Post #126,342
11/18/03 11:31:17 AM
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Saddam al-Qaeda connection or not?
[link|http://www.dod.mil/releases/2003/nr20031115-0642.html|It's a non-denial denial!]
Excerpt:
The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the NSA, or, in one case, the DIA. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the Intelligence Community. The selection of the documents was made by DOD to respond to the Committee\ufffds question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions.
I say:
When the facts speak for themselves, we can draw our own conclusions.
[link|http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp|The Weekly Standard has the scoop, and the analysis]
Excerpt:
The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.
According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in
some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.
I say:
Care to debate this? Well, forget it. These are well documented facts, and therefore are not subject to debate.
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DEAL WITH IT.
Compromise is for suckers. Seeking a middle ground is what led to 9/11.
"I do not want to be admired by scumbags and liars and wife beaters. I want to be admired by good and decent, intelligent and just people, and in order to achieve this I need to do things that make me despised by their opposites." - Bill Whittle
Never mind all the mass graves. Where's the nerve gas?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfire...arlowe/index.html]
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Post #126,357
11/18/03 11:39:37 AM
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I was wondering how long it was going to take you...
...to find that.
I could've posted it last week...figured you'd have been quicker off the mark :-)
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #126,443
11/18/03 12:08:40 PM
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Next time don't wait for me. I get busy with other stuff.
It's not that I don't care. It's that there's other stuff in my life way more urgent than online discussion groups. Now this pack of idiotarians we have here obviously have a lot of free time on their hands, and no idea how to use it constructively. I can outmaneuver them even with this handicap. I expect lots of people could. But if you're in a hurry to see them slammed down, do go ahead and take the initiative. I haven't got an exclusive franchise or anything.
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DEAL WITH IT.
Compromise is for suckers. Seeking a middle ground is what led to 9/11.
"I do not want to be admired by scumbags and liars and wife beaters. I want to be admired by good and decent, intelligent and just people, and in order to achieve this I need to do things that make me despised by their opposites." - Bill Whittle
Never mind all the mass graves. Where's the nerve gas?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfire...arlowe/index.html]
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Post #126,424
11/18/03 11:56:19 AM
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Re: Saddam al-Qaeda connection or not?
[link|http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002732.html|http://www.j-bradfor...hives/002732.html]
DoD denies this is a valid report. Make of it what you will.
The universe makes no sense until you accept that God uses base 13.
Even then, it's still pretty dodgy.
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Post #126,440
11/18/03 12:02:42 PM
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Try reading for comprehension.
They didn't deny it at all. And I already linked to that.
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DEAL WITH IT.
Compromise is for suckers. Seeking a middle ground is what led to 9/11.
"I do not want to be admired by scumbags and liars and wife beaters. I want to be admired by good and decent, intelligent and just people, and in order to achieve this I need to do things that make me despised by their opposites." - Bill Whittle
Never mind all the mass graves. Where's the nerve gas?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfire...arlowe/index.html]
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Post #126,488
11/18/03 12:43:25 PM
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It wasn't a denial
It was an "its out of context"
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #126,531
11/18/03 1:43:26 PM
11/19/03 5:44:07 PM
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Slowly the cracks form...
[link|http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2003_11_16_dish_archive.html#106925803876407356| Andrew Sullivan]
've been told off the record that some of this intelligence is very iffy. So let's discover which bits are iffier than others. Isn't that what the press is supposed to be about? On an issue that's obviously extremely important?
[link|http://www.msnbc.com/news/995706.asp?0cv=KB10| MS-NBC ] Except for a few, inconclusive exceptions, the memo doesn\ufffdt actually contain much \ufffdnew\ufffd intelligence at all. Instead, it mostly recycles shards of old, raw data that were first assembled last year by a tiny team of floating Pentagon analysts (led by a Pennsylvania State University professor and U.S. Navy analyst Christopher Carney) whom Feith asked to find evidence of an Iraqi-Al Qaeda \ufffdconnection\ufffd in order to better justify a U.S. invasion.
Within the U.S. intelligence establishment, the predominant view\ufffdthen as now\ufffdis that the Feith-Carney case was murky at best. Culling through intelligence files, the Feith team indeed found multiple \ufffdreports\ufffd of alleged meetings between Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives dating back to the early 1990s when Osama first set up shop in Sudan. But many of these reports were old, uncorroborated and came from sources of unknown if not dubious credibility, U.S. intelligence officials say. (Not unlike, as it has turned out, much of the \ufffdreporting\ufffd on Iraq\ufffds ever-elusive weapons of mass destruction.) Moreover, other reports\ufffdsome of which came foreign intelligence services and Iraqi defectors\ufffdwere selectively presented by the Feith team and are, as one U.S. official told NEWSWEEK, \ufffdcontradicted by other things.\ufffd
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Post #126,534
11/18/03 2:05:38 PM
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Argument not proof
The memo is an argument by Mr Douglas Feith that there was such a connection. It doesn't seem to be supported by others that would have read it. From what parts I have seen I don't think it's a case closed pile of information. It's important to keep in mind that the memo includes raw intelligence reports, that is information that has not be verified.
The memo includes the Muhammad Atta in Prague information, which has been widely questioned. Much of the rest of it seems to consists of information that somebody in al Qaeda met with somebody from Iraqs intelligence service with no information about what the topic was.
It was already known that Iraq and al Qaeda had talked to each other on and off for many years. But nothing has turned up that shows that their relation went very far.
