Posted on 03/28/2004 6:10:42 AM PST by truthandlife
Why did the Bush administration immediately suspect that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks when there was no evidence of any connection, as Richard Clarke and other Bush critics maintain?
Maybe it was because there was indeed evidence, very dramatic evidence, in fact - in the form of warnings in the state-run Iraqi press that such an attack was coming, along with praise for Osama bin Laden and his kamikaze hijackers in the days after the World Trade Center was destroyed.
Less than two months before 9/11, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper "Al-Nasiriya" carried a column headlined, "America, 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 U.S. "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 U.S. "will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs" - an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, "New York, New York." [Two 9/11 families were awarded over $100 million last May by U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer based on this and other evidence that Iraq was involved in 9/11]
Saddam's threats of a 9/11-style attack before 9/11 weren't limited to that single report. In 1992, his son Uday used an editorial in Babil, the newspaper he ran, to warn of Iraqi kamikaze attacks inside America, saying, "Does the United States realize the meaning of every Iraqi becoming a missile that can cross countries and cities?"
Then in the late 1990s, according to UPI, "a cable to Saddam from the chief of Iraqi intelligence was transmitted by Baghdad Radio. The message read, 'We will chase [Americans] to every corner at all times. No high tower of steel will protect them against the fire of truth.'"
Coincidence? Perhaps.
But after the 9/11 attacks, Saddam became the only world leader to offer praise for bin Laden, even as other terrorist leaders, like Yassir Arafat, went out of their way to make a show of sympathy to the U.S. by donating blood to 9/11 victims on camera.
The day after the attacks, in quotes picked up by Agence France Press, Saddam proclaimed that "America is reaping the thorns planted by its rulers in the world."
"There is hardly a place (in the world) that does not have a memorial symbolizing the criminal actions committed by America against its natives," AFP quoted the Iraqi dictator complaining, based on reports in the Iraqi News agency.
After excoriating the U.S. for ending World War II by using nuclear weapons, and for its involvement in Vietnam, Saddam gloated, "[He] who does not want to reap evil must not sow it, and [he] who considers the lives of his people precious must remember that the lives of the people in the world are precious also."
"The American peoples should remember that no one ever crossed the Atlantic carrying weapons to be used against them. They are the ones who crossed the Atlantic carrying death, destruction and ugly exploitation to the whole world."
A day later Saddam told visiting Tunisian Foreign Minister Habib ben Yahya, "America brought the hatred of the world upon itself."
For his part Uday flat-out praised the 9/11 attacks, saying, "These were courageous operations carried out by young Arabs and Muslims," according to quotes picked up by the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat.
As Richard Clarke and his fans in the Democrat-media complex report in ominous tones that President Bush ordered him to launch an unwarranted investigation into the 9/11-Iraq connection, it's worth remembering how much Iraq had done justify that order.
miserable failure miserable failure miserable failure miserable failure war criminal
Who paid the $100 million?
Hollings: I ask unanimous consent to print this article in the RECORD.There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows: [From Al-Nasiriya, July 21, 2001]
America , an Obsession Called Osama Bin Ladin (By Naeem Abd Muhalhal)Osama Bin Ladin says that he took from the desert its silence and its anger at the same time. etc.
HOMELAND SECURITY ACT OF 2002 -- (Senate - September 12, 2002), page Page: S8525
Thanks for posting.
(One red-haired boy raises his hand from the back of the classroom and asks: "Why doesn't Presdident Bush and others in his administration cite this material?")
It is read into the Congressional record for the Senate - September 12, 2002
It's an award only on paper at this time. I heard the other day that it may or may not be paid out of the monies confiscated and/or frozen during the war. It was pointed out that the U.S. government has control of that money. I'm just guessing, but I'd bet that the government would utilize the funds to rebuild Iraq first. Of course there's always the possibility that those two families could petition the court to force the government to pay up. But then this would be tied up in the courts for years.
Meanwhile America has started to pressure the Taliban movement so that it would hand them Bin LadinThat's proof that Bush's administration was after Bin Ladin.
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