THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Cyc., why wasn't he able to make this report in 2001?

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For the same reason French scientists can't walk around making reports on American WMD. Because Dilfer is an American citizen and was not allowed to do so at the time.

Where are you going with this? I hope it's not down the 'we had to invade to know for sure...' line, because we sure didn't hear our leaders telling us that before we went. They told us they WERE sure, when they either were not or were very wrong.

Cycloptichorn

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in 2001, there was no doubt Saddam had WMD's. There were no lies, no hidden agendas. The threat that Saddam, in a desperate move to keep a firm grip on his country, would try to sell those WMD's to terrorist organizations, like al Qaeda, was too great.

UNSR 1441 gave Saddam one last chance. He dicked around and forced Bush into action.

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McTag wrote:

Plenty of facts to choose from, that's for sure.

Sorry dude, but you're out there with nothing but windbags who choose to ignore evidence to support you, not facts. Nor do you have any proof whatsoever that this is true or do you?

McTag wrote:

That won't wash either. Cheney spent days at the CIA to ensure their report gave him the impetus he needed to lie about the reasons for war. He made them beef up and skew the information.

Ya... That's what I thought.

Meanwhile, everyone on planet earth knows that Saddam already used Chemical WMD on at least one occasion... but you find it impossible to believe that he might again. You're well enough informed to know that Saddam's Nuke program was further along than our intelligence suggested the first time around, but find it impossible to accept that we honestly thought it may have been again.

You think some report that was unable to find proof of a crime, possibly years after it's commission is somehow proof that it never took place. Rolling Eyes

Have you ever bought a bag of weed? Ever park in a no parking zone? Ever drive drunk or reckless? What proof remains of any of these infractions after the fact? Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Idea

But, for terrorist ties, there is no need to be so abstract: Saddam was openly paying $25,000 a crack for terrorists to commit acts of terrorism, but you don't think there was any link between Saddam and terrorism. Do you need to see a snapshot of him in bed with Bin Laden before you believe? Btw, Bush declared war against terrorism, not just Al Qaeda... and in my book paying $25,000 a crack for terrorist acts qualifies as terrorist acts...

Bush acted on faulty intelligence, yes. How you go from there to believing Bush is a war criminal because he acted on that faulty intelligence to remove a mass murdering maniac who was continuing to finance terrorist acts, who had a rich history of murder, rape, torture and repression, who's eventual successors were already proving to be even more murderous and less humane than he... etc etc etc, is way, way beyond me. You all need to back up several steps and figure out who the real bad guys are. It might help to stop ignoring evidence, too. Idea

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Icann, you go back to the same tired pieces of evidence every time.

Tired? Or did you mean tiresome? Valid evidence does not lose its validity with repetition. But when one is resisting the truth, being exposed to repetition of evidence that supports the truth can be tiresome.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Osama's fatwa has nothing to do with Iraq.

The 9-11 Commission Report discusses Osama's fatwas: 1996, and 1998. It also provides some evidence of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. The 1998 Fatwa prompted Saddam to invite Al Qaeda to Iraq.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The Dulfer report CLEARLY STATES that Iraq was a 'waning threat,'

You haven't read it, right?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

According to your criteria, Icann, sanctions will NEVER work; they only postpone the problem.

NEVER is a long time. I claim thus far in history sanctions haven't worked.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

You state that terrorist HARBORING was linked to Iraq, but it hasn't.

Yes it has.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

You don't seem to get that Saddam had no control in the north part of his country.

You seem to not get that whether Saddam knew or not, the terrorists camped in the northern part of Iraq were harbored in Iraq and had to be removed for the same reasons as the al Qaeda in Afghanistan had to be removed. They were both a highly probable threat to our future security.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

You also seem to forget that as the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 spent a considerable amount of time in America prior to the attack. By your criteria, WE should have been attacked for harboring terrorists ...

Yes, if we refused to stop harboring terrorists once we learned they were terrorists and where their training camp(s) in the US were. In Saddam's case, he knew both who and where in 2002, for the same reasons we knew who and where.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I also think you'd be hard-pressed to find an instance of slander that Kerry said about the troops.

John Kerry's entire presentation to the US Senate accusing our troops of committing atrocities in Vietnam was false and therefore was slander. By the way, few if any of John Kerry's alleged sources had actually served in Vietnam.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Reporting what others have told you is not slander.

Oh yes it is slander. All that is required for it to be slander is that it meet the legal definition of slander. That definition does not say it is or is not not slander depending on the source(s) the slanderer uses.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Refusing to wear rose-colored glasses is not slander.

True, but lying about what a person is or has done is slander.

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Nobody but the most hard core doves have criticized Bush and company for taking out the Taliban. The Taliban did not attack us. They, however, harbored those who did.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Nobody but the most hard core doves have criticized Bush and company for taking out the Taliban. The Taliban did not attack us. They, however, harbored those who did.

i for one was glad to see the taliban smacked around. they were, and still are, a really bad bunch of religion abusing meglos. i do think we left the job at least partially unfinished, thiugh.

i knew several afghanis back in the '80s when many escaped to america during the war with russia.

nice people. i wish them well.

