An American Hero who tried to stop 911

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[hjmick]

Yep.

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[Gaffer]

He was even good looking enough that he will be played by one of the top actors in the future.

If We had listened to this guy 911 could have been stopped.

you need to clarify that, it's not "WE". If clinton had listened to this guy, 9/11 could have been prevented.

[dan]

you need to clarify that, it's not "WE". If clinton had listened to this guy, 9/11 could have been prevented.

Yep, just like Bush is single-handedly responsible for the Iraq War.:lame2:

[gabosaurus]

The FBI and CBI have long been rogue operations that operated outside the White House.
Sept. 11 happened under Bush's watch. He refused to heed all the warnings. Then he used it as an excuse to begin the Iraq conflict.
I doubt Bush would have stopped Sept. 11 if he knew about it. Sept. 11 will always be the greatest day of the Bush Presidency.

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[Dilloduck]

It seems some of you dont realise 911 happen 9 months into Bush's presidency and NOT during the Clinton years.

How in the hell do you and gabby make it through a day using y'alls "Logic"?

If I lit a bomb but I had given it to you when it exploded it would be your fault ? :laugh2:

[hjmick]

It seems some of you dont realise 911 happen 9 months into Bush's presidency and NOT during the Clinton years.

It seems that some of you don't realize that the planning for what happened on 9/11 had been going on for at least eight year. Ever since the '93 attack. It seems that some of you don't realize that there were warning signs for several of those years, evidence of this can be found in the story of John O'Neill. It seems that some of you don't realize that war had been declared on the U.S. many years before Bush took office and essentially nothing was done. It seems that some of you don't realize that there is enough blame to go around. You can lay blame on the doorstep of the Bush administration and the Clinton administration, and probably several other administrations, at least as far back as the Carter presidency.

[theHawk]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/


This is a man that will go down in history and will have his life story turned into Spy movies some day.

How many of you have ever even heard of him?

Yes, I've heard of him. John O'Neill was played by Harvey Keitel in the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11, which liberals came out swinging against. Mainly because it accurately portrayed the Clinton administration for ignoring O'Neill's warnings throughout the 90's. I still remember Sandy Berger of all people coming onto Larry Kind Live to denounce it, and demanding they either pull it or edit it (so much for the First Amendment eh?). Naturally, Larry Kind didn't ask him anything about why he stole Clinton era documents out of the National Archives pertaining to terrorism. But of course we'll never see anyone on the Clinton News Network throw anything but softballs to Clintonian liberals.

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[hjmick]

Yes, I've heard of him. John O'Neill was played by Harvey Keitel in the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11, which liberals came out swinging against. Mainly because it accurately portrayed the Clinton administration for ignoring O'Neill's warnings throughout the 90's. I still remember Sandy Berger of all people coming onto Larry Kind Live to denounce it, and demanding they either pull it or edit it (so much for the First Amendment eh?). Naturally, Larry Kind didn't ask him anything about why he stole Clinton era documents out of the National Archives pertaining to terrorism. But of course we'll never see anyone on the Clinton News Network throw anything but softballs to Clintonian liberals.

Shhh...the truth doesn't matter, it's all Bush's fault because it happened on his watch! Don't dare try to lay any responsibility on W.J. Clinton, he wasn't in office.

As I said in my previous post, there is plenty of blame to go around.

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[theHawk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pathto911disclaimer.png

This disclaimer had to be played with that movie it was so FULL of distortions on the true story.

Fighting against lies is the right thing to do.

Which "distortions" are you talking about? And you better come up with something more than "Sandy Berger says so." That piece of shit was caught red handed stealing and destorying documents that no doubt shed alot of bad light on Clinton.

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[stephanie]

Clinton administrations accomplishments stopping terrorism.... None..
The millennium bomber was stopped by a Canadian border gaurd...

First World trade center bombing..
Muir building, Oklahoma
USS Cole

Attacks against his own citizens..

Branch Davidian's-80 people killed 20 of them children
Elleon Gonzalas ripped from the arms of his relatives, so Clinton could appease Fidel Castro...

Yeah...the Clinton administration had quite the record...
None stopping terrorisms, but attacking it's own citizens it did pretty well at..

But hey..Don't let that stop you all from the hero worshipping of the dude...:poke:

[Mr. P]

It seems that some of you don't realize that the planning for what happened on 9/11 had been going on for at least eight year. Ever since the '93 attack. It seems that some of you don't realize that there were warning signs for several of those years, evidence of this can be found in the story of John O'Neill. It seems that some of you don't realize that war had been declared on the U.S. many years before Bush took office and essentially nothing was done. It seems that some of you don't realize that there is enough blame to go around. You can lay blame on the doorstep of the Bush administration and the Clinton administration, and probably several other administrations, at least as far back as the Carter presidency.

And THAT'S the TRUTH that MATTERS. Although with all the walls built between the intelligence services by the Clinton admin. I can't see placing much blame on a 7 month new administration. How do you stop the flow of water AFTER the dam has burst?

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[OCA]

It seems some of you dont realise 911 happen 9 months into Bush's presidency and NOT during the Clinton years.

Clinton was offered Bin Laden on a platter 3 times and refused 3 times, Bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11, how much more responsible could he possibly get?

[OCA]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_to_9/11#Controversy_and_criticisms

take a look at long the list of complaints with the contents are

If I posted a list of distortions and lies in a Michael Moore flick would you dispute them?

You see where I am gong here, right?

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[OCA]

Link?

while your at it can you bring me a list of the walls the other guy was talking about?

Link? Are you shitting me? You live under a rock for the past 7 years?

Walls? What the hell are you talking about? Ask the other guy himself.

[theHawk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_to_9/11#Controversy_and_criticisms

take a look at long the list of complaints with the contents are

Most of that page is exactly what I said it would be, Clinton administration officials disputing it, as well as the 9/11 Commission Report. The report of course, was never going to tell the American public the whole truth. The whole purpose of it was to clear Clinton's name, as well as Bush's to a lesser extent. But even the Commission Report had to put some blame onto the Clinton administration.

Nonetheless, from your source:


Dereliction of Duty contains a compilation several events witnessed by Patterson. In an interview with World Net Daily, Patterson agrees that scenes from The Path to 9/11 conflate several events, but he maintains that the overall depiction of how the Clinton administration handled its opportunities to get bin Laden was correct.[37] Patterson states that he witnessed several incidents similar to those depicted in the movie, where Berger was pressing Clinton for a decision to strike at bin Laden, "but he couldn't get a decision from the President." Dereliction of Duty recounts an event where Berger was informed in the situation room by a military watch officer, "Sir, we have a two-hour window to strike." Clinton did not return phone calls for Berger for more than an hour, then said he wanted more time to study the situation. Patterson also describes a second incident where Berger placed an urgent call to the president through Patterson. Clinton, who was watching a golf tournament, became irritated, and after a third attempt at relaying the message, responded that he would call Berger on his way back to the White House. According to Patterson, by then the window of opportunity was closed. [38]

According to the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report, there were several real-life circumstances where plans to capture bin Laden were called off that may roughly speaking match the description of events occurring in the movie (see above).[39]

In May 1998, plans by the CIA to utilize allied Tribal forces to capture bin Laden were called off (page 114). Both Berger and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet claim it was Tenet, not Berger, who called off plans. However, the report makes no claim as to who actually called off the operation, and it notes that the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt said he "thought that it was Berger’s doing, though perhaps on Tenet's advice." Berger claims, and his claims are presented uncontested in the Report, the operation was never in the execution stage in the first place because it was not feasible for local tribes and warlords to assist in his capture and delivery to the United States.[40]

Most of that page is just complaints offering very little specific examples of innacuracies. If the best they can come up with is Atta boarded a US Airways liner instead of an American Airlines as depicted in the movie, then thats pretty weak.

