Posted on 12/26/2005 7:42:38 PM PST by RWR8189
Baghdad
On a cool December morning, Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad waited for their distinguished guests on the sidewalk outside of the ambassador's residence in the heart of the fortified Green Zone in downtown Baghdad. Moments passed, but no one came. As Khalilzad chattered in Cheney's ear, the vice president stood looking at the cloudless blue sky with his hands clasped behind his back, sporadically shuffling his right foot back and forth. They waited some more. An eager press corps-with cameras and microphones, pens and pads at the ready--waited to capture the handshake between Cheney and Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Cheney's first trip to liberated Iraq.
Moments earlier, after a meeting that to all outward appearances had run precisely as planned, Cheney and Khalilzad had bid farewell to President Jalal Talabani and Minister of Planning Barham Saleh, two leading Kurdish politicians. Talabani had said all of the right things in a brief statement before the press was removed from the 20-minute private meeting with the Americans. The corpulent Kurd had offered kind words for the "American brave Army" and told Cheney that Iraqis regarded him and George W. Bush as "great heroes of Iraq." The meeting had concluded and the four men had walked briskly outside to the front of the ambassador's residence. A white Chevy Suburban equipped with a rooftop device to scramble remotely controlled bombs had pulled up just as the men completed their final handshakes. Cheney and Khalilzad had waved to the departing vehicle and walked back inside.
Ten seconds later, they had reemerged before the cameras to greet al-Jaafari. And they waited. After five minutes the Shiite leader arrived in another white Chevy Suburban. A strong wave of musk cologne wafted over the press corps as al-Jaafari and a top adviser emerged from the vehicle and greeted the Americans.
Back inside, Cheney had given a three-sentence statement to the press explaining that he was delighted to be in Baghdad. Al-Jaafari would not be so brief. Speaking through a translator, the Iraqi prime minister revealed that he had not been told Cheney was coming. "I thought only the ambassador was going to be here," he said, smiling.
Turning to Cheney, al-Jaafari continued: "I'm very happy for your presence and for the presence of American soldiers." The Iraqi prime minister called 2005 "one of the most important years in Iraqi history" and noted the increase in turnout with each of the three elections this year. As al-Jaafari provided additional detail-- "from 59 percent in January, to 63 percent in October, to 70 percent on December 15" -- Khalilzad grew impatient. He widened his eyes, dipped his chin, and sliced his left hand through the air palm down as if to say, "Enough." Al-Jaafari took the hint and stopped short. The press was escorted from the room, and presumably the real work began.
Cheney's trip comes as part of a coordinate--and long overdue--Bush administration public relations offensive on Iraq and the war on terror. In the past week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made appearances on several Sunday talk shows; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also traveled to Iraq and the region; and senior national security officials were made available for rare on-the-record press briefings. On consecutive days, President Bush delivered a particularly meaty version of his weekly radio address, gave a prime time address to the nation from the Oval Office, and held a nationally televised press conference in the East Room.
It appears that these efforts are paying dividends. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released while Cheney was still in the region showed marked improvement in President Bush's overall approval (up 8 points to 47 percent) as well as his conduct of the war on terror (up 8 points to 56 percent) and its crucial battle in Iraq (up 10 points to 46 percent).
There has been concern among conservative activists and Republicans in Congress that this new campaign would be short-lived, that the administration would return to its defensive crouch of last summer as soon as the poll numbers rebounded. That's still a possibility, but if Cheney's language this week is any indication, it appears the Bush administration will continue to make the case aggressively that Americans are better off because of its conduct of national security policy, including the Iraq war.
That effort will likely include the release of documents and other materials captured in postwar Iraq. In recent weeks, senior Bush administration and intelligence officials have been discussing several plans to expedite the public release of those materials. According to officials familiar with their contents, the documents provide an unfiltered look inside a criminal regime that brutalized its own citizens, bought off numerous European politicians, and provided significant support to transregional terrorists.
Cheney's trip took him to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Oman, but the most important stop was his surprise visit to Iraq, three days after successful parliamentary elections there.
AFTER HIS MORNING MEETINGS IN BAGHDAD, Cheney helicoptered to Taji Air Base just north of Baghdad. A dark blanket of smog hovered over the city; the acrid smell of burning trash, familiar to those who have spent time in the Iraqi capital, was particularly strong this day.
