Our, humankind's, ability to wage war in a more efficient way has always out-stripped the capability of our morality to absorb or curtail its horrors. The rules of war-fare change at a very escalated rate. Our laws dictating these rules are locked in a by-gone area.
President Obama can project force (beyond ICBMs) anywhere in the world within hours, if not within minutes. President Johnson could only project force within weeks...days if the forces just happened to be near the projected target. Since WWII, the US military has grown into an true international presence with feet on the ground all around the globe. These factors were probably not considered when the War Powers Act was created.
This is why Presidents and Congress can split hairs over what is "war" and what is not. Libya, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan may all look the same to many of us, but the lawyers and policy-makers can twist and turn a bunch of $2 words all around and make them appear to be completely different. The law needs to reflect more of the current world, but I do not expect our leaders to change something that they can so easily manipulate to their interests.
Post edited by tybird on
All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a thousand enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.
Our, humankind's, ability to wage war in a more efficient way has always out-stripped the capability of our morality to absorb or curtail its horrors. The rules of war-fare change at a very escalated rate. Our laws dictating these rules are locked in a by-gone area.
President Obama can project force (beyond ICBMs) anywhere in the world within hours, if not within minutes. President Johnson could only project force within weeks...days if the forces just happened to be near the projected target. Since WWII, the US military has grown into an true international presence with feet on the ground all around the globe. These factors were probably not considered when the War Powers Act was created.
This is why Presidents and Congress can split hairs over what is "war" and what is not. Libya, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan may all look the same to many of us, but the lawyers and policy-makers can twist and turn a bunch of $2 dollars all around and make them appear to be completely different. The law needs to reflect more of the current world, but I do not expect our leaders to change something that they can so easily manipulate to their interests.
I'm floored.
The Train is not used to coherent, eloquent thought.
OCT 11, 2002: "In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.
Hours earlier, the House approved an identical resolution, 296-133."
Except there were no weapons of mass destruction for Saddam Hussein to 'give up'.
Our, humankind's, ability to wage war in a more efficient way has always out-stripped the capability of our morality to absorb or curtail its horrors. The rules of war-fare change at a very escalated rate. Our laws dictating these rules are locked in a by-gone area.
President Obama can project force (beyond ICBMs) anywhere in the world within hours, if not within minutes. President Johnson could only project force within weeks...days if the forces just happened to be near the projected target. Since WWII, the US military has grown into an true international presence with feet on the ground all around the globe. These factors were probably not considered when the War Powers Act was created.
This is why Presidents and Congress can split hairs over what is "war" and what is not. Libya, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan may all look the same to many of us, but the lawyers and policy-makers can twist and turn a bunch of $2 dollars all around and make them appear to be completely different. The law needs to reflect more of the current world, but I do not expect our leaders to change something that they can so easily manipulate to their interests.
I'm floored.
The Train is not used to coherent, eloquent thought.
Very nice.
Thank you
All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a thousand enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.
OCT 11, 2002: "In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.
Hours earlier, the House approved an identical resolution, 296-133."
Except there were no weapons of mass destruction for Saddam Hussein to 'give up'.
in the thick of it all hussein and his followers were the weapons of mass destruction.
remember chemical ali wiping out whole villeges with expermintal chemical weapons
or the torture chambers or the rapes or killing of fathers and son's...did that matter ?
OCT 11, 2002: "In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.
Hours earlier, the House approved an identical resolution, 296-133."
Except there were no weapons of mass destruction for Saddam Hussein to 'give up'.
in the thick of it all hussein and his followers were the weapons of mass destruction.
remember chemical ali wiping out whole villeges with expermintal chemical weapons
or the torture chambers or the rapes or killing of fathers and son's...did that matter ?
Godfather.
nobody is disputing the fact that those were very bad people. we are protesting because the part about iraq being an "immediate threat to the united states" was all bullshit and based on lies and motives other than freeing the citizens of iraq.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
remember chemical ali wiping out whole villeges with expermintal chemical weapons
or the torture chambers or the rapes or killing of fathers and son's...did that matter ?
Godfather.
Yeah, I remember that. It was done with U.S and British support, and we continued selling them chemical weapons after they'd wiped out those Kurdish villages.