[OCA]

From the L.A. Times no less!



Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize
Sudan offered up the terrorist and data on his network. The then-president and his advisors didn't respond.


By MANSOOR IJAZ
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.

I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.

From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.

Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.

The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening.

As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of Bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster.

Realizing the growing problem with Bin Laden, Bashir sent key intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996.

The Sudanese offered to arrest Bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to "baby-sit" him--monitoring all his activities and associates.

But Saudi officials didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.

In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.

Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.

Some of these men are now among the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists.

The two men who allegedly piloted the planes into the twin towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian trader who managed Salim's bank accounts and whose assets are frozen.

Important data on each had been compiled by the Sudanese.

But U.S. authorities repeatedly turned the data away, first in February 1996; then again that August, when at my suggestion Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, wrote directly to Clinton; then again in April 1997, when I persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data; and finally in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI.

Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington, I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available. They said they'd get back to me. They never did. Neither did they respond when Bashir made the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national security threat.

And that was not the end of it. In July 2000--three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen--I brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies--an ally whose name I am not free to divulge--approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

The offer, which would have brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that would eventually deliver him to the U.S., required only that Clinton make a state visit there to personally request Bin Laden's extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best.

Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.

*

Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is chairman of a New York-based investment company.




http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm

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[avatar4321]

And THAT'S the TRUTH that MATTERS. Although with all the walls built between the intelligence services by the Clinton admin. I can't see placing much blame on a 7 month new administration. How do you stop the flow of water AFTER the dam has burst?

especially when they were forced to start putting the administration late because of certain people trying to steal the election they never once won.

[avatar4321]

It seems some of you dont realise 911 happen 9 months into Bush's presidency and NOT during the Clinton years.

Counting problems?

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[avatar4321]

http://tinyurl.com/yvs6pr


Buzz Paterson is also a right wing shill

i get it. Just call everyone a right wing shill and you can ignore everything they say. So much for wanting to know the truth.

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[stephanie]

Bush took office on Jan 20th 2001.

911 well that was on September 11th 2001


Do you think the president gets NO briefings before that point?

You and others like you, have BDS so bad you just won't let up...

Did Clinton get NO briefings BEFORE the world trade center was bombed the first time...???

Wasn't he briefed of a threat, that Timothy McVee was going to blow up the Muir building???

You all constantly jump on this... "President Bush should've known the terrorist were going to fly airplanes into the world trade center, but he ignored the intelligence report"...
Yet, Clinton get's a pass for missing TWO terrorist attacts....
I guess that's because he "WAS A DEMOCRAT"...

You all sound so silly, it's laughable...:poke:

[Dilloduck]

This is some really old shit--we've been through it all several times know and I fail to see you point. If it's that "9/11 is all Bushs' fault" you're a day late and a dollar short. Go back to trying to prove that Baghdad wasn't a military target in the war. That claim is a doozy and we haven't done that one that I know of.

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[Dilloduck]

Tell me why the Shock and Awe killed so many civilians?

Was the entire city of Baghdad a military target?

Throwing out one bizarre claim after another is NEVER going to get you to the truth you claim to seek. WE DIDN'T BOMB THE ENTIRE CITY, DUMB ASS. Prove to me we intentionally targeted civilians in Baghdad.

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[Dilloduck]

'

Show me what we did bomb in Iraq?

You're a pathetic waste of time.

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[Mr. P]

Maybe you can show me evidence of these walls that MrP was talking about because he could not?

Sure I can when I take time to find them, but some how I don't think it will matter to you. Here's a novel concept, you find them, maybe you'll believe it then.

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[Dilloduck]

Giving me little red squares because you cant answer any of my questions or request for facts to back your assertions is not an arguement an adult makes.

People provide you with link after link ad nauseum. You ignore them, dismiss them or just move on. Yes--I awarded you with some neg rep. Feel honored.
You're "did too--did not" style of debating isn't even Kindergarten level.

[OCA]

The truth does not matter to truthmatters.

Anything or anybody that proves her wrong is a right wing shill, conspiracy etc. etc.

That is the weakest of debating styles.

[Mr. P]

Dear Mr P ,

I looked and looked and could not find them.


I never asked you to prove my point with facts yet you want me to do it for you?

I tried to find them and I bet you did not even look.

After reading what you've posted I gotta agree with dillo, You're a pathetic waste of time and you won't believe it anyway. Find it, it's out there.

[OCA]

Giving me little red squares because you cant answer any of my questions or request for facts to back your assertions is not an arguement an adult makes.+

I destroyed your point of view with facts, answered your questions with facts......you dismiss out of hand anything that does not fit your myopic view.

Take a debate class.

[Dilloduck]

http://tinyurl.com/4vau


It this article it quotes some of the commanders and they say things like "there will be no place safe in Baghdad".

Take this POS link for example---Does this some how back up your absurd claim that Baghdad was not a military target ???? :laugh2:

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[avatar4321]

I have given you people ample evidence of what the truth is so please no longer repete the things you now know are not true.

Saddam did not have AQ ties.

Saddam did not have WMDs.

Clinton did not put up "walls" to keep the intell groups from stopping the 911 attacks.

Bush did not respond with any urgency to the threats of terror.

The Iraq war is causing terror.

Please recognise facts.

When facts get ignored America is put in danger.

Simply repeating yourself again and again doesnt mean its true. Especially when countless government, militiary, and international reports CONTRACT EVERYTHING YOU ASSERT.

We found countless bodies of people killed by Saddams non existant WMDs. Saddam's own website had him offering money to the family of terrorists. Osama Bin Laden even admitted that he met with Saddam.

Yet none of this is true because you claim it isnt. Bullcrap.

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[avatar4321]

I gave you PROOF , I gave you links to the different government intell people saying what I assert is fact.

What have you given me? INSULTS and no facts.

you've been given link again and again. you ignore everything you dont like claiming biased. I was unaware that national & foriegn governments, Saddam, Osama, and dead bodies from t he weapons were somehow biased.

People are dead from WMDs in Iraq. It doesnt matter how many links you provide trying to claim there were no weapons. The fact that there are dead bodies makes your links wrong.

It doesnt matter how any times you claim there is no connection between Saddam and Terrorism. Saddams website, his ministers. comments by Osama Bin Laden and his payments to terrorists families prove otherwise.

You dont prove negatives simply by asserting them repeatedly. They cant be proved ones you have evidence contrary to them. Evidence you have no problem ignoring.

[Dilloduck]

Now why would you say the entire city of Baghdad was a military target?

I notice you are persisting in giving me NO facts to base anything you claim.

I never said it was. It was YOUR claim that Baghdad was not a military target. I'm sorry your having such a hard time covering up one of the dumbest statements I've heard for a long time.------Go ahead, Truth. Try to deal with some.

(find a link showing Baghdad as a military target? You've GOT to be kidding.)

:laugh2::laugh2::laugh2:

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[Dilloduck]

Go get the quote you claim?

get it yourself--I'm not pandering to your silly requests. :fu:

[Kathianne]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/


This is a man that will go down in history and will have his life story turned into Spy movies some day.

How many of you have ever even heard of him?

Add me to those 'who knew.'

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[OCA]

I just went back through all your posts.

You gave nothing but insults and one opinion article written by a right wing hack named MANSOOR IJAZ



http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/207

This is proof of his hackdom.


And I consider that article to be spot on correct.

Is it your asertion that there was no valid reason to remove Saadam from power?

[OCA]

How many times must I post this before the lies from the left stop?




Iraq & al Qaeda
The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers.