The brief flight to Taji took us over the court house where Saddam Hussein's trial is being held, over buildings worn down from years of war, and over the vast stretches of sandy nothingness that make up much of Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein, Taji was the base of the Hammurabi division of the Iraqi army. Today it is home to both American and Iraqi soldiers, in one of the success stories of U.S. soldiers' efforts to train their Iraqi counterparts. Which explains why we were there.
Upon landing, we were shown to a gravelly patch of the base, where we were introduced to a man named Ayoub Bashar. Bashar's cheeks were ruddy; his belly was round. His large smile was partially obscured by the bushy black mustache across his upper lip. He looked like the Iraqi army officers who stood by Saddam Hussein's side in so many photographs of the former dictator. That's no accident. Bashar, a Sunni Arab like Saddam, was one of those officers. He is the former chief of armor for the army of the ousted regime. His combat experience dates back to the Iran-Iraq war. After the Gulf war, he ran afoul of the government and was sentenced to five years in prison. He served one of those years and was released.
Today, Major General Bashar is commander of the 9th Mechanized Division of the Iraqi army. The American officers who work with him describe Bashar as a demanding and effective leader.
Bashar spoke with a heavy accent, but his English is good. He enthusiastically shook Cheney's hand as he explained that the Iraqi soldiers under his supervision were responsible for providing regional security for the recent elections.
"Sir, they were so, so, so proud to do this mission, the election," he said loudly, unable to conceal his own pride. Arrayed before the two men, over an area approximately the size of a football field, were several small groups of Iraqi soldiers standing before their tanks. Some of the tanks, a sandy yellow in color, were reconstructed from parts of tanks leftover from the old Iraqi army. Several others, these light gray, were donated to the new Iraqi army by Hungary and Greece.
As he conducts a made-for-TV tour, Bashar stopped in front of each group of soldiers to explain their background and their duties. Cheney shook hands with each man. In front of every third tank stood carefully placed easels weighted to the ground with sandbags. The easels displayed USA Today-like charts and graphs explaining various aspects of the progress made in standing up the Iraqi army.
According to figures provided by U.S. officials, the First Brigade of the 9th Mechanized Infantry Division has 2,494 trained soldiers and 146 combat vehicles. Of the three battalions in the division, two "control their own battle space." The division has captured or killed 40 high value targets from the insurgency this year.
General Bashar, like Talabani and al-Jaafari, made a point of offering his thanks. "To you and to the American people, we like to thank them for the help they are giving us," he said. "Thank you for giving us democracy and prosperity."
Cheney then turned his attention from the Iraqi soldiers to the Americans. He had lunch with a group of U.S. troops in a tent outside an outbuilding at the base. Cheney picked up a tray and went through the food line. James Rosen, a Fox News Channel White House correspondent, peered through a mesh window in front of Cheney's line of sight and asked the vice president whether the lamb kebabs were on a Mrs. Cheney-approved diet. Cheney glanced up with a smile, shook his head, and held his finger to his lips.
After lunch, Cheney and his entourage boarded helicopters for Al Asad Air Base, approximately 180 kilometers west of Baghdad. The airfield was the second largest in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and was home to most of the Iraqi air force.
Shortly before 3 P.M., several hundred soldiers gathered in a large hangar for Cheney's speech. They were not told in advance who, exactly, would appear on stage. Although the response from the crowd was enthusiastic when they learned that their honored guest was the vice president of the United States, Cheney began his remarks with an acknowledgment that he was a disappointment to some.
"Well, I'm not Jessica Simpson."
He quickly turned serious, using the occasion to thank the troops for their service and to challenge critics back home.
I know most of you have heard the political debates that have been going on back home. You've heard some prominent voices advocating a sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq. Some have suggested this war is not winnable. And a few seem almost eager to conclude that the struggle is already over. But they are wrong. The only way to lose this fight is to quit. And that is not an option. Every American serving in this war can be absolutely certain the people of the United States are behind you. Americans will not support a policy of submission, resignation, or defeatism in the face of terror. Our country will never go back to the false comforts of the world before September 11, 2001.
After the speech, Cheney met with 30 U.S. soldiers. The entire group sat on folding chairs around a large rectangular table. "We're going to kick the press out in a minute so they don't inhibit anybody. I want to hear from you," Cheney told the soldiers. He added, with a slight smile: "If you've got any complaints, I can take them straight to the top. It may not do any good, but I can make sure that it happens."
