Here is an article I found on Iraq/Al Qaeda. The guy seems to be legit, give it a read. He makes a good case on the link, although it is from Dec 2002.
Thanks for the link. I disagree with the author's arguments. At one point he says that Iraq tried to kill Bush sr. around the same time as the WTC was first bombed. That doesn't mean that Al Qaeda and Saddam are linked. Also in Bin Ladens most recent tape, he called for the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Concrete statements like that weigh more heavily than the circumstatial links the author uses. I understand how someone else might read that article and come to different conclusions though.
You are absolutely right and so is FranchiseBlade. A lot of people do feel that Iraq was behind 9/11. As FB said, it's around half of the country. Even though it isn't true, runs contrary to everything we know about Saddam and Bin Laden and there is zero evidence to support it. I wonder why people believe it... Oh, that's right. Bush said repeatedly he would present proof of it. And then he backed down on that and moved on to the next reason in the shell game of reasons to attack Iraq. But he didn't back down all the way. He continues even still to hammer away at 9/11 every time he talks about attacking Iraq. And people continue to support attacking because they're still freaked out about 9/11. I don't blame them. If I thought he'd had something to do with 9/11 I would be supporting this war. He didn't. It was a lie. And you, and many Americans, were faked out. It really was an amazing feat. Just say something a lot of times and people believe it. Amazing they continue to believe it even after Bush's people admit it wasn't true. Many Americans still believe that Kuwaiti babies were removed from incubators by Iraqi forces even though it's a matter of record now that that whole story was fabricated by a Kuwaiti princess with the aid of a US PR firm. Smoke and mirrors. You have been had. If you continue to believe in the 9/11 link you should at least know it is an act of willful self deception so you can feel better about this being a just war.
April Glaspie. And Hillary killed Vince Foster. Your ability to selectively hear what you want to hear and ignore the rest is astounding.
thanks for your assistance with my personal problems. by the way...as for your diagnosis..."hello, pot...this is the kettle calling."
You've reached new levels of annoying on this issue, Jorge. I didn't think that was possible. Kudos. It wasn't MY poll, it WAS the last poll published that wasn't a flash poll, and OF COURSE the numbers change when we declare war. That doesn't change the fact that this is the most unpopular, questionable military action, both with regard to national and international opinion, since Viet Nam. It's amazing how, when a poll shows that the country's split in half, you ignore it, you deny the poll's validity and continue to assert that anyone who opposes the action is a hippie extremist freak and then when war is declared and numbers predictably rise you suddenly trust the polls. And, by the way, you will NEVER beat the shame you brought on yourself opposing a shelter for veterans on the same day as you trumpeted over and over again that you support the troops. Why do you think so many vets are hard off? It is hard, it is psychologically damaging to kill a lot of strangers, whether it's the right thing to do or not. If your support for the troops ends when they stop "contributing to society" it is worth NOTHING. If I was a veteran I'd kick your ass for your incredible hypocrisy.
However we may rankle each other on this issue, the fact remains: Bush promised to link Saddam to 9/11, people believed him, his own people admitted there was no such link, people continue to believe the misinformation he put out even after he backed off it. Every time you say Salman Pak to try and revive this lie of a conspiracy I will say April Glaspie to revive the still undisputed controversy over whether or not Bush the elder initially supported Iraq's Kuwait invasion. But that's neither here nor there. You were lied to by your president to justify an unjust war. Why doesn't that make you angry?
