*DAMN R6 Forum

posted without comment:

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With Tuesday?s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself ? but never pulled the trigger.
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/ (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/)

"In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide."

Now let's look at the flip-side of this little article:

So, if this is all true, then it is also true that IRAQ DID INDEED HAVE TIES TO AL-QAIDA.

Also, one milligram of ricin can kill an adult, and we all know what cyanide does....so wouldn't these be classed as Weapons of Mass Destruction?  They are Chemical Weapons in the hands of terrorists.

So, although this little article tried to put a little spin on Bush, it also clearly shows that we were just for waging war against Iraq.

PWNED.

-GhostSniper Out.

So basically the Bush administration let this guy go because killing him would make it harder for them to decieve people about going to war? Wow.  I want to see what develops from this, because this could be big.

GS.  First of all, just because terrorists are conducting their operations in a particular country doesn't mean that the country (necessarily) supports the terrorists.  If an Al-Qaida operative was making a dirty bomb in the U.S, does it mean that the United States has ties to Al-Qaida?  Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists has nothing to do with Saddam having them.  Maybe you should proof-read your writing before you post it.

Gabe,

PUT DOWN THE CRACK-PIPE AND STEP AWAY FROM THE LITTLE BOY!

This wasn't happening in the United States, where you can get away with murder and not get caught--literally....we are talking about a very tightly-controlled dictatorship with secret police forces all over the place so that the dictator knows exactly what is going on in his country.  If this was happening anywhere in Iraq, Saddam knew about it.

GhostSniper, not true. Stuff goes on in the U.S. all of the time, that the U.S. doesn't support. Examples: The K.K.K., organized crime, drug dealing, growing/producing drugs. That's like saying the United States supports your local pothead buddies because they grow weed in their closet. Actually, according to your logic, it's like saying the United States government has plans to smoke that weed, and knows it's there, because a U.S. citizen is growing it. Just because some terrorists are producing chemical/biological weapons in Iraq doesn't mean that the Iraq government has ties to them. The U.S. government didn't have ties to the Unabomber, did they? No. He just built his bombs in a cabin in the U.S.

Holy shit GS but open you eyes. That comment is totally unfounded, and in fact if you look at history the relationship between saddam and Al-qaida wern't exactly close.

Its is becoming more and more clear that Al-qaida are taking advantage of the total chaos in Iraq. They are using this opportunity to attack at the US and britain - by trying to stir up unrest and cause problems. By attacking the Shia festivals yesterday Al-quieda is helping to widen the gab between religiouse groups in iraq, and between the the shia and the US occupying force. over 170 Iraqi's were murdered yesterday, and the americans failed to stop this. That dosnt look kindly to those family members who have just had their loved ones blown up.

More an more iraqi's now believe that a) america wants iraq to remain in a state of unrest so it has more power over the country and its assests. im making no comment on that. b) that Americans simply do not care about iraqis... and now they want them out and fast.

The problem now of course that pull out now and you leave a power vacume that Al-qaida would just love.

Had preperations acutally had been prepared for post 'bombing the shit out of the country' we might not be having these problems now. Effectivly the manner in which the invasion of iraq, and the post managment of iraq has been mannered, has opened a door for Al-Qaida.

Excuse me, but you need to go find yourself a better grasp of the English language.  That isn't even what I said.  You are WAY out of context.  Go back and reread what I said.  What are you, in the 2nd Grade or something?

Just, in whose opinion? Halliburton? Dick Cheney? George W. Bush? The fact still remains, significant amounts of WMD material have not been recovered, therefore the classification of Iraq being an "imminent" threat to U.S. assets was a  misleading statement.

The billions and billions of dollars wasted daily on the Iraq debacle, would be better served improving intelligence gathering. Not to mention that the U.S. will have to foot the bill alone, whereas in 1990 the cost was differed to a multitude of nations.

No matter how many tanks, airplanes and precision guided munitions we have, terrorist will always have the upper hand of ambiguity. We have the brute force capability, however we lack the hard intelligence needed to infiltrate and destroy such terror organizations.

By assuming a unilateralist, aggressive foreign policy the United States has effectively increased the anger and resolve of the terrorist forces. No matter what country we invade or what regime we decapitate, the terrorist will strike back.

Within our lifetimes we will see a catastrophic terrorist act on U.S. soil, that will belittle the magnitude of 9/11.

Just who's pwning who, here?

