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On Aug. 6, 2001, our vacationing president was warned by the CIA for the 36th time in eight months that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States and that recent intelligence had suggested an attack might be imminent. There were at that moment, George W. Bush was told, 70 bin-Laden-related field investigations being conducted in the country. “All right,’’ our president told the CIA officer, “you’ve covered your ass.’’ On one level, Jon Krakauer’s “Where Men Win Glory’’ represents a detailed look at the tragic tale of Pat Tillman, the football star who quit the NFL...

Osama Bin Laden PRE-ANNOUNCED the 9/11 attacks 3 weeks in advance, promosing "unprecedented attacks" on the US 3 weeks before 9/11. This is reported at the end of this clip from ABC News, local Channel 7 from Washington, DC, broadcast on the evening of 9/11 2001. Osama Bin Laden promised that Al Qaeda would attack the US in an unprecedented way BEFORE it happened. Not only has Al Qaeda repeatedly and proudly admitted that Al Qaeda planned, funded, and executed the 9/11 attacks on the United States, but Osama Bin Laden announced (admitted) the 9/11 attacks 3 weeks in advance,...

Just as President Jacques Chirac was vehemently arguing against invading Iraq in late 2002, General Philippe Rondot wrote that he had been given the green light to "recover" top officials including Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister. Previously unseen extracts of Gen Rondot's private diaries were reprinted in the newspaper Libération. In a passage dated Dec 3, 2002, the general refers to an "agreement in principle to 'recover' if necessary Mr Aziz and Al-Rafai" – said to be a senior Ba'ath Party politician. The two men were believed to have been considered useful to the French while Gen Rondot knew Aziz...

Assertions relating to the Saddam Hussein/al-Qaeda controversy have filled countless news articles and books and cannot be completely recapped and answered in a few articles. But despite all of the ink and bandwidth spent on the topic, there are additional questions yet to be fully explored in the eyes of many. When one attempts to dig on questions, such as what meetings actually took place between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda members — where they took place and when, and what was discussed — the CIA emerges as one of, if not the major, intelligence players involved in public discussion...

Assertions relating to the Saddam Hussein/al-Qaeda controversy have filled countless news articles and books and cannot be completely recapped and answered in a few articles. But despite all of the ink and bandwidth spent on the topic, there are additional questions yet to be fully explored in the eyes of many. When one attempts to dig on questions, such as what meetings actually took place between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda members — where they took place and when, and what was discussed — the CIA emerges as one of, if not the major, intelligence players involved in public discussion...

This is one of those articles that I really REALLY hope people will read before just commenting on the headline or the quoted sections. In fact, I think it's one of the best articles I've seen on this subject in half a decade. Yes, it's long, detailed, and forces many readers to question their previously held beliefs about regime ties to the Al Queda terrorist network, but it's not the typical anti-Bush/anti-war piece or a woohoo-Bush-was-right piece either. It is EXACTLY why: members of the 911 Commission, Sen Intel Com, as well as others (and why every investigation into the...

James Gordon Meek of the New York Daily News has posted two recent stories based on documents he obtained through FOIA on the FBI's interview of Saddam Hussein. Meek says that, according to the documents, Saddam denied links to al Qaeda just as he did prior to the invasion and the Baath party recently denied again on their website. In one of the documented interviews Hussein referred to America as his enemy and in another interview discussed Iraq's relationship with, and level of support for anti-Israel groups linked with Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas, who he referred to as "guests."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader. "Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction. He believed Iraq was being threatened by others in the region and must appear able to defend itself, the report said. The FBI reports, released...

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he led the world to believe that his country had weapons of mass destruction because he did not want to appear weak to the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to declassified FBI documents released Wednesday. Hussein was quoted as saying that he was so concerned about radical Iranian leaders that he was ready to sign a security agreement with the United States guaranteeing protection from Iran.... Hussein also referred to Osama Bin Laden as a "zealot" and said that he did not deal with al-Qaida....

