Posted on 03/28/2004 6:10:42 AM PST by truthandlife
Why did the Bush administration immediately suspect that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks when there was no evidence of any connection, as Richard Clarke and other Bush critics maintain?
Maybe it was because there was indeed evidence, very dramatic evidence, in fact - in the form of warnings in the state-run Iraqi press that such an attack was coming, along with praise for Osama bin Laden and his kamikaze hijackers in the days after the World Trade Center was destroyed.
Less than two months before 9/11, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper "Al-Nasiriya" carried a column headlined, "America, An Obsession Called Osama Bin Ladin." [July 21, 2001] In the piece, Baath Party writer Naeem Abd Muhalhal predicted that bin Laden would attack the U.S. "with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House."
The same state-approved column also insisted that bin Laden "will strike America on the arm that is already hurting," and that the U.S. "will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs" - an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, "New York, New York." [Two 9/11 families were awarded over $100 million last May by U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer based on this and other evidence that Iraq was involved in 9/11]
Saddam's threats of a 9/11-style attack before 9/11 weren't limited to that single report. In 1992, his son Uday used an editorial in Babil, the newspaper he ran, to warn of Iraqi kamikaze attacks inside America, saying, "Does the United States realize the meaning of every Iraqi becoming a missile that can cross countries and cities?"
Then in the late 1990s, according to UPI, "a cable to Saddam from the chief of Iraqi intelligence was transmitted by Baghdad Radio. The message read, 'We will chase [Americans] to every corner at all times. No high tower of steel will protect them against the fire of truth.'"
Coincidence? Perhaps.
But after the 9/11 attacks, Saddam became the only world leader to offer praise for bin Laden, even as other terrorist leaders, like Yassir Arafat, went out of their way to make a show of sympathy to the U.S. by donating blood to 9/11 victims on camera.
The day after the attacks, in quotes picked up by Agence France Press, Saddam proclaimed that "America is reaping the thorns planted by its rulers in the world."
"There is hardly a place (in the world) that does not have a memorial symbolizing the criminal actions committed by America against its natives," AFP quoted the Iraqi dictator complaining, based on reports in the Iraqi News agency.
After excoriating the U.S. for ending World War II by using nuclear weapons, and for its involvement in Vietnam, Saddam gloated, "[He] who does not want to reap evil must not sow it, and [he] who considers the lives of his people precious must remember that the lives of the people in the world are precious also."
"The American peoples should remember that no one ever crossed the Atlantic carrying weapons to be used against them. They are the ones who crossed the Atlantic carrying death, destruction and ugly exploitation to the whole world."
A day later Saddam told visiting Tunisian Foreign Minister Habib ben Yahya, "America brought the hatred of the world upon itself."
For his part Uday flat-out praised the 9/11 attacks, saying, "These were courageous operations carried out by young Arabs and Muslims," according to quotes picked up by the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat.
As Richard Clarke and his fans in the Democrat-media complex report in ominous tones that President Bush ordered him to launch an unwarranted investigation into the 9/11-Iraq connection, it's worth remembering how much Iraq had done justify that order.
Besides the fact that Uday's statement is bluster, when did he say it? Oh, yeah, 1992. What year was the 9/11 attack? Oh, yeah, 1991. Apparently the author has a time machine, or thinks someone related to all this does, because grandiose bluster after the attack is evidence of Saddam's involvement prior to the attack.
No, Uday's statement in 1992 occurred a few months before the first WTC bombing. You know, the one carried out by a man with an Iraqi passport: Ramzi Yousef. Yousef was one of the original planners on Operation Bojinka in 1994 which eventually became the 9/11 attacks.
The hints of the attack on 9/11 by the Iraqi newspaper in July 2001 are strange. Did it indicate knowledge of the upcoming attacks? Was this kind of article and its language common or was it an anomaly. If it was anomalous, then it is evidence that Saddam knew the attacks were going to take place. Everyone knows that Saddam had a strong motive for attacking us. If he knew ahead of time then it isn't a big stretch to think that he may have been involved. If you think that Saddam would come out and admit involvement in 9/11, then you are a bigger fool than you appear.
We know the British warned us in August. Again, the government is to blame for ignoring them, right? Of course, just like with Pearl Harbor, they didn't "ignore" them - they wanted it to happen. Then they claim ignorance afterwards.
I'm really surprised that the folks in the white coats let you have the time to type all this in. Thorazine is your friend!
I am surprised Newsmax did not report this before.
Yousef and Nichols crossed paths in the Phillipines. Mohammed was Yousef's uncle. It is interesting to note that Yousef entered the United States on an Iraqi passport and had been known among the New York fundamentalists as "Rashid, the Iraqi". Another name that could be thrown into the mix is Abdul Rahman Yasin, a U.S. citizen who moved to Iraq in the 1960's and returned to the U.S. in 1992. After the 1993 WTC bombing, Yasin fled to Iraq and was given money and housing by Saddam Hussein's regime.
Bump.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010917015755/http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/2001/08/01/11487.html
A) Suddenly Saddam is concerned about the lives of innocent people???
and
One of the biggest reasons people in this world don't like the U.S.A., is for the same reason most Americans cannot look at opulence and say, "Good for that person." Most people say..."What the heck did THEY do to get all that money" instead. Those in the world that don't like us....are simply jealous. And jealousy is quite ugly, no matter where you come from.
bump
He knew in advance, he was harboring terrorists, including Abu Nidal and Zarqawi (who founded Al Qaeda in Iraq before the invasion), and yet the left maintains that there was no justification for the war.
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