The point of the article is that the White House refused three times to take out a known terrorist *even after he tried to launch a WMD attack in England*.

Now, if this is true and this dude was in Iraq and did have WMDs then why did the White House not act?

I think it's a greater problem when the White Houses refuses to destroy the very terrorists and WMD labs it proclaimed were the purpose for invading Iraq. And I ask you how a double negative produces a positive. He knew. He failed to act. He let the guy escape. And yesterday near 300 ppl died because of Bush's political bullshit.

How is that a good thing?

Additionaly, I'm hesitant to just leap in an buy this article hook line and sinker (as much as I want to), precisely because if it were true it would be beyond the scope of the "everyday: horrible things the President is willing to do to reap political gain. I'm sure Bush lies for his own benefit, but I find it hard to imagine he'd risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of British citizens all so he can "prove" after he invaded Iraq that their were terrorist with WMDs there.

As for this:
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So, if this is all true, then it is also true that IRAQ DID INDEED HAVE TIES TO AL-QAIDA.
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No, even if every word is true it does not.

It proves that there were terrorists opperating in Iraq.

It does not prove Saddam was butt buddies with them. In fact, the article expressly mentions this dude as hanging out in the north of the country - that is, where Saddam could not control what goes on.

And this?

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So, although this little article tried to put a little spin on Bush, it also clearly shows that we were just for waging war against Iraq.
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It absolutely does the opposite. It proves that Bush was uniterested in dealing with terrorists outside of his larger goals. That they could have killed Zarqawi and disrupted his opperation was unimportant to him. What was important to him was that his prescence lended politcal crediblity to the war in Iraq. But the article makes the point that three times the Pentagon, hardly leftist liberals, had plans to take the fucker out and got dissed. Why?

Because the Bush administration has been a for-the-moment and for-itself operation, burning through the resources of tomorrow and the hard-acquired inheritance of the past to service the political needs -- its political needs -- of the present.

That's the hard truth.

The even harder truth is that Bush is willing to risk our lives, yes our civilian lives, in order to serve his political ends.

And here's an even scarier question to ask: If Bush knew about this and refused to act even after repeated requests ... then how can we trust him when he says there was no warnning 9/11 was coming? How can we ever believe anything he ever says when it comes to terrorism when we know he is willing to use terrorism, terrorists, and terrorist attacks for his personal political gain?

This article makes it clear that our intellegnce was very good indeed. Good enough to have the warboys comping to go smack down some terrorist ass, even at the cost of soldier's lives!

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?Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn?t do it,? said Michael O?Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
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The house of cards comes tumbling down, one card at a time.

GS, I bet someone with enough time on their hands could link the US to Al-Qaida. Sadam and al-quida don't even share the same objectives or see eye to eye on anything. This is simply people trying to justify what the US has done besides the fact "Sadam is a bad man".

FYI Kerma was under control of the Kurdish Liberation Front and other Kurdish forces. Before the war Sadaam had no control over the Northern extremities of Iraq. So did the Kurds make WMD?

No. I guess I wasn't making myself clear enough. I was comparing Iraq to the U.S. Just accidently left out a sentence or two that would have made it much clearer. My mistake. Basically, all I was saying is this: Not everything that goes on in a country is supported by the government(I.E. terrorists developing bio weapons in Iraq). Then just read my other post for examples of this, and voila. Turned your world upside down, didn't it? Well. I wish it had. Never done that before.

IF we were going to take a very 'simplistic view' of this whole deal... US has failed to catch Osma.... And they looked a bit daft for it... So bush, not wanting to look like he had failed on his 'war on terrorism' had to go and find the next best thing to keep the voters back home happy..... hello Iraq

Politics schmolitics........I know how to solve the problem......Bush and Osama should start their own clans and fight it out on GhR.....or RvS....That way they wouldnt have to include the rest of the world on their little sick crusades for WHATEVER!!!! Come on.....read your history books and learn, plz....before you destroy the world....btw...if bush started a clan...i am sure Tony Blair would be one of the waradmins...right next to Rumsfeldt(who really scares me)

lol....if Donald Rumsfeld scares you then you should be very very afraid of me :)

Here's a follow up about the tenuios nature of the Zarqawi/al-Qaida connection:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/8089829.htm (http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/8089829.htm)

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- The administration tied Saddam to a terrorism network run by Palestinian Abu Musab al Zarqawi. That network may be behind the latest violence in Iraq, which killed at least 143 people Tuesday.

