I will go with Cheney’s statements over anything coming from Congress where the Demo’s have a hand in twisting any report....
Funny how all intelligence reports supporting Democrat talking points are 100% correct and gospel, while every intelligence report opposing them is “manipulated”,”cherry picked”, “falsified” and “Agenda driven”.
Good on ya Cheney.
So in other words Democrats are taking the word of Saddam over Cheney. No surprise there.
So is Levin saying that Zarqawi wasn't operating in Iraq?
2002 Iraqi Document: Zarqawi in Iraq Long Before the War Started http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1598259/posts
It was regarded as common knowledge and widely reported prior to Bush becoming President that Saddam Hussein was a supporter of international terrorism, which he was, including connections to Al-Qaeda (but there are of course a lot more terrorists than just Al-Qaeda). Here is one example of this reporting (video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFWCg1BdRg
Does anyone dispute the Zarqawi was in Iraq before we invaded?
This report says there were no "strong ties", which supposedly refutes Cheney. But what's a "strong" tie? Were there "weak ties", then? And those don't count? Are "strong ties" the only kind of "ties" we're allowed to count? Who decides whether a "tie" is "strong"? (The left?) Basically, here's what the real definition is: "strong ties" are any ties that are stronger than... whatever ties Iraq may have had with Al Qaeda. Thus, Iraq (by definition - because they defined it this way) didn't have "strong ties" with Al Qaeda, and (therefore) Bush etc. are liars because they said otherwise (<-this part's just a plain old straw man; even here Cheney's only saying Al Qaeda was in Iraq, and nothing about "ties").
Similar phenomenon occurs with the definition of "Al Qaeda" itself. Obviously, Zarqawi was in Iraq. But the left really, really wants to always be able to say "Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq". Solution? Simple: even if he was in Iraq before the invasion, Zarqawi "wasn't in Al Qaeda" at the time. Same person, but not "in Al Qaeda", therefore Iraq = no ties to Al Qaeda (even if there were ties to Zarqawi!), thus Bush lied etc. The question of just why exactly we're supposed to care, necessarily, whether someone like Zarqawi is "in Al Qaeda" or "not in Al Qaeda" at any given time, or even whether being "in Al Qaeda" is necessarily such a well-defined thing in the first place, is never answered. The formula is simple: whatever ties you find to whatever terrorists, just insist that they weren't "in Al Qaeda" at the time of the ties. According to the left, this makes it ok and it makes fighting them wrong. We're only allowed to care about people who are officially "in Al Qaeda" for some reason.
The entire approach is fundamentally intellectually dishonest and impossible to take seriously anymore.
CIA rather fiercely maintains that the meeting never took place, each time the Czechs reported that the meeting did occur, within an hour the CIA would race to the phones to "leak" to the press that it was a lie, that it had never happened. The president of the Czech Republic himself came out and repeated it, a couple of times, and again CIA falls all over itself to "leak" within minutes that it never happened.
So that has become the commonly accepted story, at least outside Czech intel circles. Never happened.
Of course, when you dig into it, what you find is that CIA's claim that it "never happened" becomes considerably weaker. In the fine print, you find that they merely "can't confirm it". It never happened, because they can't confirm it, and they can't confirm it because they didn't have anyone on the scene.
Thats it. Thats the basis of the denial.
Its the old bogus sophomore philosophy conundrum, if the tree falls in the forest, with only the loggers there to see it, CIA can't confirm it, so the tree is still standing, as far as we can tell.
Cheney couldn't make it any clearer and those that disagree just ignore his actual point.
The Saddam-Osama Connection: The Terrorist Testimony
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23264
By Mark Eichenlaub
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 7, 2006
One of the pillars of the argument that there were “no links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda” is that the captured/defected members from both sides have denied any relationship existed. (The Left makes this claim even though most of the detainees’ interrogation logs remain classified and their contents remain on a need-to-know basis.) This “no connection” claim has been made a number of times, and those making it generally receive favorable media attention; they’re rarely if ever confronted with testimony that conflicts with their argument. I will not argue on behalf of the truthfulness of former Ba’athists and al-Qaeda members, but if their testimony is going to admitted, shouldn’t critics also hear the testimony of those in custody who tell a different story?
There are more than a few former Iraqi officials and captured al-Qaeda affiliates who have revealed examples of cooperation between Saddam’s Iraq and Osama’s terrorist assets.
· “Abu Mohammed,” a former colonel of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen fighters, told reporters long ago that Iraq was training terrorists, including al-Qaeda.
