Two interesting things in today's posts. Revel posts a piece on removal of sophisticating weapons making equipment from Iraqi factories and she has bolded lines which I assume she thinks are the parts that make the U.S. look bad. However, the information in this piece gives strong credence to WMD and WMD-making capabilities does it not and also credence to our claims that convoys of stuff did leave Iraq shortly after the invasion; two things for which Revel (and some others) have consistently stated there was no proof.
And now JW posts a piece suggesting payoffs to members of the inspection team. This would be the same inspection team that said they should have more time? That along with the serious allegations re the OFF scandal is sure stacking up to provide strong insights into why the U.N. was so reluctant to enforce its own resolutions.
Agents Say al-Qaida's Ability Diminishing
Sunday March 13, 2005
By PAUL HAVEN
Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Senior Bush administration officials have warned in recent weeks that al-Qaida is regrouping for another massive attack, its agents bent on acquiring nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in a nightmare scenario that could dwarf the horror of Sept. 11.
But in Pakistan and Afghanistan - where Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy are believed to be hiding - intelligence agents, politicians and a top U.S. general paint a different picture.
They say a relentless military crackdown, the arrests last summer of several men allegedly involved in plans to launch attacks on U.S. financial institutions, and the killing in September of a top Pakistani al-Qaida suspect wanted in a number of attacks - including the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and two failed assassination attempts against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf - have effectively decapitated al-Qaida.
Pakistani intelligence agents told The Associated Press that it has been months since they picked up any ``chatter'' from suspected al-Qaida men, and longer still since they received any specific intelligence on the whereabouts of bin Laden or any plans to launch a specific attack
They say the trail of the world's most wanted man - long-since gone cold - has turned icier than the frigid winter snows that blanket the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the terror mastermind is considered most likely to be hiding.
Pakistani officials have been quick to hail the long silence as a signal that it has already dismantled bin Laden's network, at least in this part of the world.
``We have broken the back of al-Qaida,'' Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said last month in a speech in Peshawar, the capital of the frontier province on the border with Afghanistan. Musharraf added last week that his government had ``eliminated the terrorist centers'' in the Waziristan tribal region and elsewhere.
``We have broken their communication system. We have destroyed their sanctuaries,'' the president told reporters. ``They are not in a position to move in vehicles. They are unable to contact their people. They are on the run.''
A senior official in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency told AP he couldn't remember the last time the agency got a strong lead on top-level al-Qaida fighters.
``Last year, we frequently heard Arabs on radios talking about their hatred for (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai and Musharraf for supporting Americans, and we were able to trace al-Qaida hideouts in South Waziristan,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``Lately, such conversations have decreased.''
Pakistan's optimism seems to be backed by senior U.S. military officials in the region.
Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the No. 2 American commander in Afghanistan, said he had seen nothing to indicate that al-Qaida was attempting to get its hands on nuclear or biological weapons.
There is ``no evidence that they're trying to acquire a terrorist weapon of that type and, frankly, I don't believe that they are regrouping,'' he told AP in a Feb. 25 interview.
``I think the pressure on them here, the pressure on them in Pakistan, the pressure on them in Iraq, is pretty great and it makes very difficult for them to operate,'' Olson added.
The skeptical assessments from officials here fly in the face of warnings out of Washington, where President Bush is pushing Congress to approve a $419 billion defense budget for 2006.
The Homeland Security Department late last month issued a classified bulletin to officials that bin Laden was enlisting his top operative in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to plan potential attacks on the United States.
There have also long been fears - though no evidence to date - that rogue Pakistani nuclear scientists might have provided bin Laden's men with the know-how to build a crude atomic device or dirty bomb.
Newly installed CIA director Porter Goss and other senior American intelligence and military officials warned last month that terrorists are preparing for new strikes.
``It may be only a matter of time before al-Qaida or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons,'' Goss said at the Senate Intelligence Committee's annual hearing on threats, urging approval of the defense budget.
But Sherpao scoffed at such warnings.
``That is simply out of the question,'' he said of al-Qaida's ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, adding that any al-Qaida leader who has escaped arrest was ``more worried about their own safety.''
``How can such people launch attacks with nuclear or chemical weapons?'' he asked.
Maj. Gen. Olson, who leaves Afghanistan next month to return to the 25th Infantry Division back in Hawaii, said al-Qaida leaders were unable to use modern communications for fear of detection and were reduced to ``16th century'' techniques such as couriers. He said he wasn't discouraged by the success bin Laden and his deputy have had in releasing audio and videotapes filled with threats during the past few months.
``They can deliver all the videotapes they want, as long as they're not delivering weapons that can kill large numbers of people and I am convinced that their ability to coordinate large attacks like that is severely disrupted right now because of the pressure we have on them,'' he said.
---
Associ Munir Ahmad in Islamabad, Pakistan, Zarar Khan in Karachi and Stephen Graham in Orgun, Afghanistan contributed to this report.
nada. anyone who really believes all humans are created equal (interesting choice of words "created equal") has his batteries in backwards.
I like your candor! I checked my multi-polar batteries and found they don't have a backwards, only an outwards.
Following this quote is my rewritten version that more closely represents my politics:
Quote:We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
My rewritten version is:
Quote:We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are designed equally endowed by their designer with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights for honorable people (i.e., people who do not deny any people their unallienable rights), honorable people institute governents that derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
People exist by design or by chance. The probability that people exist by chance is much less than one in 10 multiplied by itself one million times (i.e., 10^[-1,000,000]). So I bet people exist by design and not by chance. Regardless of how one chooses to bet on that matter, honorable persons recognize that it is in their own mutual self-interest to secure for all honorable people equal rights.
It is quite academic to argue whether people are endowed their equal rights by design, by chance, or by their own enlightened mutuals wills to serve their own mutual self-interest.