( The media and the democrats knew all along Saddam had WMD...we sent an engraved invite we were coming three months in advance, of course he moved his WMD to Syria----but the bloodthirsty "Bush Lied" chorus was allowed to perpetuate to destroy Bush) Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq Last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts arrives in Canada updated 6:57 p.m. ET, Sat., July 5, 2008 The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a...

The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the war crimes conviction of a businessman for selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein that his regime in Iraq turned into poison gas and unleashed on Kurds and Iranians. ... In May 2007 a Hague appeals court upheld Van Anraat's 2005 conviction for complicity in war crimes and increased his sentence from 15 to 17 years. ... Presiding Judge Leo van Dorst said that from the mid-1980s Van Anraat was Iraq's sole supplier of a chemical called TDG, or thiodiglycol, for its mustard gas production program. "The suspect knew ... the TDG he was...

Prior to this month's disputed presidential election in Iran, the Obama administration sent a letter to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for an improvement in relations, according to interviews and the leader himself. Ayatollah Khamenei confirmed the letter toward the end of a lengthy sermon last week, in which he accused the United States of fomenting protests in his country in the aftermath of the disputed June 12 presidential election. U.S. officials declined to discuss the letter on Tuesday, a day in which President Obama gave his strongest condemnation yet of the Iranian crackdown against protesters.

9/11, Info Sharing, and “The Wall” The rise of “the wall” between intelligence and law enforcement personnel that impeded the sharing of information within the U.S. government prior to September 11, 2001 was critically examined in a detailed monograph (pdf) that was prepared in 2004 for the 9/11 Commission. It is the only one of four staff monographs that had not previously been released. It was finally declassified and disclosed earlier this month [http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/wall.pdf --searchable HTML transcript at http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:KyzY5fDka0AJ:www.fas.org/irp/eprint/wall.pdf+%22legal+barriers+to+information+sharing:+the+erection+of+a+wall+between+intelligence+and+law+enforcement+investigations%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us]. In April 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft testified (pdf) that the failure to properly share threat information in the summer of...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says there was “never any evidence” that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq played any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. “On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11, there was never any evidence to prove that,” Cheney said during an interview Monday night with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “There was some reporting early on, for example, that Mohammed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official,” Cheney said. “But that was never borne out.” In a 2003 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cheney...

Maybe now that President Obama’s in charge of the war in Iraq, and there’s no need to lie, distort, or half quote truths to oppose the war (can’t oppose it if it’s run by a Democrat)…maybe now people will realize: 1) the matter was never closed by any investigation 2) there’s hundreds of times more information demonstrating ties than there is dismissing them BAGHDAD — The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki said Al Qaida worked closely with former operatives in Saddam Hussein regime. Officials said leading members of the Al Qaida network have coordinated operations with Saddam...

But what to do now? Exactly what the U.S. could have done before: recognize the cease-fire as a false peace, present the Iraqi Army with an ultimatum -- to get rid of Saddam Hussein or the U.S. will resume the air attack on military targets and every high officer will be tried for war crimes. With the killer gone, Iraqis can be left to their own political settlements. The only duty of the U.S. is to allow those who trusted us to return to their homes, free of terror. But to do that, Mr. Bush must show true strength --...

Barely a month before the 9/11 terror attacks, two Pakistani nuclear scientists, said to be close to disgraced Abdul Qadeer Khan, met up with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and offered to supply him with atomic weapons, according to a newly released book Chaudiri Abdul Majeed and Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who held a series of senior posts in Pakistani nuke programme, went to Taliban headquarters in Kandahar in mid-August 2001 and spent three days with bin Laden who was keen on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the book says. In fact, Mahmood was said to be more close to Khan,...