Gwynne Roberts, Sunday Times, July 14, 2002
· Iraqi soldiers, captured during the early phases of the war on Iraq in 2003, revealed that al-Qaeda terrorists were present inside Iraq fighting alongside Iraqi troops Gethin Chamberlain, The Scotsman, 10-28-03
· Hamsiraji Sali, Commander of the al-Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayyaf, admitted receiving $20,000 dollars a year from Iraq. Marc Lerner, Washington Times, 3-4-03
· Salah Suleiman, revealed that he was a former Iraqi Intelligence officer, captured on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border shuttling between Iraq and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Janes Foreign Report, 9-19-01
· Jamal al-Qurairy, a former General in Iraq’s Mukhabarat, who defected years ago, said “that [is] ours” immediately after seeing 9/11 attacks.
David Rose, Vanity Fair, Feb. 2003, and David Rose, The Observer, 3-16-03
· Abbas al-Janabai, a personal assistant to Uday Hussein for 15 years, has repeatedly stated that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden that included training terrorists at various camps in Iraq.
CNN, 7-23-2003
Gwynne Roberts, Sunday Times, July 14,2002
Richard Miniter, TechCentralStation, 9-25-03
· Two Moroccan associates of Osama bin Laden, arrested in Rabat in Nov 98, confirmed that Col Khairallah al-Tikriti, the brother of Iraq’s top Intelligence official (Mukhabarat), was the case officer in charge of operations with al-Qaeda in Kashmir and Manila
Jacquard, Roland, In the Name of Osama Bin Laden, Duke University Press, 2002, pg.112
· Wali Khan Amin Shah, an al-Qaeda operative in custody, told the FBI that Abu
Hajer al-Iraq had good contacts with Iraq Intelligence Services (reported to Senate Intelligence Committee)
Stephen Hayes, Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard, 7-18-05
· Farouk Hijazi, former #3 in Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, although he denies the well documented reports of his later meetings with bin Laden, Hijazi admits that he met with Osama bin Laden to discuss antiship mines and terror training camps in Iraq during the mid-90’s.
9-11 Commission, Staff Statement 15
· Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat from 1997-2002, says that he worked to link Saddam Hussein regime with Ansar al Islam and al-Qaeda.
Preston Mendenhall, MSNBC, “War Diary”
Jonathan Schanzer, Weekly Standard, 3-1-04
· Mohamed Gharib, Ansar al Islam’s Media chief, later admitted that the group took assistance from Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 10-16-03
· Mohamed Mansour Shahab, aka Muhammad Jawad, is a smuggler who claims to have been hired by Iraq to bring weapons to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 4-03-02
Richard Miniter, TechCentralStation, 9-25-03
· Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is a senior al-Qaeda operative. Although he has changed his story, he initially told his captors that his mission was to travel to Iraq to acquire poisons and gases from Iraqi Intelligence after impressing them with al-Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· An “enemy combatant” being held at Guantanamo Bay, who was also a former Iraqi Army officer, admits that he served as a liaison between Osama bin Laden and Iraqi Intelligence. He was arrested in Pakistan before completing joint IIS/al-Qaeda mission to blow up U.S. and British embassies
Associated Press, 3-30-05
Stephen Hayes, Thomas Joscelyn. Weekly Standard. 7-18-05
· Abu Hajer al-Iraqi (aka Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim) told prosecutors that he was bin Laden’s best friend and in charge of trying and procure WMD materials from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 6-17-04
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· A “Former Senior (Iraqi) Intelligence Officer” has told U.S. officials that a flurry of activity between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda took place in early and late 1998, the meeting point was Baghdad’s Intelligence station in Pakistan
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Wafiq al-Sammarrai, former head of Iraq’s Military Intelligence before defecting in 1994, stated that Saddam Hussein has agents “inside” al-Qaeda
Laurie Mylroie, “Study of Revenge”
· Khidir Hamza, Saddam Hussein’s former top WMD official, says that Saddam had connections to al-Qaeda
CNN, 10-15-01
PBS Frontline “Gunning For Saddam”
· Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy , a former high-ranking officer in Iraq’s Mukhabarat, told PBS Frontline and the New York Times that the September 11 attackers were trained in Salman Pak, as were other members of al-Qaeda
PBS Frontline “Gunning For Saddam”
· Sabah Khodada, a former Captain in Iraq’s Army, told PBS Frontline and the New York Times that the terrorist training camp at Salman Pak included the training of al-Qaeda members airplane hijacking
PBS Frontline “Gunning For Saddam”
· An “Iraqi Defector,” who spent 16 years working for Iraq’s Mukhabarat, told the Iraqi National Congress that Saddam Hussein’s illegal oil revenues helped fund al-Qaeda (story later corroborated by Claudia Rosett )
Radio Free Europe 9-29-2002
· Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, a captured senior Iraqi official, said that IIS agents had met with bin Laden until the middle of 1999
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Qassem Hussein Mohamed, who served in Iraq’s Mukhabarat for 20 years, told reporters that Saddam Hussein has been secretly aiding, arming and funding Ansar al Islam and al-Qaeda for several years