The 9/11 Commission's staff has come down decidedly on the side of the naysayers about operational ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. This development is already being met with unbridled joy by opponents of the Iraq war, who have been carping for days about recent statements by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that reaffirmed the deposed Iraqi regime's promotion of terror.




The celebration is premature. The commission's cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq confederated is puzzling. Given that the panel had three hours for Richard Clarke, one might have hoped for more than three minutes on Iraq. More to the point, though, the staff statements released Wednesday — which seemed to be contradicted by testimony at the public hearing within minutes of their publication — raise more questions than they answer, about both matters the staff chose to address and some it strangely opted to omit.

The staff's sweeping conclusion is found in its Statement No. 15 ("Overview of the Enemy"), which states:


Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Just taken on its own terms, this paragraph is both internally inconsistent and ambiguously worded. First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no "ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." If the first proposition is so, then the "[t]wo senior Bin Laden associates" who are the sources of the second are either lying or misinformed.

In light of the number of elementary things the commission staff tells us its investigation has been unable to clarify (for example, in the very next sentence after the Iraq paragraph, the staff explains that the question whether al Qaeda had any connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the 1995 plot to blow U.S. airliners out of the sky "remains a matter of substantial uncertainty"), it is fair to conclude that these two senior bin Laden associates may not be the most cooperative, reliable fellows in town regarding what bin Laden was actually up to. Moreover, we know from press reports and the administration's own statements about the many al Qaeda operatives it has captured since 9/11 that the government is talking to more than just two of bin Laden's top operatives. That begs the questions: Have we really only asked two of them about Iraq? If not, what did the other detainees say?



Inconvenient Facts
The staff's back-of-the-hand summary also strangely elides mention of another significant matter — but one that did not escape the attention of Commissioner Fred Fielding, who raised it with a panel of law-enforcement witnesses right after noting the staff's conclusion that there was "no credible evidence" of cooperation. It is the little-discussed original indictment of bin Laden, obtained by the Justice Department in spring 1998 — several weeks before the embassy bombings and at a time when the government thought it would be prudent to have charges filed in the event an opportunity arose overseas to apprehend bin Laden. Paragraph 4 of that very short indictment reads:

Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.
(Emphasis added.) This allegation has always been inconvenient for the "absolutely no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda" club. (Richard Clarke, a charter member, handles the problem in his book by limiting the 1998 indictment to a fleeting mention and assiduously avoiding any description of what the indictment actually says.)

It remains inconvenient. As testimony at the commission's public hearing Wednesday revealed, the allegation in the 1998 indictment stems primarily from information provided by the key accomplice witness at the embassy bombing trial, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl. Al-Fadl told agents that when al Qaeda was headquartered in the Sudan in the early-to-mid-1990s, he understood an agreement to have been struck under which the jihadists would put aside their antipathy for Saddam and explore ways of working together with Iraq, particularly regarding weapons production.

On al Qaeda's end, al-Fadl understood the liaison for Iraq relations to be an Iraqi named Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. "Abu Hajer al Iraqi"), one of bin Laden's closest friends. (There will be a bit more to say later about Salim, who, it bears mention, was convicted in New York last year for maiming a prison guard in an escape attempt while awaiting trial for bombing the embassies.) After the embassies were destroyed, the government's case, naturally, was radically altered to focus on the attacks that killed over 250 people, and the Iraq allegation was not included in the superseding indictment. But, as the hearing testimony made clear, the government has never retracted the allegation.

Neither have other important assertions been retracted, including those by CIA Director George Tenet. As journalist Stephen Hayes reiterated earlier this month, Tenet, on October 7, 2002, wrote a letter to Congress, which asserted:

Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank. We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.
Tenet, as Hayes elaborated, has never backed away from these assessments, reaffirming them in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee as recently as March 9, 2004.
Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has provided faulty information to Congress? That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did not cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."


Kabul...Baghdad...
The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.

I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

Of course, we may yet find that Saddam was a participant in the specific 9/11 plot. In that regard, the commission staff's report is perplexing, and, again, raises — or flat omits — many more questions than it resolves.


Don't Forget Shakir
For one thing, the staff has now addressed the crucial January 2000 Malaysia planning session in a few of its statements. As I have previously recounted, this was the three-day meeting at which Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, eventual hijackers of Flight 77 (the one that hit the Pentagon), met with other key 9/11 planners. The staff's latest report, Statement Number 16 ("Outline of the 9/11 Plot"), even takes time to describe how the conspirators were hosted in Kuala Lampur by members of a Qaeda-affiliated terror group, Jemaah Islamiah. But the staff does not mention, let alone explain, let alone explain away, that al Midhar was escorted to the meeting by Ahmed Hikmat Shakir.

Shakir is the Iraqi who got his job as an airport greeter through the Iraqi embassy, which controlled his work schedule. He is the man who left that job right after the Malaysia meeting; who was found in Qatar six days after 9/11 with contact information for al Qaeda heavyweights — including bin Laden's aforementioned friend, Salim — and who was later detained in Jordan but released only after special pleading from Saddam's regime, and only after intelligence agents concluded that he seemed to have sophisticated counter-interrogation training. Shakir is also the Iraqi who now appears, based on records seized since the regime's fall, to have been all along an officer in Saddam's Fedayeen.

Does all this amount to proof of participation in the 9/11 plot? Well, in any prosecutor's office it would be a pretty good start. And if the commission staff was going to get into this area of Iraqi connections to al Qaeda at all, what conceivable good reason is there for avoiding any discussion whatsoever of Shakir? At least tell us why he is not worth mentioning.


Prague Problem
One thing the staff evidently thought it was laying to rest was the other niggling matter of whether 9/11 major domo Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani in Prague in April 2001. The staff's conclusion is that the meeting is a fiction. To say its reasoning is less than satisfying would be a gross understatement. Here's the pertinent conclusion, also found in Statement Number 16:

We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9 [2001]. Based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred. The FBI's investigation places him in Virginia as of April 4, as evidenced by this bank surveillance camera shot of Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Atta was back in Florida by April 11, if not before. Indeed, investigation has established that, on April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call Florida phone numbers from cell sites within Florida. We have seen no evidence that Atta ventured overseas again or re-entered the United States before July, when he traveled to Spain under his true name and back under his true name.
This is ground, again, that I've recently covered. To rehearse: Czech intelligence has alleged that Atta was seen in Prague on April 8 or 9, 2001. Atta had withdrawn $8,000 cash from a bank in Virginia on April 4 and was not eyeballed again by a witness until one week later, on April 11. The new detail added by the staff is that Atta's cell phone was used in Florida on three days (April 6, 9 and 10) during that time frame. Does this tend to show he was in Florida rather than Prague? It could, but not very convincingly. Telling us Atta's cell phone was used is not the same as telling us Atta used the cell phone.

Atta almost certainly would not have been able to use the cell phone overseas, so it would have been foolish to tote it along to the Czech Republic — especially if he was traveling clandestinely (as the large cash withdrawal suggests). He would have left it behind. Atta, moreover, had a roommate (and fellow hijacker), Marwan al-Shehhi. It is certainly possible that Shehhi — whom the staff places in Florida during April 2001 — could have used Atta's cell phone during that time.

Is it possible that Atta was in Florida rather than Prague? Of course it is. But the known evidence militates strongly against that conclusion: an eyewitness puts Atta in Prague, meeting with al-Ani; we know Atta was a "Hamburg student" and represented himself as such in a visa application; it has been reported that the Czechs have al-Ani's appointment calendar and it says he was scheduled to meet on the critical day with a "Hamburg student"; and we know for certain that Atta was in Prague under very suspicious circumstances twice in a matter of days (May 30 and June 2, 2000) during a time the Czechs and Western intelligence services feared that Saddam, through al-Ani, might be reviving a plot to use Islamic extremists to bomb Radio Free Europe (a plot the State Department acknowledged in its annual global terror report notwithstanding that the commission staff apparently did not think the incident merited mention).