Did they have any weapons of mass destruction in 2003? No, they didn't.
remember chemical ali wiping out whole villeges with expermintal chemical weapons
or the torture chambers or the rapes or killing of fathers and son's...did that matter ?
Godfather.
Yeah, I remember that. It was done with U.S and British support, and we continued selling them chemical weapons after they'd wiped out those Kurdish villages.
Did they have any weapons of mass destruction in 2003? No, they didn't.
ah ha ha good morning Byrnzie, so maybe bush knew that they had WMD because his admin sold then the chemicals and tools to build these WMD ?
remember chemical ali wiping out whole villeges with expermintal chemical weapons
or the torture chambers or the rapes or killing of fathers and son's...did that matter ?
Godfather.
Yeah, I remember that. It was done with U.S and British support, and we continued selling them chemical weapons after they'd wiped out those Kurdish villages.
Did they have any weapons of mass destruction in 2003? No, they didn't.
ah ha ha good morning Byrnzie, so maybe bush knew that they had WMD because his admin sold then the chemicals and tools to build these WMD ?
Godfather.
I'm confused by your use of the word 'knew'. All their wmd's had already been destroyed after the first Gulf war, either by the weapons inspectors who were in Iraq between 1991 and 2003, or by ten years of aerial bombardment. Our politicians 'knew' this, and yet they chose to lie to us. The evidence for this was made available a long time ago, so I'm surprised that it's still the subject of any debate.
as you say "they lied to us" so I doubt this was the first time, where did the lies start and end ?
do think it was a good idea to get rid of hussian wmd or not ? I mean condidering the level of
pure evil acts aginst his own people where would he have gone next ? if history tells us anything
the hunger for greed and power grows bigger with every evil victory just the fact that he had the kurds
wiped out is proof of his lust for power.he had vaults filled with gold bars mad amounts of money gold plated machine guns stolen art works and on and on,do you think it was possible he used some of his money to fund al queda ? wmd or not the man was a rabbid animal and his trail of destruction would have grown larger if the US had not stoped him, so wmd or not who REALLY knows.
off all the things you can dis-like about Bush for this one is the weakest on the list, take a look at obama and what he's doing and he thinks cutting loose the countrys 30,000,000 barles of oil reserves to drop oil prices for the consumer is going to make everything alright ? they(presidents) all do the same thing for the most part
so blaming just one is kinda closed minded in my opinion, in this day and age they're all dirty !
do think it was a good idea to get rid of hussian wmd or not ? I mean condidering the level of pure evil acts aginst his own people where would he have gone next ?
Except we didn't just get rid of Saddam Hussein - we 'got rid of' over 1 million Iraqis. Surely a better way would have been to fund and support the opposition movements in Iraq, and let them then decide their own destiny?
do think it was a good idea to get rid of hussian wmd or not ? I mean condidering the level of pure evil acts aginst his own people where would he have gone next ?
Except we didn't just get rid of Saddam Hussein - we 'got rid of' over 1 million Iraqis. Surely a better way would have been to fund and support the opposition movements in Iraq, and let them then decide their own destiny?
Didn't some Western country fund Al-Queda in the 80s... Can't remember who it was, the United something...
Believe me, when I was growin up, I thought the worst thing you could turn out to be was normal, So I say freaks in the most complementary way. Here's a song by a fellow freak - E.V
yer honner...I object ! I believe it was totally possible !
Godfather.
Why? Where's your evidence?
got me....but where is yours that says he did not.
Godfather.
The fact that after 9 years not one shred of evidence has turned up linking him to Al Queda, despite concerted efforts by certain members of the U.S government - Cheney, Rumsfeld - to convince the American public that there was a link. There's my evidence.
On April 29, 2007, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on 60 Minutes, "We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period."