I had posted about this before. I wrote an article last March that was published on American Thinker. I just completed my book The Link: The Secret Relationship between Saddam and al Qaida. For more info: http://lfairmont.wordpress.com/ My agent is looking for a traditional publisher, but in the meantime I have self-published. The book is primarily sourced from Iraqi documents retrieved by the US military in Iraq. The media has suppressed the truth. I have Saddam talking about al Qaida being in Iraq in 1995. I have new evidence about WMDs and Saddam saying he gave the order for the...

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential hopeful John McCain fixed his sights on Saddam Hussein long before President Bush sent the U.S. military to oust the Iraqi dictator in March 2003.

An intimate look at one 9/11 hijacker.

SARGAT, Iraq, April 4 — Preliminary tests conducted by MSNBC.com indicate that the deadly toxins ricin and botulinum were present on two items found at a camp in a remote mountain region of northern Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training center by Islamic militants with ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. The field tests used by MSNBC.com are only a first step in the evidentiary process and are typically followed by more precise laboratory testing that MSNBC.com has not conducted. U.S. intelligence agents were conducting their own tests in the same area and had not yet released their results,...

<p>SARGAT, Iraq, April 4 — MSNBC.com tests reveal evidence of the deadly toxins ricin and botulinum at a laboratory in a remote mountain region of northern Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training camp by Islamic militants with ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is conducting its own tests at the same area, but has not yet released the results, according to officials in northern Iraq.</p>

This is a FReeper made video based off the Al Qaeda document found and posted here at Free Republic by Jveritas. I plan to post it also at Googlevideo and Liveleak. I will present these links as they become available.

MEDIA ADVISORY, April 25 /Christian Newswire/ -- The trial of Scooter Libbey proved one thing: Bush and Cheney were right -- along with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, John Kerry, and every other Democrat and responsible world leader. Saddam Hussein WAS indeed actively working to develop and build a nuclear bomb, and posed a threat of a nuclear holocaust against American famlies. An internal memo from the U.S. State Department was declassified at the insistence of Scooter Libbey's defense attorneys (against Foggy Bottom's wishes). The memo has been posted by the ASSOCIATED PRESS at -- http://wid.ap.org/documents/libbytrial/jan23/DX71.pdf And the memo is fully...

The Prime Minister of Niger reported to the U.S. State Department in early 2002 that Iraq tried to buy uranium "yellow cake" (ore) -- a June 2003 Memo reveals. A declassified court exhibit introduced in the 2007 trial of Scooter Libbey proved that Saddam Hussein tried to get uranium ore from Niger -- covertly and under the table. This is clear evidence that Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons. Iraq already had stockpiles of uranium "yellow cake" that it was not using -- but that uranium was being watched by UN inspectors. Iraq could have no reason for wanting...

The Foxnews ticker at the bottom of the screen is reporting that Israeli intelligence may have known about the September 11 attacks beforehand and yet didn't tell the U.S. Anyone have a link to this story so I can peruse it myself? I seriously doubt the legitimacy of the claim, but I would have to withhold judgment until I read the story itself.

Five years on, few Iraq myths are as persistent as the notion that the Bush Administration invented a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet a new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.Naturally, it's getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has let the study's revelations float by. But that doesn't make the facts any less notable or true. The redacted version of "Saddam and Terrorism" is the most definitive...

This ought to be big news. Throughout the early and mid-1990s, Saddam Hussein actively supported an influential terrorist group headed by the man who is now al Qaeda's second-in-command, according to an exhaustive study issued last week by the Pentagon. "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives." According to the Pentagon study, Egyptian Islamic Jihad was one of many jihadist groups that Iraq's former dictator funded, trained, equipped, and armed.

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had extensive ties to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, according to an official report published by the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses and released through the Joint Forces Command. That report, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, came up with some startling revelations in its 59 pages:

Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that an investigation into over 600,000 documents captured at the end of the invasion of Iraq showed no operational links to al-Qaeda — or at least, that’s how the media reported it. After a strange few days in which the Pentagon delayed the report, it finally hit the internet last night — and it’s clear that the analysis done by the media was superficial at best. If no operational “smoking gun” could be found, the report still shows that Saddam Hussein had plenty of ties to all sorts of terrorist groups, including radical Islamist...