I am perfectly prepared to accept the staff's conclusion about Atta not being in Prague — if the commission provides a convincing, thoughtful explanation, which is going to have to get a whole lot better than a cell-phone record.

What is the staff's reason for rejecting the eyewitness identification? Is the "Hamburg student" entry bogus? Since the staff is purporting to provide a comprehensive explanation of the 9/11 plot — the origins of which it traces back to 1999 — what is their explanation for what Atta was doing in Prague in 2000? Why, when the staff went into minute detail about the travels of other hijackers (even when it conceded it did not know the relevance of those trips), was Atta's trip to Prague not worthy of even a passing mention? Why was it so important for Atta to be in Prague on May 30, 2000 that he couldn't delay for one day, until May 31, when his visa would have been ready? Why was it so important for him to be in Prague on May 30 that he opted to go despite the fact that, without a visa, he could not leave the airport terminal? How did he happen to find the spot in the terminal where surveillance cameras would not capture him for nearly six hours? Why did he go back again on June 2? Was he meeting with al-Ani? If so, why would it be important for him to see al-Ani right before entering the United States in June 2000? And jumping ahead to 2001, if Atta wasn't using cash to travel anonymously, what did he do with the $8000 he suddenly withdrew before disappearing on April 4? If his cell phone was used in Florida between April 4 and April 11, what follow-up investigation has been done about that by the 9/11 Commission? By the FBI? By anybody? Whom was the cell phone used to call? Do any of those people remember speaking to Atta at that time? Perhaps someone would remember speaking with the ringleader of the most infamous attack in the history of the United States if he had called to chat, no?

Are these questions important to answer? You be the judge. According to the 9/11 Commission staff report, bin Laden originally pressed the operational supervisor of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), "that the attacks occur as early as mid-2000," even though bin Laden "recognized that Atta and the other pilots had only just arrived in the United States to begin their flight training[.]" Well I'll be darned: mid-2000 is exactly when Atta made his two frenetic trips to Prague immediately before heading to the United States to begin that flight training.

The commission staff next says, "[i]n 2001, Bin Laden apparently pressured KSM twice more for an earlier date. According to KSM, Bin Laden first requested a date of May 12, 2001," and then proposed a date in June or July. Well, what do you know: all those dates are only weeks after Atta may have had some reason to drop everything and secretly run to Prague for a meeting with al-Ani.
Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is an NRO contributor.

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406170840.asp

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I gave you links to our national intelligence assessments, Senate investigations(done during a Republican majority).

You again give an oppinion piece by a right wing writer from a right wing site.

Go get something that can be trusted.

I did not give you an Al Franken report did I?

You would not accept it if I did wuold you?

Be honest , use facts from unbiased sources.


National review is highly respected on both sides of the aisle.

9/11 commission was political witchhunt.

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again look at where this information is from.


National Review is highly respected on both sides of the aisle, are you saying that this is a falsely published article? Can you disprove any of these links between AQ and Saddam?

You posted a link from MSNBC........you must be kidding us.

[OCA]

Who says the national review is respected?

Prove the 9*11 report was a partisan whitch hunt?

It was Run by a Republican named Keen and was set up by a republican majority congress.


Prove that National Review is not highly respected on both sides of the aisle.

Prove the 9/11 commission was not a political witchhunt.

Two can play your dishonest game.

[OCA]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review

Its run by William Buckley and is recognised as a conservitive mag.


William Buckley is highly respected on both sides of the aisle.

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No he is not!

prove he is.

Prove that he is not.

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I submitt that it was contrary to OUR national security to do so and that is proven by the reports from the people in Intell.

You just dont want to accept facts and instead use partisan sites to form your opinions.

Prove that all people in intel, prove that all their assertions are correct.

What would Truthmatters do that would bolster our national security as pertaining to terrorism?

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Throughout his career as a media figure, Buckley has received much criticism, largely from the American left but also from certain factions on the right, such as the John Birch Society and the Objectivists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley%2C_Jr.

Hardly proof.

Find me one person in America who has not pissed off or does not have anyone who disagrees with or criticizes him.

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I keep proving what I say and all you do is ask me to prove what you say.


Are you really that lazy or just not smart enough to do your own work?

You've yet to prove anything other than we all have someone who disagrees with us regardless of our POV.

I'm just smart enough to throw your own dishonest debating game back in your face and frustrate the piss out of you.

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I just proved to you he is not trusted by all sides, you have proven NOTHING!

It said they disagreed with him....not that he is not trustworthy.

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This is what will kill the Republican party.

You accept NO facts.

You persist in living in a fantasy world wehere Bush can do no wrong and any scrap of truth that doesnt comfort you in your little slef made cave is ignored or falsely condemed.


You will help the Republican party to its grave.

Who said I was a Republican?

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No it says he has been critized by many including certain conservitives.

He is not trusted as a reliable source by any Democrat I know.

Please explain the difference between criticism and trustworthiness.

Is it your contention that the man is a liar and of low moral values without having ever met him?

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You may not be in name but you are defending a president that only a partisan hack would defend.

I have republican friends and family that hate this guy and are so pissed at their party fror walking in lock step with this total failure they are voting for independents or democrats instead of Rs.

I have? Where have I defended Bush? Hell I don't remember mentioning his name in this thread.

You do realize that I have succeeded in exposing you as the "I hate the police because I hate Bush" kook that you are, right?

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Why dont you answer one of my questions for a change instead of constantly telling me to prove everything and providing nothiong in return?

Just mirroring you. You probably shouldn't have played the "disregard everything that contradicts my POV as a rightwing conspiracy" game you started early in this thread.

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I just proved to you he is not trusted by all sides, you have proven NOTHING!

you really dont understand the concepts of truth, proof, and evidence do you?

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How many times must I post this before the lies from the left stop?




Iraq & al Qaeda
The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers.



The 9/11 Commission's staff has come down decidedly on the side of the naysayers about operational ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. This development is already being met with unbridled joy by opponents of the Iraq war, who have been carping for days about recent statements by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that reaffirmed the deposed Iraqi regime's promotion of terror.




The celebration is premature. The commission's cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq confederated is puzzling. Given that the panel had three hours for Richard Clarke, one might have hoped for more than three minutes on Iraq. More to the point, though, the staff statements released Wednesday — which seemed to be contradicted by testimony at the public hearing within minutes of their publication — raise more questions than they answer, about both matters the staff chose to address and some it strangely opted to omit.

The staff's sweeping conclusion is found in its Statement No. 15 ("Overview of the Enemy"), which states:


Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Just taken on its own terms, this paragraph is both internally inconsistent and ambiguously worded. First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no "ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." If the first proposition is so, then the "[t]wo senior Bin Laden associates" who are the sources of the second are either lying or misinformed.

In light of the number of elementary things the commission staff tells us its investigation has been unable to clarify (for example, in the very next sentence after the Iraq paragraph, the staff explains that the question whether al Qaeda had any connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the 1995 plot to blow U.S. airliners out of the sky "remains a matter of substantial uncertainty"), it is fair to conclude that these two senior bin Laden associates may not be the most cooperative, reliable fellows in town regarding what bin Laden was actually up to. Moreover, we know from press reports and the administration's own statements about the many al Qaeda operatives it has captured since 9/11 that the government is talking to more than just two of bin Laden's top operatives. That begs the questions: Have we really only asked two of them about Iraq? If not, what did the other detainees say?



