Posted on 08/31/2002 3:07:33 AM PDT by ovrtaxt
Friday Aug. 30, 2002; 11:16 p.m. EDT Limbaugh to White House: What About Salman Pak?
Is the Bush administration using all the ammunition at its disposal to convince the American people that war with Iraq is imperative?
Not according to conservative media giant Rush Limbaugh, who chastised the White House Thursday for not spotlighting the issue of Salman Pak, the hijacking school run by Saddam Hussein just south of Baghdad where the 9-11 hijackers likely trained to attack America.
"It's unbelievable that somehow this story remains sequestered," Limbaugh told his 20 million listeners. "I read this story last night and I was amazed."
"There is something called the Republican National Committee and there is the administration," the number one talk host complained. "And look, if I could find this on the Internet, I'm sure the web surfers in the basement of the White House or the Old Executive Office Building could find it too."
Limbaugh proceeded to read at length from a Nov. 11 report in London's Observer newspaper - one of the most respected broadsheets in Great Britain - detailing the accounts of two Salman Pak defectors along with corroborating testimony from a former UN weapons inspector.
Though the Observer's bombshell report has been largely ignored by both the press and the White House in recent months, the similarity between what transpired over the skies of New York and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11 and the drills at Saddam Hussein's hijacking school offers clear evidence of Iraq's involvement in Osama bin Laden's attacks on America.
The facts uncovered by the Observer have yet to be refuted by any subsequent media investigation. And should they be invoked by the Bush White House, the story could form the basis for a solid argument that attacking Iraq isn't merely a preemptive strike to keep Saddam from getting the bomb, but instead direct retribution against the lone head of state who both financed and helped plan the worst attack on the United States in its history.
NewsMax.com first reviewed the Salman Pak story nearly three weeks ago in a report headlined: "Salman Pak: Iraq's Smoking Gun Link to 9-11."
Some excerpts:
With all the talk about how little evidence the Bush administration has tying Saddam Hussein to the 9-11 attacks, we're more than a little surprised at how quickly reporters, not to mention the White House, seem to have forgotten about Salman Pak.
That's the name of the Iraqi training camp located south of Baghdad where, according to the accounts of at least two Iraqi defectors quoted in the New York Times last November, terrorists from around the world rehearsed airline hijackings aboard a parked Boeing 707 that bore an eerie resemblance to what transpired on 9-11.
"We could see them train around the fuselage," one of the defectors, a five-year veteran of the camp, told the paper. "We could see them practice taking over the plane."
And that's not all.
A few days before the Times report, the London Observer revealed that one of the defectors, a colonel with the Iraqi intelligence service Mukhabarat, had drawn an even more direct link to 9-11.
The former Iraqi agent, codenamed Zeinab, told the paper that one of the highlights of Salman Pak's six-month curriculum was training to hijack aircraft using only knives or bare hands. Like the Sept. 11 hijackers, the students worked in groups of four or five, he explained.
Zeinab's story has since been corroborated by Charles Duelfer, the former vice chairman of Unscom, the U.N. weapons inspection team, who actually visited the Salman Pak camp several times.
"He saw the 707, in exactly the place described by the defectors," the Observer reported. "The Iraqis, he said, told Unscom it was used by police for counterterrorist training."
"Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter'," Duelfer explained. "I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. Like, derrrrrr! I mean, what, actually, do you expect?"
Unlike the other parts of Salman Pak, Zeinab told the Observer that there was a foreigners' camp that was controlled directly by Saddam Hussein.
"It was a nightmare! A very strange experience," the Iraqi agent said. "These guys would stop and insist on praying to Allah five times a day when we had training to do. The instructors wouldn't get home till late at night, just because of all this praying."
A second defector said that conversations with the hijacker-trainees made it clear they came from a variety of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco.
"We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States," he added chillingly. "The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this."
Though the Bush administration has been largely silent about Salman Pak, former CIA Director James Woolsey is apparently convinced it was used to rehearse Sept. 11-style hijackings.