Jay
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Post #126,558
11/18/03 3:27:36 PM
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Using six degrees of separation
Marlowe, you've had contact with Al-Q.
Please report to interogation room 3B.
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever."
1 Peter 1:24-25
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Post #126,992
11/21/03 7:58:35 AM
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Evidence not argument. Speaks for itself.
Your lame attempts at dismissal and spin notwithstanding.
----------------------------------------------------------------
DEAL WITH IT.
Compromise is for suckers. Seeking a middle ground is what led to 9/11.
"I do not want to be admired by scumbags and liars and wife beaters. I want to be admired by good and decent, intelligent and just people, and in order to achieve this I need to do things that make me despised by their opposites." - Bill Whittle
Never mind all the mass graves. Where's the nerve gas?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfire...arlowe/index.html]
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Post #127,005
11/21/03 8:58:22 AM
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DOD repudiates the Saddam/Al Qaeda connection story
[link|http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2003/nr20031115-0642.html|Link] from a Joe Conason story at [link|http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/11/20/standard/index.html|Salon]. From the DOD news release- News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate. From Conason's article- This morning Stephen Hayes, author of the Weekly Standard's controversial cover story on alleged connections between Iraq and al-Qaida, appeared with me on Brian Lehrer's WNYC radio program. Although Hayes defended his story, based on a secret prewar memo, he conceded that the headline on the piece should perhaps have been "Case Open" (as Jack Shafer suggests) instead of "Case Closed." (This reply is to you because the philbot doesn't deserve the dignity of a reply. Don't forget, the shun's the thing.) -----------------------------------------
It is much harder to be a liberal than a conservative. Why?
Because it is easier to give someone the finger than it is to give them a helping hand.
Mike Royko
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Post #127,007
11/21/03 9:03:45 AM
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Naturally
As if anyone with half a brain would believe the "Weekly Standard", one of their state press organs.
-drl
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Post #126,559
11/18/03 3:30:10 PM
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Does this mean
that we now have a reason to go to war, since the WMD justification hasn't panned out? Better get the troops mobilized.
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Post #126,637
11/18/03 10:16:13 PM
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If that's a connection
then it's time for the US to declare war with the US. There've been meetings between al-Q folks and US intelligence operatives for years, esp. during the eighties in Afghanistan.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca] [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Post #126,819
11/20/03 9:41:41 AM
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connection or not? they'd be the last to know
US intelligence has been totally unable to get inside any of the terrorist groups
despite the ability of a suburban California kid, John Walker Lindh, to move all through the ranks and meet bin Laden
thus, all that stuff in the Weekly World News about Osama and Saddam's gay wedding is about as valuable as intel reports
A
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Post #126,993
11/21/03 8:05:20 AM
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Lt. Smash weighs in on the evidence.
[link|http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/002295.html#002295|Looks like the real thing to him]
Excerpt:
I\ufffdve taken some time to read and digest Hayes\ufffd article. While I\ufffdm not an intelligence analyst, I have read literally hundreds of intelligence summaries in the course of my military career. When you do this every day, you learn how to separate solid, reliable reporting from rumor and speculation.
If a report comes from [link|http://www.npr.org/|a single source with little or no history of accurate reporting], it\ufffds generally considered to be \ufffdadvisory, but not reliable.\ufffd What you give the closest attention are similar reports from multiple, independent sources with established histories of accurate reporting.
What struck me most about the memo was this line, which most readers not familiar with intelligence summaries probably glossed over:
Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17 and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al-Qaida operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Source #4 was described as \ufffda senior Iraqi intelligence officer\ufffd who was debriefed in May 2003.
Source #11 was descibed only as \ufffdsensitive reporting,\ufffd which generally refers to an active source with access to the enemy.
Source #15 was described as \ufffda foreign government service,\ufffd probably an intelligence agency.
Source #16 was described as \ufffdCIA reporting.\ufffd Self-explanatory.
Sources #17 and #18 are not characterized.
Taken alone, these independent reports from six separate sources would generally be considered corroborated and highly reliable. But these meetings were also reported in the mainstream media. Newsweek wrote about the connection between Saddam and Bin Laden in January 1999, and The Guardian reported on it the following month.
The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq.
Indeed, the evidence was so convincing, that Clinton\ufffds CIA chief James Woolsey, appearing on CNN\ufffds Late Edition this past weekend, described it as a \ufffdslam dunk.\ufffd
While none of this yet confirms a link between Saddam and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it is clear that the Iraqi government was in communication with Usama bin Laden, and it appears likely that they formed some sort of mutually beneficial working relationship.
The war in Iraq was, in fact, a legitimate act of self-defense by the United States of America.
Democratic partisans will, predictably, continue to talk down these reports. This is not because they don\ufffdt want to believe that Saddam Hussein could have consorted with terrorists, but rather because many Democratic candidates have staked out anti-war positions \ufffd and any evidence linking Saddam and Usama could serve to undermine their chances of regaining the White House in 2004.
I say:
I'm sure there's some perfectly innocent explanation for all these high level contacts. Not.
----------------------------------------------------------------
DEAL WITH IT.
Compromise is for suckers. Seeking a middle ground is what led to 9/11.
"I do not want to be admired by scumbags and liars and wife beaters. I want to be admired by good and decent, intelligent and just people, and in order to achieve this I need to do things that make me despised by their opposites." - Bill Whittle
Never mind all the mass graves. Where's the nerve gas?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfire...arlowe/index.html]
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