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I discern that the Bush campaign is fading. He has lost the intelligentsia, and the Republicans are now realising he is not a traditional conservative.
That only leaves....yes, you know who you are. The shameful few.

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If you think I have ignored a few posts, that is not true. Well, it's true in the limited Blair/Bush sense. I composed half of the above before our friend came to visit, and so I lost a couple of hours talking to him, then sent it. It is intended to make you think.

So sorry if I seem to ignore a few rhetorical questions. I do not propose to get too bogged down in the detail that we have kicked around here for so long. Other people's straw men are not my thing.

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I don't blame you a bit. We could probably switch sides on this argument without missing a beat and no one would be the wiser. :wink:

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Comprehensive
Report
_____________________

of the
Special Advisor to the DCI
on
Iraq’s WMD

30 September 2004

(Carles Duelfer Report, 19 pages)
www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/

Key Findings

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

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Thanks Ican. Those who actually do read the thing--I've read most of it--will see that it is not such an indictment of Bush's 'rush to war' as his opponents would have us to believe.

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ican wrote:

That's a falsification! The report cites both Iraq-al-Qaeda contacts and Iran-al-Qaeda contacts.
www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.tm

Your link doesn't work, ican.

Aside from affirming that "the United States would punish not just the perpetrators of the attacks, but also those who harbored them," where in the report is this evidence for harboring, ican? You highlight the word harbor and harboring, but don't provide any reference to the evidence of harboring you claim is in The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

About the "friendly contacts," that's all the report cites along with some speculation that these indicated "common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States." O-kay. A statement of the obvious. The report goes on to say, however, "but to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

Where is your evidence of a collaborative operational relationship, ican?

In your quote of the NBC News report you highlight text that talks about a terrorist camp Zarqawi was at. The news report does not indicate where in Iraq this camp was located. Do you have evidence that this camp was anywhere other than Northern Iraq? Most likely this camp to which NBC's news report refers was in Northern Iraq, an Ansar al-Islam camp, a Kurdish terrorist group, an anti-Saddam terrorist group, a group with whom all the available evidence indicates Zarqawi was involved. Where is your evidence that Saddam had ties with them, ican?

You've failed to provide evidence for your assertions.

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InfraBlue wrote:

ican wrote:
That's a falsification! The report cites both Iraq-al-Qaeda contacts and Iran-al-Qaeda contacts.
www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.tm

Your link doesn't work, ican.

Origianally, the 'Duelfer report' was published October 6 by the Central Intelligence Agency on its web site, three monstrous files of 50 to 75 Megabytes each

Now a much more digestible html version of the report is available from GlobalSecurity.org HERE

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We now have a new report to utilize ..... The 'Dufus' pages Smile

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InfraBlue wrote:

ican wrote:
That's a falsification! The report cites both Iraq-al-Qaeda contacts and Iran-al-Qaeda contacts.
www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm

Your link doesn't work, ican.

It will now.

InfraBlue wrote:

Aside from affirming that "the United States would punish not just the perpetrators of the attacks, but also those who harbored them," where in the report is this evidence for harboring, ican?

[2.5; note 76] These 1999 friendly contacts did not lead immediately to harboring because Afghanistan at that time was thought by Osama to be a more hospitable place for al Qaeda then Iraq. The question naturally arises (within an objective mind):what happened in 2002 when Afghanistan was no longer more hospitable than Iraq? Obviously what happened in 2002 (after the US invasion of Adganistan and the flight of surviving al Qaeda from Afghanistan) was the creation of al Qaeda camps in Iraq, one of which was discovered in northern Iraq. QED: Iraq sheltered al Qaeda in 2002 and in 2003 until we invaded Iraq.

InfraBlue wrote:

The report goes on to say, however, "but to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

You keep repeating this mistake. That applies only to cooperation on the attacks on the US. It doesn't apply to Iraqi sheltering of al Qaeda. There was/is persuasive evidence that Iraq was sheltering al Qaeda. There was/is persuasive evidence that they were being trained for additional attacks.

InfraBlue wrote:

[Do you have evidence that this camp was anywhere other than Northern Iraq?

I'll assume it was in northern Iraq if you like. I'll even assume it was the only such camp (we learned from our invasion that there was more than one such camps). But northern Iraq is in Iraq! Iraq was harboring this northern camp of al Qaeda. This camp was as much a threat against us as was any camp in Afghanistan. It had to be removed and its residents had to be incarcerated or killed. To do that we had to invade it. We learned from Clinton's attempt to destroy the al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that an air attacks would not be sufficient to destroy the al Qaeda in Iraq. We had to invade Iraq on the ground to accomplish that.

InfraBlue wrote:

[Where is your evidence that Saddam had ties with them, ican?

Where is your evidence that he didn't know about the camp? Where is your evidence that if he had known about it he would not have tolerated it? It strains credibility to think that having invited al Qaeda into Iraq in 1999, he would not have welcomed them in 2002 right up to our invasion in March 2003.

