Posted on 03/16/2008 2:49:59 PM PDT by jveritas
Lets have congress name these people and find out if these so called experts would still stand by that belief considering all the evidence collected.
How do we know these so called experts aren't the Valerie Plames of the CIA?
I would like to know who these experts are and why they came to that conclusion when it is clear Ansar Al Islam was getting money, training and weapons from Saddams Mukharabat?
Post #240 could only make it more clear that Congress Knew Zarqawi was working with Al Qaeda and this Kenneth Katzman report is a confirmation.
Congress would benifit by reading the Jveritas translated document between Saif Al Adel and Zarqawi working with Ansar Al Islam. "But would they ever read it?"
Ansar Al Islam terrorist group would not possibly exist without the backup and support of Saddam regime. Both Saddam and Ansar Al Islam had a common enemy: “The Kurds”.
I thought the new Pentagon report called the "Iraqi Perspective Project" stated that Saddam funded Ansar al-Islam as did Al-Zawahiri, independently of each other.
Check out this article in the Weekly Standard
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/768rwsbj.asp?pg=1
Saddam’s Ambassador to al Qaeda
From the March 1, 2004 issue: An Iraqi prisoner details Saddam’s links to Osama bin Laden’s terror network.
by Jonathan Schanzer
03/01/2004, Volume 009, Issue 24
“A RECENTLY INTERCEPTED MESSAGE from Iraq-based terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi asking the al Qaeda leadership for reinforcements reignited the debate over al Qaeda ties with Saddam Hussein’s fallen Baath regime. William Safire of the New York Times called the message a “smoking gun,” while the University of Michigan’s Juan Cole says that Safire “offers not even one document to prove” the Saddam-al Qaeda nexus. What you are about to read bears directly on that debate. It is based on a recent interview with Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in Saddam’s secret police, the Mukhabarat, from 1997 to 2002, and is currently sitting in a Kurdish prison. Al-Shamari says that he worked for a man who was Saddam’s envoy to al Qaeda.”
“In addition to weapons, al-Shamari said, the Mukhabarat also helped finance Ansar al Islam. “On one occasion we gave them ten million Swiss dinars [$700,000],” al-Shamari said, referring to the pre-1990 Iraqi currency. On other occasions, the Mukhabarat provided more than that. The assistance, he added, was furnished “every month or two months.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5851&R=ED839E
Such current ties to al Qaeda and its allies raise the inevitable question of whether or not any existed prior to the war. According to a March 2002 New Yorker article by Jeffrey Goldberg, another Iraqi imprisoned intelligence officer named Qassem Hussein Muhammed, who had been captured by Kurdish forces en route to the Ansar al-Islam enclave, had claimed that Abu Wael was “the actual decision-maker” for the group and “an employee of the Mukhabarat,” the Arabic name for Iraqi intelligence.
While traveling through northern Iraq in 2002, Jonathan Schanzer, a specialist in radical Islamic movements at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, met a former member of Iraqi intelligence named Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who had been imprisoned by the Kurds since March 2002. Al Shamari revealed a wealth of purported information about pre-war ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, including details about the activities of Colonel Saadan Mahmoud Abdul Latif, a member of Ansar al-Islam's ruling council far better known as Abu Wael. Al-Shamari went even further than Muhammed, claiming that Abu Wael had married one of al-Douri’s cousins and had even met with Saddam Hussein “four or five times.” Claims of Iraqi assistance to Ansar al-Islam are even supported by the 9/11 Commission which—despite having been widely reported as having “debunked” claims of such a link—also noted cryptically: “There are indications that by then [2001] the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al-Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.”
Joseph
I spoke with Jonathan Schanzer on the phone when looking for the U.S. delegation that visited the Communist Party in Iraq. Mark gave me his name as a contact. He was very helpful.
“I thought the new Pentagon report called the “Iraqi Perspective Project” stated that Saddam funded Ansar al-Islam as did Al-Zawahiri, independently of each other.”
There are five volumes
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/iraqi/index.html
Do you know which volume I could look as a quick reference?
It was from a discussion here at FR from a NRO article that stated such... I believe.
I found it in a Stephen Hayes Weekly Standard article.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=14889
Saddam’s Dangerous Friends
What a Pentagon review of 600,000 Iraqi documents tells us.
by Stephen F. Hayes
03/24/2008, Volume 013, Issue 27
“In 1998, the Iraqi regime offered “financial and moral support” to a new group of jihadists in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.”
Joeseph
is there a way we could find out from Stephen what transalted document this quote came from?
Also was Stephen Hayes looking at both Docex and the Harmony Database?
Harboring al Qaeda ( What the new Senate Intelligence Report says about Saddam's hospitality)
It always amazes me how much the Democrats and some Republicans pay no attention to any postwar intelligence that supports prewar intelligence.
It’s not accidental.
I would try, at every opportunity, to cut the legs out from under any possible argument the MSM/Dems might make for their bogus story.
Now is not the time for our leaders to be, figuratively at least, arguing the meaning of “is”!! The interminable “hairsplitting” is going to get us all killed. It might not hurt to remind Mr. McCain of that fact.
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