No Shit!

[Peter_Puget]

Link

 

No shit:

 

4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes.

 

There's more:

 

10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically requested that [brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.

The analysis of those events follows:

The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials explicitly threatened retaliation.

 

Still more:

 

14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular and reliable source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of Abdul Aziz.

An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and an explanation of these reports:

Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.

 

Yet more:

 

26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training.

The analysis of this report follows.

CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."

 

Case closed.

 

Mattp, Jim, Chuck and J_B crow will be served at 7pm sharp!

 

PP

 

 

[Al_Pine]

 

Well hot damn! Perhaps this was not just a fruitless exercise after all. Perhaps we are now safer with respect to TERROR!!

 

What do you think about that PP? Do you think that our invasion of Iraq has made the us safer from terror?

[Necronomicon]

The Weekly Standard is a great source for unbiased analysis.

 

 

[Jopa]

Peter_Puget said:

Case closed.

[scrambler]

Jopa said:

Peter_Puget said:

Case closed. Bullshit!

 

Who you gonna believe? The Weekly Standard and Fox News? Or Department of Defense and CIA?

 

DOD Statement on News Reports of Al-Qaida and Iraq Connections

 

CIA Finds No Evidence Hussein Sought To Arm Ter'rists

 

 

[j_b]

Peter_Puget said:

Case closed.

 

Mattp, Jim, Chuck and J_B crow will be served at 7pm sharp!

 

hilarious. it should not take you till 7 p.m. to read scrambler's links and get back to us

 

obviously you need to diversify your choice of news sources. the story had been debunked as of saturday.

[Jim]

PP - you're doing the same thing Rummy did. Taking bits and pieces of unverified information, often produced by dubious sources and stitching together your own story. What a joke.

 

The CIA analysts have already said they don't stand behind the conclusions given my Rummy and his buds. And of course the Administration will send a letter to the Senate committee that cherry picks their version, w/o the input of analysts. And of course they will leak it to the Standard. Get real. Nothing new here.

[allthumbs]

[j_b]

Peter_Puget said:

Mattp, Jim, Chuck and J_B crow will be served at 7pm sharp!

 

what happened PP? where were you when it was time to take your medicine?

 

it was not very fair of the neocon propaganda machine to leave you hanging out to dry like this. perhaps next time, you'll take what kristol and murdoch say with a grain of salt (scratch that and read real news)

 

not that you have any excuses for being fooled once again. how many times have they done this by now? how many revealing documents, damaging confessions, piles of dangerous weapons, labs and mad scientists have they uncovered to great fanfare and never spoke of ever again? be sure to let us know if they ever publish a retraction (one can keep dreaming ...)

 

sorry if i sound harsh but hopefully it'll be a motivation for you to check your facts before you decide to add to rumors and go on a witch hunt. the dittoheads have gotten away with foul play far too long.

[j_b]

Several newspapers and other media outlets had egg on their face Monday after reporting or endorsing a Weekly Standard story revealing new evidence of an "operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

 

Several outlets, including the New York Post, The Washington Times and FOX News, ran with the story. There was just one problem: On Saturday, the Pentagon issued a press release stating that "news reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq ... are inaccurate."

 

Despite this, the New York Post on Monday titled its editorial on the subject: "Bush Was Right."

 

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2030480

 

note that the new york post, fox news and the weekly standard are rupert murdoch holdings and well known neo-conservative mouthpieces (i.e. the people in charge of foreign policy). in turn, the washington times is a moonie property.

 

ha! 'journalism' ....

[Off_White]

Hmmm, who's got the egg on their face now Peter?

 

[vegetablebelay]

Well I gotta say nice job pp. You reeled them all in except for Mattp, but got a bonus with OW.

[Jake]

I dunno. Something just doesn't jive with this whole thing. I've read the Standard article, and it seems to point out some pretty damning stuff. But then, the DOD says, nope, it wasn't analyzed, it was just stuff. But, they don't say what was wrong with it at all except say it isn't right.

 

So, when the Standard got the letter, was it full of just bad/unanalyzed info? If so, why would DOD send that to the Senate? Or is the Standard misconstruing the facts in the letter? Then again, if all of this stuff was true, wouldn't DOD love to point this out and say, "here is more proof that Saddam was working with bin Laden?" This whole thing is just a little strange.

