Bush making America safer in the future

“In October 2002, Bush described Zarqawi as "one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."

Zarqawi wrote a January 2003 letter to bin Laden's lieutenants, intercepted at the Iraqi border, saying that if al Qaeda adopted his approach in Iraq, he would swear "fealty to you [bin Laden] publicly and in the news media."

In March, in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tenet described Zarqawi's network as among groups having "links" to al Qaeda but with its own "autonomous leadership . . . own targets [and] they plan their own attacks."

Although Zarqawi may have cooperated with al Qaeda in the past, officials said it is increasingly clear that he has been operating independently of bin Laden's group and has his own network of operatives.

The other group, Ansar al-Islam, began in 2001 among Kurdish Sunni Islamic fundamentalists in northern Iraq, fighting against the two secular Kurdish groups that operated under the protection of the United States. At one point, bin Laden supported Ansar, as did Zarqawi, who is believed to have visited their area more than once. Tenet referred to Ansar as one of the Sunni groups that had benefited from al Qaeda links.”

“Here's the story on Zarqawi:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/”

“Te Washington Post has some great stories today regarding commision findings, along with links that are chock full o white house quotes regarding links between Iraq & al qaeda.”

“I have yet to even hear a liberal admit the world IS a better place due to the sacrifice of our brave troops. To say otherwise is akin to pissing on their graves."
Nigal
08:18:16 AM
06/17/04


The world is not a better place, and the only grave I'm pissing on is the chickenhawks that are getting our people killed.”

“I'm #&%!$ting on thier grave as well!”

“Did not some head honcho tell the commission that the Iraq war appears to be an amazing recruiting tool for militants?

Maybe that makes the world a better place, former unemployed militants now have work?”

“So basically the guy's link Al Qaeda is nebulous at best, and is linked to Iraq due to his geographic location, not because of a close network of allies.”

“That seems to about sum it up, SMW.”

“Of course there are those who find it odd that he is missing from the FBI's most wanted terrorists list.”

“Dood!

First, ad homiem.

Now, nebulous.


Very hip!”

“You like that, huh? My verbosity knows no bounds!”

“I didn't see Sheik Yerbuti on that wanted list.”

“It's amazing what the media will do to distort the minds of poor libs like Bearmagnet, Violin etc... I've already posted an example before. Now we have Lee Hamilton, A Democrat member of the commission at least telling us the straight truth. What did he say? He said the what the commission has stated is NOT substantially different from what the administration has been saying.”

“"Former Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democratic vice chairman of the panel, said media reports of a conflict between the administration and the commission were 'not that apparent to me.'"”

“Is he talking about a conflict in the stories or a conflict?”

“They're still looking for Boris & Natasha.”

“Phaedrus - he's saying there isn't a confict in stories.”

“On the Today show this morning, Dick Cheney fired away again at the press for, in his view, making too much of the 9/11 commission's staff report that disputes the administration's claims about the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida. Some members of the press are "often lazy, often report what someone else in the press said without doing their homework," Cheney said.

There are lots of lazy people out there who don't do their homework, it seems, including leading experts on al-Qaida. In an Australian radio interview, transcript here, author Peter Bergen of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, said the administration is "grasping at straws."

"One of the striking things about al-Qaeda is how few Iraqis there are in the organisation. A lot of Saudis, a lot of Algerians, a lot of Yemenis, but no Iraqis. There are probably more American members of al-Qaeda than Iraqis, and stronger ties to Brooklyn than Baghdad, if al-Qaeda had an office in Brooklyn.

"But I mean the larger point is there were no substantive dealings between al-Qaeda and Iraq. I mean, they met in Sudan on a number of occasions. We know from the United Nations you can have meetings without results, and that was the case – you can't point to any outcomes."

Q: So when President Bush says there are numerous contacts between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein...

PETER BERGEN: "Well, it's an interesting kind of construct, isn't it? Because, I mean, I have contacts with all sorts of people, I met with bin Laden – it's doesn't mean I did business with him. You know, I think this is grasping at straws at this point ... The point is that there's no there there, there's just nothing... I mean, some of the things that were supposed to have been true aren't true, for example, a meeting between the hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent, well, it just never happened."”

“phagrus!”

“So anybody see what Putin's been saying...

"Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country warned the United States several times that Saddam Hussein's regime was planning terror attacks on the United States and its overseas interests."

