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Re: Iraq and Al-Qa'ida
| quote: | Originally posted by zag2me
I just saw a news item on uk tv about americans perceptions on the link between Iraq and the september 11th attacks.
I was horrified to see all 7 of the interviewed americans on the street really do beleave that sadam hussain had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks.
I just cant beleave people can be so naive. Is your government telling you this? Is it really true? From an outsiders point of view this seems absolutly crazy.
I was under the impression Sadam hussain spent his entire life as the countries leader suppresing muslims fundementalism which was the biggest threat to his dictatoship rule.
Or am i missing something here? |
The reason why people believe there is a connection because of the repeated lies that have been told by this administration:
| quote: | Published Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Cheney: Iraq Tied to al-Qaida
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
The Associated Press
ORLANDO -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.
"He was a patron of terrorism," Cheney said of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. "He had long-established ties with al-Qaida."
Cheney offered no details to back up his claim of a link between Hussein and al-Qaida.
In making the case for war in Iraq, Bush administration officials frequently cited what they said were Saddam's decade-long contacts with al-Qaida operatives. They stopped short of claiming that Iraq was directly involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, but critics say Bush officials left that impression with the American public.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said the Bush administration had "a sorry record in the war on terror." Graham, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spoke Sunday in a conference call arranged by John Kerry's presidential campaign in anticipation of Cheney's speech.
The U.S. State Department acknowledged last week it was incorrect in stating that terrorism declined worldwide last year in a report that the Bush administration initially pointed to as evidence it was succeeding against terrorism, Graham noted. Instead, both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said.
A handful of protesters led by the League of Conservation Voters protested outside the hotel where Cheney spoke Monday in Orlando.
The vice president later went to a Panama City for a $350,000 fund-raiser.
During his brief speech at the institute, Cheney listed what he described as the accomplishments of the Bush administration in the war on terror. He said democracy was taking root in Afghanistan and Iraq; Libya's leader, Moammar Gadhafi, has abandoned his nuclear ambitions; Pakistani president Gen. Pervez Musharraf has become a U.S. ally, and Saudi Arabia's leaders have gotten a wake-up call about the threat posed by alQaida operatives in the kingdom.
Cheney made no mention of the kidnapping in Saudi Arabia over the weekend of Lockheed Martin contractor Paul Johnson Jr., who has ties to Florida's Space Coast.
"We are now about three years into the war on terrorism," Cheney said. "We met great challenges. There are more ahead. This is not time for impatience or self-defeating pessimism."
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Then the 911 commission comes out with this report today:
| quote: | No Evidence Connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda, 9/11 Panel Says
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; 1:32 PM
There is "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, according to a new staff report released this morning by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Although Osama bin Laden briefly explored the idea of forging ties with Iraq in the mid-1990s, the terrorist leader was hostile to Hussein's secular government, and Iraq never responded to requests for help in providing training camps or weapons, the panel found in the first of two reports issued today.
The findings come in the wake of statements Monday by Vice President Cheney that Iraq had "long-established ties" with al Qaeda, and comments by President Bush yesterday backing up that assertion.
The commission issued its report on al Qaeda's history at the start of a two-day round of hearings this morning. In a separate report on the planning and deliberations for the Sept. 11 plot, the panel cited numerous pieces of FBI evidence in concluding that ringleader Mohamed Atta never met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9, 2001, as Cheney and some other Bush administration officials have alleged.
"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 second report said.
The report on al Qaeda's history said the government of Sudan, which gave sanctuary to al Qaeda from 1991 to 1996, persuaded bin Laden to cease supporting anti-Hussein forces and "arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda." But the contacts did not result in any cooperation, the panel said.
"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan [in 1996], but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report says. "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."
The conclusions provide the latest example of how the Sept. 11 commission has become a political irritant for the Bush administration. The 10-member bipartisan commission, initially opposed by the White House, has frequently feuded with the government over access to documents and witnesses and has issued findings sharply critical of the Bush administration's focus on terrorism prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
In testimony before the commission, CIA and FBI officials said they agreed with the staff report's assessment of the abortive relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq.
A CIA counterterrorism analyst who testified using the pseudonym Ted Davis said, "We’re in full agreement with the staff statement," which he said did "an excellent job" of representing the agency’s current understanding of the al Qaeda-Iraq relationship.
John Pistole, the FBI's executive assistant director for counter-terrorism, concurred.
Staff writer William Branigin contributed to this report.
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Zag2me look up other American news sources that do not assert such a connection between Hussein and al-Qaeda because to not do so and assume that Americans are simply sheep in a herd is to also be ignorant of events in America such as the released 9-11 reports today that debunk such a notion of Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein being connected partners.
