World Terrorism : Weapons of Disruption Onging...

>>>I have been asleep, so have not heard how the Israel Leader is doing.

It's looking grim.

>>>African stopped at U.S. border was carrying N.S. man's ID

Well, whaddaya know.

Throwing Albanians into the mix.

>>> To complicate matters, the ports of entry (such as the airports) are now controlled by the Albanian Mafia. The Albanians have taken over the operations of the Italian-American crime families and have become, according to the FBI, the leading criminal organization in the US . The Albanians, as you know, are Muslims with ties to radical Islam and, through the KLO, al Qaeda. <<<
http://www.therant.us/guest/mauro/01052006.htm

Now, I have a dumb question: What is a White Russian?

Not dumb at all. The only dumb question is the unasked question.

The White Russian dates back to the communist revolution of 1917. The reds were the communist supporters (usually peasants) and the whites were those who were dedicated to the Czarists....and freedom. Most of the whites however, were upper crust socially. The landholders and businessmen. Some were of royal bloodlines.

It's a heckuva good drink, too. Kahula liqueor, vodka and cream. Yum. For many years, it was my signature alcholic beverage.

An interesting history lesson:

Tashkent's hidden Islamic relic
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4581684.stm

There's something to connect and I see most of us trying to connect it,
but something big is missing from the picture.
<<<<<<>>>>>>>>

Thank you for reading my efforts.

We don't have all the missing pieces, therefore we cannot
connect the missing dots.

I don't know how we turn back time.

As I wrote that, I kept thinking of what I knew, LOL, I only
now thought of Cuba.

Cuba people fled, and Castro threw them out.

Some of our trash is in Cuba and lots of communist moved in to rule the 'party'.

Hungry was heavy on my mind also, as the communists took over, the people fled. I still remember the pleas on the radio and TV to give them a home in America.

I think how I want to adopt a Hungarian child, even then, to keep it safe from the communists and give it a home in America.

That 20 million dead, is our army, our workers and our leaders.

Thank you.

Makes good sense to me.

I like the term "White Russian".

It always upsets me a wee bit, when I hear that the states which voted for President Bush are the "Red States".

Who colored in the first map with us being shown as reds?

I have served your "White Russian" at work, but do not recall having ever tasted one.

You and Albert are "right" to be proud of the title "White Russian" and we are lucky that you are an American.

So much to learn and so little time.

I need to use more words, it isn't the first time that someone has thought that I meant all of something, instead of part of it.

The battle to close the Mexican border has been hard for me to join in, as I was raised with the honest Mexican who came here to work and feed their families.

And today, I listen to them talk on the radio and feel fear.

But then, the ones on the radio, have never worked a day in the field or picked cotton by hand or fruit from trees.

Look at the communists that we have in elected office and then we have to face that we are a communist country.

http://bernie.house.gov/pc/members.asp

Historical text

Othman was murdered by a rebellious mob while he was reading
his book. A dark stain on its pages is thought to be the caliph's
blood.

It was Othman's murder that precipitated the Shia-Sunni divide
which has split the Muslim world ever since.

Later disputes over the succession led to a division between the
mainstream Sunnis, and supporters of Othman's immediate
successor, Ali, who became Shias.

The story of how the Othman Koran came to Tashkent is a
remarkable one.

After Othman's death it is
believed it was taken by Caliph
Ali to Kufa, in modern Iraq. Seven
hundred years later, when the
Central Asian conqueror,
Tamerlane, laid waste to the
region, he found the Koran and
took it home to grace his
splendid capital, Samarkand.

It stayed there for more than
four centuries, until the Russians
conquered Samarkand in the 1868. The Russian governor then
sent the Othman Koran to St Petersburg where it was kept in the
Imperial Library.

But after the Bolshevik revolution, Lenin was anxious to win over
the Muslims of Russia and Central Asia. Initially he sent the Koran
to Ufa in modern Bashkortostan.

But finally, after repeated appeals from the Muslims of Tashkent,
it was returned once more to Central Asia in 1924. It has
remained in Tashkent ever since.

Visiting dignitaries from the Muslim world often turn up to see the
Othman Koran in the depths of old Tashkent, so it is odd that it is
still kept in such an out of the way location.