Most of the traveling press was escorted out of the tent, leaving only a pool reporter, who apparently didn't inhibit anyone. The first question, from Marine Corporal Bradley Warren, was openly skeptical of the mission. "From our perspective, we don't see much as far as gains. We're looking at small picture stuff, not many gains. I was wondering what it looks like from the big side of the mountain-how Iraq's looking."
Said Cheney:
Well, Iraq's looking good. It's hard sometimes, if you look at just the news, to have the good stories burn through. Part of it is that what we're doing here, obviously, takes time. It's hard, tough, day-in, day-out kind of work that all of you are involved in. But from our perspective, from the standpoint of the president, we spend a lot of time on it between us. It's probably the single most important problem on our platter that we have to deal with-and we do every day.
The session ended some 30 minutes later, and Cheney, his staff, and the traveling press returned to the cavernous gray C-17 military transport that had brought us to Baghdad 10 hours before. Cheney traveled in the "silver bullet," a portable stand-alone unit bolted to the floor of the airplane that looks like one of those throwback replicas of 1950s diners that are popping up across the United States. Inside, Cheney's room features a desk with two chairs, a sofa and coffee table, a flat-screen plasma television, and a private bathroom. Cheney's staff sat in three rows of airplane seats across the front of the plane. Journalists and secret service personnel were relegated to canvas and steel seats that folded down from the sides of the plane.
We arrived at our hotel in Muscat, Oman, the Grand Hyatt, at about 10:30 P.M. local time, after a half-hour drive past local shops interspersed with the occasional Hardees, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Baskin Robbins. The television in each room carried two of the early NFL games live-Philadelphia vs. St. Louis and San Diego vs. Indianapolis. Those games started at 1 P.M. EST, which meant that we had been traveling-and awake-for 30 hours.
AT 3:30 A.M., ABOUT MIDWAY THROUGH the 3rd quarter of the late football games, the traveling press gathered in the Regency Club to prepare for our departure to Afghanistan. We would once again leave the roomy 757 often designated as Air Force II on the tarmac in Oman in favor of the inconspicuous C-17 transport for the three-hour flight to Bagram Air Base. The flight and arrival at Bagram were uneventful--not something we would be able to say about anything else that day.
After a short helicopter ride, we landed on a street in downtown Kabul just outside the presidential palace. The day marked the opening of the democratically elected parliament in Afghanistan, a milestone for the new Afghan government and for Bush administration foreign policy. Most of Cheney's staff made it inside the heavily guarded complex without incident. Three of them did not. A tall, bespectacled staff member from the U.S. embassy in Kabul tried in vain to explain to the Afghan guards that they had made a mistake by excluding government officials traveling with Cheney. The guards were impassive.
The Americans grew increasingly agitated, speaking into their sleeves and plotting their next move. The embassy official continued to make his case to the Afghan guards, all of whom were wearing sleek sunglasses and Western-style casual clothes. Not unlike overzealous mall cops, the Afghans were thrilled to be exercising what little power they had, and so insisted that the Cheney staffers have their bags and bodies searched along with the traveling press. The embassy official, shouting now, explained that the Cheney staffers had sensitive information in their bags and would not submit to a search.
The debate soon escalated. "Tell the guys with the big guns to get the f- away from our journalists," barked a Secret Service official. An Afghan guard began to respond, but was shouted down. "Just tell them to back the f- off."
Another Afghan official was jawing, manager-to-umpire-style, with the U.S. embassy official. "You not get a search, you stay here," he said, motioning to the ground outside the tall gate. Moments later, as the chaos continued, a burly White House official emerged from inside the compound. With him came a well-dressed Afghan official. After the White House staffer pointed to the three Cheney staffers, his Afghan counterpart shouted instructions to his subordinates, who allowed the three American officials to walk through the gate unmolested. The press remained outside. Fearing that we risked missing some of the ceremony, we consented to searches of our bags and our bodies.
We were led through a chaotic hallway adjacent to the parliament chamber and shown into a holding room for the press. The doorway was a collection of flailing arms and legs and hands with notepads, as local Afghan journalists tried to escape. Two Afghan guards in Western-style business suits blocked the journalists' exit and had no apparent interest in whatever it was the journalists were shouting. A bystander explained that the journalists had just been told they might not be allowed in the parliament chamber for the opening ceremony. They began pushing and shoving the guards and one another, randomly flashing their media credentials as if that might solve the problem. We opted not to join them.