In late November he told Fox News Channel's Laurie Dhue:
"We know that at Salman Pak, on the southern edge of Baghdad, five different eyewitnesses - three Iraqi defectors and two American U.N. inspectors - have said - and now there are aerial photographs to show it - a Boeing 707 that was used for training of hijackers, including non-Iraqi hijackers trained very secretly to take over airplanes with knives."
Another intriguing coincidence: Salman Pak's hijacking school reportedly opened for business in 1995, the same year al-Qaeda agents in the Philippines hatched a plot to hijack 12 airliners and slam some of them into U.S. landmarks. (End of NewsMax excerpt)
Despite the compelling case of Salman Pak, the shockingly flat-footed Bush public relations team remains mum on the most potent justification for hitting back at Baghdad.
No wonder support for Bush's Iraq attack has dropped to just 51 percent in the latest Gallup poll.
Yeah, everyone knows that the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the USA after finishing boarding school in Switzerland for the day jumps in her Learjet to fly to Kuwait to volunteer at a Red Crescent hospital for a few hours before starting her homework.
I am especially disturbed by how Scott Ritter had been demonized by those beating the war drums for war in Iraq, and I can only shake my head at how much this campaign for war in Iraq is making the US look like a bunch of buffoons and liars and it destroys the possibility of receiving any foreign support in future legitimate anti-terrorism campaigns.
. http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/000731.htm
Ritter said he was first invited to Baghdad last year by the Iraqi government after the publication of his book "Endgame," which argued that the continuation of economic sanctions on Iraq was more "evil" than doing business with Saddam Hussein. "They were shocked by my position in the book," Ritter said.
Ritter said that several months later, at a hearing on Capitol Hill, he met Iraqi-born American businessman Shakir Alkafajii, who had heard Ritter attack U.S. policy toward Iraq. Alkafajii asked what Ritter could do to end the sanctions and break the impasse in relations between the United States and Iraq. "I said I could do a documentary," Ritter answered.
Alkafajii, who is accompanying Ritter as a "translator and cultural adviser," secured the travel visas for the crew and agreed to put up a $400,000 line of credit to finance the documentary.
Your point being?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/553598/posts
Ritter is a paid lobbyist who has worked for Iraq. His views should be considered in that context. $400,000 can buy alot of subjectivity on a subject.
Read the story. His tour of Iraq was in violation of U.S. federal law, resulting from the sanctions that are still in place.
London Telegraph:Iraq's chemists bought anthrax from America
I don't see the smoking gun, he was critical of the Iraq policy long before he was commisioned to produce a documentry, no one knows better than him that IT HAS NOT WORKED.
West Nile virus confirmed in Chicago burbs
"The virus first appeared in New York in 1999 and has since been detected in 28 states, as far west as Iowa, Louisiana and Missouri."
Salman Pak: In 1985, the CDC sent three shipments of West Nile Fever virus to Iraq for use in medical research. Valerie Kuklenski, "Western Firms Supplied Iraq with Chemical Weapons," UPI, October 2, 1990.
I would like to locate Valerie Kuklenski's UPI article to confirm the U.S. shipped the West Nile virus to Salman Pak. Any suggestions on where to start?
Suppose, hypothetically, the West Nile virus was brought to the U.S. by Iraqi agents. If so, why? It is not a weapon of mass destruction and that is the type of wepaon we have been repeatedly warned about from Saddam. One result of the West Nile virus is the wide spread use of crop dusters and trucks to spray for mosquitos.
Saddam has spent billions developing his biological weapons program, what he is missing is a means of wide scale delivery.
The hijackers spent a considerable amount of time investigating crop dusters.
The the parallel in two possible unconventional tactics are interesting to me.
The terrorists used airliners to bring down skyscrapers.
Consider the possibility that airborne and ground vehicles disguised as mosquito spraying platforms could be used in a coordinated biological weapon attack.
Crop dusters near populated centers would normally draw suspicion.
