Posted on 09/08/2006 10:14:11 PM PDT by doug from upland
I concur...this is not the end all be all that shows 100% Saddam knowledge of every detail of Al Qaida's operations in Iraq...that being said there were lots of mistakes made pre and post 9/11...I just hope we learn from them and get better..
What is it with this 9/11 thing all of a sudden? All I hear lately is "9/11 this and 9/11 that" ... I mean, here I was happily listening to Joan Baez music today, and all of a sudden everyone is talking about something called "9/11" ... I have no clue what they mean. Really! I was just so happy being a Moth fluttering about into a hot lightbulb that I didn't know that many of my ancestors also fluttered right into that same hot lightbulb so many days ago. My only memories are of this morning when I began fluttering about from my coccoon, and yesterday never existed.
/sarcasm
This excerpt from an article in Friday's WSJ written about Interpol efforts to stop terrorists discusses falsified documents. There are 12 MILLION known lost or stolen passports worldwide. If you know the right people, it can't be too hard to get one of them...
In terms of the gaps in our security measures, the most glaring is the threat of terrorists entering the U.S. and other countries using falsified stolen passports. This fraud, the subject of a recent report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, has been going on for too long. The GAO report -- buttressed by the findings of the 9/11 Commission -- is a catalogue of clandestine travel and planning. Stolen and lost passports are "prized travel documents among terrorists" and "officials acknowledge that an undetermined number of inadmissible aliens may have entered the U.S. using a lost or stolen passport."
For instance: Ramzi Yousef, mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, entered the U.S. using a stolen Iraqi passport. And even with the heightened security following 9/11, there are documented cases of foreigners entering the U.S. and many other countries using falsified stolen passports -- including some from the city that was home to an al Qaeda cell that helped plan the 9/11 attacks. It is cold comfort to the many airline passengers -- regularly, sometimes invasively inconvenienced by the current security regime -- to learn that five years after 9/11, we still don't require every passport to be screened against a global database of stolen passports.
Before 9/11 we had a valid excuse -- no such database existed. Over the last four years, however, Interpol has built a global database of Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD), which identifies a shocking 12 million stolen and lost passports, as well as the technology to allow officers to access this and other Interpol databases at airports, borders and other field points.
This new approach, launched in Switzerland at the end of last year, gets results. Each month, over 20,000 Swiss police officers conduct over 300,000 database searches. So far, the searches have detected on average over 100 people carrying documents that had been reported stolen or lost. Until other countries implement this border protection tool (as France has done at Charles de Gaulle Airport), there will remain another gaping hole in global security.
Yet the global community is not yet treating this as a high priority. Most likely it will take a major attack, like a terrorist using a stolen passport and armed with a biological weapon, before countries will treat this issue like they now treat the threat of liquids being carried on planes by passengers.
bttt
Well, that's true in the sense falsified passports are available to anyone who has the monetary means, nefarious contacts and evil reason to get a fake one.
Anyone can get an Iraqi passport AK 47...and you don't even have to be in Iraq an NRA member ...
Same thing
The Philippine government expelled two Iraqi diplomats after it was proven that they were tied to a terrorist bombing in the Philippines. One of the bombing victims was a U.S. Army advisor. These were not just Iraqi citizens - they were employees of the Iraqi government who represented Saddam Hussein.
http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=11990&R=EC0D16975
Celebrate FREEDOM! Buy a Gun for 9/11 !!!
BTTT
An Iraqi passport?
Big deal.
Iraq has always been a seedy waste of a land and with poor border controls and in truth, a passport is just a forum of I.D. - an internationally accepted means of I.D..
Next.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.