Al Qaeda-Iraqi relationship proven beyond any doubt.

ABC World News Now | 4/27/2004

[Peach]

Good job.

You can never satisfy posters like this, no matter how pertinent the response is. The goal of these posters is to disrupt threads, especially the WMD threads. They are worried that Americans will understand more fully as they read these threads the threat that Iraq posed and that support for the president will grow.

[Peach]

Be sure to read the last few paragraphs to see what Hitchens has to say about Saddam's comments to the jihadists. It is to be expected the naysayers will have something negative to say.

To date, the naysayers think the following people are to be discredited:

Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Mylroie, Chalabi, Rice, Powell, nearly every conservative reporter on the planet and a host of others too numerous to mention.



Covering the "Quagmire"
Are war correspondents betting on failure in Iraq?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 11:18 AM PT


I am not a war correspondent, though I have put in some time at the Europa Hotel in Belfast, the Commodore in Beirut, and other places of journalistic legend such as Meikles in Harare and the Sarajevo Holiday Inn. In any case, the emergence of a consensus among a press corps is something one can witness without having to duck the occasional incoming projectile. It was widely agreed in the Manchester, N.H., Sheraton in the early weeks of 1992 that Bill Clinton was a "new Democrat" and the presumptive nominee. There were very few if any Milosevic sympathizers among the Sarajevo contingent (a bias that suited me). There were no more than three Bush-Blair sympathizers in the Kuwait Hilton during the days of the "southern front" in last year's Iraq war, and I know this because I was in that case in the minority. One doesn't have to be an "old hand" to detect the signs of a conscience collective or, if one doesn't care for it, a "herd mentality."

It's now fairly obvious that those who cover Iraq have placed their bets on a fiasco or "quagmire" and that this conclusion shows in the fiber and detail of their writing. I give you a sentence from Jon Lee Anderson's essay "The Uprising" in the current New Yorker:

[A] score or more armed men, most with their faces masked by kaffiyehs and wearing the black turbans of the Mahdi Army, controlled a checkpoint. They were brandishing RPGs and Kalashnikovs at cars. Several of them had yellow U.S. Army-issue grenades. We had been following seven Red Crescent ambulances for a while, and as we drove up, the fighters at the checkpoint and the drivers of the ambulances began shouting Sadr's name. The drivers had decided to join the uprising.

Now, I wasn't there. But I am sure Anderson, an experienced writer about war and revolution, saw just what he says he saw. What I don't know is how well he knew those ambulance drivers personally, and how certain he can be that they "joined" an "uprising" led by "fighters." Nor does he say how he knew. I think, in other words, that exactly the same scene could be rendered in quite starkly different words.

Here's another byline I know of old: Jonathan Steele of the Guardian in London. His is a reliably anti-Bush voice, normally couched in elegant prose. The following is from a report he filed April 5:

Herded into lines by inexperienced police officers, hundreds of would-be Iraqi voters pushed into a sparsely equipped school at the weekend to cast their ballots for the local council of Tar.

Deep in the marshes of the Euphrates, the town of 15,000 people was the first to rise against Saddam Hussein in the abortive intifada of 1991. Now it was holding the first genuine election in its history.

The poll was the latest in a series which this overwhelmingly Shia province has held in the past six weeks, and the results have been surprising. Seventeen towns have voted, and in almost every case secular independents and representatives of non-religious parties did better than the Islamists.

Aside from that slightly dubious initial word "herded," the article is a model of straight reportage that goes on to record that wives could vote at a time different from their husbands, that proceedings were orderly, and that the religious parties scored well but not that well. You will also notice that the word "intifada," or uprising, is used neutrally. So, which is the more convincing, and more revolutionary—a long line of first-time-ever voters or a few dozen fanatics with Kalashnikovs?

As long as the latter seek to negate the former, the coalition forces are not only right to repress so-called "insurgents" but delinquent if they do not do so. There are vast numbers of Iraqis—as we know from the leaflets distributed in Najaf, and the blogs from Baghdad, and from the hundreds of thousands who are exercising their right of return to the country—who do not wish to live under the rule of demented mullahs. The pulse and heart rate of the society have barely had a chance to register.

Nobody should know this better than Lakhdar Brahimi, the current envoy of the United Nations and a lifetime member of the Algerian FLN. A few years ago, his party and his government were challenged by an extreme fundamentalist movement that actually won the first round of a general election but would probably not have permitted any subsequent one. In any event, the Algerian authorities announced that on no account would they surrender the country to the "insurgency" that followed. They showed themselves willing to kill on an unprecedented scale, employing measures that the U.S. Marines would never be permitted. Repulsive though many of the tactics were, I think the FLN was broadly right. Certainly, Algeria today is a far better society for the outcome, and so is the whole of North Africa and therefore Southern Europe. These are the stakes. It is impossible to lose sight of them for a moment and irresponsible to confer the noble title of rebel or revolutionary on those who showed no courage at all when there was a real tyranny in the land.