On February 17 2008, Al-Ekhlaas which is the largest terrorist forum on the internet published an Al Qaeda document that talks about the life of Abou Musaab Al Zarqawi and indicates that Zarqawi came to Iraq before the war to prepare the terrorist insurgency against the US troops. According to the document Zarqawi arrived to the Sunni areas in central Iraq. This document was written by one of Al Qaeda top leaders called “Saif Al Adel”. There were many accounts about Zarqawi presence in Iraq before the war in particular in Northern Iraq with “Ansar Al Islam” an active Al...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jack Bauer gets to save the world in the fall, after all. The producers of Fox's "24" are developing a two-hour "prequel" to the upcoming seventh season of the real-time thriller. The movie, designed to bridge the two-year gap between Seasons 6 and 7, is targeted to air in the fall, leading to the show's January return..

SADDAM Hussein was prepared to take $1 billion and go into exile before the Iraq war, George Bush, the United States president, is said to have told José WMaria Aznar, the then prime minister of Spain, a month before the 2003 invasion. During a meeting at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on 22 February, Mr Bush told Mr Aznar that Saddam could also be assassinated, according to a transcript of their talks published yesterday in the Spanish newspaper El Pais. "The Egyptians are speaking to Saddam Hussein. It seems he's indicated he would be prepared to go into exile if...

Then-Secretary of State Collin Powell made the case in 2003 in front of the United Nations that Saddam was providing al Qaeda safe haven in Iraq. As evidence he alleged that Abu Mus’ab Al Zarqawi was an al Qaeda operative in northern Iraq. For those who want to chastise the invasion of Iraq as misdirected and having nothing to do with al Qaeda, it became important to establish that Secretary of State Powell and the Bush Administration were “lying” to the UN.

Bush thought Saddam was prepared to flee: report By Jason Webb 29 minutes ago Saddam Hussein was prepared to take $1 billion and go into exile before the Iraq war, according to a transcript of talks between U.S. President George W. Bush and an ally, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday. During a meeting at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on February 22, 2003, Bush told former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar that Saddam could also be assassinated, according to the transcript published in El Pais in Spanish. In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe...

Less than a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein signaled that he was willing to go into exile as long as he could take with him $1 billion and information on weapons of mass destruction, according to a report of a Feb. 22, 2003, meeting between President Bush and his Spanish counterpart published by a Spanish newspaper yesterday. The meeting at Bush's Texas ranch was a planning session for a final diplomatic push at the United Nations. The White House was preparing to introduce a tough new Security Council resolution to pressure Hussein, but most council members...

Daystar will air part II Friday Sep 21st on the "Joni" show of interview with General Sada, one of Sadam's generals who witnessed Sadam's intention of use WMD. God bless Daystar! God bless President Bush and PM Blair!

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec 07, 2001 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says he warned the United States that &quot;something would happen&quot; 12 days before the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. In an interview published Friday by the left-wing Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, Mubarak also said that if the Israeli defense force were to kill Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, it would be a grave mistake. Mubarak did not reveal how he learned in late August of a possible terrorist attack against the United States. He said he was taken aback by the scale of the ...

Director of National Intelligence Says U.S. Didn't Connect Available Information

In the weeks preceding the 2001 attacks on America, there were very significant financial warning signs that something big – and bad – could be about to happen. Huge surges in purchases of “put options” on stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines, the two airlines used in the attacks, and “put options” on Merrill Lynch & Co., and Morgan Stanley, stocks of two financial services companies hurt by the attack were noted. Put options are essentially “bets” that a stock or stock index will drop on or before a certain date; the larger the drop, the bigger the gain...

