Jan 06 2006
No Iraq-Al Qaeda Connections??
How did the moronic 9-11 Commission determine there were not contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam’s Regime when there appears to be an incredible history of meetings in the 1990’s:
1996: Deputy IIS Director Faruq Hijazi meets with UBL (redacted) shortly after UBL returns from Qatar (redacted) 1998: Director of IIS, Mani abd al-Rashid al-Tikriti met privately with UBL at one of his farms in Sudan (redacted) several weeks after Khobar Towers attack; used Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum as “cover” 1995-1996: (redacted) UBL requests Iraqi assistance with bomb making (redacted) 1998: (redacted) Hijazi meets with UBL in Afghanistan in late 1998 1998: (redacted) Zawahiri visits Baghdad and meets with Iraqi Vice President (redacted) 1998: Senior al Qaida official Zawahiri meets with 2 IIS officers in Afghanistan (redacted) 1998-1999: Flurry of reported meetings following al-Qaida’s successful East Africa attacks and (redacted); discussions of safe haven following bombings; Iraq reportedly promises al Qaida training
This is a sampling of from one for 3 pages of contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraqi government officials. Just a sample.
Now I can understand ambiguity at times, but to argue the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda was akin to the relationship between the US and Cuba is ridiculous. These were not sworn enemies that would rather fight each other than join forces, let alone join forces against the US of A.
I think the 9-11 Commission owes us taxpayers our money back. This kind of cover up or ignorance is unacceptable.
AJ – I thought slide # 14 (Atta Meeting in Prague) was the most interesting in that (1) “CIA has corroborated June 2000 Prague visit by Attaâ€, (2) “Atta also reportedly met with Kanaan (Iraqi Charge d’Affaires)†and (3) “ Several airport workers remember Atta traveling with his brother Farhanâ€.
I would suggest everyone read Alhazmi and Almihdhar: The 9/11 Hijackers Who Should Have Been Caught for a very good article by Paul Thompson at The Center for Cooperative Research:
I believe the VP was referring to Alhazmi and Almihdhar in his speech yesterday.
The Weekly Standard has – if not the mother-lode, at least a big-sister-lode:
ADVANCE COPY
In the new issue of The Weekly Standard:
-Stephen F. Hayes on Saddam terror camps:
THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.
The secret training took place primarily at three camps–in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak–and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria’s GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.
(see http://www.weeklystandard.com)
Did Hayes finally get those Iraqi Intell documents declassified? Hope so. I’m tired of lefty denials of training at Salman Pak. What do they think that aircraft fuselage so visible in the satellite photos is for, a children’s playground?
Half of this Iraq-Al Queda denial is mere semantics. The links between Iraqi conspirators and the 1993 World Trade Center attack are clear. Not so clear, is the role of 93WTC mastermind Ramzi Yousef, also an early Al Queda plotter. He has many questionable Iraqi ties too.
Laurie Mylroie explained it all to the 911 Commission but apparently Jamie Gorelick had just passed around some especially noisy snacks to the Commissioners just before her testimony.
http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2005/08/who-is-ramzi-yousef-and-why-you-should.html
[…] I hope Hayes gets to see more papers. AJ has some thoughts. […]
LINK
THE POPE OF TERRORISM’S ROLE in forming such alliances drew the Clinton administration’s attention when, in August of 1993, Sudan was placed on the U.S.’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism.” The State Department’s Global Patterns of Terrorism for that year recognized the Sudanese regime’s active role in exporting terrorism throughout Africa and the Middle East and even raised the specter of Sudanese involvement in terrorism on American soil. The State Department’s report noted that while “there is no conclusive evidence linking the Government of Sudan to any specific terrorist incident during the year, five of 15 suspects arrested this summer following the New York City bomb plot are Sudanese citizens.”
The New York City bomb plot mentioned by the State Department was, of course, the first attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993. That plot nearly destroyed one of the World Trade Center’s towers. One of the non-Sudanese suspects was an Iraqi-national named Abdul Rahman Yasin. He quickly fled to Iraq with the help of Saddam’s regime after being, inexplicably, released by the FBI. Iraqi intelligence documents discovered since the start of the Iraq war have revealed that, upon his return to Iraq, Yasin received a monthly stipend and housing from the Iraqi government.
Turabi’s relationship with Saddam would continue to blossom throughout the mid-1990s. In an account in the New York Times on December 6, 1994, Turabi described his relationship with the Iraqi dictator as “very close.” He even defended the Iraqi regime’s Islamic credentials. Turabi explained, “Saddam is gradually reintroducing Islam. He has restricted liquor. Koranic studies are mandatory for all students, all teachers and all Baathist party members. He knows the society is returning to Islam.” He explained, “Arab governments are collapsing. They know it. . . . The Arabs are changing from below. Arab nationalism is finished and the Islamic spirit is rising in places like Saudi Arabia. This is one of the consequences of the gulf war.”