But U.S. officials say the evidence that Zarqawi had close operational ties to al-Qaida appears increasingly doubtful.

Asked for Cheney's views on Iraq and terrorism, vice presidential spokesman Kevin Kellems referred Knight Ridder to the vice president's television interviews Tuesday.

Cheney, in an interview with CNN, said Zarqawi ran an "al-Qaida-affiliated" group. He cited an intercepted letter that Zarqawi is believed to have written to al-Qaida leaders, and a White House official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity said the CIA has described Zarqawi as an al-Qaida "associate."

But U.S. officials say the Zarqawi letter contained a plea for help that al-Qaida rebuffed. Linguistic analysis of the letter indicates it was written from one equal to another, not from a subordinate to a superior, suggesting that Zarqawi considered himself an independent operator and not a part of bin Laden's organization.
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The key concept is that, in rebutal to some presumptions that terrorists in Iraq before the war are indicators that Saddam was haboring terrorists (and to a greater extent, that all terrorists are al-Qaida), um, no, you're wrong.

while some of this is circumstantial evidence there is clearly a link between saddam and terrorist organizations, al quada or not. here's just a few examples (taken from a very reliable conservative news source =p):

He paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. "President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of the Palestinian political office, Faroq al-Kaddoumi, his decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000," Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, declared at a Baghdad meeting of Arab politicians and businessmen on March 11, 2002, Reuters reported two days later. Mahmoud Besharat, who the White House says dispensed these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said: "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue." Between Aziz's announcement and the March 20 launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and killed 223 more, including at least eight Americans.

The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell-phone records indicate that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City. Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40.

Along Iraq's border with Syria, U.S. have troops captured Farouk Hijazi, Hussein's former ambassador to Turkey and suspected liaison to al Qaeda. Under interrogation, Hijazi "admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994."

The Czech Republic stands by its claim that 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim an-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat/intelligence agent. He was expelled two weeks after the suspected meeting with Atta for apparently hostile surveillance of Radio Free Europe's Prague headquarters, from which American broadcasts to Iraq emanate.

On January 5, 2000, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir ? an Iraqi airport greeter reportedly dispatched from Baghdad's embassy in Malaysia ? welcomed Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to Kuala Lampur and escorted them to a local hotel where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared. He was arrested in Qatar on September 17, 2001, six days after al Midhar and al Hamzi slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 216 people. On his person and in his apartment, authorities discovered papers tying him to the 1993 WTC plot and "Operation Bojinka," al Qaeda's 1995 plan to blow up 12 jets over the Pacific at once.

U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and a monthly salary. Indiana-born, Iraqi-reared al Qaeda member Abdul Rahman Yasin was indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that exploded beneath the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring some 1,000 New Yorkers.

*saddam hussien clearly supported and financed terrorism. directly and indirectly. al quada or not. in iraq or not. he most definitly supported terrorists. i have never believed that he had any connection to 9/11, or usama. reportedly, usama hated saddam even. however...after 9/11, when this guy publicly announced his continued financial support for terrorists....well...he had it comin.

and for those that would criticize the pres/gov/military for not attacking this zarqawi guy before the war.....duh. it was before the war. there were negotiations taking place at the U.N. infact colin powell's claims that zarqawi was in iraq were quickly dismissed by many as bush trying to hype it up. hmm...he turned out to be there didn't he. and what would bush's detractors have said if there were strikes in iraq to get this guy before the war? and what impact would it have had on the logistics and planning of the war everybody knew was coming? that would've been a big risk going after somebody early unless his name was saddam.

Key point, IF THIS IS TRUE.  Before everyone jumps on the bandwagon, why not wait and see how this plays out?


Anyone that thinks the US looks daft for not catching Bin Laden yet, watches too many movies and isn't really in touch with reality.  

Lotsa good points, Cutter.

Can you provide me with a link to the sources?

My feeling is if this stuff is all true then it's frontpage info. It should have been used to validate the war in Iraq. Why are we seeing it now? It's great circumstancial evidence for the Administration's argument.

I expect to find that, while this all sounds convincing on the surface, it's based on cooked intel, the sort of cherry picking Cheny and Rummy's group was doing.

Also, Bucc, the NBC report is getting a good amount of attention. The alligation, that is, that the White House nixed three seperate attempts by the Pentagon to go kill this guy, warrents a response from the White House.