And this from a guy opposed to the war in Iraq.

Check out CNN, Rueters, etc.”

“Vladimir Putin, that two bit dictator.”

“The last thing put in is is a good guy.

As far as what he's saying now, I'm curious as to why the adminisration didn't mention this earlier.”

“Hey jacka$$, he's the duly elected President of the Russian Federation. That hardly makes him a two bit dictator.”

“Hey jacka$$, he's the duly elected President of the Russian Federation. That hardly makes him a two bit dictator.



HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa”

“You don't follow Russian politics, do you?”

“LET'S RACK THAT ONE!

Hey jacka$$, he's the duly elected President of the Russian Federation. That hardly makes him a two bit dictator."
Savage
03:13:38 PM
06/18/04

Beautiful.”

“A bad guy with nukes....... here we go again!”

“I really am curious what pooty-poot-Putin is up to.

How can you square what he just said with this from last December:?

"We do not want the United States to lose their war on terrorism. We are US partners in the fight against terrorism," Putin said.

"But as for Iraq, this is a separate matter. There were no international terrorists under Hussein. This is a separate problem," said Putin. ”

“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/18/eveningnews/main624825.shtml

(CBS/AP) Former President Bill Clinton's memoir "My Life" is not due out until next week, but The Associated Press got a copy of it today and reported some of what's in it without directly quoting from the book.

One of the more important sections of the book— dealing with al Qaeda, is the focus of the Associated Press report.

In one of the more compelling passages of Clinton's book, he recounts a meeting with then President-elect George W. Bush, reports CBS News Anchor Dan Rather.

The former president claims he warned Mr. Bush that the biggest threat to the nation's security was Osama Bin-Laden and al Qaeda.

According to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush said little in response, and then switched subjects.”

“Well, we know Bush is exactly the sort of man Bin Laden wants in the White House... a religious reactionary to fuel his worldwide culture war. Now it appears that Bush is Putin's kind of guy as well.

I ask myself Why would the 'duly elected president' (OH, the Irony) of the Russian Federation want a Bush type in the White House? I'm sure the Russians would be heartbroken if Iraq became "America's Afghanistan".

What is that old KGB spook really up to?”

“Yea!


This thread again!”

“Published on Saturday, June 19, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
Bush Told He is Playing into Bin Laden's Hands
Al-Qaida may 'reward' American president with strike aimed at keeping him in office, senior intelligence man says

by Julian Borger in Washington

A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.

In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organization than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.

He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organization from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.


The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror" yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed, who was one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.

But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very fine line," he said yesterday.

Imperial Hubris is the latest in a relentless stream of books attacking the administration in election year. Most of the earlier ones, however, were written by embittered former officials. This one is unprecedented in being the work of a serving official with nearly 20 years experience in counter-terrorism who is still part of the intelligence establishment.

The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit anonymously and without naming which agency he works for, may reflect the increasing frustration of senior intelligence officials at the course the administration has taken.

Peter Bergen, the author of two books on Bin Laden and al-Qaida, said: "His views represent an amped-up version of what is emerging as a consensus among intelligence counter-terrorist professionals."

Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush White House and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.

"Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even wilful failure to recognize the ideological power, lethality and growth potential of the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus that threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq."

In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture the al-Qaida leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001. Instead of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable.

"For my money, the game was over at Tora Bora," Anonymous said.

Yesterday President Bush repeated his assertion that Bin Laden was cornered and that there was "no hole or cave deep enough to hide from American justice".

Anonymous said: "I think we overestimate significantly the stress [Bin Laden's] under. Our media and sometimes our policymakers suggest he's hiding from rock to rock and hill to hill and cave to cave. My own hunch is that he's fairly comfortable where he is."

The death and arrest of experienced operatives might have set back Bin Laden's plans to some degree but when it came to his long-term capacity to threaten the US, he said, "I don't think we've laid a glove on him".

"What I think we're seeing in al-Qaida is a change of generation," he said."The people who are leading al-Qaida now seem a lot more professional group.

"They are more bureaucratic, more management competent, certainly more literate. Certainly, this generation is more computer literate, more comfortable with the tools of modernity. I also think they're much less prone to being the Errol Flynns of al-Qaida. They're just much more careful across the board in the way they operate."

As for weapons of mass destruction, he thinks that if al-Qaida does not have them already, it will inevitably acquire them.