But the authoritarian Uzbek government has inherited a
Soviet-era distrust of Islam, and still views much of its own
Islamic history with suspicion.

The mufti's official religious establishment is closely watched and
takes care not to attract too much attention to itself.

As a result, its greatest treasure, the world's oldest Koran,
continues to sit quietly in the medieval quarter of old Tashkent.
<<<<<<>>>>>>

From your link, I am glad that I read this one, imagine a book on deerskin surviving since 651, it is wonderful.

I am very glad that it has survived.

Now, is a good time to ask, is everyone or anyone interested in articles such as this?

Laughing and not admitting to the number of newsletters I have joined, so that I would have them when needed.

I get a list of this type article every week or so, more than I can read, but still I worth posting, if others are interested, I never know who to send my "good things" to.

Should it be posted? It is amazing the finds that are out there, and like this one, often there is something that is there and a part of our efforts to connect the dots.

Thank you, Vel for finding this one.

Case Closed
From the November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S.
government's secret memo detailing cooperation
between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
by Stephen F. Hayes
11/24/2003, Volume 009, Issue 11

Editor's Note, 1/27/04: In today's Washington
Post, Dana Milbank reported that "Vice President
Cheney . . . in an interview this month with the Rocky
Mountain News, recommended as the 'best source of
information' an article in The Weekly Standard
magazine detailing a relationship between Hussein
and al Qaeda based on leaked classified information."

Here's the Stephen F. Hayes article to which the vice
president was referring.

-JVL

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an
operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003
that involved training in explosives and weapons of
mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist
attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in
Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al
Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according
to a top secret U.S. government memorandum
obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith
to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the
chairman and vice chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to
a request from the committee as part of its
investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by
the administration. Intelligence reporting included in
the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic
and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency,
and the National Security Agency. Much of the
evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by
multiple sources. Some of it is new information
obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al
Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is
more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is
one of a history of collaboration between two of
America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo--which lays out the
intelligence in 50 numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda
contacts began in 1990 and continued through
mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began.
Most of the numbered passages contain straight,
fact-based intelligence reporting, which in some
cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the
source. This reporting is often followed by
commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf
War. According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden
sent "emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi
government officials." At some unspecified point in
1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought
Sudan's assistance to establish links to al Qaeda."
The outreach went in both directions. According to
1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden
wanted to expand his organization's capabilities
through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early
stages was Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a
leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated National Islamic
Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One
defector reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in
arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda relationship. The
defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through
its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the
transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment
to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with
training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview
with one of Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the
memo details:

4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a
senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi
intelligence established a highly secretive
relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and
later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992
between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS)
and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi.
Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and
senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri
were at the meeting--the first of several
between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional
meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al
Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al
Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where
they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in
a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam
insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept
secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam
made a personnel change in the IIS for fear
the relationship would come under scrutiny
from foreign probes.

A decisive moment in the budding relationship came
in 1993, when bin Laden faced internal resistance to
his cooperation with Saddam.

5. A CIA report from a contact with good
access, some of whose reporting has been
corroborated, said that certain elements in
the "Islamic Army" of bin Laden were against
the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the
internal factional strife that was developing,
bin Laden came to an "understanding" with
Saddam that the Islamic Army would no
longer support anti-Saddam activities.
According to sensitive reporting released in
U.S. court documents during the African
Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached an
"understanding" with Saddam under which he
(bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda operations to be
mounted against the Iraqi leader.

Another facilitator of the relationship during the
mid-1990s was Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu
Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New York prison,
was described in court proceedings related to the
August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best friend." According
to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton
administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a
liaison with Saddam's regime and tasked him with
procurement of weapons of mass destruction for al
Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu
Hajer "visited Iraq in early 1995" and "had a good
relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime before
mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss
unspecified cooperation with the Iraqi government."

Some of the reporting about the relationship
throughout the mid-1990s comes from a source who
had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and his
dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis,
offered "the most credible information" on
cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.

