Jun 16 2006
Atta In Baghdad For Training?
OK, this news item linked today by Mac Ranger is news to me – though it does predate this blog and my newly focused attention to news stories. But this is just stunning:
(Filed: 14/12/2003)
Iraq’s coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day “work programme” Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.
In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta “displayed extraordinary effort” and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be “responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy”.
The second part of the memo, which is headed “Niger Shipment”, contains a report about an unspecified shipment – believed to be uranium – that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
This actually nails two stories that we here have been following. The obvious danger Saddam posed to America if he ever linked up with Al Qaeda (his WMD technology in their hands is a recipe for death). But it also links in the Wilson-Plame angle where Joe Wilson and Valerie may have been covering up a Niger-Iraq connection – not investigating one. I have various speculative posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here – to name a few.
But here is an Iraqi document confirming the idea of excess uranium going to Libya which would be destined for Iraq. There was plenty of yellow cake in the abandoned mines in Niger (and elsewhere). And everyone was looking for missing yellow cake – not extra yellow cake exports to states like Libya, where the excess was to be sent to Iraq at some future date.
And all the while Valerie Plame was charged with monitoring this trade for signs of trouble……
Read about the latest connections uncovered between Saddam and the Taliban here at FoxNews. I guess the far left will now claim connections to the Taliban doesn’t mean there was any possible connections to Al Qaeda as well!
Well I doubt if the Emporer needed any help from Hitler to launch an attack on Pearl harbor, but they were on the same damn side. Same difference.
I have read that it may be true that Libya’s WMD program was actually Saddams. Has any one heard this accusation? I would love it if Atta was trained in Iraq. In my heart of hearts I know that Bush did not go into Iraq on something flimsy.
He went because those damn terrorists needed to be killed
FE
Amen.
Kathie:
Yes I did hear that. In fact I heard that several of these countries worked together, each having a part of the whole.
Terrye-I also heard that thousands of Iraqi scientists were in Libya and Gadaffi thought that the US would find out that is why he gave up the program, we also caught him with a shipment. Why doesn’t any body talk about it? Could it be that Bush agreed he would not talk about it if the whole program was given up? Wow that would be stunning for Bush and Blair to keep secret that information and take all the crap for 4 years to help out Gadaffi.
Hhhmmm… For years I’ve wondered “Why was Abu Nidal was assasinated?” but no one seemed to be able to supply me with a reasonable explanation.
Until now…if it’s true.
So the next question: was there any association between Zarqawi and Atta in Iraq?
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jwit/jwit020823_1_n.shtml
Abu Nidal murder trail leads directly to Iraqi regime
This article written in 2002 is interesting. I don’t know much about the person whom wrote this article but a few things stood out to me. You guys are great at putting pieces of puzzles together so I copied and pasted a couple things in this article. It maybe old news, but you decide.
“A senior Iraqi official said on 20 August that Abu Nidal, who had returned to Iraq several months earlier bearing a false Yemeni passport and was placed under house arrest, killed himself after Iraqi agents accused him of conspiring with anti-Iraqi forces, including Kuwait [and Saudi Arabia]. Iraqi intelligence had apparently confronted Abu Nidal with evidence of his involvement with foreign agents to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime, with an Iraqi senior official claiming that classified documents and plans concerning a US attack on Iraq were found in his house. ”
Remember the American war planes found in Iraq said to have come from Centcom?
Now this: Saddam killed Abu Nidal over al-Qa’eda row
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/25/wnidal25.xml
“Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist, was murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein after refusing to train al-Qa’eda fighters based in Iraq, The Telegraph can reveal.”
Read the whole article
He also lived in Libya and Afganistan
Even if we could compose the most compelling and fact by fact documented linkage of how this all this fits together, would it make a difference?
It would to us, but it would be deminished and ignored by those who most need to learn the lessons.
Such is the way of the world.
I read a bunch of facts and position papers each and every day. I decode what I can of the gist of what all viewpoints are trying to say.
Many times I wonder how some people draw the conclusions they do that are sometimes contrary to thier own data presented.
I travel all the blogs, left right center and lost in space.
The left blogs have a view that the MSM is a conservative talk organ, and most on the right seem to believe that the MSM is a liberal talk sheet.
By mathematical transitive formulas , if we believe the media is to our left and the left believes it is to their right, then we can draw the conclusion that the left and right distance is more than most can imagine.