Crop dusters are used in mosquito spraying operations and would provide a legitimate excuse for over flyng populated areas.
Fogging trucks, however, have been spraying seven days a week, Ourso said. But, at $6,200 a drum for 30 gallons, "we're using it pretty quick," he said.
· In Crowley, the Acadia Parish Police Jury voted unanimously Tuesday night to implement a one-time, parishwide mosquito-control spraying, using $200,000 from Public Health Unit funds and two crop-dusters owned by Broussard Flying Service.
Atta and Moussaoui werre both involved and interested in crop duster planes, lessons and manuals.
I wonder if any thing about use of crop dusters,West Nile virus, anthrax, water biological agents,was in Moussaouis emails and on his computer hard drive? The FBI claims to have lost track of or not to be able to recover his emails which the Fed judge in the case does not believe-the judge flatly does not believe the FBI and ordered the FBI to prove to her that the FBI really could not retrieve some of his emails. Have we ever been told by the FBI or White House all that was on his computer hard drive?
Last year ABC reported that five experts ABC hired had concluded the anthrax was from Iraq because of special bentonite clays used by Iraq to keep the anthrax airborne and from clumping. The White Hosue rushed to the public and told the public that it should not believe the ABC experts. But the White House never did explain or give a basis for why the ABC experts should not be believed either.
They don't have to explain to us, they tell us what to think.
Weaponized Anthrax in Iraq: Anthrax spores were not developed for laboratory use alone, but were actually weaponized on a large scale by Iraq. UNSCOM inspectors found traces of anthrax spores in seven warheads from long-range al-Hussein missiles, with a range of 640 kilometers and thus capable of reaching Israel. Around 200 biological aerial bombs were additionally produced.
However, according to the UN, Iraq's most effective biological weapons platform was a helicopter-borne aerosol generator that worked like an insecticide disseminator (perhaps this was intended for domestic use or against Iranian troops close to the Iraqi border). The disseminator was successfully field tested. Dispersal research for biological weapons was conducted by the Salman Pak Technical Research Center. Iraq engaged in genetic engineering research in order to produce antibiotic resistant strains of anthrax spores. The success of this research is unknown
Because the FBI already ransacked some poor American schmuck's apartment and Bush doesn't want the FBI to be embarrassed with another Richard Jewel fiasco. Decorum and all...
As for the WNV, I suspect it represents a study to see the spread pattern if birds (or maybe even insects) were used as a vector. I believe it originated in the vacinity of Plum Island, IIRC. (Which doesn't mean I'm accusing our gov't, BTW. Since that's near a large port of entry as well as a large population, it would suit propaganda purposes marvelously to start something there.)
But you're right about the spraying establishing a convenient cover for mischief,honway, particulary if people get used to seeing the little truck foggers going down the road. Those would provide a really nice cover for a chemical attack to gain entry to a base or some other heavily guarded target.
Thanks for the information. It is one of the unique characteristics of FR that permit the input of first hand experiences of members that can add important pieces to the complex puzzle. In my opinion, the Administration is aware that we are at much greater risk of a major biological attack than they are publicly acknowledging. Our leaders are facing a real dilemma. Attack Iraq now and risk a major biological weapon response from Saddam, as described by Clinton yesterday on TV, or wait while Saddam increases his arsenal.
I believe the 9-11 attack was part of a larger strategy by Saddam Hussein. His goal is to significantly cripple the U.S., the way his country was crippled in 1991. By using surrogates to carry out the 9-11 attack, he could claim he had no role in the attack. When we attack Iraq now, without allies and without a U.N. resolution, many in the Islamic world would accept an Iraqi response in the form of a major biological attack on the U.S as justified.
My main criticism of the current U.S. strategy is that before we attack Iraq, we should deport as many as possible of the radical Islamic followers that are in this country illegally, put out of business the known terrorist cells operating in the U.S.(beginning with the Hamas cell in OKC) and monitor the activities of the thousands of former Iraqi soldiers that were resettled in the U.S. after Gulf War I.
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