Inconvenient Facts
The staff's back-of-the-hand summary also strangely elides mention of another significant matter — but one that did not escape the attention of Commissioner Fred Fielding, who raised it with a panel of law-enforcement witnesses right after noting the staff's conclusion that there was "no credible evidence" of cooperation. It is the little-discussed original indictment of bin Laden, obtained by the Justice Department in spring 1998 — several weeks before the embassy bombings and at a time when the government thought it would be prudent to have charges filed in the event an opportunity arose overseas to apprehend bin Laden. Paragraph 4 of that very short indictment reads:

Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.
(Emphasis added.) This allegation has always been inconvenient for the "absolutely no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda" club. (Richard Clarke, a charter member, handles the problem in his book by limiting the 1998 indictment to a fleeting mention and assiduously avoiding any description of what the indictment actually says.)

It remains inconvenient. As testimony at the commission's public hearing Wednesday revealed, the allegation in the 1998 indictment stems primarily from information provided by the key accomplice witness at the embassy bombing trial, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl. Al-Fadl told agents that when al Qaeda was headquartered in the Sudan in the early-to-mid-1990s, he understood an agreement to have been struck under which the jihadists would put aside their antipathy for Saddam and explore ways of working together with Iraq, particularly regarding weapons production.

On al Qaeda's end, al-Fadl understood the liaison for Iraq relations to be an Iraqi named Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. "Abu Hajer al Iraqi"), one of bin Laden's closest friends. (There will be a bit more to say later about Salim, who, it bears mention, was convicted in New York last year for maiming a prison guard in an escape attempt while awaiting trial for bombing the embassies.) After the embassies were destroyed, the government's case, naturally, was radically altered to focus on the attacks that killed over 250 people, and the Iraq allegation was not included in the superseding indictment. But, as the hearing testimony made clear, the government has never retracted the allegation.

Neither have other important assertions been retracted, including those by CIA Director George Tenet. As journalist Stephen Hayes reiterated earlier this month, Tenet, on October 7, 2002, wrote a letter to Congress, which asserted:

Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank. We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.
Tenet, as Hayes elaborated, has never backed away from these assessments, reaffirming them in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee as recently as March 9, 2004.
Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has provided faulty information to Congress? That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did not cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."


Kabul...Baghdad...
The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.

I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

Of course, we may yet find that Saddam was a participant in the specific 9/11 plot. In that regard, the commission staff's report is perplexing, and, again, raises — or flat omits — many more questions than it resolves.


Don't Forget Shakir
For one thing, the staff has now addressed the crucial January 2000 Malaysia planning session in a few of its statements. As I have previously recounted, this was the three-day meeting at which Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, eventual hijackers of Flight 77 (the one that hit the Pentagon), met with other key 9/11 planners. The staff's latest report, Statement Number 16 ("Outline of the 9/11 Plot"), even takes time to describe how the conspirators were hosted in Kuala Lampur by members of a Qaeda-affiliated terror group, Jemaah Islamiah. But the staff does not mention, let alone explain, let alone explain away, that al Midhar was escorted to the meeting by Ahmed Hikmat Shakir.

Shakir is the Iraqi who got his job as an airport greeter through the Iraqi embassy, which controlled his work schedule. He is the man who left that job right after the Malaysia meeting; who was found in Qatar six days after 9/11 with contact information for al Qaeda heavyweights — including bin Laden's aforementioned friend, Salim — and who was later detained in Jordan but released only after special pleading from Saddam's regime, and only after intelligence agents concluded that he seemed to have sophisticated counter-interrogation training. Shakir is also the Iraqi who now appears, based on records seized since the regime's fall, to have been all along an officer in Saddam's Fedayeen.

Does all this amount to proof of participation in the 9/11 plot? Well, in any prosecutor's office it would be a pretty good start. And if the commission staff was going to get into this area of Iraqi connections to al Qaeda at all, what conceivable good reason is there for avoiding any discussion whatsoever of Shakir? At least tell us why he is not worth mentioning.


Prague Problem
One thing the staff evidently thought it was laying to rest was the other niggling matter of whether 9/11 major domo Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani in Prague in April 2001. The staff's conclusion is that the meeting is a fiction. To say its reasoning is less than satisfying would be a gross understatement. Here's the pertinent conclusion, also found in Statement Number 16:

We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9 [2001]. Based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred. The FBI's investigation places him in Virginia as of April 4, as evidenced by this bank surveillance camera shot of Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Atta was back in Florida by April 11, if not before. Indeed, investigation has established that, on April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call Florida phone numbers from cell sites within Florida. We have seen no evidence that Atta ventured overseas again or re-entered the United States before July, when he traveled to Spain under his true name and back under his true name.
This is ground, again, that I've recently covered. To rehearse: Czech intelligence has alleged that Atta was seen in Prague on April 8 or 9, 2001. Atta had withdrawn $8,000 cash from a bank in Virginia on April 4 and was not eyeballed again by a witness until one week later, on April 11. The new detail added by the staff is that Atta's cell phone was used in Florida on three days (April 6, 9 and 10) during that time frame. Does this tend to show he was in Florida rather than Prague? It could, but not very convincingly. Telling us Atta's cell phone was used is not the same as telling us Atta used the cell phone.

Atta almost certainly would not have been able to use the cell phone overseas, so it would have been foolish to tote it along to the Czech Republic — especially if he was traveling clandestinely (as the large cash withdrawal suggests). He would have left it behind. Atta, moreover, had a roommate (and fellow hijacker), Marwan al-Shehhi. It is certainly possible that Shehhi — whom the staff places in Florida during April 2001 — could have used Atta's cell phone during that time.

Is it possible that Atta was in Florida rather than Prague? Of course it is. But the known evidence militates strongly against that conclusion: an eyewitness puts Atta in Prague, meeting with al-Ani; we know Atta was a "Hamburg student" and represented himself as such in a visa application; it has been reported that the Czechs have al-Ani's appointment calendar and it says he was scheduled to meet on the critical day with a "Hamburg student"; and we know for certain that Atta was in Prague under very suspicious circumstances twice in a matter of days (May 30 and June 2, 2000) during a time the Czechs and Western intelligence services feared that Saddam, through al-Ani, might be reviving a plot to use Islamic extremists to bomb Radio Free Europe (a plot the State Department acknowledged in its annual global terror report notwithstanding that the commission staff apparently did not think the incident merited mention).

I am perfectly prepared to accept the staff's conclusion about Atta not being in Prague — if the commission provides a convincing, thoughtful explanation, which is going to have to get a whole lot better than a cell-phone record.

What is the staff's reason for rejecting the eyewitness identification? Is the "Hamburg student" entry bogus? Since the staff is purporting to provide a comprehensive explanation of the 9/11 plot — the origins of which it traces back to 1999 — what is their explanation for what Atta was doing in Prague in 2000? Why, when the staff went into minute detail about the travels of other hijackers (even when it conceded it did not know the relevance of those trips), was Atta's trip to Prague not worthy of even a passing mention? Why was it so important for Atta to be in Prague on May 30, 2000 that he couldn't delay for one day, until May 31, when his visa would have been ready? Why was it so important for him to be in Prague on May 30 that he opted to go despite the fact that, without a visa, he could not leave the airport terminal? How did he happen to find the spot in the terminal where surveillance cameras would not capture him for nearly six hours? Why did he go back again on June 2? Was he meeting with al-Ani? If so, why would it be important for him to see al-Ani right before entering the United States in June 2000? And jumping ahead to 2001, if Atta wasn't using cash to travel anonymously, what did he do with the $8000 he suddenly withdrew before disappearing on April 4? If his cell phone was used in Florida between April 4 and April 11, what follow-up investigation has been done about that by the 9/11 Commission? By the FBI? By anybody? Whom was the cell phone used to call? Do any of those people remember speaking to Atta at that time? Perhaps someone would remember speaking with the ringleader of the most infamous attack in the history of the United States if he had called to chat, no?