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 4-2-02
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
· Dr. Mohammed al-Masri, a known al-Qaeda spokesman, told the Sunday Times that Saddam Hussein contacted the “Arab Afghans” (al-Qaeda) in 2001. Al-Masri also said that Saddam even went so far as to fund the movement of some al-Qaeda members into Iraq and then later supplied them with arms caches and money, later to be used in insurgent attacks. Abdel Bari Atwan, Sunday Times, 2-26-06 via Thomas Joscelyn, “Saddam, the Insurgency, and the Terrorists, 3-28-06
· Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s former mentor, told reporters in 2004, “Saddam Hussein’s regime welcomed them with open arms and young al-Qaeda members entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation.” AFP, 8-30-04 Thomas Joscelyn, “What Else Did Hudayfa Azzam Have To Say About Al-Qaeda In Iraq?” 4-3-06
· Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s mentor Abdullah Azzam, has said Iraq’s government worked closely with al-Qaeda before the war and welcomed a number of members in after they left Afghanistan and armed and funded them Thomas Joscelyn citing AFP, 8-30-04
· Dr. Mohammed al-Masri, a known al-Qaeda spokesman, told the Sunday Times that Saddam Hussein contacted the “Arab Afghans” (al-Qaeda) in 2001. Abdel Bari Atwan, Sunday Times, 2-26-06 via Thomas Joscelyn, “Saddam, the Insurgency, and the Terrorists,” 3-28-06
· Haqi Ismail, a Mosul native with relatives at the top of Iraq’s Mukhabarat and spent time in al-Qaeda/al Ansar camps in Afghanistan and Northern Iraq before being caught by Kurdish security, indicated that he was working for Saddam Hussein’s Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat)
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
· Moammar Ahmad Yussef, a captured deputy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, told officials that Iraq provided money, weapons, fake passports, safe haven and training to al-Qaeda members
Dan Darling, Winds of Change, 11-21-03
· A “top Saddam Hussein official,” who was also a senior Intelligence official, says that Iraq made a secret pact with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad and later al-Qaeda. Secret meetings between the two sides began in 1992.
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Abu Zubaydah, a high ranking al-Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, has said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had good contacts with Iraqi Intelligence Services
Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard, December 2, 2005
· Abu Iman al-Baghdadi, a 20-year veteran of Iraqi intelligence, told BBC news that Saddam Hussein is funding and arming Ansar al-Islam to fend off anti-Saddam Kurds
Jim Muir, BBC, July 24, 2002
Surely, much more detail is locked away in the classified interrogation logs of other captured al-Qaeda fighters and former Baathists in custody. (I have filed an FOIA request for a few.) Those who may have some answers would be the big name al-Qaeda fighters who were caught in Iraq and the captured Baathists in custody caught after the war terrorizing with Zarqawi and his affiliates. But what we know already should make us discount the “no connection” argument made by partisans denying reality.
He said this in his interview with Rush on his show this week. Rush then said that the transcript would be shortly posted on his web site for all the Drive By Media to cut and paste their slant of the interview with.
The 'report' didn't say they didn't have 'any' ties which is what the LIBERALS & OLD MEDIA want us to think.
So much for post 911 "THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX".
The Dims and the American people who support them are STUPID, IGNORANT or just plain American hating jerkoffs!!
Saddam’s Terrorist Ties
The American Thinker ^
Posted on 01/07/2006 6:10:29 PM EST by april15Bendovr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1553808/posts
The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes has been trying for a significant amount of time to get released publicly the captured Iraqi documents (only 2.5 % of which have as yet been translated).
He advises that some are about to be released. And they should put an end to the preposterous claims that the Baathists would never work with the Jihadis.
Here is what the soon to be released documents reveal, Hayes says:
The secret training took place primarily at three camps-in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak-and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria’s GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.
The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million “exploitable items” captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.
“As much as we overestimated WMD, it appears we underestimated [Saddam Hussein’s] support for transregional terrorists,” says one intelligence official.
Speaking of Ansar al Islam, the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that operated in northern Iraq, the former high-ranking military intelligence officer says: “There is no question about the fact that AI had reach into Baghdad. There was an intelligence connection between that group and the regime, a financial connection between that group and the regime, and there was an equipment connection. It may have been the case that the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] support for AI was meant to operate against the [anti-Saddam] Kurds. But there is no question IIS was supporting AI.”
