The director of the CIA makes the same statement Bush does, after Bush, and this little piece of information does not make it into the NYT's article.
Has the NY Slimes ever published the truth about anything dealing with GW since the 2000 elections?
if hussein gave shelter to Abu Abbas and had the fusealage of a 737 jet, had the training camp and all, why would it not be feasable that he would also allow al qaeda to operate there?
On April 13, 2004, Jordanian security forces foiled an al-Qaeda plot against the nation’s intelligence agency. The plot, reported on April 26 by Agence France-Presse (AFP), involved a plan to use trucks packed with 20 tons of chemical explosives, including blistering agents, nerve gas and choking agents. Jordanian officials estimated that had the attack been successful, the amount of chemicals involved had the potential of killing up to 80,000 people.
Six members of the terror network which planned to execute the plot were arrested and four others were killed in a series of raids in Jordan which concluded on April 20. The ringleader of the terror network was a Jordanian, Azmi al-Jayussi. Jayussi had been recruited for the operation in Iraq by al-Qaeda leader Abu Massab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi was identified by Jordanian officials as the mastermind of chemical weapons plot.
According to a Jordanian security official interviewed by AFP, “Jayussi started to plan for the operation in Iraq where he had moved to from Afghanistan. He received direct orders from his leader, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, to whom Jayussi had pledged allegiance and absolute obedience since he met him in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”
In a taped statement, Jayussi related how his first encounter with Zarqawi had been in Herat, Afghanistan, and how he later connected up with him again in Saddam’s Iraq. He stated that it was Zarqawi who had trained him in the use of “explosives and strong poisons.” Excerpts of Jayussi’s taped statement, which were aired on ABC’s “Nightline” on April 26, 2004, revealed that the planning and training for the WMD plot took place in Iraq more than a year before the US-led coalition invasion.
In Iraq, Zarqawi introduced Jayussi to another of his Jordanian followers, Muwafaq Adwan. Muwafaq was killed in a shootout with Jordanian police in Amman on April 20. Jayussi told Jordanian security officials that Zarqawi had ordered Muwafaq and him to Jordan where “[o]ur mission was to instigate military work” in the country.
In Jordan, Jayussi was aided by several Syrians under Zarqawi’s direction. The aim of their operation was to attack Jordan and its ruling family as part of a “war against crusaders and infidels.”
Anti-terror experts said that the network’s 20 tons of explosives would have caused “two explosions: a traditional one and a chemical in an area of two square kilometers.”
“The chemical explosion would lead to the emission of poisonous chemical gasses which would have caused physical deformities and direct injuries to the lungs and eyesight,” said one of the experts on a Jordanian news program. “Outside this circle, the human loss would amount to around 80,000 people dead and 160,000 injured.”
To fund the operation, Jayussi said that he received the equivalent of $170,000 (US) in installments from Zarqawi, sent through messengers, most of them from Syria.
Another arrested suspect, Ahmed Samir, told Jordanian security that he had been trained in Iraq by a Zarqawi aide and worked on explosives for two months in a factory in Ramtha, near the Jordanian-Syrian border.
News of this foiled plot should have provided conclusive proof that what President Bush feared, and which justified the effort to take Saddam down, was real – that Saddam allowed the operation of terrorist groups, especially al-Qaeda, within Iraq, and that terrorists trained in Iraq and supplied with a significant quality of WMD materials from Iraq, could have international reach. News of this foiled terrorist plot to use WMDs in a spectacular attack in Jordan received scant attention in the US media. While ABC’s “Nightline” carried the story, and similar stories appeared in articles published in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, the American news media did not give this news the significant level of attention it deserved. The news media’s mantra is that the failure to find stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq is a scandal that rests on the head of George W. Bush. “Bush lied!” The real scandal here is the failure or refusal of the American news media to report and pursue events which give credence and justification to President Bush’s policies in Iraq.
Answer - Yes. And they are right.
Quoting from the article:
On June 25, 2004, the New York Times reported on an internal Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) document that discussed relations between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda. The document, authenticated by the U.S. intelligence community, reports on meetings between bin Laden emissaries and Uday Hussein in 1994. The document further reports that the Iraqi regime agreed to a request from bin Laden to broadcast sermons from an anti-Saudi cleric. The IIS document advises that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement." And when bin Laden was ousted from Sudan in 1996, the document reports that Iraqis were "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship."
Tom Daschle is the architect of this smear campaign against President Bush. He was the one who suggested that Harry Reid and Dick Durbin pull that stunt on Friday. He is still angry at Sen. Frist for going to S. D. to campaign against him.
For some reason he thinks people still care what he thinks. He must think he is still running the show in DC too...
Message to Washington:
It's Time to Bring Our Troops Home
Sign Tom's Online Petition Today
Together, we need to call on President Bush to adopt a plan for successful withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. After two years, $250 billion appropriated to fight this war and the tragic deaths of more than 2,000 American troops, we must provide a plan for victory and an exit strategy.
I have outlined my plan of Strategic Redeployment, developed in cooperation with the Center for American Progress, with input from some of the nation's most respected foreign policy experts. You can view the entire plan on CAP's website in PDF format. My plan calls for bringing home the first 80,000 troops beginning this January and no later than the end of 2006. The plan redeploys 20,000 American troops to Afghanistan to help finish our job there, including the capture of Osama bin Laden. Finally, the plan calls for the last 70,000 American troops to come home by the end of 2007.
Join me in calling on our leaders in Washington to bring our troops home by signing my online petition today.
I gave a speech covering foreign policy and my plan for strategic redeployment on November 2 at Northwestern University in Chicago. You can listen to an mp3 audio version of the speech or subscribe to my podcasts in iTunes on my podcast page. If you prefer to read the text of the speech, I have posted it to the web.
"I wish I could share with you the misleading information I personally was provided in September and October of 2002," he said in remarks scheduled for delivery at Northwestern University in Evanston.
The misrepresentations, Daschle said, underscore the need for Congress to repair the nation's foreign policy initiatives in order to restore the public's trust in the use of U.S. military power.
Daschle has raised his public profile in recent weeks and has not ruled out a presidential run in 2008.
In an advance text of the speech, obtained by The Associated Press, Daschle said terrorism and AIDS had become greater threats under the Bush administration. He accused President Bush of giving rise to "a world opinion that now holds America in lower esteem than ever before."
http://tinyurl.com/agugy
******
Nov. 6, 2005, 9:45AM
Secret session was year in the making
Only a handful of Democrats were in on the plan that originated with Sen. Daschle
By CHARLES BABINGTON
Washington Post
WASHINGTON - It took Democrats about five seconds to trigger the parliamentary move that forced the Senate into a rare closed session last week, but it was more than a year in the planning.
The final decision to employ the tactic, which infuriated Republicans and exacerbated partisan animosity, was made in the Democratic leader's second-floor Capitol office Monday night, in a small gathering of his lieutenants.
Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., considered the strategy to be so sensitive that only four of his colleagues knew what he intended when he entered the Senate chamber at 2:25 p.m. Tuesday, party aides said.
snip
Daschle's staff researched exactly how Rule 21 might be used, aides said, and their findings were at Reid's fingertips when he convened the weekly meeting of his leadership team at 6:15 p.m. Monday.
Present were party whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., conference secretary Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and campaign committee Chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
snip
Reid obtained an enthusiastic endorsement of the plan from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the intelligence committee's top Democrat, Manley said.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/3440266
Fortunately, their readership has dropped substantially...but the true propaganda of the TImes is so blatant. The question remains whether or not people will look at the original documents as Steven Hayes has done...the good news is that this DOES get out through radio, etc.
We'll have to fight the good fight.