Posted on 06/08/2004 3:59:07 PM PDT by swilhelm73
Saddam Hussein "always had links with international terrorist organizations."
On the face of it, this is not a controversial statement. It comes from a CNN interview of Iyad Allawi, recently chosen as the interim prime minister of Iraq. Allawi expanded on this assessment in a December 31, 2003, interview with CNN's Bill Hemmer, when he estimated that more than 1,000 al Qaeda terrorists were operating in Iraq. But his more interesting comment came moments later. The al Qaeda fighters, he said:
were present in Iraq, they came and they were active in Iraq before the war of liberation. They were inflicting a lot of problems on the--and inflaming the situation in northern Iraq, in Iraq Kurdistan. They killed once about a year and a half ago 42 worshipers in one of the mosques in Harachi [ph] in a very ugly way.
Again, on the surface, this was not a particularly revealing statement. After all, Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council that al Qaeda was operating in Iraq--almost certainly with the knowledge and approval of the Iraqi regime--before the war. CIA Director George Tenet has testified to the presence of al Qaeda in Iraq on several occasions. Allawi went on:
Those people have had the backing of Saddam prior to liberation, and they remained in Iraq after the collapse, and after the vacuum was created. After the way, they remained in Iraq. Many joined them since then.
Allawi's declaration that the Iraqi regime supported al Qaeda terrorists before the war in Iraq is intriguing not because of the claim itself, but because of the man making it. Allawi for years ran an Iraqi exile group called the Iraqi National Accord. In recent years, he was the Iraqi exile closest to the CIA. And although George Tenet has spoken repeatedly about the prewar Iraq-al Qaeda connection, he has been at odds with many in the bureaucracy beneath him.
Allawi's claims about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection--claims he has made for several years--have not always been solid. In December, Allawi provided journalists with a document indicating that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta trained in Iraq weeks before the 9/11 hijackings. That same three-page document also claimed that Iraq had--as President Bush claimed in his State of the Union Address--sought uranium from Niger. The report was a bit too politically convenient and was quickly dismissed as a forgery.
But Allawi isn't the only prominent member of the new Iraqi government to have suggested Iraq-al Qaeda connections. His deputy, Barham Salih, has also repeatedly alleged that Saddam's regime supported Ansar al Islam, al Qaeda-linked Islamists in Kurdistan. "Yes, they hate each other, but they're very utilitarian," said Salih. "Saddam Hussein, a secular infidel to many jihadists, had no problem giving money to Hamas. This debate [about whether Saddam worked with al Qaeda] is stupid. The proof is there."
ABC News' outstanding Pentagon reporter, Martha Raddatz, also reported on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection last week. But her May 25, 2004, report on Abu Musab al Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate who joined forces with Ansar al Islam terrorists, buried an important detail. "In late 2002, officials say, Zarqawi began establishing sleeper cells in Baghdad and acquiring weapons from Iraqi Intelligence officials." (emphasis added).
The evidence is Iraqi's were in Oklahoma City in 1995 and participated in the bombing.
The evidence is there that al Qaeda terrorists were in Iraq.
If I were a Democrat running on the fact that the above two facts are untrue, I'd be very worried.
When is George going to show his hand?
I don't know, but betting on him playing it WRONG is a bad idea.
It WAS politically convenient, but it was never forensically examined, AFAIK.
Be suspicious all you want, but look at the evidence before drawing a conclusion.
"When is George going to show his hand?"
In a hurry for your slice of cooked dim goose?
In a hurry for your slice of cooked dim goose?
Just like the movie "Fast & Furious" power-shift thorough the gears smoothly and don't flip the "nos" switch too soon.
First you let the Dims dig their own grave, then you let them shoot themselves. All that's left to do is back-fill the hole...and play the liberal Dim's version of "taps"
If you hum it, it sort of sounds like "hey-hey-hey-gooooodbye"
If the above 2 items are facts then they are TRUE. I fact is and only is a TRUE THING. "the fact that the above 2 facts are untrue" is a nonsense phrase and a self contradiction.
If the above 2 items are facts then they are TRUE. I fact is and only is a TRUE THING. "the fact that the above 2 facts are untrue" is a nonsense phrase and a self contradiction.
WHAT ?????
It is just too bad that the video of when Saddam was "humiliating" prisoners in Ah-boo Grabber is not shown on TV...60 Minutes II...
The video that was shown to all the Senators. Now that was some serious humiliation! The video was offered to all news outlets and not one American news outlet picked up a copy... But, what should I have expected? The American news outlets ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC (except FOX) are now the Liberal-Democratic-Partisan-Media-Outlet. They want more porn...not truth and true news.
If the fact is untrue then it is not a fact and if it is referred to as a fact then you are writing that the true thing is untrue. You are writing nonsense.
Less than two months before 9/11/01, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper “Al-Nasiriya” carried a column headlined, “American, 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 US “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 US “will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs” – an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, “New York, New York”.
The Clinton administration in the late 90's said that Osama bin Laden negotiated with Saddam. AQ would not attack Iraq in exchange for WMD training.
In the mid-90's mainstream media wrote often about the world's alarm about the growing relationship between OBL and Saddam. It's been funny to watch the leftists conveniently "forget" all the information they once wrote about.
Dozens of articles linking Saddam and OBL:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1127451/posts
You sound like a programmer...boolean logic
The best way to end war and ensure peace is to kill the enemy.
The best way to end terrorism is to kill terrorists.
Kill them all.
In an argument when you say "the fact that" you have usually semantically given the argument to your opposition and I occasionally hear that used effectively by that opposition to confound an argument. Perhaps it is time to simply retire that word "fact" since it is so commonly used to mean its opposite. Actually, I know nothing of Mr. Boole or his logic.
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