The official continued:
”[Saddam] used these groups because he was interested in extending his influence and extending the influence of Iraq. There are definite and absolute ties to terrorism. The evidence is there, especially at the network level. How high up in the government was it sanctioned? I can’t tell you. I don’t know whether it was run by Qusay [Hussein] or [Izzat Ibrahim] al-Duri or someone else. I’m just not sure. But to say Iraq wasn’t involved in terrorism is flat wrong.”
Hayes details the great difficulty in getting all this documentation translated and released, and all of us share his frustration. And I wonder if when this batch is released the media will not cherry pick it and underplay the evidence of the links between Saddam’s Iraq and terrorism.
But slow translation of captured , valuable war documents is nothing new. In the 1980’s until the Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations started work on them,many captured Nazi documents remained untranslated and virtually unusable for research.
And you thought the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark was fiction
Clarice Feldman 1 07 06
*
Attorney General Gonzales Must Investigate
An open letter from Clarice Feldman @ The American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=4109
1-6-2006
Dear Mr. Attorney General:
Twice in recent days we have seen published evidence of unethical conduct warranting disciplinary action on the part of FISA judges. Since they have hidden their conduct under a cloak of anonymity, the normal process of filing complaints with the Clerk of the FISA Court is unavailing. Therefore, I ask that you immediately institute an investigation to find out which judges are involved and seek appropriate measures to remove or discipline the judges involved.
Let’s review that evidence briefly:
In his December 16, 2005 article in the New York Times, James Risen says:
According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters.
This suggests that a judge on the FISA court was one of Risen’s sources. If there is any ambiguity, this article in Thursday’s Washington Post, [assuming the newspaper and its reporter have not perpetrated a hoax] establishes beyond peradventure of doubt that some judges on the Court did speak anonymously and in violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct and basic precepts of appropriate judicial conduct to that reporter:
Some judges who spoke on the condition of anonymity yesterday said they want to know whether warrants they signed were tainted by the NSA program. Depending on the answers, the judges said they could demand some proof that wiretap applications were not improperly obtained. Defense attorneys could have a valid argument to suppress evidence against their clients, some judges said, if information about them was gained through warrantless eavesdropping that was not revealed to the defense.
As Andrew McCarthy of the National Review reminds us this is shocking conduct:
First of all, judges speaking to the press regarding matters that may end up in litigation is always a major impropriety, regardless of what kind of matters are involved. Canon 3 of the federal Code of Judicial Conduct expressly admonishes: “A judge should avoid public comment on the merits of a pending or impending action, requiring similar restraint by court personnel subject to the judge’s direction and control.” This is so elementary to fairness and impartiality the hallmarks of the judicial function that it is almost surprising to find a rule about it.
But let’s leave that aside for a second. These are the judges of the FISA court. Of the hundreds of federal judges in the United States, there are, as already noted, less than a dozen specially chosen for these weighty responsibilities. They are selected largely because they are thought to be of unquestionable rectitude, particularly when it comes to things like leaking to the press.
To find federal FISA court judges leaking to the Washington Post about an upcoming closed meeting with administration officials about the highest classified matters of national security in the middle of a war is simply shocking.
Even more mind-blowing, though, is to find them discussing what they see as the merits of the issue. Without having heard any facts or taken any submissions on the governing law and in the cowardice of anonymity here they are speculating for the media about what positions they might take depending on how the administration answers their questions. Here they are preliminarily weighing in on the validity of defense claims in cases where FISA evidence was introduced. This is an inexplicable judicial misconduct.
He’s right. I urge you to act promptly and put the reporters and FISA Judges under oath, to get to the bottom of this apparent flagrant abuse of office.
Clarice Feldman 1 06 06
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1553808/posts?page=9#9
If Cheney’s statements had any merit, he they would have come from the existing White House infrastructure and be widely disseminated. They would not be released as red meat to the Dittoheads waiting for Rush Limbaugh to tell them what to think.
Bookmark
Anyone with half a brain could figure this out....but of course that is a tall order for the dumbcrats....to use their brains for anything but hatred.
He said former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been leading the network's operations in the country before the 2003 US-led invasion... "He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organised the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," he told the show.
Sen. Levin, was a member of the Senate Select Committe from I believe 1998 to 2006.
Also, John Kerry and Bob Graham were also on the 1998 to 2000 intel committee.
These were the years that Al Qaeda began arriving in the U.S. to attack us. Levin and Kerry were responsible for overseeing the intel community.
The responsibility rested with them, and they failed. That is why they resist any connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.
Not to mention these were Clinton years.