 

And as for the neocons being the ones in charge of foreign policy - that is generally correct, but I would argue that Bush FP is not really much different that any other president's FP is. Just look at all the Democratic Pres candidates - they all supported the war in Iraq - except for maybe Clark, but his whole campaign has disapeared off the radar screen anyway.

[j_b]

the dod said what was wrong with it: "the items [...] were either raw reports or products". this means the data was neither confirmed nor analyzed for its meaning. how many intelligence reports mentioned extensively by the administration have turned out to be true (the whole wmd thing for example, from nigergate to declarations by defectors)?

 

i agree there is an aura of strangeness about the whole thing and imo, it is probably meant to be that way. on the one hand you have bush saying that there is no connection between saddam and 9/11 and on the other hush-hush intelligence data about saddam and bin laden just happens to be 'leaked' to newspapers (how many times before has material of this importance been leaked to the press? hum....)

 

moreover:

W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the DIA, said yesterday that the Standard article "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?"

 

Another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather "data points . . . among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true."

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54452-2003Nov17?language=printer

 

i wouldn't give up on clark. imo he'll surprise a few:

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player.html?4908&FOX_News_Live&Setting%20the%20Record%20Straight&wvx-300

[murraysovereign]

Jake said:

I dunno. Something just doesn't jive with this whole thing. I've read the Standard article, and it seems to point out some pretty damning stuff. But then, the DOD says, nope, it wasn't analyzed, it was just stuff. But, they don't say what was wrong with it at all except say it isn't right.

 

So, when the Standard got the letter, was it full of just bad/unanalyzed info? If so, why would DOD send that to the Senate? Or is the Standard misconstruing the facts in the letter? Then again, if all of this stuff was true, wouldn't DOD love to point this out and say, "here is more proof that Saddam was working with bin Laden?" This whole thing is just a little strange.

 

Don't forget, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lauching of the "War on Terror", senior Administration officials were quite open and candid about the deliberate misinformation they were going to be spreading as part of their "war effort." They told us they were going to lie to us, that it would be necessary to lie to us, and that we would have no way of knowing when they were lying to us and when they were telling the truth.

 

Since lying is official government policy, and since they told us in advance they were going to be lying to us, we shouldn't be too surprised to find that, when they told us they were going to lie to us, they weren't lying. Until now. Now they're lying, but having promised us that they would, they have to, otherwise they'd have been lying when they announced their policy of lying to us. And everyone knows lying is wrong. Unless you're only doing it to fulfill your earlier promise to lie, in which case you're pretty much morally obliged to lie. Right?

[Peter_Puget]

Ok Back now.

 

 

J_B – said the story was debunked on Saturday. I say he is incorrect. Scrambler seems to miss the entire point of the DOD memo.

 

Here is the critical portion of the Pincus story (Pincus is well known for being anti-war)

 

Yesterday, allegations of new evidence of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda contained in a classified annex attached to Feith's Oct. 27 letter to leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were published in the Weekly Standard. Feith had been asked to support his July 10 closed-door testimony about such connections. The classified annex summarized raw intelligence reports but did not analyze them or address their accuracy, according to a senior administration official familiar with the matter.

 

No debunking. The reports are merely raw intelligence reports.

 

The DOD memo:

 

News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate... The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions.

 

 

Again no debunking. Note how what the DOD is saying is that the DOD has not confirmed new information. Of course since the data was raw intelleigence info no one was suggesting that they were. Further the DOD is not saying the info is false. I believe the DOD did not even supply the information in question, so why would they be responsible for confirming it.

 

Read this: Another Link

 

It is from Slate – not a Murdoch publication.

 

Side note to J_B: It is generally considered bad form to attack a man and not an argument. Please shape up and leave Murdoch alone

 

PP .

 

[mattp]

I'll agree with you that it is geneally considered bad form to attack a man rather than an argument, PP, but in Rupert Murdock's case I think we can make an exception.

[j_b]

boo! bad faith!

 

the story you quoted and your post said that the case was closed because the data proved the connection between s and bl. and you thus invited us to eat crow.

 

dod said the data was raw (i.e. unconfirmed) and "The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda"

 

therefore the connection between s and bl is very far from being established. the story is thus debunked. is there some element of logic you are missing here peter?

[jon]

Read how fucked up the Bush Administration is.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

[Jake]

Anbody here work for the CIA and wanna explain this, cause that's the only way anybody is ever gonna get the answer.

