oops...was "sleepy" yesterday night. ...its Iyyad Allawi whos the spoon.....i guess the post makes a little more sense now..basso read the last paragraph in the article you posted... giddyup.... Ayman Al-Zawahiri was not a wanted man at that time....
Allawi has been discredited time and time again. He's been wrong at almost every turn, and to take him seriously on this without a lot of other supportive evidence(which there isn't) would be foolish.
You need to check your facts. Zawahiri was wanted for the bombings of the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which occurred in 1998. For you reference, 1998 was before 1999.
He was but not by the then government of Iraq. For instance our government has frequently allowed people wanted by other governments such as members of the IRA into the US. That they might've allowed him into the country doesn't automatically indidcate they were working with him.
Sishir, you are vastly underestimating the logical leaps that this juicy tidbit from saddam's hitman via an italian website that we are being graciously invited to take - that Zawahiri not only was sighted in the country, and that his sighting, if true, necessarily means he was conspiring with, and met with Saddam, and necessarily means and that together they planned the September 11 attacks, and necessarily means he planned it right down to the master stroke of unfairly surprising the president while he was reading children's books in order to make him sit there like an idiot so that Michael Moore could bring him down, ERGO this necessarily means the invasion of Iraq, after four years and countless posts of discarded, manufactured, recycled, rehabbed, and refurbished info, finally has a retroactive rationale that we can live with! Whew! what a relief!
Somehow I feel like Iraq would have been prevented from allowing wanted terrorists to travel inside her borders in the aftermath of her naughtiness in Gulf War I-- per UN sanctions and restrictions.
i kinda feel like america would have been prevented from invading and launching an illegal attack on another soverign nation which had made no overt or covert threats against america in the recent years -- per UN and various international laws.
Oh, poor Iraq! 1. The US was not in defiance of UN sanctions since 1991. 2. We had a Coalition, yes not a Mighty Coalition, but a Coalition nonetheless who went about the much-needed business of toppling a horrible dictatorship
Nice to see your concern for the IRaqis. 1. The US was not in defiance of UN sanctions since 1991. [/B][/QUOTE]But the invasion of Iraq did violate national law. But they did it in the wrong way.
<b>Originally posted by FranchiseBlade Nice to see your concern for the IRaqis.</b> That's why I said Iraq-- the national government (Saddam, Uday and Qusay primarily) not the people. <b>But the invasion of Iraq did violate national law. But they did it in the wrong way.</b> Gulf War I Contnued (under wildly different circumstances post 9/11)
I'm not in disagreement that Saddam was not strictly adhering to the agreements and UN regulations after Gulf War I. But guess who those agreements were signed with... It wasn't the U.S. It was the UN. The UN was already taking measures to check on the compliance of those agreements. The U.S. stopped those measures in order to commence making a war. 9/11 doesn't give people the right to start wars. We are now seeing why. War should only be used in defense of a nation, to stop genocide, and as a last resort. The current war with Iraq meets zero of those criteria.
And after the US was attacked by rogue ME elements, it asked the UN to get its ass in gear. The corrupt UN failed to do anything (remember, it was their measures that had been so long ignored or snubbed by Hussein) and so the US forged its own coalition and took its own action. Being attacked gives a nation the right to fight back in its own interest. When that attacker is a coalition of terrorists, then you fight where there is support and/or corruption which could lend support.
Stop lumping the whole ME together. They are not one people of one culture. There aren't one country. They have many countries with a huge range of cultures, and languages being spoken. Because one country harbored the terrorists that attacked on 9/11 doesn't mean anyother country in that hemisphere is an automatic threat where are first and only course of action should be to invade. Being attacked does give a nation the right to fight back. We weren't attacked by Saddam, and nobody that Saddam supported had anything to do with 9/11. Becausae we were attacked on 9/11 we had the right to go after Afghanistan for harboring those responsible for the attacking. As for the corrupt UN they had the inspectors in there. That much of the whole thing was due to G.W. Bush, and it could have been a victory for him. All he had to do was leave the inspectors in long enough to find out the truth about Iraq, and we would have known that Iraq didn't have any biological agents to terrorists, even had it wanted to. Of course throught out the history of Saddam and WMD's it never once tried to give them to terrorists, or help terrorists develop their own. There was zero history of that kind of threat from Saddam.
<b>Originally posted by FranchiseBlade Stop lumping the whole ME together. They are not one people of one culture. There aren't one country. They have many countries with a huge range of cultures, and languages being spoken. </b> I didn't. I said "rogue ME elements. That indicates differentiation. <b>Because one country harbored the terrorists that attacked on 9/11 doesn't mean anyother country in that hemisphere is an automatic threat where are first and only course of action should be to invade.</b> We punished The Taliban and are attempting to return Afghanistan to her people. We then went after Saddam's Iraq because, in my estimation, they were ripe for removal. Guilty and weak. <b>Being attacked does give a nation the right to fight back. We weren't attacked by Saddam, and nobody that Saddam supported had anything to do with 9/11. Becausae we were attacked on 9/11 we had the right to go after Afghanistan for harboring those responsible for the attacking.</b> See above. <b>As for the corrupt UN they had the inspectors in there. That much of the whole thing was due to G.W. Bush, and it could have been a victory for him. All he had to do was leave the inspectors in long enough to find out the truth about Iraq, and we would have known that Iraq didn't have any biological agents to terrorists, even had it wanted to. Of course throught out the history of Saddam and WMD's it never once tried to give them to terrorists, or help terrorists develop their own. There was zero history of that kind of threat from Saddam.</b> Inspectors would never have found out the truth. There weren't enough of them and Saddam was patently dishonest. It had been a dozen years that he had been jerking the world around. We found out the only way we were going to find out-- by force. There was also zero history of the kind of event that 9/11 turned out to be. No more time to be looking the other way and taking unnecessary risks
Our own govt. was patently dishonest in the affair. They tried to claim Saddam was using the aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons. In fact Condi Rice flat out lied when she said the tubes really could only serve one purpose. Saddam said he was using them for conventional weapons. Guess who was honest in that situation. Saddam said he didn't have WMD's. He wasn't lying about that. Saddam was a liar, and horrible dictator. There is no question. That is why it is even more humiliating when our own administration was shown to be the ones being dishonest while Saddam was telling the truth. How do you make the judgement that the inspectors wouldn't have found out the truth? They had already been on the ground and felt that given more time they could have reached some conclusions. It might also depend on what kinds of inspectors you have in there. Scott Ritter who had been in there before would have been good. He was the one person who claimed that Saddam probably didn't have any WMD's before the war, and that the intel was wrong. He was called a traitor, and a Saddam lover. The thing is that he was correct. More inspectors like him and we would have found out, and spared the invasion. In addition agreeing to the deal that would have put U.S. CIA and FBI agents inside Iraq on the ground to verify would have also done the job. Our govt. lied, and went to war while there were still other options There certainly was a history. They had attacked the Cole, attacked embassies, and we even had intel of their intent to use Airplanes as weapons to attack the U.S. We stopped a terrorist bomb plot under Clinton when they were going to try and blow up LAX. The history of terrorists being intent on attacking the U.S. was plentiful. The history of Saddam supplying or intending to supply WMD's to terrorists were non-existent.
