Posted on 06/23/2002 3:52:54 PM PDT by codebreaker
President Bush had a previously undisclosed meeting last week with General Tommy Franks, commander of United States forces in Afghanistan, to dicuss what was described on Sunday as 'concrete' military plans to attack Iraq.
'One of the meetings that wasn't reported this week was a briefing by General Franks in the Oval Office of the President on Wednesday revealed 'Fox News Sunday' panelist Bill Kristol, citing an unnamed administration source.
Kristol said that the Bush-Franks meeting indicates that the administration had decided to take action against Iraq regardless of the status of Middle East peace talks adding, 'Bush may be moving faster than we think in preparing to get rid of Saddam.'
I'd feel better about it if we had the Iowa or one of her three sisters in the region to keep Iran honest while we are about our business in Iraq. They could close the Strait of Hormuz awfully quick.
BULL FEATHERS! This is nonsense,,,,,,,,,
It depends. Small SOF/SOC Force, say 30,000? 3 to 6 Months. The Franks request? 250,000 troops? The middle of never. We are not even close to the SOF/SOC option at this time. It's all logistics and thats not even close. Additonally the biggest problem is still Turkey. They have not bought in fully yet. The Saudi's? for get it.
It appears that the administration is [now] taking things in their proper order:
"Peace" or its semblance in the middle east will not assist in dealing the menace posed by Saddam and his WMD.
However, destroying Saddam, his regime and his military, will have a significant positive impact on the situation in Israel/Palestinian-held territories.
Bin Laden and others founded their own separate group in 1989 known as "Al Qaida" (the Base) based in Afghanistan and Peshawar, Pakistan and turned to terrorism. It wouldn't be long before al Qaeda transformed itself into an international terrorist network and began carrying out attacks on U.S. interests around the world. From the beginning bin Laden was Al Qaeda's emir, or prince, and he gave the orders. "Those who were suspected of collaborating against Al Qaeda were identified and killed," the indictment states.
Meanwhile, the leader of the less wacko group, Azzam, was conveniently killed by a car bomb in late 1989, and the MAK split yet again. The most extreme faction from that also joined Bin Laden's organization.
By 1989's end, bin Laden would return to Saudi Arabia to work in his family's Jeddah-based construction business after the Soviets withdrew, but he continued his organization to support opposition movements in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. After Afghanistan, Bin-Laden ran the Jihad Committee which includes the Egyptian Islamic Group and the Jihad Organization in Yemen, the Pakistani al-Hadith group, the Lebanese Partisans League, the Libyan Islamic Group, Bayt al-Imam Group in Jordan, and the Islamic Group in Algeria. This committee runs the Islamic Information Observatory center in London, which organizes media activity for these organizations, and the Advisory and Reformation Body which also has a bureau in London.
In the summer of 1990, Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden, though heavily involved in the Saudi opposition, 'reportedly' offered his services to the Saudi government to help defend against an Iraqi invasion of the kingdom, he was rebuffed. If such an offer was ever made, it would have been very unwise for the Royal family to accept it as bin Laden might have become too popular and gained more of a following, which he could later use to topple the Saudi government- something which, by the way, he has wanted to do as part of the opposition since before the Gulf War- in spite of popular assertions that he was merely angry with the US presence on 'holy ground.'
When American military forces remained in Saudi Arabia, at the request of the Saudi government when the Gulf War ended in early 1991, Osama bin Laden became increasingly critical of the Saudi royal family, which he denounced for corruption. Osama was expelled from Saudi Arabia, and his family publicly disowned him. Bin Laden went into exile in Sudan as a guest of the radical Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi, with whom bin Laden had met frequently regarding the Afghan jihad. Bin Laden established a headquarters for al Qaeda in Khartoum, Sudan, spending the next five years there. In 1994 Osama bin Laden was stripped of his Saudi citizenship after Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen accused him of supporting subversive groups.
Oh please. Get a clue. This story is out because the administration wants it out.
Don't buy it. Once we get as far as Baghdad, ain't NO Iraqi going to die for Saddam. It'll be chocolate bars rather than bullets.
I highly doubt that should an assault on Iraq come soon, it will resemble anything like Desert Storm. At this time we have nowhere near the firepower or assets in place to conduct a campaign on that scale.
Your theory, that this story is a plant to encourage indigenous plots against Saddam is plausible. Other (not necessarily contradictory possibilities):
1) We plan to move on Iraq at some later, but not too distant date, and want to exhaust his forces by triggering their premature deployment
2) In conjuction with the preceeding, we want to observe the deployment strategy to further hone our own plans and identify bombing targets.
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