We were led to a holding room about 30 feet down the hallway. The room had large leather office chairs as well as several comfortable armchairs. On the wall above the door was a large, wall-mounted plasma television with a live feed from inside the parliament chamber. Just as we settled in, there were shouts from the hallway. "Come! Come!" More commotion. "Audio! Come!" The Afghan journalists penned in the other holding room had been freed and were charging--some of them in a full sprint--in the direction of a promised audio feed of the proceedings. Once again, we opted not to join them.
The ceremony began with a reading from the Koran. Vice President Cheney and his wife Lynne were seated in the front row. Then President Hamid Karzai rose to deliver a speech marking the opening of parliament. "With hopes for a prosperous future for the people of Afghanistan, I am opening the first session and the legislative period of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Thank God for providing our nation the opportunity to be in control of its own destiny. This gathering represents the assumption of full sovereignty by the great people of Afghanistan and Almighty God's blessing."
The members of parliament were arrayed before him in a semicircle, many dressed for the cold weather outside. At each seat was a large green and gold copy of the Koran and a small plate of sweets, covered with clear plastic wrap and adorned with a red bow. Each member of parliament was given a bound book recounting the accomplishments of the Afghan government since the end of the war in late 2001. Karzai reviewed several of these in his speech: Some 6,620 kilometers of highway have been graveled; monetary reform policy has produced a single, stable currency; 4,325 new "health posts" have been established; 4 million Afghan refugees have come home. He also acknowledged Cheney and thanked the United States for its help.
One curiosity from the speech: Karzai said that the people of Afghanistan "appreciate the support of Iran with regard to reconstruction and the fight against terrorism." (Asked later about the reference, a senior Bush administration official refused to comment, saying he had not heard the line.)
The traveling press watched most of the speech in the comfortable holding room, with each reporter given an opportunity to rotate into the parliament chamber for a portion of the address. Karzai delivered parts of the speech in Dari and parts in Pashto, Afghanistan's two official languages, and it wasn't until 40 minutes into the speech that the audio feed in the holding room was switched to the English translation.
Karzai strained to control his emotions as he concluded his remarks, rendered thus by the interpreter:
We Afghans have the right to stand with full dignity and self-confidence in front of the people of the world and say that this immortal phoenix, this beloved Afghanistan, once again rose from the ashes of invasion and subjugation; we have the right to declare all those who aspire [to] the destruction of our soil, that this country will never vanquish. May God bless you all.
As Afghan schoolchildren assembled for a patriotic song, the translator, unaware that his microphone was still on, began assessing his own performance and otherwise commenting on the ceremony. A White House official later confirmed that Vice President Cheney, who was wearing an earpiece to receive the translation of the speech, also got to hear this rambling self-critique.
The next stop for Cheney was a meeting with Karzai at the presidential palace. The schedule called for a brief photo opportunity at the beginning of the session. These brief exchanges usually produce little substantive news, but they are important for TV coverage. As we waited outside the palace for Cheney's arrival, one of Karzai's press handlers informed us that he would allow no more than nine American journalists in the room. Moments later, it was down to four. Then six.
After the press was dismissed, Karzai opened the meeting by apologizing that his address had taken an hour, according to a White House official. Cheney reminded the Afghan president that he, Cheney, had served in Congress for 10 years and was thus quite used to long speeches.
When the meeting was over, we returned to Bagram Air Base, where Cheney addressed a rally for the troops and met with General Karl Eikenberry for a briefing on military operations in Afghanistan. Late that afternoon we left for Oman.
On the flight, Cheney emerged from the Silver Bullet to find most of his staff sprawled asleep over their three rows of seats. After a laugh, he stood behind the group and summoned up a look of mock disappointment for a photo taken by the staff nurse.
THE PRESS GATHERED IN THE MAKESHIFT FILING CENTER at 5:15 A.M. for the trip to Pakistan. We landed at Chaklala Air Base shortly before noon, and after a short helicopter ride arrived at the presidential palace in Islamabad, where Cheney met with President Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf thanked Cheney and the American people for providing assistance, both financial and operational, to the difficult relief effort in the aftermath of the October earthquake in Pakistan that killed over 73,000 people and left hundreds of thousands without homes.
