THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

timberlandko wrote:

Sorry if my inclusion of the qualifiers "reportedly" and "so the story goes" wasn't enough caveat for you. I used those words precisely because the story may or may not be apocryphal ... it is subject to dispute, and there are various versions of it.

Those qualifiers only related to the most obviously dubitable parts of the story. Other equally questionable parts were presented witout them.

Some outright falsehoods were also presented without such disclaimer.

So no, they weren't nearly enough. I did note your disclaimers and even edtied my post to remove "present as fact" from it because of them.

But either way, sorry to have been unecessarily harsh.

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Craven wrote:

Whether or not that is enough is up to you, but that's just a wee bit that I remember from one or two articles and you'd probably find a lot more if you look into it.

Hmmm ... all fair enough, but what I reacted to was you saying that "The Saudi government has pretty much always been steadfastly against the terrorists."

What you are writing about now is a clampdown that, according to the very sources you cite, constitutes a "significant improvement" compared to past practice.

I have no qualm with the observation that the Saudi government has lately significantly upped its efforts. Like I said, the past practice of turning a relative blind eye to militant groups, in implicit exchange for them leaving its regime in peace, had started backfiring in any case after all those "Afghan veterans" came back home and militant energy started increasingly focusing on the government at home. So that would only be logical.

But if there is a "significant improvement" in how the Saudi government is now tackling the militants, that would seem to disprove rather than confirm your assertion that it "has pretty much always been [acting] steadfastly".

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Dom't worry 'bout it, CdK ... seems to have bothered you more than it bothered me. No biggie.

A real biggie, though, and one I agree with, is your assessment of the surreptitious, perhaps overly so, nature of the Anti-Terror efforts of The Saudi Government. They do, from what I've heard and read, much not from media but from folks I know and trust, and who are "there" (note the qualifiers :wink: ) far more than they talk bout. Dunno so much as I blame 'em, either, given the somewhat shaky position of The House of Saud and the rabble-rousing potential of what might be seen as an afront to religion. The Saudi Government is sorta between a rock and a hard place. They of course cannot countenance terrorism, but they cannot go around openly closing down mosques and schools, either. Much of what they do goes unreported, even covered up, precisely to keep it out of the regional media, and thus away from the attention of The Saudi In The Street.

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I agree with that take without any reservations.

I didn't go into what I consider to be the reasons in my post but if I had it would have been what you say.

IMO they have to fight it while being careful with their street.

Of course, I wish they'd take the fight public, but at the same time I hope they fall (with the disclaimer that I think that if they fell now what replaced them would be worse).

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nimh wrote:

Hmmm ... all fair enough, but what I reacted to was you saying that "The Saudi government has pretty much always been steadfastly against the terrorists."

Good point, please replace "the terrorists" with "Al Qaeda".

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Craven de Kere wrote:

Of course, I wish they'd take the fight public, but at the same time I hope they fall (with the disclaimer that I think that if they fell now what replaced them would be worse).

What do you mean by this?

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That I wish that the house of Saud would more visibly fight terror (e.g. in PR as well as in actions) but that I wish this while the house of Saud doesn't (because they are worried about rocking the boat) because I don't mind if they lose power (because monarchy is stupid) and they do (because they think it's pretty nifty).

But because I think that if they lose power a worse government (less secular, more extreme, less friendly to us) will arise I add the disclaimer that the replacement would probably be worse (so I don't want the house of Saud to go the way of the house of usher just yet).

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Ah, gotcha. For a moment I thought you were hoping they'd fail, despite believing their successors would be worse... and that could only be reasonable if you were one of these lunatics hoping some sense would be kicked into them right after that (walks away whistling discreetly).

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Craven de Kere wrote:

Brand X wrote:
Craven de Kere wrote:
He was killed while disposing of the body.

Yeah, right. These were Saudi's 'most wanted men' and hey! They're dead.

I dunno.

Yeah right about them being killed while on their trip to dispose the body? I did not make that up.

And "hey! They're dead." sounds like you think it was suspect in other ways.

Seriously, you simply want to believe that there's something fishy, you want to believe so bad that it doesn't matter a whit to you that there is no basis for this belief. It doesn't matter that there are hundreds of eye witnesses who can relate the real story.

