Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First, here is the URL to the article. It is fairly long, but very interesting.

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp

The really disturbing thing is that the democrats on the intelligence committee that were planning on making and releasing a report about Bush's reasons for going to war, just prior to the next presidential election, knew this and they still planned to try and unseat Bush with this "made up" report. They had confirmed evidence that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda and al Qaeda to 9/11, thus Iraq to 9/11! This really demonstrates how they think their personal power and the power of their party is more important than the truth and their country!(I am talking about the democrats that are in power in this country, not the sheep that follow them, so if you are a democrat, don't be too offended!)

You probably won't see this info. in the liberal general media, even though the report was given to congress! Nothing today is new worthy, unless it bashes Bush! I guess the liberals will have to start talking about the economy again!

To bad the Bush administration doesn't use the media like the democrats do, we would all be a lot more informed and safer.

Rodney

I looked over the website that houses the article you (rodmalm) cite and found a related piece about the Democratic memo. I clicked the link memo hoping to peruse the full memo but instead I ended up on a page with a banner in Latin that translates "The Power of the Democrats Must Be Destroyed". I'm not 100% certain about the translation of democraticorum though since Greek root words drafted into Latin don't work very well at times. Interestingly, there are comments about the Mass. court decision to rule that a ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional and the page basically urges it's readers to simply ignore the Judicial Branch of our government when they don't agree with its rulings. Any site that speaks against the 3 branched framework of our country isn't a valid read. Back to the subject at hand, I want to address some of the points in the rodmalm's article.

Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."

Please note "fragmentary" & "possible" in the same sentence. Looks like wishful thinking to me.

The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.

Please note the word "former", which implies that he was not currently in charge of the IIS office. Also the article mentions that it appears the funds were never allocated, so the meeting was probably fruitless in any event.

CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April 2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot confirm Atta met with the IIS.

The dates are too widely spaced to cause me to believe that these meetings were related. Also, the words "complicated" & "contradictory" don't help the situation.

The meeting that has gotten the most press attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.

First of all - gotten??? Sorry, but I demand decent word use by journalists. Secondly, it sounds to me like the Czech information group doesn't quite fill the shoes left behind by the KGB.

Sensitive reporting appears a lot in this article and ends up sounding like the old joke "I'd love to tell you, but I'd have to kill you afterward".

CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al Qaeda connections are a fantasy...

Doesn't everyone just love the use of upper-case? Until this point, I actually thought the article might be factual and unbiased reporting. Pity they contaminated it with unnecessary passion.

Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) [line omitted] There is no Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Liquid paper? If that's their idea of desperately assuring secrecy, it's a wonder we didn't find Saddam's WoMD arsenal months ago. It implies that the simplistic Iraqis are making our 1400 person WoMD team look like a pack of morons. It is also interesting that the quote above says there is no large group investigating Iraq-al Qaeda ties and yet this is followed later in the article by the following statement:

CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be a slow process.

Isn't it odd that we've found this wealth of scattered information irrefutably connecting Iraq & al-Qaeda and yet (yes, I'm saying it again) no mention of the WoMD? To his credit, Bush has at least stopped insisting that they'll be found in Syria.

That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo, extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda connections.

I'd say someone was doing some serious "skimming". I wonder how many small and meaningful details will inevitably be missed in the effort to make Bush look justified in his actions?

The whole Ahmed Hikmat Shakir section is very informative and I would concur on the surface it suggests very strongly that he was in league with al-Qaeda, but one man's efforts do not speak for the policies and alliances of an entire nation. Thus the article's conclusion, "But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans", is too general in scope to be meaningful.

Keep looking Rod. While you're at it (and because I'm curious), please provide me with a list of all TV news centers, major newspapers, and magazines that constitute the liberal media. All I've seen for years are Rush, O'Reilly, and their clones. The only liberal I remember is Donahue and I never liked him anyway.

I look forward to your response.
-----
Who is like Set...