WASHINGTON - It took an act of Congress to force the CIA to lift the veil on its watchdog's internal investigation that lays out the agency's many failures in the months and years before Sept. 11, 2001. Three CIA directors disparaged the document. Multiple requests under the Freedom of Information Act collected dust. Finally, on Tuesday, with the clock ticking on Congress' 30-day deadline to release the report, CIA Director Michael Hayden reluctantly caved in. Completed in June 2005, the report lays out in greater detail what has long been known: The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available...

CIA: Asleep At The Switch August 23, 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the days and weeks following Sept. 11, how many times did we hear some terrorism expert say: If only the CIA had known al-Qaida operatives were in the United States, this tragedy might never have happened? Well, now it turns out they did know — but did nothing about it. In an explosive report, the inspector general of the United States concludes that CIA agents had tracked two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, from a terrorist summit in Malaysia to the United States. CIA officials...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20381551/site/newsweek/ In September 2006, during a famous encounter with Fox News anchor Wallace, Clinton erupted in anger and waived his finger when asked about whether his administration had done enough to get bin Laden. “What did I do? What did I do?” Clinton said at one point. “I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since.” Clinton appeared to have been referring to a December 1999 Memorandum of Notification (MON) he signed that...

Intelligence: A highly critical CIA report details the spy agency's failings during the 1990s in preventing the 9/11 attacks. But as the report makes clear, the Clinton administration also deserves a big piece of the blame. The scathing look into the CIA's many failures before 9/11 makes for some depressing reading. The CIA at various times knew information that it didn't pass along to others, or ignored things it should have paid closer attention to. The headlines tell it all. "CIA missed chances to tackle al-Qaida." "Head of CIA 'failed to stop' al-Qaida's 9/11 attacks on America." "C.I.A. Lays Out...

WASHINGTON: George Tenet, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, recognized the danger posed by Al Qaeda well before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but failed to adequately prepare the CIA to meet the threat, according to an internal agency report that was released in summary form Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — A report released Tuesday by the Central Intelligence Agency includes new details of the agency’s missteps before the Sept. 11 attacks, outlining what the report says were failures to grasp the role being played by the terror mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and to fully assess the threats streaming into the C.I.A. in the summer of 2001. The 19-page report, prepared by the agency’s inspector general, also says that 50 to 60 C.I.A. officers knew of intelligence reports in 2000 that two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, may have been in the...

The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al-Qaida and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to Sept. 11, the agency's own watchdog concluded in a bruising report released Tuesday. Completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now, the 19-page executive summary finds extensive fault with the actions of senior CIA leaders and others beneath them. "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," the CIA inspector general found. "They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," *snip* Yet the...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Newly declassified intelligence documents reveal the depth of U.S. officials' concern that Pakistan was providing funds, arms - and even combat troops - to the Taliban in Afghanistan for years before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. They also show rising frustration at what U.S. officials called Pakistan's "resistance and/or duplicity" toward Washington's repeated requests for help in persuading the Taliban to hand over accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A top official at one point said hauling Pakistan before the UN Security Council should be considered. The documents, released under a Freedom...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A lawyer for Oscar Wyatt has asked a judge to exclude evidence from his upcoming trial that suggests a link between the Texas oil tycoon and Saddam Hussein and a tip to Iraq about the U.S. invasion. The motion, filed in Manhattan federal court on Monday, comes three weeks before Wyatt, former chairman and founder of Coastal Corp., goes on trial accused of paying secret kickbacks to Iraq and corrupting the U.N. oil-for-food program. He has pleaded not guilty to charges he conspired to pay several million dollars in kickbacks to Iraq in relation to the...

For those counting, this is at least the sixth confirmation of this. ABC News led the way with three reports from captured AQ and captured IIS guys immediately after the invasion. (h/t Amy Proctor) The political rhetoric says that these camps were not in Saddam's Iraq but in the Kurdish north. What that ignores is that the camps were certainly not at all allied with the Kurds, but against them, and were acting with Saddam's help. Politicians often try to point to Senate Intelligence Committee reports claiming there were no ties etc., but these reports are: 1. Political reports not...