 

I've heard from people apparently in "the know" that Cheney would come down to the CIA and ask "what do you have on Saddam?" Of course, not coming up with the right answer could be career threatening.

 

I'm still not convinced that the Standard report is worthless and wrong, though.

 

Edited November 19, 2003 by Jake

[j_b]

the Pentagon issued a press release stating that "news reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq ... are inaccurate."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2030480

 

good article jon

 

hey PP - i hope you were hungry the other night and did not let the crow dinner go to waste.

Edited November 19, 2003 by j_b

[scrambler]

Look, I could care less about all this ‘rah rah for my team’ crap. Sometimes I feel my interests are served by the Repub, other times it’s the Dems. Sometimes I say ‘fuck both parties, they can both go to hell, goddamn self-serving bastards.” Besides all this political talk makes me feel like a tool.

 

I want to reiterate a critical item in the DOD memo as stated: Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal.

STATEMENT ON NEWS REPORTS OF AL QAEDA AND IRAQ CONNECTIONS

 

With regard to leaking information to bolster the rationale for a war where someone else's sons and daughters are dying, this smacks too closely of the Plame Affair.

 

I want to use George H.W. Bush's own words to impart my feeling about the players in the Administration who use information for purely political gains, i.e., cover their asses:

 

"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.

 

And when it comes to the mission of CIA and the Intelligence Community, George Tenet has it exactly right. Give the President and the policymakers the best possible intelligence product and stay out of the policymaking or policy implementing except as specifically decreed in the law.

 

Because of your support - the same support given to a fledgling DCI 24 years ago - George Tenet is able to do that. Just that. Able to provide the President the best intelligence possible in the entire world.

 

For Douglas MacArthur, Duty, Honor, Country represented a great moral code of conduct and chivalry for those who guard this beloved land. That's true here at CIA. It's true all across the Intelligence Community - the huge community that comes together under the leadership of the Director. This complex might well have been named for more deserving men who preceded me as DCI. You think of Bill Donovan or Allen Dulles or Dick Helms here with us today. Giants in their field. Or it might have been named for people like Welch, or Buckley [CIA officers Richard Welch and William Buckley killed in the line of duty.] And like all of them, and so many more, I'm proud to have served with the men and women of CIA. (Applause)

 

It has been said that "patriotism is not a frenzied burst of emotion, but rather the quiet and steady dedication of a lifetime." To me, this sums up CIA - Duty, Honor, Country. This timeless creative service motivates those who serve at Langley and in intelligence all across the world.

 

It is an honor to stand here and be counted among you. Thank you very, very much."

 

--exerpts from Remarks By George Bush, 41st President of the United States, At the Dedication Ceremony for the George Bush Center for Intelligence, 26 April 1999

 

To wrap up, here's another link for you to ponder: The dubious link between Iraq and al Qaeda

--news story from THE HILL, The Newspaper For and About the U.S. Congress, Wed., Nov. 19, 2003

 

Here are exerpts from the article:

 

"Other material in the dossier either appears unsubstantiated or — like the claims regarding Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta — has already been discredited. Peter Bergen, the al Qaeda expert who interviewed bin Laden in March 1997 and presumably has a pretty good handle on the security precautions bin Laden was keeping at the time, doesn’t buy the idea that the terror chief would have shown up for a meet-and-greet in Baghdad less than a year later, as the Feith dossier alleges.

 

“It’s just not plausible,” Bergen writes on his website, “that bin Laden would have slipped into Iraq unnoticed in January 1998. He was already a very wanted man and a widely recognized person.”

 

I could run through all the allegations in the Feith memo, but the bottom line is that on this question, the case really is closed. Just not in the way the Standard article suggests."

 

[willstrickland]

So Puget, I gotta know:

 

After you're done slobbin' Kristol's sack , who's next in line...Kondracke, the stuttering fucking idiot; Barnes, the tubby self-righteous bastard; or Donaldson, the rugster himself...and does Sammy D at least take that snaffle pelt off his noggin before he gives you the facial?

 

Do you really expect to get "objective" journalism from a publication that is essentially "This Week's Republican Talking Points and Agenda" ?

 

A link between SoDamnInsane and Al Q wouldn't surprise me at all, but again: Do you think Americans are more or less likely to be attacked by terrorists today compared to before we went into Iraq?

 

for me the answer is clear.

[j_b]

case closed

 

[j_b]

more specific info or how the intelligence community dismissed the data in the report more than a year ago.