Exhaustive review sponsored by the Pentagon finds NO link between Saddam, al Qaida (1 Viewer)

[RebSaint]

Energizing foreign terrorists

Arguably the decision to invade Iraq energized the terrorists far more than those evil, liberal pinkos in the media and the protester-types--the proof in the pudding is AQ's operations in Iraq after the invasion.

The United States managed to create a problem with AQ where none existed before the invasion. Brilliant!

 

[blackadder]

Wrong cigar smoker

"Those pinko-fascist-terrorist will never take my bodily fluids!"

Good one.

"it first occured to me during the physical act of love"

 

[champ76]

Wrong. Again.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/18/MNGP278BI61.DTL

"long history of ties" Sounds to me like the Bush administration was engaging in good old fashioned fear mongering to whip up support for the war. Simple.

Glad you're here to keep me straight. But that article does not support your contention. There was a long history of ties between the two, as was detailed in the 9-11 report. But no operational link, no 9-11 link. No one in the administration made that allegation. You keep wanting to inspect the individual parts of the puzzle(in hindsight) when decision makers at the time were looking at the puzzle as a whole, in the wake of a colossal intelligence failure which lead to 9-11. They did not want to be caught with their pants down, again. Now, in my book, once a decision to go to war is made, I expect my leaders to whip up support. There is a difference between that and deliberately lying. Since the war began, there has been precious little "whipping up," which has lead to some of the erosion of support for the war.

 

[DadsDream]

Well someone "knew" it was time to invade Iraq didn't they!!

And re: your first post. It really doesn't respond to BullDawg

In your opinion. But then, I've been swapping stories with Bulldawg for years here. I'm telling you what the intent was. If you chose to discount that, well, that's your choice.

..so much as it clearly supports the invasion. Is it a mortal sin to admit that our government deceived us to support an illegitimate war? All the language analysis in the world can't change that. This report is going to be just one more confirmation of that. Excuse me if the quotes we've seen are enough to convince me. (When combined with the mountains of other supporting evidence)

No, it had nothing to do with supporting the invasion. It had to do with responding to Bulldawg, then reading the news item, then providing background information regarding what I took from that article.

The rest of the junk in this thread (assigning motives and such to my reasons for posting) is pure hogwash.

 

[Mr. Littlejeans]

Arguably the decision to invade Iraq energized the terrorists far more than those evil, liberal pinkos in the media and the protester-types--the proof in the pudding is AQ's operations in Iraq after the invasion.

The United States managed to create a problem with AQ where none existed before the invasion. Brilliant!

You're absolutely right Reb.

What's easier for AlQaeda?:

Spend millions of dollars and several years planning and training for a risky operation where you try to hijack airliners and crash them into the WTC and Pentagon in an attempt to kill as many Americans as possible,
OR
Let the Americans come to you! Lay land mines and IUD's, send suicide bombers, energize a disgruntled Iraqi population to do most of the work for you, all the while watching the U.S. wreck their own economy, and you get to kill 4000 American soldiers!!

We gave them BOTH options

 

[Shawn]

Glad you're here to keep me straight. But that article does not support your contention. There was a long history of ties between the two, as was detailed in the 9-11 report. But no operational link, no 9-11 link. No one in the administration made that allegation. You keep wanting to inspect the individual parts of the puzzle(in hindsight) when decision makers at the time were looking at the puzzle as a whole, in the wake of a colossal intelligence failure which lead to 9-11. They did not want to be caught with their pants down, again. Now, in my book, once a decision to go to war is made, I expect my leaders to whip up support. There is a difference between that and deliberately lying. Since the war began, there has been precious little "whipping up," which has lead to some of the erosion of support for the war.

There was a long history of ties between the U.S. government, and Timothy McVeigh, via the U.S. military.

We should have attacked ourselves.

 

[LSSpam]

There was a long history of ties between the U.S. government, and Timothy McVeigh, via the U.S. military.

We should have attacked ourselves.

Well, we're really showing the dollar whose boss

 

[V Chip]

Sometimes it all boils down to what the meaning of is, is. I suspect the report will explain what it means by "operational links" and may even refer to the "non-operational" ones. We should wait and see.

To that end I think DD (with assist from BD) might be right -- this is specific wording that is 100% meant to imply that there is no link, so that people assume there is 100% no link, but also covering their own arses in case there is *some* link that is later revealed. It's legalese, a way to skirt the system with language.

Odd that legalese gains popularity as one's interests are affected positively, and is considered disdainful when one's interests are affected negatively (loopholes for taxes, Clinton's "definition of 'is' is" and definition of sex with ML, and now "operational").

Course between taking a short break betweeen typing this and previewing it the thread explodes for hundreds of posts, so if it was mentioned, mea culpa.

 

[blackadder]

Glad you're here to keep me straight. But that article does not support your contention. There was a long history of ties between the two, as was detailed in the 9-11 report. But no operational link, no 9-11 link. No one in the administration made that allegation. You keep wanting to inspect the individual parts of the puzzle(in hindsight) when decision makers at the time were looking at the puzzle as a whole, in the wake of a colossal intelligence failure which lead to 9-11. They did not want to be caught with their pants down, again. Now, in my book, once a decision to go to war is made, I expect my leaders to whip up support. There is a difference between that and deliberately lying. Since the war began, there has been precious little "whipping up," which has lead to some of the erosion of support for the war.