Are these questions important to answer? You be the judge. According to the 9/11 Commission staff report, bin Laden originally pressed the operational supervisor of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), "that the attacks occur as early as mid-2000," even though bin Laden "recognized that Atta and the other pilots had only just arrived in the United States to begin their flight training[.]" Well I'll be darned: mid-2000 is exactly when Atta made his two frenetic trips to Prague immediately before heading to the United States to begin that flight training.

The commission staff next says, "[i]n 2001, Bin Laden apparently pressured KSM twice more for an earlier date. According to KSM, Bin Laden first requested a date of May 12, 2001," and then proposed a date in June or July. Well, what do you know: all those dates are only weeks after Atta may have had some reason to drop everything and secretly run to Prague for a meeting with al-Ani.
Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is an NRO contributor.

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406170840.asp

:laugh2::laugh2:

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How many times must I post this before the lies from the left stop?




Iraq & al Qaeda
The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers.



The 9/11 Commission's staff has come down decidedly on the side of the naysayers about operational ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. This development is already being met with unbridled joy by opponents of the Iraq war, who have been carping for days about recent statements by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that reaffirmed the deposed Iraqi regime's promotion of terror.




The celebration is premature. The commission's cursory treatment of so salient a national question as whether al Qaeda and Iraq confederated is puzzling. Given that the panel had three hours for Richard Clarke, one might have hoped for more than three minutes on Iraq. More to the point, though, the staff statements released Wednesday — which seemed to be contradicted by testimony at the public hearing within minutes of their publication — raise more questions than they answer, about both matters the staff chose to address and some it strangely opted to omit.

The staff's sweeping conclusion is found in its Statement No. 15 ("Overview of the Enemy"), which states:


Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Just taken on its own terms, this paragraph is both internally inconsistent and ambiguously worded. First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no "ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." If the first proposition is so, then the "[t]wo senior Bin Laden associates" who are the sources of the second are either lying or misinformed.

In light of the number of elementary things the commission staff tells us its investigation has been unable to clarify (for example, in the very next sentence after the Iraq paragraph, the staff explains that the question whether al Qaeda had any connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the 1995 plot to blow U.S. airliners out of the sky "remains a matter of substantial uncertainty"), it is fair to conclude that these two senior bin Laden associates may not be the most cooperative, reliable fellows in town regarding what bin Laden was actually up to. Moreover, we know from press reports and the administration's own statements about the many al Qaeda operatives it has captured since 9/11 that the government is talking to more than just two of bin Laden's top operatives. That begs the questions: Have we really only asked two of them about Iraq? If not, what did the other detainees say?



Inconvenient Facts
The staff's back-of-the-hand summary also strangely elides mention of another significant matter — but one that did not escape the attention of Commissioner Fred Fielding, who raised it with a panel of law-enforcement witnesses right after noting the staff's conclusion that there was "no credible evidence" of cooperation. It is the little-discussed original indictment of bin Laden, obtained by the Justice Department in spring 1998 — several weeks before the embassy bombings and at a time when the government thought it would be prudent to have charges filed in the event an opportunity arose overseas to apprehend bin Laden. Paragraph 4 of that very short indictment reads:

Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.
(Emphasis added.) This allegation has always been inconvenient for the "absolutely no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda" club. (Richard Clarke, a charter member, handles the problem in his book by limiting the 1998 indictment to a fleeting mention and assiduously avoiding any description of what the indictment actually says.)

It remains inconvenient. As testimony at the commission's public hearing Wednesday revealed, the allegation in the 1998 indictment stems primarily from information provided by the key accomplice witness at the embassy bombing trial, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl. Al-Fadl told agents that when al Qaeda was headquartered in the Sudan in the early-to-mid-1990s, he understood an agreement to have been struck under which the jihadists would put aside their antipathy for Saddam and explore ways of working together with Iraq, particularly regarding weapons production.

On al Qaeda's end, al-Fadl understood the liaison for Iraq relations to be an Iraqi named Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. "Abu Hajer al Iraqi"), one of bin Laden's closest friends. (There will be a bit more to say later about Salim, who, it bears mention, was convicted in New York last year for maiming a prison guard in an escape attempt while awaiting trial for bombing the embassies.) After the embassies were destroyed, the government's case, naturally, was radically altered to focus on the attacks that killed over 250 people, and the Iraq allegation was not included in the superseding indictment. But, as the hearing testimony made clear, the government has never retracted the allegation.

Neither have other important assertions been retracted, including those by CIA Director George Tenet. As journalist Stephen Hayes reiterated earlier this month, Tenet, on October 7, 2002, wrote a letter to Congress, which asserted:

Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank. We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.
Tenet, as Hayes elaborated, has never backed away from these assessments, reaffirming them in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee as recently as March 9, 2004.
Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has provided faulty information to Congress? That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did not cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."


Kabul...Baghdad...
The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.

I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

Of course, we may yet find that Saddam was a participant in the specific 9/11 plot. In that regard, the commission staff's report is perplexing, and, again, raises — or flat omits — many more questions than it resolves.


Don't Forget Shakir
For one thing, the staff has now addressed the crucial January 2000 Malaysia planning session in a few of its statements. As I have previously recounted, this was the three-day meeting at which Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, eventual hijackers of Flight 77 (the one that hit the Pentagon), met with other key 9/11 planners. The staff's latest report, Statement Number 16 ("Outline of the 9/11 Plot"), even takes time to describe how the conspirators were hosted in Kuala Lampur by members of a Qaeda-affiliated terror group, Jemaah Islamiah. But the staff does not mention, let alone explain, let alone explain away, that al Midhar was escorted to the meeting by Ahmed Hikmat Shakir.

Shakir is the Iraqi who got his job as an airport greeter through the Iraqi embassy, which controlled his work schedule. He is the man who left that job right after the Malaysia meeting; who was found in Qatar six days after 9/11 with contact information for al Qaeda heavyweights — including bin Laden's aforementioned friend, Salim — and who was later detained in Jordan but released only after special pleading from Saddam's regime, and only after intelligence agents concluded that he seemed to have sophisticated counter-interrogation training. Shakir is also the Iraqi who now appears, based on records seized since the regime's fall, to have been all along an officer in Saddam's Fedayeen.

Does all this amount to proof of participation in the 9/11 plot? Well, in any prosecutor's office it would be a pretty good start. And if the commission staff was going to get into this area of Iraqi connections to al Qaeda at all, what conceivable good reason is there for avoiding any discussion whatsoever of Shakir? At least tell us why he is not worth mentioning.


Prague Problem
One thing the staff evidently thought it was laying to rest was the other niggling matter of whether 9/11 major domo Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani in Prague in April 2001. The staff's conclusion is that the meeting is a fiction. To say its reasoning is less than satisfying would be a gross understatement. Here's the pertinent conclusion, also found in Statement Number 16:

We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9 [2001]. Based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred. The FBI's investigation places him in Virginia as of April 4, as evidenced by this bank surveillance camera shot of Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Atta was back in Florida by April 11, if not before. Indeed, investigation has established that, on April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call Florida phone numbers from cell sites within Florida. We have seen no evidence that Atta ventured overseas again or re-entered the United States before July, when he traveled to Spain under his true name and back under his true name.
This is ground, again, that I've recently covered. To rehearse: Czech intelligence has alleged that Atta was seen in Prague on April 8 or 9, 2001. Atta had withdrawn $8,000 cash from a bank in Virginia on April 4 and was not eyeballed again by a witness until one week later, on April 11. The new detail added by the staff is that Atta's cell phone was used in Florida on three days (April 6, 9 and 10) during that time frame. Does this tend to show he was in Florida rather than Prague? It could, but not very convincingly. Telling us Atta's cell phone was used is not the same as telling us Atta used the cell phone.