This source's reports read almost like a diary.
Specific dates of when bin Laden flew to
various cities are included, as well as names
of individuals he met. The source did not offer
information on the substantive talks during
the meetings. . . . There are not a great many
reports in general on the relationship between
bin Laden and Iraq because of the secrecy
surrounding it. But when this source with close
access provided a "window" into bin Laden's
activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily
involved with Iraq (and Iran).

Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat
sketchy, though multiple sources place Hassan
al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's current
No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting
gets much more specific in the mid-1990s:

8. Reporting from a well placed source
disclosed that bin Laden was receiving
training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi
Intelligence Service] principal technical expert
on making sophisticated explosives, Brigadier
Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was
observed at bin Laden's farm in Khartoum in
Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the
company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence,
Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti.

9 . . . Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19
Jan. 1996), staying at the residence of a
member of the Qatari ruling family. He
discussed the successful movement of
explosives into Saudi Arabia, and operations
targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in
Dammam, Dharan, and Khobar, using
clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia.
Upon his return, bin Laden met with Hijazi and
Turabi, among others.

And later more reporting, from the same "well
placed" source:

10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani
abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti, met privately with bin
Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti
used an Iraqi delegation traveling to
Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as
his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to
meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi.
The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS
officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed
bin Laden's request for IIS technical
assistance in: a) making letter and parcel
bombs; b) making bombs which could be
placed on aircraft and detonated by changes
in barometric pressure; and c) making false
passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically
requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed],
Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives
maker--especially skilled in making car
bombs--remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi
intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in
Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.

The analysis of those events follows:

The time of the visit from the IIS director was
a few weeks after the Khobar Towers
bombing. The bombing came on the third
anniversary of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile]
strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted
assassination of former President Bush in
Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials explicitly
threatened retaliation.

IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the
mid-1990s, intelligence reports detail a flurry of
activities in early 1998 and again in December 1998.
A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported
that "the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan
was Baghdad's point of contact with al Qaeda. He
also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998 and
met with Tariq Aziz."

11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam
personally sent Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy
director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey,
to meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in
Sudan and later in Afghanistan in 1999. . . .

14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a
"regular and reliable source," [Ayman al]
Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited
Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President
on 3 February 1998. The goal of the visit was
to arrange for coordination between Iraq and
bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah
and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of
Abdul Aziz.

That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance
of the U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM,
created by the cease-fire agreement following the
Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's
presidential palaces that he refused to provide. As the
tensions mounted, President Bill Clinton went to the
Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the
nation for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of
terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized
international criminals" and said "there is no more
clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The day after this speech, according to documents
unearthed in April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence
headquarters by journalists Mitch Potter and Inigo
Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo
detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden
representative traveling to Baghdad. Each reference
to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that,
when revealed, exposed a plan to increase
cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to
that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel
and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of
the message from bin Laden and to convey to his
envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The
document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion
of "the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden,
and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The al
Qaeda representative, the document went on to
suggest, might provide "a way to maintain contacts
with bin Laden."

Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden
issued his now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq,
published in the Arabic-language daily, al Quds
al-Arabi: "For over seven years the United States has
been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of
places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches,
dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people,
terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the
Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the
neighboring Muslim peoples." Bin Laden urged his
followers to act: "The ruling to kill all Americans and
their allies--civilians and military--is an individual
duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in
which it is possible to do it."

Although war was temporarily averted by a
last-minute deal brokered by U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The standoff
with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when
President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a
70-hour bombing campaign that began on December
16 and ended three days later, on December 19,
1998.

According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi,
deputy director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin
Laden in Afghanistan on December 21, 1998, to offer
bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in the
memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to
confirm this meeting and relates two others.

15. A foreign government service reported
that an Iraqi delegation, including at least two
Iraqi intelligence officers formerly assigned to
the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late
1998 with bin Laden in Afghanistan.

16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and
Zawahiri met with two Iraqi intelligence
officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.

17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to
Afghanistan to seek closer ties to bin Laden
and the Taliban in late 1998. The source
reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to
broaden its cooperation with al Qaeda. Iraq
was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to
sabotage U.S. and U.K. interests. After a
senior Iraqi intelligence officer met with
Taliban leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements
were made for a series of meetings between
the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in
Pakistan. The source noted Faruq Hijazi was in
Afghanistan in late 1998.