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Osama bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia by sending mujahideen from Afghanistan to repel Saddam's forces. After the Gulf War, bin Laden continued to criticize Saddam's Ba'ath regime, emphasizing that Saddam could not be trusted. Bin Laden told his biographer that "the land of the Arab world, the land is like a mother, and Saddam Hussein is fucking his mother."[43] Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist, and Ba'athism is a movement which combines pan-Arab nationalism with secularism and Arab Socialism. It is therefore very much at odds with political Islamism.[44] The ideological founder of Ba'athism, Michel Aflaq, was himself a Christian.[45]
The 9/11 Commission stated in its report that bin Laden had been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army. Those forces mostly operated in areas not under Saddam's control. Sudanese Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi, to protect his ties with Iraq, brokered an agreement with Bin Laden to stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Laden seemed to honor this agreement for a time, although, he continued to aid Islamic extremists in Kurdistan. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, the extremist groups, with help from Bin Laden, re-formed into an organization called Ansar al-Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.[46]
Osama bin Laden's expressed hostility to Saddam's regime, critical assessment of evidence from the Iraqi National Congress (the source of most of the claims of cooperation between the two) as well as the paucity of evidence for the alleged links, particularly for any substantial collaboration, have led most journalists and intelligence analysts not associated with or supporters of the Bush administration to dismiss the claimed links.
Robert Pape's exhaustive study of suicide terrorism found that "al-Qaeda's transnational suicide terrorists have come overwhelmingly from America's closest allies in the Muslim world and not at all from the Muslim regimes that the U.S. State Department considers 'state sponsors of terrorism'."[47] Pape notes that no al-Qaeda suicide attackers came from Iraq. Daniel Byman's study of state sponsorship of terrorism similarly did not list Iraq as a significant state sponsor, and called the al-Qaeda connection "a rationale that before the war was strained and after it seems an ever-weaker reed."[48] The conclusion of counterterrorism experts Rohan Gunaratna, Bruce Hoffman, and Daniel Benjamin, as well as journalists Peter Bergen and Jason Burke (who have both written extensively on al-Qaeda), has been that there is no evidence that suggests any collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. That was similar to the conclusion of specific investigations by the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and 9/11 Commission, among others. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reviewed the CIA's investigation and concluded that the CIA's conclusion that there was no evidence of operational collaboration was justified.
While Saddam was not involved in the September 11 attacks, members of his government did have contacts with al-Qaeda over the years; many of the links, as will be seen below, are not considered by experts and analysts as convincing evidence of a collaborative operational relationship. Former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke writes, "[t]he simple fact is that lots of people, particularly in the Middle East, pass along many rumors and they end up being recorded and filed by U.S. intelligence agencies in raw reports. That does not make them 'intelligence'. Intelligence involves analysis of raw reports, not merely their enumeration or weighing them by the pound. Analysis, in turn, involves finding independent means of corroborating the reports. Did al-Qaeda agents ever talk to Iraqi agents? I would be startled if they had not. I would also be startled if American, Israeli, Iranian, British, or Jordanian agents had somehow failed to talk to al-Qaeda or Iraqi agents. Talking to each other is what intelligence agents do, often under assumed identities or 'false flags,' looking for information or possible defectors."[49] Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Voice of America that "[...] Saddam Hussein had his agenda and al-Qaida had its agenda, and those two agendas were incompatible. And so if there was any contact between them, it was a contact that was rebuffed rather than a contact that led to meaningful relationships between them."[50]
The purported meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi Intelligence officer, regarding which Vice President Cheney had stated "we’ve never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it",[15] was dismissed by CIA Director George Tenet, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee in February, 2004 that there was no evidence to support that allegation. In fact, the FBI had evidence that Atta was in Florida at the time, taking aircraft flight training; and the Iraqi officer in question, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, has been captured and maintains he has never met Atta.[16]
