I think it's irrelevant to the "invasion."
BTW, I want to hear from the Czechs themselves. The reporting from the Czech "government" seems contradictory, as reported here.
I don't know if the meeting took place, but Ani's denials and Bina's. statements are meaningless. "Osama Hated Saddam," whatever. Saddam hated Iran, he sent planes there. Atta could have had his own agendas.
And now we know some of the disinformation is false. The disinformation about the trip in the American press was very curious. The Czechs stuck to their guns in the face of it.
And the timing of the meeting "just happened" to be at a time Atta wasn't eyewitnessed in the US. Except for cell phone calls to "lodgings". Well, what are those lodgings? Anyone check if Atta was there?
Check out Stephen F. Hayes' book "The Connection: How Saddam's Collaboration With Al Qaeda Endangered America." It is a compelling read in so many ways, but also brings some important corroboration to the Atta-Prague story.
Hayes indicates, contrary to the 9-11 Ommission's Report, that in fact there is a photo of someone with the Iraqi agent who appears to be Atta, stalking the offices of Radio Free Europe in Prague from April 2001.
Additionally, the April 4th bank sighting mentioned in the Ommission's report is highly misleading. This sighting occured BEFORE Atta's alleged meeting with the Iraqi agent on April 9th in Prague. During that bank visit, Atta withdrew $8,000 in cash which is in keeping with someone needing a large amount of money to travel.
In further contradiction to the 9-11 Ommission's presumptive conclusions, Atta was known to take the train into the Czech Republic from Germany. European train stations do not take your name when you purchase a train ticket so there would be no record of Atta's travels if he travelled by train, so a lack of his name appearing anywhere is meaningless.
Further, does the 9-11 Ommission report ACTUALLY want us to believe that EVERYONE who crosses into the Czech Republic is photographed? Europe's system of passport control is such that when you travel into one European country from outside Europe, your passport is stamped only one time and only looked at with a glance when crossing into other European states, IF AT ALL. So if Atta kept to his usual practice of travelling to Prague by train from Germany, there is no reason a record of his passport would be on file with Czech authorities.
And of course the cellphone thing is flimsey at best. Atta likely left his phone behind while in Europe and his hijacker roommate was the one using it in all likelyhood. Why is the 9-11 Ommission so fired up to exhonerate Saddam on any interaction with Atta?
As Hayes' book points out, the extensive FBI paper trail on Atta reconstructed after 9-11 ends abruptly after the April 4th Virginia bank sighting and does not resume again until a week later back in Florida. There is no such gap anywhere else in the paper trail record of Atta's journeys. While not conclusive, the possibility that Atta was in Prague, cannot be so easily dismissed as the 9-11 Ommission report makes out. And the Czechs stand firmly behind their story...just like the European intelligence agencies that stood behind the Yellow Cake story of Iraqis shopping for uranium in Zaire who, along with President Bush, are being vindicated in their insistence on the accuracy of that story.