As the man says, verrry interesting.
Posted on 01/30/2003 9:32:30 AM PST by honway
The CIA is blocking critical intelligence that links Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, a former top terrorism advisor to President Clinton is contending, and by doing so, she says, the agency is weakening President Bush's case for war against Iraq.
Asked about Salman Pak, the terrorist training camp near Baghdad where, according to a number of Iraqi defectors, al Qaeda terrorists have practiced for years hijacking American airliners using the same methods employed on 9/11, Clinton Iraqi expert Laurie Mylroie told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg:
"There's a huge debate within the (Bush) administration. The Defense Department wants to bring out information like that. The CIA, which is responsible for dealing with terrorism, accommodated Clinton's desire not to hear about Iraq and terrorism, does not want that information to come out. It acts as Saddam's lawyer."
Mylroie served as President Clinton's top advisor on Iraq during the 1992 campaign, and she has lectured on Middle Eastern terrorism and its origins at the Naval War College and Harvard University. Mylroie is also author of the book, "The War Against America," which details Baghdad's role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Just minutes before Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday night, Mylroie told Malzberg, "For any official statement to be made by the government, there is an interagency review process and the CIA blocks (the Salman Pak) information. Their response is to say, the defectors are not reliable - because they oppose Saddam you can't believe them."
What about satellite photos backing up accounts from Salman Pak defectors who describe a Boeing 707 parked on the ground, which they say serves as a classroom for Saddam's hijack trainees?
According to Mylroie, the CIA offers the bizarre alibi that the plane "could have been used by the Iraqis for counter-hijacking."
The Clinton terrorism expert says the White House is partly to blame for not forcing U.S. intelligence services to be more forthright about the information they have on Salman Pak, complaining, "Bush has failed to discipline the bureaucracy. And they have put their careers above Bush's career."
Asked to detail the precise role of Iraq in al Qaeda operations directed against the U.S., Mylroie told WABC, "Al Qaeda acts as a front for Iraqi intelligence. Al Qaeda provides the ideology, the foot soldiers and the cover. And Iraqi intelligence provides the direction, training and expertise."
Commenting on reports that the White House would use the State of the Union address to reinforce the argument that Saddam has been working with al Qaeda for years, Mylroie noted, "I'm glad (President Bush) is going to talk about Iraq and al Qaeda. (But) I have some concern that because powerful individuals and institutions are even now unwilling to acknowledge their error, the case is going to be a lot weaker than it could be."
He already he got his jollies on 9/11, with the most audacious and stunning surprise attack in human history. The deterrent part is just about getting away with it. There's nothing very complicated or mysterious about it.
The reason would be similar goals, a common enemy, and a way to achieve military parity, if not superiority. I don't need to go into Hussein's reasons.
Just as the muslims want the west (and especially the US) out if muslim lands, China wants the US out of her sphere of influence. She cannot challenge us directly, but she can get in some licks through proxies. And she can undermine any US public support for "foriegn adventures" by making the US public "war-weary". In other words, anything that weakens the US only strengthens China's chances of eventually claiming all the islands and land she believes it is her destiny to rule.
As for the need to blackmail an American administration, they controlled Clinton--at least initially--with money. But how do you control a whole elected government and keep one party from exposing the other--especially if they are in competition? A biological threat just might do it. It might allow you to steal all the technology you need to catch up...
I agree that there is no proof at this point, but I am still going to keep the prospect in mind...
The CIA, which is responsible for dealing with terrorism, accommodated Clinton's desire not to hear about Iraq and terrorism, does not want that information to come out. It acts as Saddam's lawyer."
If these reports don't amount to a smoking gun, then "smoking gun" has no meaning.
What about 1881?
What about 1901?
Huh? Huh? Huh?
And what about all the unsuccessful attempts?
Huh? Huh? Huh?
The Chinese are active on all fronts and in many ways, some more subtle than others, some in which it seems to me that we are willfully blind (Panama Canal).
North Korea is the creation and puppet of Beijing and there are a ton of dots just waiting to be connected between China, NK, Pakistan and Iraq.
Watch for the current administration to start making the connections public if and/or when NK tries to make diversionary moves on our Pacific flank.
I think history will show that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor did much more damage to our primary tool for fighting a war. Our military force. The Tet offensive was also fairly effective and was directly against our military forces. Its true that the attack on the World Trade Center was more horrific and more devious due to the surprise attack on civilians, but look at what the US militray force still has available to fight with. Saddams attacks were the kind that one would expect from a future thinking enemy that was fighting a very long war. Not the kind of attack someone living on the borrowed time of a cease fire agreement should have undertaken. So in an attempt to get his jollies off, he has succeded in the destruction of the Taliban, the all out war against Al Queda and his eventual complete and utter demise. I guess its possible that he is that stupid.
The deterrent part is just about getting away with it.
