Connection between Iraq and 9/11?

maybe, maybe not.

They're not the Enquirer, but they have run a lot of stories bout the war that were shaky, and are being sued for libel wehn they claimed that a British MP was on Saddaam's payroll.

 

The article also mentions Nigerien uranium, so that sends a red flag to me that this is questionable at best.

The Telegraph has a knack for "finding" documents (usually from "rubble" taht other news agencies, the US Army, the CIA, somehow don't.

 

i'm sceptical about this, not because i don't think it's possible that atta spent time suckling at the terrorist tit of abu nidal, but because the document seems too convenient, almost like a gift to GWB from the iraqi council for catching Saddam. the juxtaposition of the yellow cake and atta claims seems odd. once again, it's not that i doubt the story about the nigerian uranium, but why would it be in the same memo w/ the atta info? too weird for me.

 

william safire, in today's NYTimes, has little more info as to where this came from:

"Under interrogation, he's (Saddam) not likely to rat on his fedayeen, lead us to his hidden billions abroad or tell the truth about dirty dealings with France and Russia. Instead, he intends to lie all the way to martyrdom.

Example: Dr. Ayad Allawi, an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies, told Britain's Daily Telegraph last week that a memo has been found from Saddam's secret police chief to the dictator dated July 1, 2001, reporting that the veteran terrorist Abu Nidal had been training one Mohamed Atta in Baghdad. Nobody disputes that a few months after Atta's 9/11 suicide mission, Nidal was permanently silenced by Saddam's police, the only "suicide" to be found with four bullets in his head.

The prisoner will surely dispute all connections to Al Qaeda, along with charges that he ordered the deaths of what Tony Blair now estimates as 400,000 Shiite and Kurdish Muslims in Iraq. "

 

I think you omitted the most important part of Safire's piece:

Ah, to be a neocon eating potato pancakes.

 

Abu Nidal linked to Atta does not make Saddam connected to 9/11. Nidal was in Iraq, but many of the 9/11 hijackers were in the U.S. That doesn't connect Bush with 9/11.

 

well, actually no, atta meeting w/ nidal in iraq would pretty much be the smoking gun. you're equating the openess of US society w/ that of saddamist iraq, a falacious assumption. there's no way Atta could have met w/ Nidal in Iraq w/o Saddam's knowledge. I'm not saying the article is true, nor commenting on the memo's legitimacy, merely saying that if Atta was ther, Saddam knew.

 

There is definitely a way. Supposing that Nidal was supposedly under 24 hour surveilance, which we don't know about it's still possible. People do it all the time. Even if Saddam knew that Atta was there that also doesn't mean that he was supportive. Saddam could have kept an eye on Atta and then when he saw that Atta meant no harm to Iraqi interests, and that Atta was leaving he let Atta go. There are plenty of ways it could have happened even in Saddam's society.

 

Don't exxagerate Saddam's control of the country. The power of his government was not monolithic nor does he have supernatural powers of detection. There's no way he can really have so much control that you could safely say a person could not enter without his knowledge.

Even so, if there were a memo sent to Saddam reporting on a relationship between Atta and Nidal in Baghdad, that still doesn't confirm a link to his government. Even if the 2 were there with his blessing, that's a passive position at best. Can someone demonstrate that Saddam knew they were planning an attack on the US and helped them either actively or with safe harbor so they could complete that mission?

 

Nidal was invited to Baghdad by Saddam, and it was an official of Saddam's government that wrote the memo, so there's your link. the memo basically says they gave atta training for his mission. put that together w/ the jet fusalage at Salmaan Pak, and I don't think it's that hard to believe Nidal and the ISS gave Atta training specific to the atrocities on 9/11. all this depends of course on whether the memo's genuine- that's the real issue here.

 

I, B-Bob, have found a true connection.

First, take the "9" in 911 and move it to the end.

Next, take the second "1" and bend its top over to the right.

Finally, move the 9 downward, one half of one carriage return.

Eerily, you now have "Irq," or at least "Irg."

I should write a book like "The Bible Code."

 

and if you bend that "r" a little you'd get ICQ- perhaps Saddam and Osamma were IM-ing?

 

b-bob -

just remember..you can't spell iraq without halliburton...of course, you have to add a "q" and capitalize the "i"...but i think you see my point. i think you see it.

QuAgmIRe = coincidence????

 

The "B-Bob" Code.... is it real?

 

Dubious Link Between Atta and Saddam
A document tying the Iraqi leader with the 9/11 terrorist is probably fake. PLUS, how terror financiers manage to stay in business

Newsweek
Dec. 17, 2003
Dec. 17 - A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in the summer of 2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents.

The new document, supposedly written by the chief of the Iraqi intelligence service, was trumpeted by the Sunday Telegraph of London earlier this week in a front-page story that broke hours before the dramatic capture of Saddam Hussein. TERRORIST BEHIND SEPTEMBER 11 STRIKE WAS TRAINED BY SADDAM, ran the headline on the story written by Con Coughlin, a Telegraph correspondent and the author of the book "Saddam: The Secret Life."

