Posted on 06/05/2002 9:56:41 PM PDT by knak
US security services are investigating possible new links between Iraq and the September 11 attacks. They have identified a new candidate as being the possible mastermind of the atrocity.
He was named as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-born member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida organisation and a blood relative of Ramzi Yousef, the key figure behind the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993.
The officials said they believed he was at large somewhere in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mohammed had previously been implicated in the thwarted attempt by Yousef and others to blow up 12 airliners above the Pacific Ocean in 1995 and there were suspicions that he was involved in the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
However, it had not been known for sure that he was involved with al-Qa'ida, let alone at such a high level.
Some hawks in the Bush administration anxious to launch a military invasion of Iraq believe that Yousef is in fact an Iraqi agent and that the man ultimately responsible for many of the terror plots of the past decade is Saddam Hussein.
The new information, suggesting that Mohammed was deeply involved in both the operational and financial planning of the September 11 attacks, came largely from captured al-Qa'ida members including Abu Zubeida, one of Osama bin Laden's closest lieutenants. ( Independent News Service)
BTW, Saul's consultation of sorcery and like didn't turn out to well, did it? The Bible speaks out against putting belief in false prophets and their mumbo jumbo, too. Or are you working with a loose-leaf bible?
And I suppose our poor excuse for taking care of Afghanistan was the skyscraper rubble in New York City. The United States is out of control! (Sarcasm)
How do you know he really invaded Kuwait in 1990. For that matter what about the moon landing.
It alleges that convicted terrorist Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi government agent. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, for which he was later imprisoned, Yousef went to the Philippines where he recruited Terry Nichols, eventually convicted as a co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing, to join a plot to blow up several U.S.-bound airliners, the lawsuit alleges.
Nichols had traveled to the Philippines between 1990 and 1994 seeking help in building a bomb, the lawsuit claims.
About three months after the airline-bombing plot was foiled and Nichols returned to the United States, Oklahoma City's Murrah building was destroyed, killing 168 and wounding hundreds. The lawsuit alleges that Abdul Hakim Murad, then imprisoned in the United States awaiting trial in the airline-bombing plot, said at the time that Yousef's network was responsible.
Years later, after the convictions of Nichols and McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing, the lawsuit alleges the global law enforcement arm Interpol was still trying to apprehend at least two other bombing suspects, one a foreign national.
McVeigh lawyer Stephen Jones said before the 1997 trial and in a book written afterward that there was evidence Nichols hooked up with Muslim fundamentalists in the Philippines and set McVeigh up as "a patsy."
Before you cheer this "new information" ask yourself the following:
1) What "US security services" are involved.
2) Who are "the officials."
3) Please explain "the suspicions" that were mentioned.
4) Please name the " hawks in the Bush administration."
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- unidentified US security services
- possible new links between Iraq and the September 11 attacks.
- as being the possible mastermind of the atrocity.
- a Kuwaiti-born member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida organisation
- The officials said they believed he was at large somewhere... - there were suspicions that he was involved in the bombings
- However, it had not been known for sure that he was involved with al-Qa'ida, let alone at such a high level.
- Some hawks in the Bush administration anxious to launch a military invasion of Iraq believe that Yousef is in fact an Iraqi agent
- The new information, suggesting that Mohammed was deeply involved in both the operational and financial planning of the September 11 attacks, came largely from captured al-Qa'ida members including Abu Zubeida,
****
********
-SNIP
CIA skeptical.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey, writing in the Wall Street Journal October 18, 1991 says the CIA dismissed the (Iraqi) story, evidently because "the CIA has always had an institutional bias in favor of information coming from recruited agents rather than volunteers and defectors."
There has been similar skepticism in the government about scholar Laurie Mylroie's theory that Ramzi Yussef, ringleader of the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was an Iraqi agent.
Mylroie's theory is susceptible to proof, by fingerprint evidence probably readily available in Britain. Publicly, the government has shown no interest in obtaining such evidence. But it's possible that someone behind the scenes has been looking--or will look-- and is keeping quiet about it. Publicly, government officials have been saying there is no evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks. But what is happening inside?
Are officials, as Woolsey suggests, skittering away from evidence of Iraqi involvement? Or are they accumulating evidence and keeping it quiet, holding it closely until the time comes to open a second front in Iraq?
-SNIP
Michael Barone, The second front. ,
U.S. News & World Report,
10-29-2001, pp 40.
I've been hearing about invading Iraq for the last 9 months. I don't know if that will ever happen.
It's kinda funny, because whatever my impatience with Bush on certain domestic security issues, I find myself at the other end of the pole in the foreign theater. I think there are a number of wise reasons for the "delay" in attacking Iraq.
Not the least of which is the anthrax letters. I believe they were a message from Saddam to let us know that he has WMDs here and can deliver them on our soil. Now consider that we know he possesses smallpox, and that over 115 million Americans have never been vaccinated, and the rest of us could use a booster.
Last October, the CDC ordered 300 million doses of vaccine by sometime later this year.
Would you want to attack Iraq before then?
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