To: Gabrielle Reilly
Well, actually, there's a lot of reasons for Osama NOT to involve himself with Iraq for the 9/11 attacks.
1) Money. The whole thing didn't cost very much and Osama certainly had plenty of his own money to cover expenses.
2) Operational Security. The more people who know about an operation the easier it is compromised. Involve Iraqi officials and it's possible that Iraq has been penetrated by intelligence or eavesdropping and AQ hasn't.
Also, Iraq had a long record of laughably incompetent attempts at terrorism at the time, all of which had failed; the attempts during the 1991 Gulf War were so comically inept if someone had made a movie of them it wouldn't have been believable. Hard to see how that is attractive to Osama.
3) Materials. I THINK you can get box cutters other places than Iraq.
4) Training. The flight training was entirely in the US, it appears. And otherwise AQ pretty much had the run of Afghanistan as a safe, secure base for training.
And in the bios of all of the hijackers (especially the "muscle" involved in physically taking over the plane) I'm unaware of any missing gaps of months or years where they were in Iraq or could have been in Iraq. They were either in Yemen or Saudi or Afghanistan, or in Germany, the US, etc.
11 posted on
05/09/2003 6:26:56 AM PDT by
John H K
To: John H K
Very good points John, but I believe you are not taking into account the must fundamental philosophy of Osama Bin Laden... he wants to eliminate the West and Christianity. He has said he considers Saddam a blathering idiot, and was appalled at the decadent lifestyle, but he appears to put differences aside to achieve his goal.
I am sure he had more long reaching plans than 9/11. Or maybe he wanted to lead Saddam in a lair where the US came after Iraq to achieve his "clash of civilizations" goal. Who knows what motivated him on that front, but I do believe he realizes the only way to defeat the west is to unify all of the anti-American countries and terrorist organizations. Iraq would be high on that priority list as a power that opposes the West... as would Iran and North Korea. It appears he has been actively around the world recruiting anti-American groups for the cause.
To: John H K
You are ignorant of the travels and covert movements of the hijackers, so don't purport to be expert on them. A real expert has already tracked these and found mysterious gaps. Next, you'll be saying you know where Osama Bin Laden is, or Saddam...
15 posted on
05/09/2003 9:53:14 AM PDT by
Paul Ross
(From the State Looking Forward to Global Warming! Let's Drown France!)
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