
The Senate Committee admitted that there were links, they just didn't think those were "sufficient", i.e. they didn't find an agreement between Saddam and Bin Laden, signed in their blood, that they pledge to work together against the US.
But there is plenty of factual evidence.
Iraq - Al Qaeda Link Discounted (but EXISTED!)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1169279/posts
It accepted the agency's view that the "most problematic area of contact between Iraq and Al Qaeda" involved reports that Iraq had provided training in the use of unconventional weapons, specifically chemical and biological weapons. President Bush and other administration officials repeatedly mentioned such training in building the case for the war.
The report said the CIA had estimated 100 to 200 Al Qaeda members had relocated to northeastern Iraq before the war. And the agency said that "a variety of reporting" indicated that Abu Musab Zarqawi, a senior Al Qaeda associate, was in Baghdad between May and July 2002 under an assumed identity.
Abu Zubaydah, a captured senior Al Qaeda official, told interrogators that he believed some Al Qaeda members had good personal relationships with Iraqi government officials.
A Terrorist Sugar Daddy Named Saddam (MUST READ -- factual info)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1003038/posts
-- Stephen Hayes reported in the July 11 Weekly Standard that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper, published by Hussein's son, Uday, ran a "List of Honor" in its Nov. 14, 2002, edition.
Among 600 leading Iraqis named was: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan."
Clinton Indictment Cited Iraq-bin Laden Link
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1153093/posts
1998 Bin Laden Indictment cites AL QAEDA - IRAQ ARRANGEMENT
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1115772/posts
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.
TEXT: US GRAND JURY INDICTMENT AGAINST USAMA BIN LADEN( court papers)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1022464/posts
You noticed it too...
I guess I am not just being paranoid.
That's an outright lie. We have 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and they ain't playing tiddlywinks.
Probably Osama and Zawahiri are over the border in Pakistan making it extremely tough to get them without provoking riots and the overthrow of Pervez Mushareff. With Pakistan nukes ending up in the hands of Jihadist Muslims.
Anyway your type of phony conservative don't really care about roping in Osama Bin Laden, that's just rhetoric. Your type doesn't understand why we went into Iraq and it wasn't just to capture weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't just to get rid of a murderous dictator and his sons.
The garbage Churchillbuff posts could come right out of the John Kerry camp or one of the Soros funded surrogate originizations such as moveon.org.
Beyond GW's reelection, his posts are designed to demoralize our troops. How would you like to be serving in Iraq and read such trash? Would do great things for your fighting spirit, eh?
George Bush is not perfect but far better than what John Kerry and company have planned if they get in. Churchillbuff always claims (a lie in my opinion) that he's conservative. If this were true he would keep his mouth shut until after the election. But going by his posts he won't be voting for George Bush so what does he care?
Churchillbuff? Like my tag line says ........
Once is Happenstance. Twice is Coincidence. The third time is Enemy action. - Ian Fleming
Gee W, you took your eye off the ball.
Obviously it isn't, since as you admit, We have 20,000 troops in Afghanistan --- and that's about 1/7th the number we have in Iraq. If we'd declared full-scale war on the Taliban and Al - Quade, sending 140 k troops after Osama's brigades, maybe we wouldn't have Tom Ridge telling us that Osama's folks are planning something big for us between now and the election. Sorry, but the Iraq folly doesn't make me feel safer - - and apparently Ridge doesn't feel safer either.
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