Where is he going ? He is trapped inside a bunker surrounded by enemies.
That would indeed be interesting. It's pretty obvious that both Pakistan and N. Korea got some help for their nuclear programs after China got our technology.
And I don't believe that Zemin was traveling throughout central Asia and South America, etc. looking for sales contracts for their plastic key ring industry :)
The Monroe Doctrine and TR's gunboats!
THE 1993 WTC BOMBING
On February 26, 1993 a bomb was detonated in the World Trade Center underground parking lot, killing six U.S. citizens. IRAQI sponsored terrorists planned, financed, executed and carried out that World Trade Center bombing.
The 1993 WTC bombing, took place on the Friday before the two year anniversary of IRAQ’s defeat in Kuwait, which was February 28, 1991. The anniversary in 1993, was a Sunday and few people would have been working at the World Trade Center that day; and IRAQ and the terrorists wanted to maximize the number of American casualties.
During the initial planning of the WTC bombing, Mahmud Abu Halima (who was later convicted for his role in the bombing) was in regular and frequent contact with his uncle Kadri Abu Bakr, who lived in IRAQ and had been a member of a PLO faction allied with SADDAM HUSSEIN. Shortly after these calls, the mastermind of the bombing, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, an IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agent, traveled to the United States using travel documents forged in Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation of that country in 1991.
42. Ramzi Yousef arrived in New York on September 1, 1992 using an Iraqi passport and requesting asylum. On December 31, 1992, he presented photocopies of passports for Abdul Basit at the Pakistani consulate in New York claiming to be Basit and requesting replacement of his “lost” passport. The real Basit was a Pakistani citizen who had moved to Kuwait and disappeared during the Iraqi occupation in August 1990.
IRAQI INTELLIGENCE had access to the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry files and upon information and belief, inserted Yousef’s fingerprints into the file and provided him with photocopies of two older passports from Basit’s file. The Pakistani Consulate, accordingly, provided Yousef a temporary passport, based on the false documents. This provided Yousef with a means to escape the U.S. two days after the World Trade Center bombing. In fleeing the United States after the bombing, Yousef first traveled through Baluchistan, an uncontrolled region of Iran straddling the border of Iran and Pakistan with strong ties to IRAQ. By the following year, 1994, Yousef was living in the Phillippines. He fled there however, after authorities discovered a plan he was working on to bomb United States’ airliners. Yousef fled to Pakistan and was eventually sheltered at an AL QAEDA guesthouse. He was arrested in February 1995 in Pakistan and extradited to the U.S. for prosecution and was eventually convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspiracy.
43. ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN, who was born in the United States to IRAQI parents but had been raised in Iraq, was questioned in New York and New Jersey in connection with the World Trade Center bombing, but was released after appearing to cooperate with U.S. officials. He fled the country the next day and traveled to Baghdad, IRAQ. U.S. prosecutors later learned that he, along with others, had prior training in bomb making, and had mixed the chemicals and constructed the bomb that was used on the World Trade Center. IRAQI INTELLIGENCE knew of Yasin’s presence in IRAQ and provided him refuge. On August 4, 1993 Yasin was indicted in absentia for the World Trade Center bombing.
44. In June 1994 YASIN was seen in Baghdad by an ABC news correspondent who was told that YASIN worked for IRAQI government. U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed that fugitive YASIN has been sheltered in IRAQ, a continuing violation of United Nationals Security Council Resolution 687 which makes it unlawful to harbor a suspected terrorist. In June 2002, YASIN was interviewed in Baghdad by Leslie Stahl from CBS. Yasin still remains in Iraq.
45. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abu Halima and Ahmad Mohammed Ajaj were all eventually convicted in the Southern District of New York for the 1993 conspiracy to bomb the World Trade Center.
46. Following his arrest in 1995, Ramzi Yousef told U.S. investigators that his intent was to create an explosion that would cause one of the World Trade Center Towers to fall over onto the other, destroying both and causing massive American casualties. Yousef had also planned to use sodium cyanide to create a toxic cyanide gas cloud throughout the area that would poison those in the building. Fortunately, the sodium cyanide was consumed in the blast and vaporized. Before the Gulf War, IRAQ had the largest and most diversified terrorist chemical weapons program in stockpiles of sodium cyanide, and had experience in the late 1980's using chemical weapons against its Kurdish population. Upon information and belief, it was IRAQ that supplied Yousef with the sodium cyanide.
47. During the worldwide hunt for fugitive Ramzi Yousef, he was living in the Phillippines with KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED. KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED’S involvement in terror activities became known when law enforcement authorities interrupted a plot to blow up a dozen U.S. commercial airliners flying to the United States from Asian cities. MOHAMMED’S participation in the planning of these acts of terror was uncovered by authorities after Yousef accidently started a fire in his apartment in Manila while mixing bomb chemicals. Filipino authorities were suspicious when they saw chemicals, bomb making instructions and timing devices in the apartment and they seized those items along with a computer containing the details of the airliner bombing plans. MOHAMMED and Yousef fled the country, before they could be arrested.