Atta almost certainly would not have been able to use the cell phone overseas, so it would have been foolish to tote it along to the Czech Republic — especially if he was traveling clandestinely (as the large cash withdrawal suggests). He would have left it behind. Atta, moreover, had a roommate (and fellow hijacker), Marwan al-Shehhi. It is certainly possible that Shehhi — whom the staff places in Florida during April 2001 — could have used Atta's cell phone during that time.

Is it possible that Atta was in Florida rather than Prague? Of course it is. But the known evidence militates strongly against that conclusion: an eyewitness puts Atta in Prague, meeting with al-Ani; we know Atta was a "Hamburg student" and represented himself as such in a visa application; it has been reported that the Czechs have al-Ani's appointment calendar and it says he was scheduled to meet on the critical day with a "Hamburg student"; and we know for certain that Atta was in Prague under very suspicious circumstances twice in a matter of days (May 30 and June 2, 2000) during a time the Czechs and Western intelligence services feared that Saddam, through al-Ani, might be reviving a plot to use Islamic extremists to bomb Radio Free Europe (a plot the State Department acknowledged in its annual global terror report notwithstanding that the commission staff apparently did not think the incident merited mention).

I am perfectly prepared to accept the staff's conclusion about Atta not being in Prague — if the commission provides a convincing, thoughtful explanation, which is going to have to get a whole lot better than a cell-phone record.

What is the staff's reason for rejecting the eyewitness identification? Is the "Hamburg student" entry bogus? Since the staff is purporting to provide a comprehensive explanation of the 9/11 plot — the origins of which it traces back to 1999 — what is their explanation for what Atta was doing in Prague in 2000? Why, when the staff went into minute detail about the travels of other hijackers (even when it conceded it did not know the relevance of those trips), was Atta's trip to Prague not worthy of even a passing mention? Why was it so important for Atta to be in Prague on May 30, 2000 that he couldn't delay for one day, until May 31, when his visa would have been ready? Why was it so important for him to be in Prague on May 30 that he opted to go despite the fact that, without a visa, he could not leave the airport terminal? How did he happen to find the spot in the terminal where surveillance cameras would not capture him for nearly six hours? Why did he go back again on June 2? Was he meeting with al-Ani? If so, why would it be important for him to see al-Ani right before entering the United States in June 2000? And jumping ahead to 2001, if Atta wasn't using cash to travel anonymously, what did he do with the $8000 he suddenly withdrew before disappearing on April 4? If his cell phone was used in Florida between April 4 and April 11, what follow-up investigation has been done about that by the 9/11 Commission? By the FBI? By anybody? Whom was the cell phone used to call? Do any of those people remember speaking to Atta at that time? Perhaps someone would remember speaking with the ringleader of the most infamous attack in the history of the United States if he had called to chat, no?

Are these questions important to answer? You be the judge. According to the 9/11 Commission staff report, bin Laden originally pressed the operational supervisor of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), "that the attacks occur as early as mid-2000," even though bin Laden "recognized that Atta and the other pilots had only just arrived in the United States to begin their flight training[.]" Well I'll be darned: mid-2000 is exactly when Atta made his two frenetic trips to Prague immediately before heading to the United States to begin that flight training.

The commission staff next says, "[i]n 2001, Bin Laden apparently pressured KSM twice more for an earlier date. According to KSM, Bin Laden first requested a date of May 12, 2001," and then proposed a date in June or July. Well, what do you know: all those dates are only weeks after Atta may have had some reason to drop everything and secretly run to Prague for a meeting with al-Ani.
Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is an NRO contributor.

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406170840.asp

:dance::dance:

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[OCA]

What in the hell are you babbling about here?

Police should be policy, boy your deduction skills are amazing?

Again though you think you could point out where i've defended Bush the man?

[OCA]

One partisan article laid to the feet of our UNITED STATES INTELL ASESSMENTS , Congresstional Reports.

You are as silly as they come.

Congressional, no need for the t.

Is it your opinion that intell asessments are always 100% correct?

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[OCA]

A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

http://tinyurl.com/kz36c

Is it possible that the intelligence analysts were wrong?

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[OCA]

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they have no evidence that Iraq produced chemical weapons after the 1991 Gulf War, despite recent reports from media outlets and Republican lawmakers.

Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan on Wednesday pointed to a newly declassified report that says coalition forces have found 500 munitions in Iraq that contained degraded sarin or mustard nerve agents.

They cited the report in an attempt to counter criticism by Democrats who say the decision to go to war was a mistake.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13480264/

Is it not possible that Saddam moved all WMD's to Syria, Iran or Russia?

[truthmatters]

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[Yurt]

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.



"It's a very candid assessment," one intelligence official said yesterday of the estimate, the first formal examination of global terrorist trends written by the National Intelligence Council since the March 2003 invasion. "It's stating the obvious."
http://tinyurl.com/kao3u

What is it with you people? Iraq is "now" the "primary" breeding ground for the scum who want to take down america? Get some education and learn what Islam is really about. They have been gunning for the west/east/north/south since the sicko religions inception. There were terrorists attacks BEFORE we liberated Iraq from Saddam. Get it thru you wee brain. Muslims are hypocrites for saying Iraq is a "reason" to go to war against the west, their OWN religion JUSTIFIES their expansion because they "liberated" the countries they took over. And NO muslim justifies Saddam.

:poke:

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[OCA]

Is it possible the national review is more biased than our intell community?

Remember the Congressional reviews were done with a Republican majority in control.


No, National Review just brought up intel that the 9/11 commission conveniently ignored in order to arrive at its predetermined conclusion.

The 9/11 commission was cut even along party lines.

[OCA]

The intell people dont think so!

Have you forgotten we have satellites trained on every part of the middle east?

Satellites do not pick up everything, especially in inclement weather.

Intel is sometimes wrong, at least thats what you guys say about the intel on Iraq pre invasion.

[manu1959]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/


This is a man that will go down in history and will have his life story turned into Spy movies some day.

How many of you have ever even heard of him?

yep.....now tell me why the cia and fbi did nothing for 8 years....

[Gaffer]

Please go get Proof of these "walls" you are talking about.

September is the ninth month not the 7th.

The "walls" were common knowledge. They are referred to that way in the 911 commission report. It was the lack of communication between the various agencies involved in intelligence gathering. Under clinton none of the agencies were allowed to exchange information or ideas about terrorists. One agency had some information while another had other information. But they could not communicate and put it all together. It was all clintons doing to keep the agencies apart. It was ignorant and foolish, like most everything else that went on in his administration.

911 was 20% Bushes fault and 80% clintons fault. No matter how the commission wants to paint it.

[Kathianne]

The "walls" were common knowledge. They are referred to that way in the 911 commission report. It was the lack of communication between the various agencies involved in intelligence gathering. Under clinton none of the agencies were allowed to exchange information or ideas about terrorists. One agency had some information while another had other information. But they could not communicate and put it all together. It was all clintons doing to keep the agencies apart. It was ignorant and foolish, like most everything else that went on in his administration.

911 was 20% Bushes fault and 80% clintons fault. No matter how the commission wants to paint it.

No shit. Anyone who wishes to 'wish away' †he walls has a hell of a selling job to do.

[manu1959]

The "walls" were common knowledge. They are referred to that way in the 911 commission report. It was the lack of communication between the various agencies involved in intelligence gathering. Under clinton none of the agencies were allowed to exchange information or ideas about terrorists. One agency had some information while another had other information. But they could not communicate and put it all together. It was all clintons doing to keep the agencies apart. It was ignorant and foolish, like most everything else that went on in his administration.