However, that al Qaeda camp or any other was a threat regardless of whether Saddam did or did not know about it, regardless of where in Iraq it was harbored.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:
ican wrote:
That's a falsification! The report cites both Iraq-al-Qaeda contacts and Iran-al-Qaeda contacts.

www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm

Your link doesn't work, ican.
It will now

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Now a much more digestible html version of the report is available from GlobalSecurity.org

Unfortunately, this version does not include the section preceding Volume I called "Key Findings". It is that section which summarizes how Saddam was getting around the sanctions, how he was planning to get the sanctions phased out, and how he was planning to resume a full WMD development after the sanctions were phased out.

Since this prior section currently exists only in pdf format, the best I can do is transcribe its 19 pages here piece by piece as I have time.

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Transcribed from pdf version of Duelfer Report

Quote:

Regime Strategic Intent

Key Findings

(1st subheading)

Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

...

(4th point)

By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of the sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo by the end of 1999.

...

(2nd subheading)

Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability--which was essentially destroyed in 1991--after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop nuclear capability--in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks--but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

{I think the above assertions of the Duelfer Report are the ones most immediately germane to our discussion here. Saddam was a threat to the innocent people of the world. That's not really rationally debated. Only the timetable of that threat is debatable. The ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-NYT-Boston-Globe-Washington-Post pontificators didn't bother to report the whole story of the Duelfer Report. They only focused on: "... Iraq's WMD capability--which was essentially destroyed in 1991--"

Hopefully, someone will find an html version that can be copied into this forum without requiring any more transcribing by me.}

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ican wrote:

The 9-11 Commission Report states that there probably was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam on planning and executing the 9-11 attack. But it does provide evidence of a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam on negotiating the harboring of al Qaeda in Iraq, and we know, for example, about Zarqawi's al Qaeda training camp in northern Iraq, discovered in 2002.

You are conjecturing with an imaginative mind, ican, not an objective one, upon what is written in the report.

2.5 note 76 says this:

Quote:

CIA analytic report,"Ansar al-Islam:Al Qa'ida's Ally in Northeastern Iraq," CTC 2003-40011CX, Feb. 1, 2003. See also DIA analytic report,"Special Analysis: Iraq's Inconclusive Ties to Al-Qaida," July 31, 2002; CIA analytic report,"Old School Ties," Mar. 10, 2003.We have seen other intelligence reports at the CIA about 1999 con-tacts.They are consistent with the conclusions we provide in the text, and their reliability is uncertain. Although there have been suggestions of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda regarding chemical weapons and explosives training, the most detailed information alleging such ties came from an al Qaeda operative who recanted much of his original information. Intelligence report, interrogation of al Qaeda operative, Feb. 14, 2004.Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any such ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. Intelligence reports, interrogations of KSM and Zubaydah, 2003 (cited in CIA letter, response to Douglas Feith memorandum,"Requested Modifications to 'Summary of Body of Intelligence Reporting on Iraq-al Qaida Contacts (1990-2003),'" Dec. 10, 2003, p. 5).

These notes cast doubt about ties between al Qaeda and Iraq. Ansar al-Islam whom it does mention, was, as I've said, a Kurdish organization operating in Northern Iraq outside the control of Saddam. If anything, the Coalition Allies' enforcement of the Northern No-Fly Zone enabled their activities. The No-Fly Zone provided harbor for Ansar al-Islam. There is no evidence whatsoever that Saddam had links to them, let alone harbored them.

ican wrote:

Iraq sheltered al Qaeda in 2002 and in 2003 until we invaded Iraq.

Actually, taking the available evidence, our invasion enabled the infestation of Iraq with al Qaeda who poured in through the unprotected borders. By all available evidence, there weren't any al Qaeda in Iraq before 2003, it is swarming with them now.

ican wrote:

There was/is persuasive evidence that Iraq was sheltering al Qaeda. There was/is persuasive evidence that they were being trained for additional attacks.

Where is this evidence, ican?

ican wrote:

We learned from Clinton's attempt to destroy the al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that an air attacks would not be sufficient to destroy the al Qaeda in Iraq. We had to invade Iraq on the ground to accomplish that.

You are confusing al Qaeda with Ansar al-Islam. The CIA refers to Ansar al-Islam as "Al Qa'ida's Ally in Northeastern Iraq" in its report cited by the 9/11 report. Al Qaeda was not in Iraq. Ansar al-Islam was in Iraq. Saddam in all likelihood most certainly knew about Ansar; it was waging a terrorist war against him.

ican wrote:

However, that al Qaeda camp or any other was a threat regardless of whether Saddam did or did not know about it, regardless of where in Iraq it was harbored.

One thing is that a terrorist camp is a threat, another is that the US administration used the pretext that Saddam had "ties" to al Qaeda and exploited this pretext in a deceptive, propagandistic way. That was the jist of Au's post and my response to your response thereof.

EDIT: One thing is that a terrorist camp is a threat, another is that the US administration used the pretext that Saddam had "ties" to al Qaeda and exploited this pretext in a deceptive, propagandistic way to incite support for the war.

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By the way, thanks for the link to The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, ican.

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THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

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