Coughlin's account was picked up by newspapers around the world and was cited the next day by New York Times columnist William Safire. But U.S. officials and a leading Iraqi document expert tell NEWSWEEK that the document is most likely a forgery—part of a thriving new trade in dubious Iraqi documents that has cropped up in the wake of the collapse of Saddam's regime.

"It's a lucrative business," says Hassan Mneimneh, codirector of an Iraqi exile research group reviewing millions of captured Iraqi government documents. "There's an active document trade taking place … You have fraudulent documents that are being fabricated and sold" for hundreds of dollars a piece.

Mneimneh said he hadn't seen the Telegraph document that purports to place Atta in Baghdad. But he, along with senior U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence officials, said the claims of an Atta trip to Iraq in the months before the September 11 attacks were highly implausible—and contradicted by a wealth of information that has been collected about Atta's movements during the period he was plotting the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Telegraph story was apparently written with a political purpose: to bolster Bush administration claims of a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime. The paper described a "handwritten memo" that was supposedly sent to Saddam Hussein by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, chief of Iraqi intelligence at the time. It describes a three-day "work program" that Atta had undertaken in Baghdad under the tutelage of notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, who lived in the Iraqi capital until his death under suspicious circumstances in August 2002.

"Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian national, came with Abu Ammer [who is unidentified] and we hosted him in Abu Nidal's house at Al-Dora under our direct supervision," the document states. "We arranged a work program for him for three days with a team dedicated to working with him ... He displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy."

The document, which according to Coughlin was supplied by Iraq's interim government, doesn't say exactly when Atta was supposed to have actually flown to Baghdad. But the memo is dated July 1, 2001, and Coughlin himself places the trip as the summer of 2001.

The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta's movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. Those records show Atta crisscrossing the United States during this period—making only one overseas trip, an 11-day visit to Spain that didn't begin until six days after the date of the Iraqi memo.

One FBI document, labeled "Law Enforcement Sensitive," states that during the summer of 2001, Atta "conducted extensive travel" that included visits in Florida, Boston, New York, New Jersey and Las Vegas. Indeed, this and other FBI documents show that during the last few days in June—when the presumed Iraq trip would appear to have occurred—almost all of Atta's movements are accounted for: On June 27, 2001, Atta flew from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to Boston. On the morning of June 28, he traveled from Boston to San Francisco (flying first class) where he switched planes and landed in Las Vegas that afternoon at 2:41 p.m. That afternoon, he rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo rental-car office, set up an account at an Internet café called the Cyber Zone and checked into the EconoLodge motel on Las Vegas Boulevard, a cheap motel in a neighborhood of seedy strip joints that is located barely two blocks from the local FBI office.

The FBI records show Atta logged onto his Cyber Zone Internet account five times over the next two days and then checked out of the EconoLodge at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of July 1. He then returned his rental car and boarded a flight to Denver at 5:59 a.m., landing in Boston later that day. A week later, on July 7, Atta boarded a flight from Boston to Zurich—the first leg on his trip to Spain. He returned to the United States on July 19, 2001.

Much about Atta's movements is still unknown—and most likely will remain so. FBI officials believe, for example, that Atta flew to Las Vegas as part of a series of trips he took that summer to test security at U.S. airports in preparation for the September 11 attacks. But it is just a theory. The visit to Spain is believed to have been for a meeting with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the planners of the September 11 attacks, who also was in Spain during the same time.

While all of Atta's movements cannot be accounted for, enough is known to make it "highly unlikely" that the September 11 ringleader could have flown off to Baghdad for a three-day work program with Iraqi intelligence, a FBI official told NEWSWEEK. For similar reasons, the bureau has long since discounted claims by Czech intelligence—and widely promoted by some Iraq hawks in the Bush administration—that Atta had flown to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent around April 8, 2001.

FBI records show Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi checking out of the Diplomat Inn in Virginia Beach, Va., and writing a check for cash for $8,000 for a SunTrust account in that city on April 4, 2001. For the rest of that week, Atta's cell phone was used to make repeated calls to Florida. On April 11, Atta rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Fla. While acknowledging that a few days are unaccounted for, the FBI has found no evidence that Atta departed the country overseas during this period, an official said.

Mneimneh, the Iraqi document expert, says that there are other reasons to discount the handwritten memo touted by the Telegraph. The document includes another sensational second item: how Iraqi intelligence, helped by a "small team from the Al Qaeda organization," arranged for a shipment from Niger to reach Iraq by way of Libya and Syria. Although the shipment is unspecified, the reference to Niger was immediately suggestive of Bush administration assertions earlier this year that Iraq sought to import yellowcake uranium from that African nation—claims that also have been widely discredited as being based on other forged documents that apparently came from the Niger Embassy in Rome.

Mneimneh says the wording of the document makes him highly suspicious: Iraqi intelligence officials were notoriously conservative and rarely—if ever—put incriminating information in writing. The reference to the Iraqi intelligence working with a "small team from the Al Qaeda organization" is "too explicit," he says.