The repeated accusation by Vice President Cheney that Iraq harbored Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, conflicts with Iraq's 1998 offer to the FBI of extradition for Yasin in return for a statement clearing Iraq from any role in the attack. Even though the CIA and FBI had already concluded that Iraq played no role in the attack, the Clinton administration refused the offer.[16] Iraq also offered to extradite Yasin in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks. In June 2002, an unnamed US intelligence official told 60 Minutes that Iraq had attached "extreme conditions" to the handing over of Yasin. According to the official, the Iraqis wanted the U.S. to sign a document laying out where Yasin had been since 1993, but that the US did not agree with their version of the facts.[51] In any case, Yasin had cooperated with the FBI and they had released him, although they would later call it a "mistake."[51] The CIA and FBI had nevertheless concluded in 1995 and 1996 that "the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack." Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke called the allegations "absolutely without foundation."[52] The Iraqis made another offer to the Bush Administration in 2003 but this offer was also spurned.[53]
“ al-Qaeda did not have any relationship with Saddam Hussein or his regime. We had to draw up a plan to enter Iraq through the north that was not under the control of his regime. We would then spread south to the areas of our fraternal Sunni brothers. The fraternal brothers of the Ansar al-Islam expressed their willingness to offer assistance to help us achieve this goal. ”
—Saif al-Adel[54]
Former National Security Council counterterrorism directors Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon summarized the problem with the Bush Administration's view in the eyes of the intelligence community: "The administration pressed its case for war most emphatically by arguing that U.S. national security was imperiled by Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda. The argument had the obvious virtue of playing to the public's desire to see the war on terrorism prosecuted aggressively and conclusively. Yet, scant proof of these links was presented. The record showed a small number of contacts between jihadists and Iraqi officials. This was treated as the tip of an unseen iceberg of cooperation, even though it fell far short of anything that resembled significant cooperation in the eyes of the counterterrorism community—as it always had. No persuasive proof was given of money, weaponry, or training being provided."[55]
Former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, has since revealed that "as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida."
Obama is 10x better than Bush on his best day. End of that argument.
And you say about Obama's respect for the troops. Please. How about the respect our military have for human life? Just look at the civilian death toll in any of the country that we're in. (that we shouldn't be in)
Wonderful. If you're advice to Obama's re-election campaign is to run on the platform of:
"I'm not as bad as Bush"
Well, it will be a long, cold November.
I'm guessing the White House has yet to ask your advice....
Yeah, because that's my advice. How did you read so well into my post? :roll:
as you say "they lied to us" so I doubt this was the first time, where did the lies start and end ?
do think it was a good idea to get rid of hussian wmd or not ? I mean condidering the level of
pure evil acts aginst his own people where would he have gone next ? if history tells us anything
the hunger for greed and power grows bigger with every evil victory just the fact that he had the kurds
wiped out is proof of his lust for power.he had vaults filled with gold bars mad amounts of money gold plated machine guns stolen art works and on and on,do you think it was possible he used some of his money to fund al queda ? wmd or not the man was a rabbid animal and his trail of destruction would have grown larger if the US had not stoped him, so wmd or not who REALLY knows.
off all the things you can dis-like about Bush for this one is the weakest on the list, take a look at obama and what he's doing and he thinks cutting loose the countrys 30,000,000 barles of oil reserves to drop oil prices for the consumer is going to make everything alright ? they(presidents) all do the same thing for the most part
so blaming just one is kinda closed minded in my opinion, in this day and age they're all dirty !
Godfather.
..
Where do you come up with this nonsense? 'Vaults of Gold Bars'??? 'Gold Plated Machine Guns'???
I know people who have served in Iraq and set up in a Hussein so-called, 'Pleasure Palace'. You know how he described it to me? Like this, **paraphrasing** "You know how when you go to Tijuana and everything there is crappy? Well, this pleasure palace is so crappy... that people who live in Tijuana would call this place, 'crappy'". The 'Gold' faucets? Stock faucets from Home Depot... painted gold. As in gold paint, $3.98 a can at Home Depot. And that was the nice stuff.
If there were vaults of gold and solid gold machine guns... then why the FUCK did we give these guys billions of dollars? Couldn't they melt down a few of those machine guns and pay their own mother fucking policemen?
Apply logic to your thoughts before you let them roll off of your tongue. Just a little helpful criticism, there.
Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
Hail, Hail!!!
as you say "they lied to us" so I doubt this was the first time, where did the lies start and end ?
do think it was a good idea to get rid of hussian wmd or not ? I mean condidering the level of
pure evil acts aginst his own people where would he have gone next ? if history tells us anything
the hunger for greed and power grows bigger with every evil victory just the fact that he had the kurds
wiped out is proof of his lust for power.he had vaults filled with gold bars mad amounts of money gold plated machine guns stolen art works and on and on,do you think it was possible he used some of his money to fund al queda ? wmd or not the man was a rabbid animal and his trail of destruction would have grown larger if the US had not stoped him, so wmd or not who REALLY knows.
off all the things you can dis-like about Bush for this one is the weakest on the list, take a look at obama and what he's doing and he thinks cutting loose the countrys 30,000,000 barles of oil reserves to drop oil prices for the consumer is going to make everything alright ? they(presidents) all do the same thing for the most part
so blaming just one is kinda closed minded in my opinion, in this day and age they're all dirty !
Godfather.
..
Where do you come up with this nonsense? 'Vaults of Gold Bars'??? 'Gold Plated Machine Guns'???
I know people who have served in Iraq and set up in a Hussein so-called, 'Pleasure Palace'. You know how he described it to me? Like this, **paraphrasing** "You know how when you go to Tijuana and everything there is crappy? Well, this pleasure palace is so crappy... that people who live in Tijuana would call this place, 'crappy'". The 'Gold' faucets? Stock faucets from Home Depot... painted gold. As in gold paint, $3.98 a can at Home Depot. And that was the nice stuff.
If there were vaults of gold and solid gold machine guns... then why the FUCK did we give these guys billions of dollars? Couldn't they melt down a few of those machine guns and pay their own mother fucking policemen?
Apply logic to your thoughts before you let them roll off of your tongue. Just a little helpful criticism, there.
cosmo this thime you are wrong buddy....I saw this crap w/pictures on the news. ya friggin goofball ya think I just made that shit up ?...his sons had gold plated MACHINE GUNS.......GEEEZ
next time just ask me and I'll tell you where I had seen or heard this stuff I don't lie as a rule in life and if I am wrong and you prove it I will always accept the facts.
but anyway an thank yopu for your keen eye and support
Comments
President Obama can project force (beyond ICBMs) anywhere in the world within hours, if not within minutes. President Johnson could only project force within weeks...days if the forces just happened to be near the projected target. Since WWII, the US military has grown into an true international presence with feet on the ground all around the globe. These factors were probably not considered when the War Powers Act was created.
This is why Presidents and Congress can split hairs over what is "war" and what is not. Libya, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan may all look the same to many of us, but the lawyers and policy-makers can twist and turn a bunch of $2 words all around and make them appear to be completely different. The law needs to reflect more of the current world, but I do not expect our leaders to change something that they can so easily manipulate to their interests.
I'm floored.
The Train is not used to coherent, eloquent thought.
Very nice.
Except there were no weapons of mass destruction for Saddam Hussein to 'give up'.
in the thick of it all hussein and his followers were the weapons of mass destruction.
remember chemical ali wiping out whole villeges with expermintal chemical weapons
or the torture chambers or the rapes or killing of fathers and son's...did that matter ?
Godfather.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Yeah, I remember that. It was done with U.S and British support, and we continued selling them chemical weapons after they'd wiped out those Kurdish villages.
Did they have any weapons of mass destruction in 2003? No, they didn't.
ah ha ha good morning Byrnzie, so maybe bush knew that they had WMD because his admin sold then the chemicals and tools to build these WMD ?
Godfather.
I'm confused by your use of the word 'knew'. All their wmd's had already been destroyed after the first Gulf war, either by the weapons inspectors who were in Iraq between 1991 and 2003, or by ten years of aerial bombardment. Our politicians 'knew' this, and yet they chose to lie to us. The evidence for this was made available a long time ago, so I'm surprised that it's still the subject of any debate.
do think it was a good idea to get rid of hussian wmd or not ? I mean condidering the level of
pure evil acts aginst his own people where would he have gone next ? if history tells us anything
the hunger for greed and power grows bigger with every evil victory just the fact that he had the kurds
wiped out is proof of his lust for power.he had vaults filled with gold bars mad amounts of money gold plated machine guns stolen art works and on and on,do you think it was possible he used some of his money to fund al queda ? wmd or not the man was a rabbid animal and his trail of destruction would have grown larger if the US had not stoped him, so wmd or not who REALLY knows.
off all the things you can dis-like about Bush for this one is the weakest on the list, take a look at obama and what he's doing and he thinks cutting loose the countrys 30,000,000 barles of oil reserves to drop oil prices for the consumer is going to make everything alright ? they(presidents) all do the same thing for the most part
so blaming just one is kinda closed minded in my opinion, in this day and age they're all dirty !