Reporters visit suspect Iraqi sites BBC.com The Iraqi authorities have taken foreign journalists on tours of a former nuclear facility and a site alleged by dissidents to be a terrorist training camp. Monday's two visits bring to six the number of escorted tours in the last month, as Baghdad attempts to disprove claims that it is continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction. I am not going to go to war based on a fabrication especially from politically motivated Iraqi defectors who intend to misuse the tragedy of 11 September They coincide with a report published in London by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which says Iraq could build a nuclear weapon within months if President Saddam Hussein was able to obtain radioactive material. Reporters were taken to the Al-Tammuz reactor in Al-Toweitheh, 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Baghdad, at which the UN says there has been unexplained activity. The Iraqis claim it is used for pharmaceutical research. They were also given unprecedented access to the Salman Pak site, 40 km east of Baghdad, alleged by Iraqi defectors to have been used for training Islamic militants. 'No terrorism training' The former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter accompanied the journalists to Salman Pak. Ritter is currently on a private visit to Iraq He said there was obviously no terrorism training taking place there - a site he said the US was ready to go to war for. The journalists were shown an old Iraqi plane abandoned in a field, which Mr Ritter said was used by Iraqi security forces to train for rescuing passengers from hijacked planes. "Any nation that has an airline industry trains people to rescue those who have been on aircraft that have been hijacked," he said. "If there is a time and a place to go to war I will be there," he said. "But I am not going to go to war based on a fabrication, especially from politically motivated Iraqi defectors who intend to misuse the tragedy of 11 September by saying somehow those who perpetrated that crime were trained here." 'Completely destroyed' At al-Toweitheh, reporters saw piles of debris and damaged equipment. Iraqi officials say the al-Toweitheh site was completely destroyed "The site was completely destroyed and it cannot be used for any nuclear activity any more," said Faiz Hussein, the head of the site. Reporters were taken inside buildings dating from 1994, where they saw the production of medical kits for treatment of kidney and liver diseases, and laboratories which officials said were used for agricultural research. Iraqi officials have again and again claimed that Iraq does not have the desire or the capability to build weapons of mass destruction. They say the leadership is to focus on rebuilding the country, which has been hard hit by more than a decade of sanctions. But there have been no weapons inspectors in Iraq since 1998 to verify or refute the Iraqi claims. I take it you would jump to agree with Scott Ritter and Saddam Hussein? The existence of Salman Pak has been confirmed by many more sources than you could provide on the contrary. Batman is there any source you could provide for us to exploit the Salman Pak lie for us? We need a source to consider your assertion.
It's very simple to me, X-Pac. Bush promised evidence of nukes and an Al Qaeda connection and then shifted to other reasons for war after he was unable to provide credible evidence of either. I don't think I need a link to prove a negative. I've never said that there was definitive proof Saddam didn't do many bad things. There are lots of bad men in the world (even ones we didn't originally arm, like we did Saddam or Noriega), doing bad things. As much as I'd sometimes wish it were different, we're not international police. We were supposed to be averting a clear and present danger with this war. We're now down to chemical weapons and missiles which can't fly further than 400 miles. Oh, and that he's a liar. Salman Pak may well have been used to train terrorists. It may even have been used by Al Qaeda terrorists, though we've yet to see any evidence of this. But we do not know this to be true. We were assured a clear cause for war would be presented and that it revolved around nukes and 9/11. That never happened. Why, when there are other legitimate beefs with Saddam, did they push these assertions so hard when they clearly didn't have the evidence they promised? Apparently they believed that the American people and the international community would not feel that Saddam's abuse of his own people, his chemical weapons or the fact that Salman Pak may have once trained terrorists was enough. Apparently they understood that if that were the standard for a pre-emptive invasion, it would strike terror into the world at large, as it would signal the first of many, many pre-emptive strikes. This, by the way, is the main reason that North Korea is so eager to arm themselves against us. First we lump them into an "Axis of Evil" and then we say we can attack any country we want, unprovoked, if we feel they might be a threat in the future. Although we did not invent the N. Korean threat, we certainly sped it up. Please don't infer that I stand with Saddam or believe him over anyone else. This whole deal is muti-faceted. There are more than two ways to think about it, no matter what Bush would have us believe.