Ironically, even the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi, which has been vocal in claiming ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, was dismissive of the new Telegraph story. "The memo is clearly nonsense," an INC spokesman told NEWSWEEK.

Contacted by Newsweek, The Sunday Telegraph's Con Coughlin acknowledged that he could not prove the authenticity of the document. He said that while he got the memo about Mohammed Atta and Baghdad from a "senior" member of the Iraqi Governing Council who insisted it was "genuine," he and his newspaper had "no way of verifying it. It's our job as journalists to air these things and see what happens," he said.


Link: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3741646/

 

Skepticism rewarded. Thanks for the find Zion... everyone else pat yourselves on the back for not getting carried away with this thread.
____________

 

Apparently much more real than the "documents" that led the Telegraph to publish that news piece. Where's the love?

 

In spite of the fact that there is zero evidence in the light of day to connect Iraq and 9/11, the initial evocation of both events by the Bushies in speeches has led to this situation: the average American believes that there is a connection, so the Bushies benefit from the misdirection.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/opini...6,0,7462051.column?coll=ny-opinion-columnists

Saddam on Lips At Ground Zero

December 16, 2003


The guide from the tour bus stood in the center of a crowd in winter hats and announced, "This used to be called Ground Zero. We don't use that anymore. We now call it the World Trade Center."

Behind him yesterday was the Russian steppes.

Brooding and empty, with nothing to stop the icy wind coming off the river.

In the wild exulting over the capture of a defeated man, Hussein, you'd think that the trade center would not be as continually and vigorously inspected by sightseers. After all, Hussein had nothing to do with this. Bin Laden is your man.

Yet small crowds such as this one with their tour guide gathered through the afternoon for the length of the fence looking out at the famous and frozen real estate.

Each person you spoke to, and they were from all over the country, were pleased that the new trade center would be the world's tallest building. Also, they were supremely happy because Saddam Hussein had had something to do with blowing up the Twin Towers.

Here was a woman in the cold, Linda Jacobs, standing with her husband, Ken, from Newport News, Va., and saying, "He probably did. Who knows. But he probably did."

Her husband said, "Oh. yeah. He was in on it."

A couple from Knoxville, Tenn., Elaine and Will, agreed. "I believe he was in on it on some level," she said. "He was around there someplace," the husband said. Betty Hipp, San Antonio. "Of course Saddam was responsible."

I was out there for some time, taking notes and hometowns, and it was all the same. Saddam is bin Laden.

To thaw out, I went into the Burger King on the corner of Liberty and Church, where Mary Garcia, 53, was behind the counter and looking out the big window and right at the trade center and the people there to look at it.

"For me Hussein did it, the other guy, too. These people both is together in Iraq and in the trade center," Garcia said. "If Saddam don't do nothing, why he go into a hole? Because he is afraid we catch him for the World Trade Center that he did with bin Laden? The both of them together."

She said she has a son in Iraq, Sgt. Peter Garcia.

"He was from Italy, they send him to Iraq. He's married already in Italy. His wife doesn't stay at the base in Italy. She goes home to Puerto Rico with the baby.

"Yesterday I get up in the morning and I hear they caught this Saddam. I go, oh, thank you God. Oh, how happy could you make me? Now maybe my son comes home."

It is a rule of mine not to use man on the street interviews, but this was so unanimous and forceful that I had to listen. And as I did, I could hear George Bush and his people all saying: "We went and got Saddam because it is better to fight terrorists in Iraq than in Manhattan."

No matter that Saddam had nothing to do with the attack. There were 15 Saudi Arabians who were in the suicide attack. Then immediately, the FBI gathered up those members of bin Laden's sprawling family who were in America and got them on planes to Switzerland. And soon, the Saudi Arabian prince was at Waco, Texas, for an amiable day with Bush.

How could you not blame Saddam Hussein for everything? He murdered his own, yes. And he was going to kill all of us with nuclear weapons. "I know they are there," Bush announced.

There was nothing nuclear about Saddam hiding in his hole. There was no anthrax or smallpox, just rats and lice.

But the unmistakable feeling is that more and more of the American public will consider Saddam Hussein a partner in terror with Osama bin Laden and that it was a wonderful thing we did, going to war to catch one of them.

This belief in two enemies probably is going to be welcomed by Larry Silverstein, the builder who by mouth alone, has made it appear that he owns the land, the buildings, the sky above and the water below. Silverstein has $3.5 billion coming as insurance for the raid. He contends that they were two separate attacks, one on Tower One, a second on Tower Two. Therefore, he wants to be paid double. Seven billion. The insurance companies involved are inclined to do battle. Without the double insurance payment, people around him say, he won't be able to build a front stoop to a building made of thin air. "Two attacks," Larry says.

"Larry, it is the World Trade Center attack," he is told, including by judges in early rulings that were at least ominous for Silverstein.

Perhaps there was a chance in the freezing air yesterday. He can claim that Osama bin Laden made one attack on a tower and then Saddam Hussein's suicide bombers went into the second tower. Two people. Two attacks. Two payments!

 

Kinda sad that people are so easily duped.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you....this President of the United States!