18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in
1999 along with several other Iraqi officials to
meet with bin Laden. The source claimed that
Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at
Saddam's explicit direction.

An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional
context and an explanation of these reports:

Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17,
and #18, from different sources, corroborate
each other and provide confirmation of
meetings between al Qaeda operatives and
Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
None of the reports have information on
operational details or the purpose of such
meetings. The covert nature of the
relationship would indicate strict
compartmentation [sic] of operations.

Information about connections between al Qaeda and
Iraq was so widespread by early 1999 that it made its
way into the mainstream press. A January 11, 1999,
Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam +
Bin Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence
source" with knowledge of contacts between Iraq and
al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam
expected last month's American and British bombing
campaign to go on much longer than it did. The
dictator believed that as the attacks continued,
indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making
his terrorism offensive both harder to trace and more
effective. With acts of terror contributing to chaos in
the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait
might feel less inclined to support Washington.
Saddam's long-term strategy, according to several
sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into
breaking the embargo against Iraq, without waiting
for the United Nations to lift if formally."

INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the
relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda from
mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One senior
Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil
Ibrahim Abdallah, "said that the last contact between
the IIS and al Qaeda was in July 1999. Bin Laden
wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance
sent back from Saddam's office reportedly ordered
Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any further contact
with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that
Saddam wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda."

The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts
this claim. One report states that "in late 1999" al
Qaeda set up a training camp in northern Iraq that
"was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest
that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of
safe haven to bin Laden throughout 1999.

23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully
considering offering safe haven to bin Laden
and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999.
The source indicated the idea was put forward
by the presumed head of Iraqi intelligence in
Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in
frequent contact and had good relations with
bin Laden.

Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an
Iraqi named Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:

24. According to sensitive reporting, a
Malaysia-based Iraqi national (Shakir)
facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11
hijackers for an operational meeting in Kuala
Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting
indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him
to a worldwide network of terrorists, including
al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur
airport--a job he claimed to have obtained
through an Iraqi embassy employee.

One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting
in the Kuala Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top
bin Laden lieutenant later identified as the
mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the
USS Cole.

25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS
Cole in October 2000 by al Qaeda revealed no
specific Iraqi connections but according to the
CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible
Iraqi involvement."

26. During a custodial interview, Ibn
al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda
operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda
associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq
(1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi
intelligence to obtain poisons and gases
training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000,
two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for
CBW-related [Chemical and Biological
Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000.
Iraqi intelligence was "encouraged" after the
embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide
this training.

The analysis of this report follows.

CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is
consistent with other sensitive reporting
indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998
for advanced weapons, including CBW and
"poisons."

Additional reporting also calls into question the claim
that relations between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after
mid-1999:

27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . .
the Saudi National Guard went on a
kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000
after learning Saddam agreed to assist al
Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in
Saudi Arabia.

And then there is the alleged contact between lead
9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence
officer in Prague. The reporting on those links
suggests not one meeting, but as many as four.
What's more, the memo reveals potential financing of
Atta's activities by Iraqi intelligence.

The Czech counterintelligence service
reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker
[Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi
intelligence chief in Prague, [Ahmed Khalil
Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions.
During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered
the IIS finance officer to issue Atta funds from
IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.

And the commentary:

CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in
Dec. 1994 and in June 2000; data surrounding
the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April
2001--is complicated and sometimes
contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot confirm
Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister
Stanislav Gross continues to stand by his
information.

It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five
high-ranking members of the Czech government have
publicly confirmed meetings between Atta and al Ani.
The meeting that has gotten the most press
attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely
disputed. Even some of the most hawkish Bush
administration officials are privately skeptical that
Atta met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that
reports of the alleged meeting, said to have taken
place in public, outside the headquarters of the
U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
suggest a level of sloppiness that doesn't fit the
pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts.

Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the
report by Czech counterintelligence that al Ani
ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service officer to
provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead
hijacker's determination to reach Prague, despite
significant obstacles, in the spring of 2000. (Note that
the report stops short of confirming that the funds
were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer
requested the transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to
Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but was
denied entry because he did not have a valid visa.
Rather than simply return to Germany and fly directly
to the United States, his ultimate destination, Atta
took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused
entry the first time, he traveled back to Germany,
obtained the proper paperwork, and caught a bus
back to Prague. He left for the United States the day
after arriving in Prague for the second time.

Several reports indicate that the relationship between
Saddam and bin Laden continued, even after the
September 11 attacks:

31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and
Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby
Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda
members and provide them with money and
weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted
a large number of al Qaeda members to head
to Iraq. The report also said that al Qaeda
members involved in a fraudulent passport
network for al Qaeda had been directed to
procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al
Qaeda personnel.

The analysis that accompanies that report indicates
that the report fits the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda
collaboration:

References to procurement of false passports
from Iraq and offers of safe haven previously
have surfaced in CIA source reporting
considered reliable. Intelligence reports to
date have maintained that Iraqi support for al
Qaeda usually involved providing training,
obtaining passports, and offers of refuge. This
report adds to that list by including weapons
and money. This assistance would make sense
in the aftermath of 9-11.

Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to
the U.N. Security Council, revealed the activities of
Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Reporting in the memo
expands on Powell's case and might help explain
some of the resistance the U.S. military is currently
facing in Iraq.

37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior
terrorist planner and close al Qaeda associate
al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance
with Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi
maintained contacts with the IIS to procure
weapons and explosives, including
surface-to-air missiles from an IIS officer in
Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al
Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in
Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S.
occupation of the city, suggesting his
operational cooperation with the Iraqis may
have deepened in recent months. Such
cooperation could include IIS provision of a
secure operating bases [sic] and steady
access to arms and explosives in preparation
for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's
procurements from the Iraqis also could
support al Qaeda operations against the U.S.
or its allies elsewhere.

38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact
with good access who does not have an
established reporting record: An Iraqi
intelligence service officer said that as of
mid-March the IIS was providing weapons to
al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq,
including rocket propelled grenade (RPG)-18
launchers. According to IIS information,
northern Iraq-based al Qaeda members
believed that the U.S. intended to strike al
Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault
against Ansar al-Islam positions.

The memo further reported pre-war intelligence
which "claimed that an Iraqi intelligence official,
praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it with $100,000
and agreed to continue to give assistance."

CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have
complained that Iraq-al Qaeda connections are a
fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White
House to fit their preconceived notions about
international terror; that links between Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely
"exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks
"cherry-picked" bits of intelligence and tendentiously
presented these to the American public.

Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, made those points as
recently as November 9, in an appearance on "Fox
News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he
complained, refuse to look at the administration's
"exaggeration of intelligence."

Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they
exaggerated intelligence in order to carry out their
purpose, which was to make the case for going to
war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that
there was any relationship between the Iraqis and the
terrorists that were in Afghanistan, bin Laden? The
administration said that there's a connection between
those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was
there a basis for that?"

There was, as shown in the memo to the committee
on which Levin serves. And much of the reporting
comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not that you
would know this from Al Gore's recent public
statements. Indeed, the former vice president claims
to be privy to new "evidence" that the administration
lied. In an August speech at New York University,
Gore claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that
Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden
at all, much less give him weapons of mass
destruction." Really?

One of the most interesting things to note about the
16-page memo is that it covers only a fraction of the
evidence that will eventually be available to
document the relationship between Iraq and al
Qaeda. For one thing, both Saddam and bin Laden
were desperate to keep their cooperation secret.
(Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an
internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's
name.) For another, few people in the U.S.
government are expressly looking for such links.
There is no Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's
1,400-person Iraq Survey Group currently searching
Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically
reviewing Iraqi intelligence files that survived the
three-week war last spring. These documents would
cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in
Arabic. They include not only connections between bin
Laden and Saddam, but also revolting details of the
regime's long history of brutality. It will be a slow
process.

So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence
Committee is best viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes"
version of the relationship. It contains the highlights,
but it is far from exhaustive.

One example. The memo contains only one
paragraph on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi
facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers
through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence
agencies have extensive reporting on his activities
before and after the September 11 hijacking. That
they would include only this brief overview suggests
the 16-page memo, extensive as it is, just skims the
surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda
connections. (continue

Do they think they can "blend in" our rural communities?