I think I agree with your post more than I disagree. I believe the case could be made but I think Bush could had done a better job of persuading the world. I agree with you on that. But Saddam has done so little to satisify the international community. He clearly harbors WMD and obviously has no plans to turn them over. Given his track record I wouldn't trust the man with a sparkler let alone bio/chem weapons. Above this his funding and links to terror make me very uneasy. I am under the impression this is strike three for Saddam. The added pressure got Saddam to destory 46(?) Al Samoud missles. Perhaps if he's not a madman and a survivor, like many say, we can avoid an engagement if he decides the United States is serious this time. Anyways I am glad we can agree on certain aspects of the problem.
Just a couple of things, Batman. First, I sincerely admire your conviction here, despite the fact that you and I share very few opinions on this issue. With regards to English public opinion re: Blair & the war, I was shocked to see this in the Guardian today: Public opinion has shifted dramatically towards military action against Iraq, with the anti-war lead in the Guardian/ICM opinion poll narrowing from 23 to only six points in the past month. This has been accompanied by a recovery in Tony Blair's personal rating, according to results of the March survey, published today.... Surprisingly the poll also shows quite good ratings for George Bush with 53% of voters saying they have confidence in him to make the right decisions on Iraq, while 43% have no confidence in him. There has been an eight and a half point swing towards support for war in the past month. Disapproval has dropped eight points to 44% and support has risen by nine points to 38%. The entire Guardian write-up is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,916466,00.html and you can download the entire poll here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2003/03/18/17303ICM_poll.pdf Regarding our lack of allies, the following European countries have expressed explicit support for our position and actions: the United Kingdom, Spain, Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Portugal, Bosnia and Montenegro. These following countries support our position, but wanted a second resolution from the UNSC: the Netherlands, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia Of those 5, The Netherlands sent Patriot missiles to Turkey before NATO approved the shipment, while the Czechs and Slovaks have sent chemical detection teams to Kuwait, so I'd characterize them as definitely supportive. 6 countries are neutral: Ireland, Austria, Finland, Serbia, Switzerland and Norway 6 countries oppose the U.S. position: France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden and Greece.
Buck and X-PAC: It's good to see that we can have an honest disagreement on issues as complex and heated as these and not devolve into a nasty fight. I hope it's been noted that, while I clearly have big problems with this war, I have never bashed the troops and I have never bashed anyone for their support of the war. I have criticized people who have sought to criticize sincere dissent (like Trader_Jorge), but I have not criticized support of the war itself. I recognize these are difficult issues, with powerful arguments on both sides. With regard to international opinion, as long as we're doing this I am heartened that there is increasing support both at home and abroad. Your list of nations and their positions though, Buck, leaves out several key players. Where is the Middle East in your list? Where's Russia or China or Japan? There remain more than six nations opposed and many of the ones you left out are more relevant than many of the ones you listed as supporting the action.
http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030210fa_fact In interviews with senior officials, the following picture emerged: American intelligence believes that Al Qaeda and Saddam reached a non-aggression agreement in 1993, and that the relationship deepened further in the mid-nineteen-nineties, when an Al Qaeda operative—a native-born Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi—was dispatched by bin Laden to ask the Iraqis for help in poison-gas training. Al-Iraqi's mission was successful, and an unknown number of trainers from an Iraqi secret-police organization called Unit 999 were dispatched to camps in Afghanistan to instruct Al Qaeda terrorists. (Training in hijacking techniques was also provided to foreign Islamist radicals inside Iraq, according to two Iraqi defectors quoted in a report in the Times in November of 2001.) Another Al Qaeda operative, the Iraqi-born Mamdouh Salim, who goes by the name Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, also served as a liaison in the mid-nineteen-nineties to Iraqi intelligence. Salim, according to a recent book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," by the former N.S.C. officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, was bin Laden's chief procurer of weapons of mass destruction, and was involved in the early nineties in chemical-weapons development in Sudan. Salim was arrested in Germany in 1998 and was extradited to the United States. He is awaiting trial in New York on charges related to the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings; he was convicted last April of stabbing a Manhattan prison guard in the eye with a sharpened comb. Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. Would you typically sign nonaggression agreements with and ask for training in poison gas those whom you want dead?
Another poll has 72% of Americans supporting war. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/iraq_poll030321.html