"designers do clothes, landscapes and movie/stage sets, not humans,
Designers also design DNA, space craft, processes, and cures.
there are ZERO inalienable rights to secure,
Who is doing the counting? How do you know?
"honorable" is an arbitrary and capricious term with virtually no valid definition,
honorable people (i.e., people who do not deny any people their unallienable rights)
finally governments are instituted by brokers of power on the backs of the labor that created their power. All governments by any nature since the age of agrarian societies has been contrived by the elites (not always a bad thing) having virtually nothing other than sloganeering of consent.
There are many exceptions to this historical view. The USA is one of them.
Mullah Krerkar is the leader of Ansar al-Islam. The Bush administration claimed that he is an ally of bin Laden, tolerated by Saddam.
Mullah Krekar Interview
Duration: 08'26"
Reporter: Jonathan Miller
Producer: Ivan O'Mahoney
Watch Video with Windows Media Player 9
Insight News Television presents a film on Ansar al-Islam - the radical Islamic militia named by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his speach to the UN. He said it was one of the missing links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Our reporter, Jonathan Miller, spent two days with Ansar's leader, Mullah Krekar. Krekar's an Iraqi Kurd, but is today living in Norway, which granted his family political asylum ten years ago. Refugee status hasn't stopped him from returning regularly to Northern Iraq to wage jihad and commit human rights abuses against his own people. Krekar set up a Taliban-style mini-state on the Iraq / Iran border where pop music and TV have been outlawed and Sharia law rules.
Powell said Ansar al-Islam offered sanctuary to al-Qaeda fighters who fled Afghanistan - chief among them, bin Laden's chemical and biological weapons man, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. He's been linked to the assassination of a US diplomat in Jordan last October and the ricin poison plot in Britain last month. Powell also said an Iraqi agent occupies a leadership position in Ansar al-Islam.
In interview, the Mullah addresses each of the detailed allegations put to him - the same allegations made by Powell at the UN. Miller presents Krekar with detailed video and audiotape evidence of his activities and of atrocities which international human rights groups say his group carried out.
Krekar denies links with al-Qaeda and says he is Saddam's his sworn enemy. He scoffs at the idea that his trusted friend, the Iraqi Arab Abu Wa'il, is a spy. He denies any links with international terrorism and said he'd never met al-Zarqawi.
The film depicts the Mullah as a family man: a loving father, husband - and son: his ageing mother tells us how much she loves him and laughs off the allegations against him. But Krekar shows his dark side, describing suicide bombing as the very very best sort of jihad and revelling in pictures showing how his fighters had decapitated and mutilated members of a rival Kurdish militia.
We have also acquired video footage filmed inside Ansar territory, showing the Islamists training. Child soldiers feature prominently; Krekar is seen standing beside the man Powell thinks is an Iraqi agent; sharia punishments are administered.
The Mullah claims he had a secret meeting with the CIA and US military personnel in Iraqi Kurdistan last year. Could this explain why US intelligence agencies were reportedly so concerned about Powell raising Ansar al-Islam as one of the key connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda?
Insight News Television can also offer access to the full interview with Mullah Krekar as well as additional pictures from inside Ansar al-Islam territory.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Report, i.e., The 9-11 Commission Report alleged, 8/21/2004.
www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm
Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.53
To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.54
With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995.
"American Soldier," BY General Tommy Franks, 7/1/2004:
1. [CHAPTER 12, page 483] The Air Picture changed once more. Now the icons were streaming toward two ridges and a steep valley in far northeastern Iraq, right on the border with Iran. These were the camps of the Ansar al-Islam terrorists, where al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi had trained disciples in the use of chemical and biological weapons. But this strike was more than just another TLAM [Tomahawk Land Attack Missle] bashing. Soon Special Forces and SMU [Special Mission Unit] operators leading Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, would be storming the camps, collecting evidence, taking prisoners, and killing all those who resisted.
2. [CHAPTER 12, page 519] And they had also encountered several hundred foreign fighters from Egypt, the Sudan, Syria, and Libya who were being trained by the regime in a camp south of Baghdad. These foreign volunteers fought with suicidal ferocity, but they did not fight well. The Marines killed them all.
3. [CHAPTER 12, page 522] This whole country is one big weapons dump, I thought. There must be thousands of ammo storage sites. It will take years to clear them all.
It seems Saddam allowed al Qaida to set up camps in norhtern Iraq where Saddam was restricted from entering.
OK boss, whatever you say. Your arguments/statements of fact are even more specious than mine. We might as well be constructing the World Trade Center anew from globs of philosophical jello. You can have Ayn Rand as your general contractor and I will take Deeprak Chopra. It would be jolly good fun, don't ya think?
cicerone imposter wrote:It seems Saddam allowed al Qaida to set up camps in norhtern Iraq where Saddam was restricted from entering.
Restricted or not, before our invasion of Iraq 3/20/2003, Saddam's troops entered northern Iraq, both in and after the 1990s. They did this several times to attack alleged rebellious Kurds and prevent the Kurds from seizing Kurdistan and its oil fields. But his regime did not choose to enter that part of northern Iraq occupied by al Qaeda. I bet his choices were not based on any alleged restrictions.
But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.
KING: Still a menace, still a problem. But the administration failed, principally because of objections from Russia and China, to get the new sanctions policy through the United Nations Security Council. Now what? Do we do this for another 10 years?
RICE: Well, in fact, John, we have made progress on the sanctions. We, in fact, had four of the five, of the permanent five, ready to go along with smart sanctions.
We'll work with the Russians. I'm sure that we'll come to some resolution there, because it is important to restructure these sanctions to something that work.
But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.
This has been a successful period, but obviously we would like to increase pressure on him, and we're going to go about doing that.
But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating tht Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.