Godfather.
Except we didn't just get rid of Saddam Hussein - we 'got rid of' over 1 million Iraqis. Surely a better way would have been to fund and support the opposition movements in Iraq, and let them then decide their own destiny?
Was it possible? Is it possible that the Pope is using some of his money to fund Al Queda? Yes, it is possible.
But let's stick to the facts instead of indulging in fantasies: Did Saddam Hussein use any of his money to fund Al Queda? No, he didn't.
yer honner...I object ! I believe it was totally possible !
Godfather.
Why? Where's your evidence?
got me....but where is yours that says he did not.
Godfather.
The fact that after 9 years not one shred of evidence has turned up linking him to Al Queda, despite concerted efforts by certain members of the U.S government - Cheney, Rumsfeld - to convince the American public that there was a link. There's my evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hus ... f_the_link
On April 29, 2007, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on 60 Minutes, "We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period."
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Osama bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia by sending mujahideen from Afghanistan to repel Saddam's forces. After the Gulf War, bin Laden continued to criticize Saddam's Ba'ath regime, emphasizing that Saddam could not be trusted. Bin Laden told his biographer that "the land of the Arab world, the land is like a mother, and Saddam Hussein is fucking his mother."[43] Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist, and Ba'athism is a movement which combines pan-Arab nationalism with secularism and Arab Socialism. It is therefore very much at odds with political Islamism.[44] The ideological founder of Ba'athism, Michel Aflaq, was himself a Christian.[45]
The 9/11 Commission stated in its report that bin Laden had been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army. Those forces mostly operated in areas not under Saddam's control. Sudanese Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi, to protect his ties with Iraq, brokered an agreement with Bin Laden to stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Laden seemed to honor this agreement for a time, although, he continued to aid Islamic extremists in Kurdistan. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, the extremist groups, with help from Bin Laden, re-formed into an organization called Ansar al-Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.[46]
Osama bin Laden's expressed hostility to Saddam's regime, critical assessment of evidence from the Iraqi National Congress (the source of most of the claims of cooperation between the two) as well as the paucity of evidence for the alleged links, particularly for any substantial collaboration, have led most journalists and intelligence analysts not associated with or supporters of the Bush administration to dismiss the claimed links.
Robert Pape's exhaustive study of suicide terrorism found that "al-Qaeda's transnational suicide terrorists have come overwhelmingly from America's closest allies in the Muslim world and not at all from the Muslim regimes that the U.S. State Department considers 'state sponsors of terrorism'."[47] Pape notes that no al-Qaeda suicide attackers came from Iraq. Daniel Byman's study of state sponsorship of terrorism similarly did not list Iraq as a significant state sponsor, and called the al-Qaeda connection "a rationale that before the war was strained and after it seems an ever-weaker reed."[48] The conclusion of counterterrorism experts Rohan Gunaratna, Bruce Hoffman, and Daniel Benjamin, as well as journalists Peter Bergen and Jason Burke (who have both written extensively on al-Qaeda), has been that there is no evidence that suggests any collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. That was similar to the conclusion of specific investigations by the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and 9/11 Commission, among others. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reviewed the CIA's investigation and concluded that the CIA's conclusion that there was no evidence of operational collaboration was justified.
