Posted on 11/09/2007 11:03:03 AM PST by neverdem
ping
OK. Do we need more evidence to convince us that mass deportation is the answer?
The writer wins the award for the most tenuous and convoluted 9/11-to-Saddam link yet. He’s probably good at the Kevin Bacon game, too.
Interesting article.
I would say that flying plains into the World Trade Center was pretty unconventional.
If it were true, the entire rationale of the American and worldwide Left of the last five+ years would be proven disastrously wrong in front of everyone. It would be glorious.
But for now, I have to put this in the too-good-to-be-true file. Related thread.
Thanks for the link.
What Ray R. says about Uthman, the meeting in Kandahar in the summer of 2000 (it was over several days), and the discussion he had with Atef and Ayman is correct.
But instead of confusing that significant letter (and the significant witness to that meeting who is available to interview), with a connection to Iraq,
...
consider the access that a Salafist Iraqi American microbiologist working with his former teacher, Bin Laden’s sheik Al-Hawali, had to know-how from the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency program funded at the George Mason University Center for Biodefense.
At one point, his office was about 10 feet from the famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and the former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, who has published a lot papers using the Ames strain of anthrax. The scientist’s name was Ali Al-Timimi. Judging from the directory, they shared the same fax number and mailstop. He was sentenced to life plus 70 years for sedition — for exhorting some young men to go defend their religion and fight jihad.
On the first anniversary of the anthrax, he had a letter hand-delivered to all members of Congress warning them not to invade Iraq.
Al-Timimi had a high security clearance for work for the Navy, according to a fascinating article by Milton Viorst in the Atlantic Monthly. His bionformatics program was co-sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection, which has the most diverse microbiological collection the world. While ATCC does not have Ames in its online catalog, they do not deny to me that they had it in their patent repository.
Pork-fueled proliferation merely increases the risk of infiltration. Emails between Ayman Zawahiri and Atef in Spring 1999 show that they did not even begin to consider biological weapons until the USG kept telling them how it easy it was. Ayman decided that they should use the cover of universities and charities in weaponizing anthrax. The Defense Intelligence Agency has produced correspondence showing that one scientist, Rauf Ahmad, was attending conferences in the UK sponsored by their biodefense establishment, Porton Down. He visited laboratories including one with thousands of pathogens and tells Ayman “I successfully achieved the targets.”
Here are the details of the infiltration of the program at GMU.
Sheiks, Bioweaponeers, And DARPA
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#SheikandtheBioweaponeers
a. Hardball Tactics In An Era Of Threats
b. The Education Of Ali Al-Timimi
c. “The Straight Path”: Connecting the Dots
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#StraightPath
d. GMU Center For Biodefense: Discovery Hall
e. Islamic Ruling On The Peace Process
f. The 2006 Arrest Of Former Falls Church “911 Imam” And Fellow Salafist Lecturer Awlaqi
g. Real Men Don’t Type: Ability of Intelligence To Prevent Domestic Bioterrorism
Here is a different thread based on a different article relating to this recent open letter to Zawahiri. As revised, this article includes Bin Uthman’s comments in an interview from last December where the Libyan discusses the issue of targeting. There were definitely those — whose support Bin Laden was actively courting — who objected to sloppy targeting (the killing of civilians, women and children etc). This Libyan was speaking for the record — perhaps someone could ask him to address the issue of WMD more specifically — perhaps he could be asked specifically his opinion of the anthrax mailings. The operation, according to former CIA Director Tenet, was strictly compartmentalized at the highest levels and so there is no reason he would know details. But him talking to Atef and Ayman and Bin Laden about these general issues in the Summer of 2000 is pretty damn good and so his insights would be important. Tenet says the anthrax planning was done in parallel to the 9/11 planning.
Jihadist’s Letter to Zawahiri Reveals Anthrax Motive
http://www.bloggernews.net/111561
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1923270/posts
Your thread and the blog were already linked in comment# 10, IIRC. Thanks for the other links.
Ray’s discussion of Iraq has to be judged in light of the fact that they know the anthrax was cultured in the Northeastern United States based on isotope ratios.
Now did Ali have a connection to the Iraqi embassy? Yes. So it indeed is a complicated world we live in.
This is very bad news for Israel.
Because Olmert will do nothing.
There’s no basis to suggest that Saddam gave Al Qaeda anthrax.
Ayman had no need to get it from Saddam.
Saddam had no need to give it.
Ray’s article posted above in no way provides support for anthrax from Saddam, and as I noted, the microbial forensics show that it was cultured in the northeastern United States.
http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com
In mid-January 2002, Dr. Barbara Rosenberg noted to the Wall Street Journal that “The FBI has gotten short lists of suspects from several people over two months ago.” Kenneth Alibek, president of Advanced Biosystems Inc., a defense contractor located at George Mason University, told the Journal that he wasn’t surprised to learn that his name had appeared on one such list. The Journal noted that born Kanatjan Alibekov, Dr. Alibek was formerly deputy director of the secret Russian germ weapons program known as Biopreparat. The Journal published an OpEd in late October 2001 titled “The Elephant in the Room” suggesting Iraq was responsible. Neither the Journal nor any other paper for over a half decade would note that the elephant in the room was in an office not much more than 10 feet from Dr. Alibekov. The microbiologist had been taught by Bin Laden’s sheik al-Hawali who had been the express subject of the 1996 declaration of war. Al-Timimi would eventually be prosecuted for exhorting young men to go to Afghanistan to defend Afghanistan against the imminent invasion by the US in October 2001. Dr. Alibek’s fellow microbiologist hand-delivered on the first anniversary of the anthrax mailings to Senators Leahy and Daschle a letter in the name of Bin Laden’s sheik warning against the invasion of Iraq.
What did Salafist Ali Al-Timimi, an Iraqi-American, think of Saddam? I don’t know. I know a good friend of his leading Ali’s charity IANA hated Saddam.
While the question whether there were WMDs in Iraq is entirely separate from who was responsible for the anthrax mailings, it is worth noting that Al-Timimi’s charity was funding large sums of money to Iraq to help establish a caliphate there in Northern Iraq. The one friend of Ali’s I mentioned was sentenced to 22 years. Although not a subject of the charges, the sentencing memo explains he was funding the group renamed Ansar Al-Islam.
In a separate case, it was revealed that correspondence shows that Mullah Krekar, expected this charity person to establish a US center for Mullah Krekar.
So the responsibility of US-based Salafists opposed to the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq is actually entirely consistent with the prudence of vaccination (assuming for the sake of argument that it is safe).
Of course, resolution of Amerithrax would have helped ensure the safety of troops also.
But these Salafists were supporters of men like Azzam and Hekmatyar. Abiding by the teaching of Qutb and Ibn Tamiyah. They were opposed to Saddam because they considered him apostate. Having said, Saddam very likely had infiltrated Ansar al-Islam (through a fellow named Wael).
More broadly, more often than not, possession of WMDs is a reason not to attack them — not a reason to attack them.
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