Through public and private contributions, the United States is providing more than $500 million in relief funds. American helicopters were on the ground providing assistance within 48 hours of the catastrophe, and that immediate effort resulted in the establishment of a more permanent presence in the remote town of Muzaffarabad.
As Cheney and Musharraf met privately, I struck up a conversation with Sohail Ali Khan, a spokesman for Musharraf. We discussed the role of Pakistan in the war on terror. The diminutive spokesman told me that Pakistani authorities are responsible for the capture or killing of more than 700 al Qaeda terrorists since the fall of 2001.
I asked specifically about an al Qaeda member detained in Khuzdar, Pakistan, in July 2002. I had been trying to obtain additional information about this detainee since March, when the Pentagon released a provocative "Summary of Evidence" describing his activities. It describes him as a former member of the Iraqi army who was recruited by the Taliban in Baghdad in 1994. He joined al Qaeda, lived at an al Qaeda camp, and received payments from Osama bin Laden. According to the Pentagon document:
From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars.
A Musharraf spokesman put me on the phone with Major General Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for the Pakistani army. Sultan said he vaguely remembered the capture, and promised to provide additional details in the coming days.
I returned to my conversation with Sohail Ali Khan, who also promised to help. I asked him about Pakistani perceptions of the United States and its leadership, pointing to a Pew Global Attitudes Survey from June 2005 that found only 23 percent of Pakistanis have a favorable view of the United States, and only 10 percent approve of George W. Bush. The same poll found that only 9 percent of Pakistanis surveyed thought the world was a safer place with Saddam Hussein out of power (53 percent thought his removal made the world more dangerous) and only 22 percent approved of the U.S. war on terror. Some 71 percent of Pakistanis interviewed were very or somewhat worried that the United States presented a military threat to their country.
I asked Ali Khan whether the U.S. relief effort could affect those attitudes. "It must," he said, "especially in those areas. Even the religious extremists are going to the U.S. tents for treatment." Ali Khan added that the U.S. relief effort had received extensive coverage in the Pakistani press. President Musharraf mentions U.S. assistance in virtually every speech he gives, and often speaks of the fact that U.S. soldiers helped unload a transport plane sent by the Iranian regime in the days immediately following the disaster.
After a delicious lunch of chicken kebabs and saffron rice, we board four Chinook helicopters to Muzaffarabad, six miles from the epicenter of the earthquake. The 30-minute flight takes us between 12,000-foot mountain peaks stretching high into the clouds. Tens of thousands of houses are carved into the side of these mountains, even at the highest of elevations, and hundreds of footpaths cut back and forth across the face of the range.
"It's probably the most rugged swath of land I've ever seen in my life," says Rear Admiral Michael LeFever, commander of the Disaster Assistance Center in Pakistan, as he briefs Cheney. The U.S. military has set up a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) unit in Muzaffarabad that continues to treat residents, including many with lingering injuries from the earthquake two months ago. Currently 23 physicians, both American and Pakistani, are staffing the hospital; a total of 300 U.S. personnel are involved in the project.
Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, underscores what Ali Khan told me about Pakistani coverage of the U.S. relief effort. He says, "Just about every day there is some article or photograph that highlights the work we do here."
On the return trip to Oman, a senior administration official confirms a report that has been circulating among the reporters on Air Force II. We are heading back to Washington a day early. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has requested that the vice president return immediately to break an anticipated 50-50 tie on the deficit reduction package. (Cheney did, in fact, cast the deciding vote.)
So Cheney skipped meetings with King Abdullah in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Hosni Mubarak, in Cairo, Egypt. He also missed a meeting in Riyadh with the father of slain Lebanese journalist Gebran Tueni. (Cheney phoned Tueni's father Thursday to express condolences for the murder of his son.)
ON THE FIRST LEG OF THE FLIGHT FROM OMAN to Andrews Air Force Base, Cheney called the seven reporters traveling with him back to his cabin for a chat. The vice president appeared relaxed, wearing a lightweight black U.S. Army jacket, a blue button-down shirt, gray flannels, and brown hiking boots. He offered his guests a beer, but didn't have one himself, saying he had lots of work to do on the flight back to Washington. The overstuffed three-ring binder on his desk-perhaps six inches thick-suggested he wasn't kidding.
Although much of the session was a playful back-and-forth between Cheney and the reporters, the vice president turned serious when he was asked about a recent New York Times story that exposed a National Security Agency surveillance program instituted after September 11.