LINK
As Jim Hoagland wrote yesterday, Iraq has “significant ties to bin Laden through its large intelligence presence in Sudan.” Indeed, Bill Gertz, already in The Wash Times, Oct 24, 1996, citing unnamed officials, reported that “Mr. Bin Ladin was in contact with Iraqi intelligence agents while based near Khartoum, Sudan.” In fact, Sudan, in particular, Hassan Turabi, head of Sudan’s National Salvation Front, has long-standing ties to Iraq, which, like Sudan is a Sunni Muslim, Arabic speaking country. In 1986, Turabi helped lure to Sudan the most intellectually formidable of Saddam’s Shi’a clerical opponents, Mehdi al-Hakim, and Iraqi assassins gunned him down in Khartoum. Sudan supported Iraq during the Gulf war. And following the war, Baghdad established Khartoum as a major center for Iraqi intelligence. The Iraqi ambassador, who just left Khartoum a few months ago, Abd al Samad al-Ta’ish, was a long-time intelligence agent, who held the rank of General Director in Iraqi intelligence. He arrived in Khartoum in July, 1991, with some thirty-five intelligence officers to establish it as a major base for Iraqi intelligence.
Interesting read BTW.
Book-(‘Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America by Yossef Bodansky)
Spring 1993 Saddam Hussein viewed the operations against the Americans in Somalia important enough to nominate his son Qusay to personally supervise them. The other elements of anti-American operations apparently didn’t support this idea. Those other elements included Bin Laden and his Afghan Arabs, the Iranian-backed Al Quds forces, the Iranian Pasadran, and the Sudanese. Iraqi intelligence reported that Saddam wanted a “Mother-of-all Battles victory in Somalia.” After these reports and after Qusay’s nomination, the Iraqi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan was expanded by the addition of several different Iraqi special intelligence services branches and special security branches. Those new additions were under the control of Sudan’s leader Hasan al-Turabi.
Mohammed Farah Aidid and his advisors left Mogadishu for an Islamic Conference in Khartoum, Sudan. Publicly he and others denounced the US. In private, he met with Bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Iranian intelligence, Iraqi intelligence, and other surrogate terrorist groups’ representatives. The followup attacks to the World Trade Center bombing were initiated at this meeting, planned for July 4th, and, later, narrowly averted by the FBI. This June conference in Khartoum also created the first joint or parallel Iraqi-Sudan-Iranian operational plans to turn Somalia (specifically) into another Vietnam for the United States.
I have alot more archived myself. Hpoe the links are still good…:)
The global security link isnt working right..sorry AJ
A whistleblower, Lieut. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon’s Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq’s weapons and ties to terrorists. “It wasn’t intelligence– it was propaganda,” she says. “They’d take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don’t belong together.” It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials– including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell’s testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February??? — that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.
Karen Kwiatkowski recently retired from the active duty USAF as a Lieutenant Colonel. Her final assignment was as a political-military affairs officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy, in the Sub-Saharan Africa and Near East South Asia (NESA) Policy directorates.
During Col. Kwiatkowski’s time at NESA, she worked the North Africa desk, in the sister office to the Office of Special Plans. Prior to the Office of Secretary of Defense assignment, she served on the Air Force Staff, Operations Directorate at the Pentagon, the staff of the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Col. Kwiatkowski has an MA in Government from Harvard, and MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska, and has completed both Air Command and Staff College and the Naval War College seminar programs. She also holds a Ph.D. in World Politics from Catholic University of America, with a dissertation on Overt/Covert War in Angola: A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.
I believe her. And you guys have absolutely no idea regarding what “facts” were debunked by U.S. Intelligence because of problems with the source to begin with.
Remember “curveball”?
Doug Feith’s shop was set up to package intelligence to support the positions this Republican administration had already taken.
They cooked the books.
Six months after the end of major combat in Iraq, the United States had spent $300 million trying to find banned weapons in Iraq, and President Bush was seeking $600 million more to extend the search. Not found were Iraq’s Scuds and other long-range missiles, thousands of barrels and tons of anthrax and botulism stock, sarin and VX nerve agents, mustard gas, biological and chemical munitions, mobile labs for producing biological weapons, and any and all evidence of a reconstituted nuclear-arms program, all of which had been repeatedly cited as justification for the war. Also missing was evidence of Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda.
WHAT ARE YOU FOR: SUCCESS OR FAILURE?
See this comment I posted over at Indepundit re Lt. Smash’s face off with a LL apologist:
*****
Great Lt. Smash you are a true American patr…