48. MOHAMMED eventually found sanctuary in Doha, Qatar. In early 1996, MOHAMMED was visited in Qatar by BIN LADEN. Around the same time, FBI director, Louis Freeh, wrote to the Qatari government requesting that it surrender MOHAMMED to U.S. authorities. Not long after the FBI request, with the assistance of Qatari officials, MOHAMMED fled to Prague, Czech Republic, foiling U.S. attempts to arrest him.
49. MOHAMMED’s whereabouts after his escape to Prague in May 1996 are not known, but documents and AL QAEDA members captured in Afghanistan identified MOHAMMED as a leader in the AL QAEDA terror network and actively involved in the planning, logistics and financing of the September 11 th attacks. His participation in the planned hijacking of U.S. commercial airliners was not new for him. MOHAMMED is a close associate of ABU ZUBAYDAH, a top BIN LADEN associate who was fully aware of the targets of the September 11 th hijackers. ZUBAYDAH is in the custody of United States authorities and is providing some information about AL QAEDA operations.
ATTACK ON U.S.S. COLE
90. In the spring of 2000, IRAQI INTELLIGENCE began planning to attack United States warships in the Persian Gulf in an effort to prompt a United Stateswithdrawal. IRAQ sought suicide bombers who would employ small boats packed with explosives to ram United States’ warships.
91. On October 12, 2000, IRAQI INTELLIGENCE and members of AL QAEDA including BIN LADEN, JAMAL AL-BADAWI, KHALID AL-MIDHAR, MOHAMMED OMAR AL-HARAZI, WALID AL-SOUROURI, FATHA ADBUL RAHMAN, YASSER AL-AZZANI, JAMAL BA KHORSH, AHMAD AL-SHINNI, RAED HIJAZI, JAMIL QASIM SAEED MOHAMMED, as well as the two suicide boat bombers Abd Al-Mushin Al-Taifi (deceased) (and a suspect in the August 1998 Embassy bombings) and Hassan Said Awadh Khemeri (deceased) carried out their plan to bomb the U.S.S. Cole by ramming a small boat loaded with explosives into the side of the ship as it was anchored in the harbor at Aden, Yemen, resulting in the deaths of 17 American sailors and injuring an additional 39.
92. The Yemeni government investigation reported that the terrorists behind the attack were Islamic extremists who fought the Soviets in the Afghan War and who were tied to the EGYPTIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD and AL QAEDA and who were trained in Afghanistan. Four were arrested in Yemen. Jamil Qaseri Saeed Mohammed was arrested a year later in Pakistan. After his arrest, AL-BADAWI admitted that he received his instructions to bomb the U.S.S. Cole from AL QAEDA member AL-HARAZI who he had met during the war in Afghanistan.
93. On June 20, 2001, in a videotape released to the press BIN LADEN boasted that his followers bombed the U.S.S. Cole. The 100-minute tape depicts BIN-LADEN, wearing a Yemeni dagger on his belt and reciting a poem to show that he and AL QAEDA were not afraid of attacking the United States military: And in Aden, they charged and destroyed a destroyer that fearsome people fear, one that evokes horror when it docks and when it sails. Video of the damaged destroyer was superimposed with the words in Arabic, “the destruction of the American Destroyer Cole.”
Source:
Ashton, et al. v. al Qaeda, et al.: Complaint (PDF) Lawsuit claiming a 9/11 link between Iraq and al Qaeda. Sept. 3, 2002
No, it's the kind of attack you'd expect from somebody who has very good back-end security.
Not the kind of attack someone living on the borrowed time of a cease fire agreement should have undertaken.
What is the evidence that Saddam is living on borrowed time? So far, all I see is a lot of saber rattling, combined with a lot of begging that Saddam take a luxurious exile. Saddam successfully blackmailed us with his anthrax in 1991, and he's still here, twelve years later, now with the most spectacular attack in human history under his belt. It seems you are in denial. But then the whole country is in denial -- just as it was in 1991, when our leadership came up with a bunch of lame cover stories to paper over the fact they had been intimidated by a Third World power, and we bought it.
So in an attempt to get his jollies off, he has succeded in the destruction of the Taliban,
Like Saddam could care less.
the all out war against Al Queda
Like Saddam could care less.
and his eventual complete and utter demise.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Last I heard, Rummy was practically begging Saddam to take a life of luxurious exile with a 24-hour security guard for life. That's pretty good going for somebody who murdered 3,000 Americans and inflicted $200 billion damage on the US economy in one morning while the whole world watched on TV, wouldn't you say?
Mylroe deserves a
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