Here's a quote from Powell's pitch to the UN on why we needed to fuck Iraq:

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Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
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http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript.09/ (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript.09/)

This makes it clear that the US knew where he was and what he was doing. Why did they not go get him? The NBC article states there were three chances to get him. Their madate was clear: the US should go kill terrorists. But, instead of doing that, the White House used the existance of terrorists in a part of Iraq uncontroled by Saddam as a pretense to invade Iraq. I call bullshit and political manipulations of the most sinister sort.

And it's not that the US hasn't caught Binny which makes us look daft, it's that we ignored him for so long because it was difficult to get him. Did Lincoln, FDR, or (I feel dirty) Reagan ignore the hard job at hand and go try something else? No. Leaders lead. Bush waffles. Even Reagan followed through his objective - spend Russia into the poor house.

Yes, Sadaam financed Freedom Fighters in Palestine, and the guy was in Northern Iraq where the Baathist did not have alot of power!

if you watch the news and read the paper a lot you pick up some of these things that are mentioned, but overlooked.  like before 9/11, there was a warning from the state dept. warning of a potential terrorist attack. but since they always happened overseas, nobody payed attention to it. and you know the way the news is here...it's like a flavor of the week thing. stories like martha getting busted, kobe, and the peterson case get much better ratings, and not that all the stories aren't important, but some just get pushed to the back and we never hear about them again.

anyway, all this stuff has been in the news before, and i bet in the next eight months your gonna start hearing more about it when the debates and bush's campain get goin. remember, this is a conservative website, so i know your gonna have some laughs and dismiss most of what you see, but you can check other sites, those points i mentioned are facts. i'm sure you've heard of at least a couple of them.      

http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins091903.asp

Anyone else disgusted by the Bush administration's use of 9/11 to help its reelection bid, while the White House has done everything in its power the impede the progress of the 9/11 commission?

Just a quick reply about the bit about supporting the palestinians. It's very different from supporting terrorism. He sent money to the family of the deceased bomber. So, he's encouraging the bombinb by building a safety net for their families. But he is not funding terrorism. Basically, he was trying to make himself a folk hero for palestinian liberation. The thing is, most arab countries finance to some degree terrorism in palestine.

Saudi Arabia, for example.

Ok, here's my response: I've lifted it verbatum from Josh Marshal's site;

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_02_29.html#002629 (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_02_29.html#002629)

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So Zarqawi and Ansar were in Iraqi Kurdistan. Thus they were 'in Iraq'. And they were linked to al Qaida. So al Qaida was 'in Iraq'. That was the argument.

Now, there was a pretty big problem with this argument. Namely, the US and the UK had made Iraqi Kurdistan into a virtual Anglo-American protectorate through its no-fly zones which kept not only Iraqi air power but basically all of Saddam's forces out of the region. The Kurds themselves had already set up a de facto government, though the region where Ansar was operating from was one they didn't control.

In other words, saying Ansar was operating out of Iraq was deeply misleading in anything other than a narrowly geographical sense since Ansar was operating from area we had taken from Saddam's control. Saddam might as credibly -- perhaps more credibly -- have charged us with harboring Ansar as vice versa.

(A side note: various Iraq hawks have alleged that Saddam's secret police were in contact with or even controlling Ansar. And it's true that Saddam and Ansar had a common enemy: the pro-American Kurdish parties. But I've never seen any credible evidence to persuade me of such links.)

In any case, to review, using Ansar and Zarqawi as proof of a Saddam-al Qaida link had serious evidentiary and logical problems. But that didn't stop the White House from making it a centerpiece of their argument -- as Colin Powell did during his presentation at the UN.

In the immediate lead-up to the war there were various parts of the White House's argument for war that were becoming weaker by the day. That, after all, was what was happening with the inspectors themselves who were, in the weeks and months just before the war, generating lots of new evidence that threw many of the earlier suspicions of WMD into real doubt -- particularly on the nuclear front.

The reports we have now about the White House's refusal to move against Zarqawi are still incomplete. And I think we've got to keep open the possibility that there were military or diplomatic restraints we were operating under that are not yet clear.

But if the reports bear out, the White House's reasons for not moving against Zarqawi when we could have don't seem to require much explanation. If we got rid of Zarqawi and Ansar the much-trumpeted Iraq-al Qaida, already so profoundly tenuous, would have collapsed altogether. To put it bluntly, we needed Zarqawi and Ansar.