Yes they do. I live in a rural area and had a run in at the post office with one that was dressed in all that grab.

On TM we followed a story about how they were in a rural area in Tenn. just passing through. They threw a bottle out the window of some type of explosive, had Israel fake passports.

They may not move in but they will pass by just looking for an opportunity.

Granny you have been busy, I will never catch up LOL. Mail call.

BTW there are some rich widowed men up here, hubby knows them all. LOL

History.....

Part 2..

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:oo2_pQu5GawJ:www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp+who+leaked+the+classified+information%3F&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&client=googlet

Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir
whisked not one but two September 11
hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al
Hamzi--through the passport and customs process
upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on January 5,
2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the
Kuala Lumpur Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al
Shibh, one of the masterminds of the September 11
plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned
to work on January 9 and January 10, and never
again.

Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the
Iraqi Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as
staging grounds for its intelligence operations; in
some cases, more than half of the alleged
"diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi
embassy, not his employer, controlled Shakir's
schedule. He was detained in Qatar on September 17,
2001. Authorities found in his possession contact
information for terrorists involved in the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings,
the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September
11 hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that
Shakir had received a phone call from the safe house
where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been
plotted.

The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest.
On October 21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan,
where he was to change planes to a flight to
Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was
detained in Jordan for three months, where the CIA
interrogated him. His interrogators concluded that
Shakir had received extensive training in
counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he
was detained, according to an official familiar with the
intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to "pressure"
Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same
time, Amnesty International complained that Shakir
was being held without charge. The Jordanians
released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he
is believed to have fled back to Iraq.

Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a
connection between Saddam Hussein and September
11? We don't know. We may someday find out.

But there can no longer be any serious argument
about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with
Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against
Americans.

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly
Standard.

© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly
Standard, All R

He didn't trust the KGB, but as head of the Soviet Union, he had to deal
with it every day. Therefore after going home and closing the door, he listened to Mahler's Fifth Symphony along
with his wife late at night every day. He made use of this period of time to purify himself and seek self-salvation.

I know the feeling.

Something's really bothering me today and I can't put my finger on it.

It's some kind of "undertow". Dark, very...very dark.

I have been this way for about 3 days and thought it was just me.

I told hubby I feel like something real bad is about to happen and I have no reason to feel that way.

We have to keep digging we may not know in advance but will see it and know it for what it is when it happens.

Blessings to you and your.

LOL come join Granny and I we are getting matching straight jackets and a padded cell together. I got top bunk! LOL

Ping for the dates.....

A little light googling, still it is interesting.

http://www.google.com/search?q=who+leaked+the+classified+information%3F&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&client=googlet&start=10&sa=N

WoW...

http://www.google.com/search?client=googlet&q=who%20stole%20the%20classified%20papers

http://www.google.com/search?q=find+the+stolen+classified+papers&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&client=googlet

Please pull this thread. It is downright criminal to give people ideas. You are not remotely the only person who can think about these things, or has, or who knows of scores of vulnerabilities. We just aren't stupid enough or traitor enough to broadcast them to our enemies.

http://app.bronto.com/x/preview.php?id=98259_f01e5c80_21095583_027634b6

Cechnya Weekly Review
Jamestown.org

January 5, 2006 - Volume VII, Issue 1
* Federal Forces Battle Handful of Dagestani Militants
* Hundreds of Chechens File Suit in Strasbourg
* New Details Emerge on Maskhadov's Bid to Mediate in Beslan
* Briefs
* Dokku Umarov: The Next in Line
By Andrew McGregor

This has the above reports, plus new information on the Beslan school.

The Beslan report, is so close to the theater attack report, that you could almost confuse them.

There is more information on the poisoned school kids in
Chechnya.

For those with an interest in Russia or Chechnya, you will want to read this.

Peter, the same Lady reporter is very much in this report.

There is absolutely nothing discussed on this thread that the terrorists don't already know. Heck, they know it before we even think about it.

The people who post here are just trying to make themselves and others aware, so that they may possibly protect themselves and their families.......before the bad guys make it a reality.