1.1 Vietnamese Blue Beauties
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Here we have a large document that was given to congress and those in other upper government positions, and we only get to read about it from a memo that is listed in a conservative publication. I would love to have seen it on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, etc. Considering how newsworthy it is, (50 links between Iraq, al Qaeda, Usama bin laden) why haven't any newspapers, tv stations, etc. even mentioned it? The mass media will spend 5 minutes interviewing protesters, and showing protests, and commenting on the protests, but the spend about 5 secs. mentioning how the majority of Americans and British support Bush and this war. This unfair reporting is changing peoples' opinions because all they see is negative, and that is not the purpose of the news!

You said, "Please note "fragmentary" & "possible" in the same sentence. Looks like wishful thinking to me."---That looks like honesty to me! Clinton would have called it a definite link!

You also commented about this"The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.

Please note the word "former", which implies that he was not currently in charge of the IIS office. Also the article mentions that it appears the funds were never allocated, so the meeting was probably fruitless in any event.

Former indicates that he currently is no longer the Iraqi intelligence chief, not that he wasn't one at the time! If he wasn't one at the time, how did he have the authority to authorize funds to Atta? And who cares if the meeting was fruitless? It shows a link. Just because the meeting failed, doesn't meant that it's existence is not important!

You also commented, "Isn't it odd that we've found this wealth of scattered information irrefutably connecting Iraq & al-Qaeda and yet (yes, I'm saying it again) no mention of the WoMD? To his credit, Bush has at least stopped insisting that they'll be found in Syria."

I don't find that odd at all. No WMD's have been found, so again, that just looks like honesty to me! It wouldn't be that hard to plant WMDs if this administration was as dishonest as the last one. And why would you mention them when they haven't been found?

This is the first time I have ever seen this site, and yes, I did hear about it on Sean Hannity's radio talk show and I haven't looked at anything else on this site so I can't vouch for them. I did find it very interesting that this report was totally overlooked by the mass media, however. I listen to the radio when I am out making deliveries, and that is where I found out about it. I understand, from listening to Hannity's show, that the original document that lists all these connections is about 500 pages long and cross-references the 50 connections with info from various investigating authorities and "terrorist" debriefings. I am looking for it on the web, but it is probably classified to protect sources. That would explain your other statement that--

That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo, extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda connections.

By the way, I haven't heard Rush or O'Reilly on the radio in years.-(I occasionally get to see O'Reilly on FOX News.) They aren't on the radio when I am out running around. (I'd love to hear their perspective on all of this though, so I could hear some info. from the other side instead of the liberal mass media I usually hear.) I occasionally hear a couple of other people that used to be on local news shows though. Two of them have commented on their radio shows, how their supervisors squashed stories because they didn't show the democrats in a good light. They have also commented how most reporters, editors, producers are very liberal and the few conservative people that work there are very cautious not to let their views be known for fear of being terminated. (I am talking about CBS and KTVU (a local fox affiliate).(one of them who also did weather, also got in trouble for using the politically incorrect term "Indian Summer" when predicting a warm spell in late fall!--apparently that is somehow offensive to Native Americans.

Just today, I heard on KGO (a local radio show that is very liberal at night, in the middle during the day, and somewhat conservative in the morning) two people who called in. They are in the military and they both commented how they were interviewed in Iraq (by ABC and CBS if I remember right). As soon as they said that everything was going great, the interviewer said cut and the interview was over. They didn't want to hear anything but bad news about the war effort!--Yes, that is good, fair reporting! Don't report what people are actually saying unless you can edit out the stuff that makes Bush or this war look good.

As for the use of CAPS and such, that is really knit-picking. I care a lot more about content than if someone is trying to make a point to his/her readers by using CAPS.

This country is becoming so liberalized, through our schools and mass media, that someone who is more toward the middle seems like a right-wing wacko to a lot of people. I agree that the American Standard is pretty far to right, from what little I have seen of it, but I consider ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC to all be liberal. Not far left wing, but far more to the left than center which is where the news shows should be.

Rodney