That would mean it was a political decision -- one intended to aid in convincing the American people of the necessity of war -- for which we are now paying a grave price.
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If the White House knew, it did nothing, and it did nothing in order to have evidence to invade Iraq. If it did not know then why did they trump up Zarqawi and Ansar as reasons to invade Iraq? In either event the Bush administration was lying to us and risking our very lives with it's dishonesty.

As for Robbins' article -

( http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins091903.asp (http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins091903.asp) )

you and I know that the news and the papers are never perfect sources of information. At the very least you need to see sources cited within a news report.

But the sourcing within Robbin's article is very poor. Here's a paragraph:

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There is also the case of Abu Zubayr, an officer in Saddam's secret police who was also the ringleader of an al Qaeda cell in Morocco. He attended the September 5, 2001 meeting in Spain with other al Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, the 9/11 financial chief. Abu Zubayr was apprehended in May, 2002, while putting together a plot to mount suicide attacks on U.S. ships passing through the straits of Gibraltar. He has allegedly since stated that Iraq trained and supplied chemical weapons to al Qaeda. In the fall of 2001 al Qaeda refugees from Afghanistan took refuge in northern Iraq until they were driven out by Coalition forces, and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda terrorist active in Europe and North Africa, fled from Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has reportedly been sent back to Iraq to coordinate al Qaeda activities there.
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All well and good. But where have you heard all this from, Mr. Robbins? And what are the counter points? He makes a very broad and presumptious series of arguments, but he doesn't list where from! TELL ME.

One of the reasons I like to use Josh's site is that he puts his sources into his argument. I can link to them. Indeed, most print reporters do one better, by actually quoting those that make various statements and citing in the text itself where they get certain facts from.

But Robbins does cite someone. Here's an example:

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The most intriguing potential link is reflected in documents found by Toronto Star reporter Mitch Potter in Baghdad in April, 2003. The documents detail direct links between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime dating back at least to 1998, and mention Osama bin Laden by name. The find supports an October 2001 report by William Safire that noted, among other things, a 1998 meeting in Baghdad between al Qaeda #2 Ayman al Zawahiri and Saddam's vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan. Other reports have alleged bin Laden himself traveled to Iraq around that time, or at least planned to. Former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, now in custody, allegedly met with bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.
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"The most intriguing potential link is reflected in documents found by Toronto Star reporter Mitch Potter in Baghdad in April, 2003."

What is the date of publication? What is the article's title? Come on, Rob.

"The documents detail direct links between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime dating back at least to 1998, and mention Osama bin Laden by name."

If so, then cite from the actual document. Robbin's must have read it or read some portion of it in order to make believe these claims enought ot print them, so why doesn't he quote the text of the documents?

I'd expect because he's never read them. He's never even read a synopsis. He's probalyl read something along the lines of the actual text he prints: that is, a statement without any evidence.

"Other reports have alleged bin Laden himself traveled to Iraq around that time, or at least planned to. Former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, now in custody, allegedly met with bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks."

Which other reports? What are the details of those allegations? See how he undercuts his own argument here, discussing how Binny came to Iraq ... or planned to. Which is it?

My question is, how many alleged things will Robbin's quote in order to support his allegations?

My simple point is that Mr. Robbin's article is not convincing dispite numerous powerful point because it does nothing to prove those points.

I can scream and wail all night long about how even the doomsday predictions about our budget deficit predict a smaller deficit than there really is. But unless I cite where I heard that from it's only hersay.

http://www.cepr.net/real_budget.htm (http://www.cepr.net/real_budget.htm)

Then Robbins said this:

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The more controversial part of the story is the alleged meeting between Atta and al-Ani in the Iraqi embassy in Prague in the spring of 2001.

...

But if they met, why? It is unlikely they were discussing the alleged RFE/RL operation, since Atta had more important things to do and the Iraqis did not need his help with that one anyway. They might have been discussing the 9/11 attacks, but there is no evidence to support that claim. The article in Das Bild raised another, more intriguing possibility: The Iraqis were supplying Atta with anthrax spores for use in attacks on the United States. The anthrax attacks had commenced shortly before the article was published, and the idea seemed plausible at the time. In fact, it still does ? the anthrax used in the attacks was weapons grade, the attacks originated from areas near where the hijackers had been active, and two years of investigation have not turned up the presupposed domestic perpetrator. At some point, you would think Occam's Razor would come into play.