*****

I continue to be amazed at the way in which so many liberals repeat the discredited mantra of the CIA to the effect that Saddam Hussein's regime was so "secular" that it not only did not collaborate, but axiomatically could not have collaborated with Islamists. If you can imagine a Hitler-Stalin pact (which, admittedly, a lot of American leftists still cannot), you can probably imagine collusion between discrepant factions with common interests.

In any case, the Saddam regime was not as "secular" as all that. The campaign of extermination waged in northern Iraq by Saddam's army was titled "Anfal" after a verse in the Quran that supposedly licenses total war. The words "Allahu Akbar" were placed on the Iraqi flag after the defeat in Kuwait. The Baath Party became the open patron of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine. The rhetoric of the Saddamist leadership was exclusively jihadist for the last decade, with special mosques built all over the country in honor of the regime. Now comes a document from the files of the Iraqi secret police, or Mukhabarat, dated March 28, 1992, and headed routinely, "In the Name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate." It is a straightforward listing of contacts and "assets," quite unsensational until it comes to the "Saudi front," where we find the name "Osama bin Ladin/he is well-known Saudi businessman, founder of Saudi opposition in Afghanistan, had connection with Syrian division." Of course, this is not a smoking gun.

[cookcounty]

"Perhaps Saddam didn't sit down in a cave with Osama and plot 9/11, but he provided financial support and training for them"

Bingo. Just like Saddam's support for (Islamicist!!!) Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Saddam likely didn't plan any bus bombings, but he provided funds to these people and bragged repeatedly about it. Yet you have Drooling-Dems idiotically saying a secularist like Saddam wouldn't aid a gang of religious zealots.

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

Oh, I get it. Those in the know, like yourself, understand that 'global democratic revolution' is the neo-con code word for completing the Marxist world takeover. Are the Illuminati involved in this plot, or just the Bilderbergers??

Lol, you are still a crank, and in my estimation, deserve a

Tin Foil Hat Alert!!

[bvw]

If she had any mirrors in her home she might be able to tell you.

[bvw]

A perfectly MARXIST way of making your point. Which is a rotten point, btw, and shows that your skull may need a vaccuum meter implant.

[bvw]

That is a very isolationist post. You seek to divide and isloate in it.

[bvw]

You are a man spinning more from less. Iraq supported terrorism, used WMD, had terr training camps and terrs within it -- those are facts in the record. In your capable hands however no fact is perfect enough.

I do agree with you though. We must conquer Saudi Arabia.

[Peach]

If only you knew...

[lugsoul]

Seems pretty clear that bvw does.

[JohnGalt]

I appreciate that you think your countrymen should be used to police the world from bad and scary people, but I am an American conservative and disagree with Madeline Albright and other liberal foreign policy types.

That some are using lies and tinfoil hat theories passed on from international scoundrels to buttress their case for the war is hardly a good prospect, and indeed indicates that some are willing to overlook domestic enemies to our Republic in pursuit of the agenda they support.

[JohnGalt]

What does a war in Iraq have to do with 19 barbarians who came in the front door? How many gubmint paper shufflers have lost their pensions or have been put in prison for gross incompetence in providing security?

Turn off your tv.

[JohnGalt]

You are hopelessly ignorant about "American conservatism."

Turn off your tv and read a book.

[WOSG]

Dittos on that.

[WOSG]

JohnGalt: More childish name-calling and non-answers from you. You really dont wear that name well.

I've tried a dialog but it's like debating a robotically bad AI program imitation of Lew Rockwell's most tinfoil-hatted isolationists mixed in with Don Rickels. Pointless insulting drivel results.

What an arrogant buffoon you've acted like on this thread!

I give up. Bye.

[JohnGalt]

Later, Leftie.

[AFPhys]

Get back on your meds and wait a month, then re-read my posts#301 and 307 again carefully.

I never accuse you in the analogy of letting SH go free. I state that if I were on an jury for murder and had similar quality evidence I would convict but not to condemn to death, and you clearly have chosen in this discussion to not convict on the basis of similar evidence.

Your calling people liars simply because you fail to correctly read and comprehend what you read appears rather paranoid, or something like that - I'm not a psychologist, though.

[AFPhys]

Tremendous observation!

Kudos

[AFPhys]

I have no idea what you actually are, but "American conservative" is certainly inaccurate.

[JohnGalt]

Would you care to go toe to toe on that question and see who is more orthodox conservative on the issues?