The most likely source of a nuclear device would be the former Soviet Union, he believes. Dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons, could be home-made by al-Qaida's own experts, many of them trained in the US and Britain.

Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.

"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.

"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."

The White House has yet to comment publicly on Imperial Hubris, which is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts say it may try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.

The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent, and the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a highly sensitive job in the late 90s.

But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA counter-terrorism center, said he had been vindicated by events. "He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the subject."

Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy.

He said: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?"

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004”

“what next?”

“I'm not a big fan of Safire, but at least he, unlike John Kerry, and a lot of journalists, understands the English language, and can recognize when he is being manipulated.

----
" "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ."

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" — just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack. "

From Safire's Op Ed in the NYT.

Once again let's put to rest this myth that there was no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. There is no question that there was.”

“And again,

"WASHINGTON, June 20 (UPI) -- The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday.

John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC's "Meet the Press" that documents captured in Iraq "indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida."

The Fedayeen were a special unit of volunteers given basic training in irregular warfare. The lieutenant colonel, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, has the same name as an Iraqi thought to have attended a planning meeting for the Sept. 11 attacks in January 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was also attended by two of the hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hamzi and senior al-Qaida leaders."

From UPI.”

“Then why is the commision asking the administration to provide proof if they have it?

(Safire is a partisan whore.)”

“One Iraqi may have been involved?

Pretty thin~~~~~~~~~~~~”

“The commision is not asking for proof of a connection between Saddam and 9/11 Violin. That's the whole point, Nobody in the administration ever said there was a connection, only a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The commision is asking for any additional evidence, to add to the evidence they already have,That Cheney, specifically, may have on that connection, because he's spoken about some info that they may not have.”

“That UPI (Rev Moon owned) is new info to me. Isn't 'Ahmed Hikmat Shakir' the Iraqi equivalent of 'John Smith'?”

“Nobody in the administration said there was a connection between Iraq and 9/11???


Isn't that why Dubya took us to war?”

“No MarkO that's not. Part of the reason for the war was Iraq's connection to Al Qaeda, not Iraq's connection to 9/11. The President has stated in the past, repeatedly that there was no evidence of Iraqi complicity in 9/11. Now the media (and Kerry more recently) try to blur this distinction to manipulate peoples opinions. So let me make sure we have this straight for everyone: Al Qaeda and 9/11 are not the same thing. Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization, 9/11 was a terrorist operation. Saying that Iraq had a connection to Al Qaeda (at least to any thinking person who understands English) is not the same as saying Iraq had a connection to 9/11.”

“Uh huh.

So, you're sayin' that Iraq had a connection with Al Qaida?

That defies logic, since Hussien's regime was hated by the fundamentalists as morally corrupt and secular.

Or maybe you're saying that members of Al Qaida had some sort of "relationship" with at least one person from Iraq, therefore a "connection".

Maybe you should tutor me in English, bright boy.”

“MarkO, the connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda are well documented, they are even documented in the 9/11 commision staff report which the media has so irresponsibly reported. (Safire actually blames the staff for writing the report in such a way as to blur the distinction. But anyone who read the report should have seen right through that.) And the commission members were all over the morning talks shows Sunday talking about the connections.”

“The events of 9/11 have no connection to Iraq, Saddam, WMD's in Iraq, etc.

Bush is a liar and a traitor.”

“Bison - If al Qaeda planned and perpetrated 9-11 and Saddam had a connection to al Qaeda, doesn't that imply a connection between Saddam and 9-11?

Did Saddam send money/materials/personnel with instructions that they not be used in any attacks on US buildings with airplanes?

These logical contortions are too hard for me to understand.”

“This spinning is making me dizzy!!!

Bush lied.........American boys DIED!!!

This just in........American boys are still dying!

Two years ago when Dubya started making noises about invading Iraq I offered to drive the bus to Canada with my boys and any others who would like to go to escape this UN-NECESSARY war.

The offer still stands!!!”

“Violin - The President said REPEATEDLY that THERE IS NO evidence of any connection to 9/11.”

“There is no logical contortion at all.”

“Is there evidence to connect Iraq to Al Queda?”

“OK, so why do so many Americans believe there was a connection?

(psssst, because Dubya indicated so)

Ah, but if you actually parse the sentences, he didn't really SAY that.

But he sure got a lot of knuckleheads to believe it.”