I'm not sure where you are getting this from. The 9-11 commision specifically debunked any collaboration between Saddam and Al Queda:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

Indeterminate "links" are not the same as collaboration against the United States. We have "links" with very shady charachters all over the globe. That's how we keep tabs on them. If you apply the same rules to us, then we are supporting whatever it is they do, correct?

You are guilty of exactly the same thing you are accusing Reb of. You only want to examine your puzzle pieces individually also, and you are forcing them together into a picture they do not make, just as the adminsitration did, and leaving out pieces you do not like too.

You know this adminsitration was set to go after Iraq even prior to 9/11 and you know that it was on the agenda for many of Bush's supporters since the 1990s. Saddam was no more a threat on 9/12 than he was on 9/11 yet they chose to take advantage of a tragedy to create another one.

Even Clinton toyed with the idea of stirring up a confrontation with Saddam under pressure from the neoconservatives. Smartly, he backed away from it because he probably quickly determined it would be a fiasco.

According to book by reporter Dana Priest, “The Mission”, the Bill Clinton White House wanted then CENTCOM commander Gen. Anthony Zinni to order his pilots to provoke a confrontation with Iraq in the no-fly zone by seeking to deliberately draw fire from the Iraqi military.

http://www.amazon.com/Mission-Waging-Keeping-Americas-Military/dp/0393010244

The request for the provocation was conveyed to General Zinni by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Ralston. But Zinni, who rightly believed that it could lead to an unwanted conflict, insisted that a formal request from the White House would have to be sent before he would give the order -- everything on the record. Clinton would not go on the record and the plan was dropped.

 

[Mr. Littlejeans]

"Saddam became too unpredictable. He sealed his fate when he launched missiles at Tel Aviv in the first Gulf War. For some reason, people seem to forget or gloss that over."

which DadsDream says was a response to:

"Which just goes to show how screwed up the area is.
Syria was no friend of Saddam."


Is there some way of interpreting "he sealed his fate" that I'm missing?

 

[RebSaint]

There was a long history of ties between the U.S. government, and Timothy McVeigh, via the U.S. military.

We should have attacked ourselves.

Which is where this kind of logic, parsing of words, and the meaning of "connections" vs "operations," ad naseum gets exposed.

Of course the administration didn't put the AQ--Hussein up front and center, but it was definitely part of the repretoire to convince ordinary Americans that the invasion was absolutely necessary.

Again, looking at the big picture like WMDs, it turned out that the administration either A. Manipulated faulty evidence to begin with, or B. Was willing to mislead the American people to make a case to go to war.

If only a tenuous connection between Al-Queda and [insert random nation-state] here, we might as well invaded half the globe, starting with Saudi Arabia and the Sudan...and countless other nations.

The administration communicated a body of information which at worst, maybe construed as lying, at best served to manipulate and mislead the American public to supporting a war based for false reasons.

For the record *one more time* I supported the invasion. Wholeheartedly. Then I realized the sham and smoke and mirrors which it was based on.

 

[blackadder]

If only a tenuous connection between Al-Queda and [insert random nation-state] here, we might as well invaded half the globe, starting with Saudi Arabia and the Sudan...and countless other nations.

Indeed.

We might have invaded ourselves because we have links to Bin Laden. I mean, we flew his family out of the US on 9/12, right?

Bin Laden was once on our payroll right? Isn't that ironclad evidence that he is a CIA operative?

And now he is in Pakistan, so he must be there with Mushareff's blessing right? So Mushareff is linked to Al Queda also...

 

[V Chip]

Rumsfeld and his boss did what the weaklings of the first Administration could not do - remove a maniacal dictator from power.
You want to know who did a bad job? The liberals of moveon and Dean supporters and sheehan types in collusion with the AP and other mainstream press. Those are the people with American blood on their hands. Energizing foreign terrorists with shoddy journalism and communist inflitrated demonstrations should be puinishable by death.

 

[Mr. Littlejeans]

Indeed.

We might have invaded ourselves because we have links to Bin Laden. I mean, we flew his family out of the US on 9/12, right?

Bin Laden was once on our payroll right? Isn't that ironclad evidence that he is a CIA operative?

And now he is in Pakistan, so he must be there with Mushareff's blessing right? So Mushareff is linked to Al Queda also...

Stop Adder, you're thinking too logically. It's un-patriotic.

 

[DadsDream]

"Saddam became too unpredictable. He sealed his fate when he launched missiles at Tel Aviv in the first Gulf War. For some reason, people seem to forget or gloss that over."

which DadsDream says was a response to:

"Which just goes to show how screwed up the area is.
Syria was no friend of Saddam."


Is there some way of interpreting "he sealed his fate" that I'm missing?

Again, it was a direct response to the poster named "Bulldawg."

You're not "Bulldawg."