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Author | Topic: Is there a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
According to a recently declassified document, the CIA found no credible information that the April 2001 meeting occurred, and in fact, that it was unlikely that it did occur. Carl Levin questioned Cheney on this in the Senate.
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=225368 (This page contains a link to the declassified document, but I can't get it to work)
I also refer you to a Guardian Article - Spain links suspect in 9/11 plot to Baghdad | World news | The Guardian The author of this article, David Rose, later confessed that most of the articles he wrote in the run-up to the war were based on information supplied by the INC which he should not have trusted: Iraqi defectors tricked us with WMD lies, but we must not be fooled again | Iraq | The Guardian PE This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 10-01-2004 03:51 AM
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
Saddam did, in fact, fund suicide bombing campaigns and many bombers' families in the past. It *is* part of the global war on terror, and regardless of spin, Iraq has pretty much nothing to do with 9/11, except to say that terrorism is terrorism anywhere, and terrorists perpetrated 9/11. Cool - does that mean that you think Nicaragua should invade the US for funding the Contras? PE
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
Gotcha. Not suicide, so good guys. Lucky for all concerned that the 9/11 bombers didn't bail from the planes, else Creationistal would have to support them.
The contras' brutality earned them a wide notoriety. They regularly destroyed health centers, schools, agricultural cooperatives, and community centers-symbols of the Sandinistas' social programs in rural areas. People caught in these assaults were often tortured and killed in the most gruesome ways. One example, reported by The Guardian of London, suffices. In the words of a survivor of a raid in Jinotega province, which borders on Honduras: "Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off, and their eyes poked out They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit." PE eta:attribution This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 10-04-2004 06:49 PM
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
Indeed. This is particularly timely:
Rumsfeld doubts Saddam-Laden link .. . In front of an audience in New York, Mr Rumsfeld was asked about connections between Saddam and Osama Bin Laden. "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," he said. BBC NEWS | Americas | Rumsfeld questions Saddam-Bin Laden link PE
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
I've been exposed as a commie raghead lover. When Rumsfeld said of Saddam and Al-Qaeda:
to my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two What he actually meant to say was:
I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between al-Qaida and Iraq all of a sudden. Rumsfeld: Iraq/al-Qaida remarks 'misunderstood' | World news | The Guardian Glad that's cleared up then. PE
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
Loudmouth writes: So what was that? Was that a "flip flop" or a "mixed message"? He was misunderstood by the liberal pinko media, and you are an evildoer trying to take away our freedoms for trying to suggest otherwise. Obviously. PE
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
Loudmouth writes: Saddam kicked out the inspectors so he could continue using torture and killings to intimidate the populace. Inspectors, even if they had already scoured every inch of Iraq, should have stayed in the country for this reason. Increasing pressure should have mounted once these types of activities were discovered. Saddam MAY HAVE removed WMD's because they were a liability. The presence of WMD's did nothing to strenghthen his position in Iraq and were a liability if they were round by the UN.In my opinion, Saddam was playing a bluff. He was hoping that the THREAT of WMD's would be enough to first keep his neighbors from invading, and secondly to keep the US from invading. If the US or the UN called the bluff all they had to do was invite inspectors in and show them that they don't have WMD's now nor did they in the past 4 years. Saddam never thought ahead on this one. One of the things which I don't think gets the coverage it deserves is the effect that sanctions had on the people of Iraq. Several high ranking members of the UN, including the then Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday, resigned in protest accusing the US and Britain of a deliberate policy of genocide. Madeleine Albright, when questioned about the Unicef report which had 500,000 children dying in Iraq as a direct result of sanctions remarked that "the price was worth it". Iraq was getting mixed messages about how and when sanctions would ever be lifted. The UN resolution had words to the effect that sanctions would only be lifted when Iraq complied with its disarmament requirements (whatever that means) but subsequent remarks by the US administration, including Clinton, indicated that sanctions would remain until Saddam was gone. Given that you'd have to prove a negative anyway and sanctions would not be lifted while he was in power, of course it was in Saddam's best interests to keep inspections (and therefore sanctions) going for as long as possible, even though Scott Ritter, a member of Unscom, declared Iraq effectively disarmed in 1998. When it was discovered that some of the Unscom inspectors were reporting back their findings to the Isreali governement, then of course it was obvious to all in the Iraqi regime that the inspections were to be a never-ending sham. From what I recall, the UN resolution called upon all nations to reveal any intelligence they had about weapons to Unscom and then Unmovic, also something that was never done, as Hans Blix himself said. No other nation was admonished for non-compliance with the resolution. Personally, I don't think there is anything anyone outside the US administration, least of all Saddam, could have done to prevent a war. PE
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
Loudmouth writes: Oh, so when Kerry is misunderstood it is a flip flop, but when anyone in the Bush administration is misunderstood it is because of the liberally biased media. Nice try, but I ain't buying it. You're obviously brainwashed. I bet you've got posters of Hitler and Bin Laden on your (toilet) wall. PE edit: had to put the 'i' in Hitler This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 10-05-2004 12:17 PM
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
When people say that "George Bush is a great leader"... Do people really say that? (Sorry, I'm a Brit and can't really fathom the appeal). Mind you (OT, and sticking my neck out here), do you think that Kerry would have done things differently if he'd been in office this term? From my restricted-view vantage point, I'd say that apart from not reading books about goats to schoolkids at crucially important times and possibly enlisting more countries to support the US in the invasion of Iraq, there's very little to choose between them, in foreign policy terms. Is this fair? PE
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
minnemooseus writes: Those sanctions themselves could be considered "acts of war". Not military, but social/economic, and just as harmful (to say the least). Just the amount of media coverage that the damage caused by sanctions get is shocking. One would think, in a democratic society the fact that the UN people on the ground, humanitarian co-ordinators, hardly apologists for Saddam, quit in disgust after accusing our countries of genocide (on a scale comparable to Rwanda) is at least grounds for a public discussion, but it seems to be the norm that the excuse that Saddam caused the suffering by spending the oil for food money on palaces is accepted uncritically and without further explanation. PE
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