I am still trying to distill why the left seems to think they have a lock on getting control of the house in the midterm elections. I have yet to see a good and substantial reason to support this premise, only feel good cheerleading.
Perhaps if the left of center does another self destruct in the midterms, it will result in a wake up call that something needs to be changed if they want to participate fully in the debate of issues facing our country.
We need to debate our future, one party dominance is not the answer.
But also we surely do not need pablum solutions.
What we need is the best decisions, and the wisest logic to advance the best for America as a nation and a force for freedom. We do not need the drag of partisan bickering and shilling for the sake of personal advantage.
Together we can do great things.. we can only hope that the pendulum is swinging to where cooperation and common benefit will rule , rather than divide and dilute and deminish.
Agendas that accomplish nothing and go nowhere are counter productive.
Hopefully we will soon get beyond that.
I was strolling around some left of center blogs and ran across a blog that positioned that Keith Oberman was the new vision of Edward R. Murrow reborn.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132×2682164
To even suggest such a comparison shows the lack of knowlege of the writer of this comment as to the commitment to real journalism the Mr. Murrow had.
The commentary provided at the link is sad and lacking in historic context. Obviously this is a person who is not old enough to have had the chance to listen day by day to the broadcast of Mr. Murrows coverage. I did and I see no way that there is any relation at all to Mr. Oberman. No link exists either real or imagined. This whole commentary is a wishful whole cloth linkage. The author of this should be ashamed. But somehow I know they will not be.
Abu Nidal was an alias — real name, “Banna.” If one Googles the words, “nazi” and “banna” (without quotes), it pulls up a great deal of background information on the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by someone named “al Banna.” Does anyone know whether Abu Nidal was related to that Banna?
The background info is interesting whether relative to Nidal or not, and included in there somewhere is the tidbit that, post WWII, England’s MI6 together with US intelligence, ostensibly “turned” the Brotherhood to our own interests. The catalyst that got that little operation off the ground? Kim Philby.
Like I said, interesting stuff.
Postscript: Abu Nidal was born in 1937, so clearly is not the same “al Banna.”
Merlin:
I know some of these people, there is no dealing with them. That is why they can not win elections. It is difficult to win elections when you belong to the America sucks and deserves every bad thing that happens to her party. You have a problem encouraging people to vote and participate when they believe there is nothing to participate in. What some of these folks need is a stint in a Yemeni prison or a vacation in Iran and then they would have some idea of what it is really like to live in a dictatorship. Right now they live in a fantasy of their own making where everything is a Karl Rove plot.
What will they do win Bush goes back to Texas and they can not concentrate all that malice on the Bushies?
Terrye
I have tried to consider how some on the left reason and think. But somehow I keep coming to the conclusion that many who comment on the most left of blogs are the now grown up bunch of little brats running around the store raising havoc and terror without the slightest correction from their parent.
No matter how weird the post is on the left, and the fault in their logic in many cases, I always find reading all the followup comments is more instructive as to the general state of mind of the left than the original post.
I don’t know AJ, this sounds like some of the disinformation that Ahmed Chalabi was peddling. There was a lot of forged documents milling around Iraq after the invasion.
OMG
Found this surfing today
One resturant owners take on the termination of Z.
Warning ADULT LANGUAGE but right to the point!
http://www.casadice.com/signs/pages/outside_sign005.htm
More super secret double probation dish of the Z dirtnap at the following link
Satire on
http://www.lileks.com/screedblog/06/061506.html
Satire off
I am impressed with how little of this imformation has been pushed into the media by the Bush administration. It is almost like they do not believe it worth the trouble. The Sadam files remainded in wharehouses for years, until the administration was finaly forced to release them. I want to get the truth and some real background that these documents can give. Official Washingtion’s urge seems to be to hide information. Common sense would lead you to believe some of these terrorists – Sadam connections existed. But the permenant beaurocracy has not been very willing to cough up this information. That in itself is very interesting..
What are the real motivations here….
Rob
You have to remember we are dealing with a head of state with Saddam. Middle East politics in the past have been an ebb and flow of support and pulling out the rug of many people to varying degrees. Any strongman in the mideast knows enough dirt on all the sides to be an issue. Sometimes you make deals with the devil to getRdone. A matter of necessity, but it don’t look good in the MSM.
Also there is a whole raft of more documents at Club Gitmo that haven’t been touched and need to be exploited for thier intel value. Most of them are stale by now, but may name names and give proof of links.