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Author Topic:   Violent propaganda
Primordial Egg
Inactive Member


Message 72 of 135 (202643)
04-26-2005 1:32 PM
Reply to: Message 70 by Tal
04-26-2005 12:37 PM


Re: I think we are getting way away from some important points.
Are these the same Iraqi defectors who were shown to be hopelessly unreliable? One 45 minute claim in particular springs to mind.
Iraqi defectors' weapons claims were 'false'
This article by Seymour Hersh in the 12 May 2003 New Yorker goes into greater detail about Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami incident - it appears that what he had to say was completely fabricated (line breaks added by me, to make it readable):
Almost immediately after September 11th, the I.N.C. began to publicize the stories of defectors who claimed that they had information connecting Iraq to the attacks. In an interview on October 14, 2001, conducted jointly by the Times and Frontline, the public-television program, Sabah Khodada, an Iraqi Army captain, said that the September 11th operation was conducted by people who were trained by Saddam, and that Iraq had a program to instruct terrorists in the art of hijacking.
Another defector, who was identified only as a retired lieutenant general in the Iraqi intelligence service, said that in 2000 he witnessed Arab students being given lessons in hijacking on a Boeing 707 parked at an Iraqi training camp near the town of Salman Pak, south of Baghdad.
In separate interviews with me, however, a former C.I.A. station chief and a former military intelligence analyst said that the camp near Salman Pak had been built not for terrorism training but for counter-terrorism training. In the mid-eighties, Islamic terrorists were routinely hijacking aircraft. In 1986, an Iraqi airliner was seized by pro-Iranian extremists and crashed, after a hand grenade was triggered, killing at least sixty-five people. (At the time, Iran and Iraq were at war, and America favored Iraq.) Iraq then sought assistance from the West, and got what it wanted from Britain’s MI6. The C.I.A. offered similar training in counter-terrorism throughout the Middle East.
We were helping our allies everywhere we had a liaison, the former station chief told me. Inspectors recalled seeing the body of an airplanewhich appeared to be used for counter-terrorism trainingwhen they visited a biological-weapons facility near Salman Pak in 1991, ten years before September 11th.
It is, of course, possible for such a camp to be converted from one purpose to another. The former C.I.A. official noted, however, that terrorists would not practice on airplanes in the open. That’s Hollywood rinky-dink stuff, the former agent said. They train in basements. You don’t need a real airplane to practice hijacking. The 9/11 terrorists went to gyms. But to take one back you have to practice on the real thing.
Salman Pak was overrun by American troops on April 6th. Apparently, neither the camp nor the former biological facility has yielded evidence to substantiate the claims made before the war. A former Bush Administration intelligence official recalled a case in which Chalabi’s group, working with the Pentagon, produced a defector from Iraq who was interviewed overseas by an agent from the D.I.A. The agent relied on an interpreter supplied by Chalabi’s people. Last summer, the D.I.A. report, which was classified, was leaked. In a detailed account, the London Times described how the defector had trained with Al Qaeda terrorists in the late nineteen-nineties at secret camps in Iraq, how the Iraqis received instructions in the use of chemical and biological weapons, and how the defector was given a new identity and relocated. A month later, however, a team of C.I.A. agents went to interview the man with their own interpreter. He says, ‘No, that’s not what I said,’ the former intelligence official told me. He said, ‘I worked at a fedayeen camp; it wasn’t Al Qaeda.’ He never saw any chemical or biological training. Afterward, the former official said, the C.I.A. sent out a piece of paper saying that this information was incorrect. They put it in writing.
But the C.I.A. rebuttal, like the original report, was classified. I remember wondering whether this one would leak and correct the earlier, invalid leak. Of course, it didn’t. The former intelligence official went on, One of the reasons I left was my sense that they were using the intelligence from the C.I.A. and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn’t like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write the stuff. They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason withto the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God. He added, If it doesn’t fit their theory, they don’t want to accept it.
PE
This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-26-2005 12:35 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by Tal, posted 04-26-2005 12:37 PM Tal has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 74 by Tal, posted 04-26-2005 1:57 PM Primordial Egg has replied

  
Primordial Egg
Inactive Member


Message 75 of 135 (202658)
04-26-2005 2:10 PM
Reply to: Message 74 by Tal
04-26-2005 1:57 PM


Re: I think we are getting way away from some important points.
You're reaching. What reason would you have for believing or even knowing that Khodada was who he said he was or that he was telling the truth. Some guy told you?
posted 2 sources, the defector was one. The 911 commission hearings was the other.
Good, so now we know you're no longer prepared to defend the claims of the Iraqi defector we can move on to what you quote of the 911 Commission.
America had intelligence information of training classes in an old airliner in Salmon Pak, south of Baghdad. At this site, terrorists were trained how to hijack airliners using only short knives.
Intelligence information? That would be some guy told another guy? Sounds bizarrely like exactly the same source, no? Everything here is consistent with Hersh's report. Its a pretty weak argument to ignore Hersh's article because his sources are anonymous (as they were for his Abu Ghraib article, if memory serves me correctly) and then seek refuge in "intelligence information" which has since been discredited.
PE
This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-26-2005 01:12 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 74 by Tal, posted 04-26-2005 1:57 PM Tal has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 76 by Tal, posted 04-26-2005 2:24 PM Primordial Egg has replied

  
Primordial Egg
Inactive Member


Message 79 of 135 (202760)
04-26-2005 5:43 PM
Reply to: Message 76 by Tal
04-26-2005 2:24 PM


Re: I think we are getting way away from some important points.
Even Colin Powell has admitted that the evidence obtained defectors was inaccurate, I see no reason to believe this defector just because he says he has a name.
MR. RUSSERT: Thank you very much, sir. In February of 2003, you put your enormous personal reputation on the line before the United Nations and said that you had solid sources for the case against Saddam Hussein.
It now appears that an agent called "Curve Ball" had misled the CIA by suggesting that Saddam had trucks and trains that were delivering biological-chemical weapons. How concerned are you that some of the information you shared with the world is now inaccurate and discredited?
SECRETARY POWELL: I'm very concerned. When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully. We looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains; there was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate, and so I'm deeply disappointed.
But I'm also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community; but it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong, and, in some cases, deliberately misleading, and for that I am disappointed and I regret it.
You chose to ignore the Guardian report about false intelligence obtained from defectors as well.
Your refuge is to pretend that the intelligence referred to in the 911 commission reports amounts to anything more substantial than the intelligence gleaned from these very defectors, whilst ignoring a story by a Pullitzer Prize winning journalist known for his inside sources and his work in bringing to light details of the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib, amongst others.
PE
edit to add source
This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-26-2005 04:44 PM
This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-26-2005 04:45 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 76 by Tal, posted 04-26-2005 2:24 PM Tal has not replied

  
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