Nedra Pickler, a reporter with the Associated Press, asked Cheney: "Do you not understand, though, that some Americans are concerned to hear that their government is eavesdropping on these private conversations?" Here is the rest of that exchange:
CHENEY: What private conversations?
Q: The private conversations between Americans and people overseas.
CHENEY: Which people overseas?
Q: You tell me.
CHENEY: It's important that you be clear that we're talking about individuals who are al Qaeda or have an association with al Qaeda, who we have reason to believe are part of that terrorist network. There are two requirements, and that's one of them. It's not just random conversations. If you're calling Aunt Sadie in Paris, we're probably not really interested.
Cheney ended with what may be the most forceful on-the-record defense of Bush administration national security policy yet. The vice president said it is this policy-not luck or fate-that explains why the United States has not been attacked in the last four years.
There's a temptation for people to sit around and say, well, gee, [9/11] was just a one-off affair, they didn't really mean it. Bottom line is, we've been very active and very aggressive defending the nation and using the tools at our disposal to do that. That ranges from everything to going into Afghanistan and closing down the terrorist camps, rounding up al Qaeda wherever we can find them in the world, to an active robust intelligence program, putting out rewards, the capture of bad guys, and the Patriot Act. . . . Either we're serious about fighting the war on terror or we're not. Either we believe that there are individuals out there doing everything they can to try to launch more attacks, to try to get ever deadlier weapons to use against [us], or we don't. The president and I believe very deeply that there's a hell of a threat, that it's there for anybody who wants to look at it. And that our obligation and responsibility, given our job, is to do everything in our power to defeat the terrorists. And that's exactly what we're doing.
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. He is currently working on a biography of Vice President
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Tran Blasts Dean: Calls for Solidarity in Iraq
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1536289/posts
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This substance of your post is why the demonRATs hate Cheney soooooo much! They can't even imagine their alternative to what Cheney brings to the party.
Great article....thanks for posting..
It will be interesting to see if Hayes can get more information on the detainee...just one more link between Al-Queda and Iraq..that the dems say never existed.
Also..I heard Hayes on a TV show recently..when he said that he is frustrated that the Bush Administration has been so reluctant to release a lot of non-classified material that pretty much backs up the WMD claim...
Great article. Thanks for the post.
bump
I suggest you read his book, The Connection, you might think differently of him.
In it he chronicles in great detail the connection between al-Qeada and Saddam's Iraq.
From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars.
A Musharraf spokesman put me on the phone with Major General Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for the Pakistani army. Sultan said he vaguely remembered the capture, and promised to provide additional details in the coming days."
That effort will likely include the release of documents and other materials captured in postwar Iraq. In recent weeks, senior Bush administration and intelligence officials have been discussing several plans to expedite the public release of those materials. According to officials familiar with their contents, the documents provide an unfiltered look inside a criminal regime that brutalized its own citizens, bought off numerous European politicians, and provided significant support to transregional terrorists.
The Mother of All Connections (New evidence of collaboration between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda)"
Journalists and secret service personnel were relegated to canvas and steel seats that folded down from the sides of the plane.....we had been traveling-and awake-for 30 hours.
Those canvas and steel seats are the same ones enjoyed by the troops. Be a man, grin and bear it.
bump!
Buried in this article is information about a mysterious detainee that Pakistan is holding. Thought you might like to know.
BTTT!!! a must read..
"I thought the administration might have oversold the importance of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al Qaeda affiliate who went to Baghdad for "medical treatment" after the war in Afghanistan. He had a starring role in Colin Powell's presentation before the UN Security Council this time last year. It looks like I was wrong. He seems to have been a central figure in pre-war Iraq/al Qaeda collaboration and, more troubling, is helping to recruit terrorists and coordinate anti-coalition activities in Iraq now. Investigations in Germany and Italy are turning up new things on Zarqawi almost daily."
The Al-Qaeda/Saddam Link, By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 28, 2004
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11946
Thanks! I find the timing intereting: Yossef Bodansky reports that on August 31, 1998 Hassan al-Turabi received approval from Iraqi VP Ramadan for a request that in the event Al Qaeda had to vacate Afghanistan it could rebase in Iraq. Bodansky describes relations between AQ and Iraq re-opening at this time as a function of rapprochement between the Saudis and Iraq.
Cap see post 9.....we have a mystery guest in custody.
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