911 was 20% Bushes fault and 80% clintons fault. No matter how the commission wants to paint it.

anyone know the name of the person that created the walls?

[Kathianne]

anyone know the name of the person that created the walls?

Gorelik was one.

[manu1959]

Gorelik was one.

excellent....now why would the president create an intelligence society that could not share information about a group that he even now admits he new was dangerous...knew had killed us soldiers in somalia and the moment 911 happened knew who had done it.....why would a president agree to purposely hamstring his intelligence groups....not to mention weaken his military and not even respond to multiple terrorist attacks on us and allied assets....

why ? bill clinton is a smart man they say.... these actions eem an odd response to the events and facts....

[gabosaurus]

I am sure Clinton was as much in the dark about the inner workings of the FBI and CIA as Reagan and Bush I were.

[manu1959]

I am sure Clinton was as much in the dark about the inner workings of the FBI and CIA as Reagan and Bush I were.

clintons admin was the one that created the fbi can't talk to the cia rule.....know which clinton aponitee created the rule......know who appointed the driector of the cia and fbi that did nothing about what they were spying on....

now tell me....why would the pres and his apointess creat an intlligence gropu that could not comminicate and would not do anything about a threat everyone claims knew was a threat......

odd isn't it

[stephanie]

I am sure Clinton was as much in the dark about the inner workings of the FBI and CIA as Reagan and Bush I were.

That is not true, Little Missy..
Clinton was OFFERED Osama Bin Laden by Sudan..
And Clinton was advised not to take him..For some stupid reason..


So... Clinton was NOT IN THE DARK...
He was just.....weak..

[manu1959]

That is not true, Little Missy..
Clinton was OFFERED Osama Bin Laden by Sudan..
And Clinton was advised not to take him..For some stupid reason..
So... Clinton was NOT IN THE DARK...
He was just.....weak..

so tell me...why would the pres not take a person he admits he knew was a threat and who would tell him not to take him and why????

it is almost like..............

[stephanie]

so tell me...why would the pres not take a person he admits he knew was a threat and who would tell him not to take him and why????

it is almost like..............

I'm not sure I like what I think your thinking...

But?????? It is a good question...

[manu1959]

I'm not sure I like what I think your thinking...

But?????? It is a good question...

yes it would make one think that the blow job crowd set up the us to get hit ..... but why.....

[stephanie]

yes it would make one think that the blow job crowd set up the us to get hit ..... but why.....

You know what dear..it's late and I'm suffering from lack of sleep...Insomnia
Now, I could probably think of a few things why, but would you like to tell me your thinking.......of why..:cheers2:

[manu1959]

You know what dear..it's late and I'm suffering from lack of sleep...Insomnia
Now, I could probably think of a few things why, but would you like to tell me your thinking.......of why..:cheers2:

well i am a bottle of vino into it and started wondering why the dems attack the right so hard....why they created an intelligenc community that was hamstrung and even when they discovered something ...did nothing....then when they blew stuff up we still did nothing....why ...what was the end game.....

duh...how do you take down the GOP....set them up to fight a war in the middle east and get a moron elected.....

the left claims now, skull and bones....you name it....

me dost think they protest too much....

[stephanie]

well i am a bottle of vino into it and started wondering why the dems attack the right so hard....why they created an intelligenc community that was hamstrung and even when they discovered something ...did nothing....then when they blew stuff up we still did nothing....why ...what was the end game.....

duh...how do you take down the GOP....set them up to fight a war in the middle east and get a moron elected.....

the left claims now, skull and bones....you name it....

me dost think they protest too much....

Unfortunatly....I hate to think....I've had those thoughts..
And on the flip side...The liberals on some sites say that President Bush set up 9/11 for some reason....

It's all just too damn sick and scary to think about, sometimes..:cheers2:

[nevadamedic]

Unfortunatly....I hate to think....I wouldn't put it past them..
And on the flip side...The liberals on some sites say that President Bush set up 9/11 for some reason....

It's all just too damn sick and scary to think about, sometimes..:cheers2:

Like Rosie......................

[manu1959]

Unfortunatly....I hate to think....I've had those thoughts..
And on the flip side...The liberals on some sites say that President Bush set up 9/11 for some reason....

It's all just too damn sick and scary to think about, sometimes..:cheers2:

yes they do say bush set up 911.....but the 8 years prior to that seems to have set up bush......they claim bush stole the election twice....yet no one can prove it.....

why would the dems set up the gop....why....

[stephanie]

yes they do say bush set up 911.....but the 8 years prior to that seems to have set up bush......they claim bush stole the election twice....yet no one can prove it.....

why would the dems set up the gop....why....

Well....IF that was the plan...My thoughts are...it backfired on them...

Cause they have been given a chance with the 2006 election, and once again they are.....Failing...

The American people aren't as stupid as some think...
Here's to 2008...:cheers2:

[manu1959]

Well....IF that was the plan...My thoughts are...it backfired on them...

Cause they have been given a chance with the 2006 election, and once again they are.....Failing...

The American people aren't as stupid as some think...
Here's to 2008...:cheers2:

i don't think they are failing...they have esentially split the country and gotten the gop to take the fall....they have gotten the gop to invade the middle east to get the oil to fund their programs....they have gotten bush elected twice and now computer voting is suddenly faulty after they win 06.....they would never be able to take down the gop on issues....they got the gop to take down the gop.....

anyone notice that out sourcing is evil but guess where the teamsters are trying to unionize....

[stephanie]

i don't think they are failing...they have esentially split the country and gotten the gop to take the fall....they have gotten the gop to invade the middle east to get the oil to fund their programs....they have gotten bush elected twice and now computer voting is suddenly faulty after they win 06.....they would never be able to take down the gop on issues....they got the gop to take down the gop.....

anyone notice that out sourcing is evil but guess where the teamsters are trying to unionize....


It just hurts my brain and heart to think of these types of things...
But with that said....The Democrats of old are no more, and this new breed of the Democrat party.....is scary...
Would they plot something like this???:dunno:

[avatar4321]

It just hurts my brain and heart to think of these types of things...
But with that said....The Democrats of old are no more, and this new breed of the Democrat party.....is scary...
Would they plot something like this???:dunno:

Yeah they are scary. I just hope in our rush to defeat them we dont end up exactly like them.

[Gaffer]

Scary thoughts out there. And it seems to run along the lines of a real and major conspiracy to grab for power. Not so much an individual as certain groups and families. Everyone withing an administration are friends, relations or associates. Nepotism is a major force in politics. In both parties.

I just can see clintons administration allowing the build up to attacks and even the attacks just to get at the gop politically. There's something a lot more sinister going on here than that. But so far my thoughts are on a lot more abstract level with nothing specific to focus on.

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[stephanie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign...rveillance_Act

here is what made the so called wall in the intell services.

You people are just unbelievable.

The 911 attacks were on BUSH'S Watch!

FISA is what created the attmosphere in which they intell comminity had barriers in communication.

The funny thing is Janet Reno tried to change this and you hate her.

The Gorlicki claims stem from one memo she wrote that said nothing that FISA didnt already say.


You people talk ,talk ,talk and provide not one single shred of evidence.


Well...your sources you quote is questionable...
Wikipedia can be edited by any Tom, Dick or Harry, who wishes to play around...
So...Maybe it is you who is Unbelievable??:poke:

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[stephanie]

Did you note that Wiki has links to everything in the article?

Did you note that the 911 commision also sited FISA as the problem?

So tell me who do you use as a good source of information?

Are you aware wiki has been reviewed along with the encyclopedia Britanic and was sited as just as reliable?

I don't care if you use it..

I just won't take you serious when you do...:poke:

[truthmatters]

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