While Saddam was not involved in the September 11 attacks, members of his government did have contacts with al-Qaeda over the years; many of the links, as will be seen below, are not considered by experts and analysts as convincing evidence of a collaborative operational relationship. Former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke writes, "[t]he simple fact is that lots of people, particularly in the Middle East, pass along many rumors and they end up being recorded and filed by U.S. intelligence agencies in raw reports. That does not make them 'intelligence'. Intelligence involves analysis of raw reports, not merely their enumeration or weighing them by the pound. Analysis, in turn, involves finding independent means of corroborating the reports. Did al-Qaeda agents ever talk to Iraqi agents? I would be startled if they had not. I would also be startled if American, Israeli, Iranian, British, or Jordanian agents had somehow failed to talk to al-Qaeda or Iraqi agents. Talking to each other is what intelligence agents do, often under assumed identities or 'false flags,' looking for information or possible defectors."[49] Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Voice of America that "[...] Saddam Hussein had his agenda and al-Qaida had its agenda, and those two agendas were incompatible. And so if there was any contact between them, it was a contact that was rebuffed rather than a contact that led to meaningful relationships between them."[50]
The purported meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi Intelligence officer, regarding which Vice President Cheney had stated "we’ve never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it",[15] was dismissed by CIA Director George Tenet, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee in February, 2004 that there was no evidence to support that allegation. In fact, the FBI had evidence that Atta was in Florida at the time, taking aircraft flight training; and the Iraqi officer in question, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, has been captured and maintains he has never met Atta.[16]
The repeated accusation by Vice President Cheney that Iraq harbored Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, conflicts with Iraq's 1998 offer to the FBI of extradition for Yasin in return for a statement clearing Iraq from any role in the attack. Even though the CIA and FBI had already concluded that Iraq played no role in the attack, the Clinton administration refused the offer.[16] Iraq also offered to extradite Yasin in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks. In June 2002, an unnamed US intelligence official told 60 Minutes that Iraq had attached "extreme conditions" to the handing over of Yasin. According to the official, the Iraqis wanted the U.S. to sign a document laying out where Yasin had been since 1993, but that the US did not agree with their version of the facts.[51] In any case, Yasin had cooperated with the FBI and they had released him, although they would later call it a "mistake."[51] The CIA and FBI had nevertheless concluded in 1995 and 1996 that "the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack." Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke called the allegations "absolutely without foundation."[52] The Iraqis made another offer to the Bush Administration in 2003 but this offer was also spurned.[53]
“ al-Qaeda did not have any relationship with Saddam Hussein or his regime. We had to draw up a plan to enter Iraq through the north that was not under the control of his regime. We would then spread south to the areas of our fraternal Sunni brothers. The fraternal brothers of the Ansar al-Islam expressed their willingness to offer assistance to help us achieve this goal. ”
—Saif al-Adel[54]
Former National Security Council counterterrorism directors Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon summarized the problem with the Bush Administration's view in the eyes of the intelligence community: "The administration pressed its case for war most emphatically by arguing that U.S. national security was imperiled by Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda. The argument had the obvious virtue of playing to the public's desire to see the war on terrorism prosecuted aggressively and conclusively. Yet, scant proof of these links was presented. The record showed a small number of contacts between jihadists and Iraqi officials. This was treated as the tip of an unseen iceberg of cooperation, even though it fell far short of anything that resembled significant cooperation in the eyes of the counterterrorism community—as it always had. No persuasive proof was given of money, weaponry, or training being provided."[55]
Former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, has since revealed that "as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida."
Godfather.
Yeah, because that's my advice. How did you read so well into my post? :roll:
Where do you come up with this nonsense? 'Vaults of Gold Bars'??? 'Gold Plated Machine Guns'???
I know people who have served in Iraq and set up in a Hussein so-called, 'Pleasure Palace'. You know how he described it to me? Like this, **paraphrasing** "You know how when you go to Tijuana and everything there is crappy? Well, this pleasure palace is so crappy... that people who live in Tijuana would call this place, 'crappy'". The 'Gold' faucets? Stock faucets from Home Depot... painted gold. As in gold paint, $3.98 a can at Home Depot. And that was the nice stuff.
If there were vaults of gold and solid gold machine guns... then why the FUCK did we give these guys billions of dollars? Couldn't they melt down a few of those machine guns and pay their own mother fucking policemen?
Apply logic to your thoughts before you let them roll off of your tongue. Just a little helpful criticism, there.
Hail, Hail!!!
cosmo this thime you are wrong buddy....I saw this crap w/pictures on the news. ya friggin goofball ya think I just made that shit up ?...his sons had gold plated MACHINE GUNS.......GEEEZ
next time just ask me and I'll tell you where I had seen or heard this stuff I don't lie as a rule in life and if I am wrong and you prove it I will always accept the facts.
but anyway an thank yopu for your keen eye and support
Godfather.