What does that matter? You have imagination.

Sigh. Making up idiotic conspiracy theories from thin air pisses me off. So does a palatable desire to see one in situations without any support for the notion.

What do facts matter? You have imagination. Let it play and truth be dammed, it's more fun to make stuff up than to try to determine what is real.

Not trusting or being skeptical does not equate to 'wanting to believe' or being imaginative.

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It doesn't always but it can, and I maintain that this is a case in which it did.

Your insinutaions had not shred of factual basis and as such your vociferation of them was a vociferation of your imagination and your rejection of what factual basis is available was obdurate clinging to what you want to believe even if you have no evidence to support the desired belief.

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But witnesses saw Paul's body being dumped, where is it?

Excerpt

Quote:

Saudi officials initially said Johnson's body was found Friday dumped on the capital's northern outskirts, hours after his captors killed and decapitated him and posted Web photos of his severed head.

But officials backtracked Saturday.

"We haven't found the body yet," said Adel al-Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, in Washington. "We think we know the area where it is."

Source

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I never said anything about witnesses knowing where the body is.

Your article has me convinced, the Saudis are up to no good. I mean, al-Moqrin was killed so soon AFTER but not BEFORE Johnson's death.

Can you flesh out any more plot points in your narrative? I've decided to watch it till the end.

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Craven de Kere wrote:

I never said anything about witnesses knowing where the body is.

Your article has me convinced, the Saudis are up to no good. I mean, al-Moqrin was killed so soon AFTER but not BEFORE Johnson's death.

Can you flesh out any more plot points in your narrative? I've decided to watch it till the end.

My post was free and clear of you, merely a post by me.

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I'll grant you that much... I didn't think it was someone else's.

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I'd give the Saudis some redemption for the hit and am willing to accept their explanation of not saving Johnson without conjuring up any conspiracy theories. However, they still have a long way to go. If their Muslim teachers problem of teaching that America is bad because too many of our "Christian" leaders are advocating a Crusade, the U.S. politicians and clerics have to take some of the responsibility.

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Craven de Kere wrote:

He was killed while disposing of the body.

I took this as a statement of fact.

Now, I wonder as well how the murderers were found so quickly after the beheading. Guess we'll see.

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Sofia wrote:

Craven de Kere wrote:
He was killed while disposing of the body.

I took this as a statement of fact.

Now, I wonder as well how the murderers were found so quickly after the beheading. Guess we'll see.

Fair enough, the statement sure could have used a disclaimer for it to be air tight.

But I don't get what the basis of the wonderment is, if perps are caught for murder they tend to be caught shortly thereafter.

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I'm not yet subscribing to a conspiracy theory--just thought witnessing the body drop would've cleared up the timing easily...
--------
Why the claim of finding it, and then the backtrack? Now, that is interesting. Does anyone know who claims to have the SKorean, scheduled for beheading? Is that in Saudi, or Iraq?

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Commission says...what?

A commission staff report says that while there were contacts between Osama bin Laden's network and the Iraqi government, they did not appear to have produced a collaborative relationship.

Al-Qaida had "a lot more active contacts" with Iran and Pakistan than it did with Iraq, but "we don't see serious conflicts" with the White House over the issue, said the commission chairman, former Republican Gov. Thomas Kean of New Jersey.

"There's really very little difference between what our staff found, what the administration is saying today and what the Clinton administration said," said commissioner John Lehman, speaking Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "The Clinton administration portrayed the relationship between al-Qaida and Saddam's intelligence services as one of cooperating in weapons development. There's abundant evidence of that."

"The Bush administration has never said that [Iraq] participated in the 9/11 attack," Lehman said. "They've said, and our staff has confirmed, there have been numerous contacts between Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaida over a period of 10 years, at least."
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Finally. Chinking away at the hyperbole...

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What Bush has said was not "they had numerous contact," but that they had a "relationship." Contact and relationship can be interpreted to mean different things to many people, and creates confusion - exactly what the Bush administration wants and seeks. That's the reason why many in this country still believe Saddam would have given WMDs to al Qaeda to be used against the US.

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THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

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