The US Justice Department disputes most of the above. Because the US has no independent evidence that the 2001 meeting occurred, and since an examination of INS records published in May 2002 showed no movements corresponding to the Czech timeline, Justice concluded that the meeting could not have taken place.
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Huh? Ok, so Robbin's goes through a series of suppositions that undercut the point he's trying to make, then presumes his point is true by asking "why they met" despite the lack of credible evidence and despite that the State Department itself has determined that Atta was not there. And then he offers a truly laughable nugget: SADDAM'S PEOPLE GAVE TERRORISTS THE ANTHRAX THAT WAS USED TO ATTACK AMERICA!

Wtf is this guys smoking.

I BEG EVERYONE to read this article from the National Review. It is a telling read. It goes far to convince you the the arguments about Iraq having ties to al-Qaida, that it was harboring terrorists, and so on, are intelectually dishonest arguments.

(I thoroughly enjoyed this)

six you have entirely too much time on your hands. here's an article from pbs, i know its not a liberal talking points site, but it's not a conservative site either and it's worth the read.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/

here's another from a ny times reporter  http://www.iht.com/articles/129142.html

and spetz, i suppose if john kerry can tout his time in vietnam as being relavant to national security. than bush can tout his experience as the president at the time of 9/11. it is the biggest issue of this election wouldn't you agree? and if bush didn't use it, the democrats would. some of the families find it distastefull, and others don't. anyway if bush uses it your gonna jump on him for it, if he doesn't use it....your gonna jump on him even harder.

Heheh. Yah, last night I had too much time on my hands. I was stuck at work waiting for that one important phone call for way too long.

(I love PBS) The PBS thing will take some time to run through. But this seems to sum up what they are saying: "The litany of charges linking Iraq's leader to terrorism are largely unproven in their specifics, but to those committed to building a case against him, they are powerful in the aggregate" That's a very good sum up of the situtation.

As for Starfire's piece: He calls the other day's terror bombing the "smoking gun" that proves Saddam's connection with terrorists. But he bases that claim on something that happened AFTER the war "ended" and Saddam captured.

Here's the Editorial abstract of the Dexter Filkins/ Douglas Jehl piece (I couldn't get the article):

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20A12F73D5E0C7A8CDDAB0894DC404482 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20A12F73D5E0C7A8CDDAB0894DC404482)

"They have independently corroborated Zarqawi's authorship; document, if authentic, constitutes strongest evidence to date of contacts between extremists in Iraq and Al Qaeda; but it does not speak to debate about whether there was Qaeda presence in Iraq during Saddam Hussein era, nor is there any mention of collaboration with Hussein loyalists."

The key is, there is no evidence that proves Saddam had a link to al-Qaida nor that memebers of his gang collaborated with al-Quida BEFORE we invaded.

The obvious supposition is that our invasion let the terrorist cat outa the bag, not Saddam.

One of three casus beli outlined in Starfire's article was:

"...informed suspicion that a clear link existed between world terror and Saddam."

But a connection between Saddam-al-Zarqawi-al-Quida just doesn't hold water. More importantly, there is no connection between them before the war.

i've mentioned before that i never thought there was any connection between saddam and al quada. but he clearly financed and supported terrorism. you should read every word in the pbs article especially the interviews and ayalisis. after all it is pbs...the channel that gave us sesame street, the electric company, any my personal favorite....mr. rogers neighborhood.

Two books I would recommend Washington's Secret War...Afghanistan by Phillip Bonosky and Ghost Wars by Steve Coll, they do a good job explaining how all this shit is a result of mismanaged U.S. foreign policy, changed my whole perspective of things.

Cutter, no matter I personally(along with the fire fighters union) am disgusted by the use of images depicting the remains of dead being removed from ground zero for political purpose. Using such powerful images to polarize the electorate is a crude and inexcusable act(Karl Rove's handiwork). Perhaps he could have used his job creating record, oh wait the unemployment rate is the highest its been in sometime.

Speaking of financing terrorism, why don't we invade Pakistan? Hell they gave Nuclear secrets to the Axis of Evil; forget Saddam. After that we have to invade ourselves, because it was the U.S. who created the spectre of international terorism, we have funded Islamic radicals in greater quantities than any other country hands down.