THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

I don't mean anything on that - this is in the latest finding by the National Intelligence Estimate, the most comprehensive report yet, based on the considered analysis of all 16 of the US intelligence agencies.

OK then! What do you think the National Intelligence Estimate means by its finding?

By invading Iraq, America caused the development of ICT (i.e., ICT = Islama Caliphate Totalitarians (e.g., al-Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Baathists, et al)?

By invading Iraq, America accelerated the development of ICT?

By invading Iraq, America has diverted itself from the true front in the war on ICT, which is?

The report, Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, points out the "centrality" of the US invasion of Iraq in fomenting terrorist cells and attacks. One section of the 30-page report, Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement, describes how the American presence in Iraq has helped spread radical Islam by providing a focal point for anti-Americanism.

Are these the same spy agencies that said Iraq had WMD?

If they were wrong then,why couldnt they be wrong now?
If you believe them now,why didnt you believe them then?

Democrats singled out CIA Director George Tenet, saying that during a private meeting in July Tenet told the panel that the White House pressured him and that he agreed to back up the administration's case for war despite his own agents' doubts about the intelligence it was based on.

"Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said,'" Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters Friday.

Tenet also told the committee that complying had been "the wrong thing to do," according to Levin.

"Well, it was much more than that," Levin said. "It was a shocking abdication of a CIA director's duty not to act as a shill for any administration or its policy."

Ahaaa!!! So it's revenge you seek!!!

It's revenge you seek and not the protection of humanity from ICT (i.e., Islama Caliphate Totalitarians).

For the record, the currently irrational leadership of the Democratic party scares the hell out of me!

The SIC [Senate Intelligence Committee] on September 8th concluded:
Quote:

Quote:

(Conclusion 6) Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq

Yes, three times Bush did refuse to attempt to kill Zarqawi. Bush's opportunities to kill Zarqawi required an attack on Iraq--either a lucky aerial assault or a ground assault. Bush eventually chose both March 20, 2003.

By the way, Clinton had three opportunies to accept a handover of Osama bin Laden, but refused each opportunity. Clinton also had multiple opportunities to try and kill Osama bin Laden: For example, in Afghanistan, Clinton did try an aerial assault on Osama bin Laden once and failed, but he never tried that again. Of course, he did try an aerial assault on Saddam's anti-aircraft systems. Also, Clinton refused to invade Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saying "there will be no sanctuary for terrorists," President Clinton on Thursday said the U.S. strikes against terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a facility in Sudan are part of "a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism."

Foreign jihadists seen as key to spike in Afghan attacks 'Straight-out-of-Iraq' tactics observed as revived Taliban increases assaults
- Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, September 25, 2006

Before the Taliban regime fell five years ago, al Qaeda trained its fighters in Afghanistan's cavernous mountains and dusty valleys, and then exported them to wage war in places like Chechnya and Kashmir.

Today, terrorism experts say, the direction of trade has reversed: Afghanistan now imports international jihadists who have honed their fighting skills in the vast deserts and shrapnel-scarred city streets of Iraq.

The growing involvement of veterans of the Iraq insurgency is a major factor behind the surge of attacks in Afghanistan -- the heaviest since the Taliban government fell in 2001, observers say.

Under their influence, a revived Taliban movement and newer groups are using suicide bombs and remote-controlled bombs to attack U.S. and coalition forces and Afghan civilians, instead of the Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and unsophisticated land mines that were once the hallmarks of the Afghan guerrilla movement.

"The increase in vehicle bombings in Kabul -- that's straight-out-of-Iraq stuff," said Brian Jenkins, an expert on terrorism at the Rand think tank. "Now Iraq is the source of the expertise, and Afghanistan is receiving."

Last Monday, three bombings in different parts of the country killed at least 19 people, including four Canadian soldiers. On Tuesday, Afghan police arrested four militants in Kabul who had been hiding more than 15 highly sophisticated explosives in a mosque. Senior police official Ali Shah Paktiawal told Reuters that the bombs must have come from outside the country.

Scattered reports that veterans of the Iraqi insurgency were traveling to Afghanistan started to appear last year, after radical Islamist Internet forums published calls for fighters to help the Taliban.

"In the summer of 2005 ... there was suddenly an unbelievable increase of publications coming from Afghanistan," said Rita Katz, whose SITE Institute monitors terrorist Web sites, publications and electronic media worldwide.

According to the institute, extremists had set up terrorist training camps in the craggy mountains of northern Iraq and in the country's western desert along the desolate 450-mile border with Syria, modeling them on former al Qaeda training grounds in Afghanistan. The trainees also took part in operations involving attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, according to SITE.

"Videos and publications said: 'Stop going to Iraq, start going to Afghanistan; we need you here; we will establish (in Afghanistan) the fighting we have now in Iraq,' " Katz said.

Last fall, two Taliban commanders in Afghanistan told Newsweek about their training in Iraq. "I'm explaining to my fighters every day the lessons I learned and my experience in Iraq," said one commander, identified as Mohammed Daud, who at the time claimed he led a force of 300 fighters in the southern Afghan province of Ghazni. "I want to copy in Afghanistan the tactics and spirit of the glorious Iraqi resistance."

In May, U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who commands the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, disputed reports that Iraq was an emerging breeding ground for insurgents in Afghanistan.

"We have not seen conclusive evidence that there has been any migration from Iraq to Afghanistan of foreign fighters that are bringing with them skills or capabilities," he said.

A U.S. military spokesman at the Combined Forces in Afghanistan reached by telephone last week said he was not authorized to comment. But a NATO spokesman in Kabul, in a telephone interview with The Chronicle, did not dispute the reports.

"I have no reason to refute that or think that it's wrong," said the spokesman, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.

The secretive nature of the insurgency makes it difficult to determine how many fighters have traveled from Iraq to Afghanistan.

In March, Asia Times Online reported that 500 fighters who had trained in Iraq were in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where the tribal region on the porous border with Afghanistan serves as a safe haven for the Taliban -- and, some analysts believe, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Jenkins said he thought the number was lower. "There's no shortage of manpower for the Afghan part of this thing," he said.

The Taliban, who are the major force behind the Afghan insurgency, find their recruits among Pashtuns, who live in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, make up about half of the Afghan population and share ethnic ties with the Taliban.

But terrorism experts said the new, Iraqi-style insurgency relies heavily on foreigners for suicide missions.

Suicide bombings are "something that the Afghan people still abhor," said Nathan Hughes, a military analyst at Strategic Forecasting, a Texas security consulting group.

SITE's Katz said that on videos of suicide missions from Afghanistan posted on Islamist Web sites, "you will see Taliban attack, but the suicide bomber speaks Arabic." Such videos, which terrorist groups have long used for propaganda and recruitment purposes in Iraq, have proliferated in Afghanistan. "All the Taliban communiqués in which they take responsibility for attacks are posted on the same jihadi forums where they post Iraqi communiqués," she said.

Tactics similar to those the insurgents employ in Iraq also have included the use of kidnappings and the "refinement of techniques, including fairly sophisticated explosive devices," said Hughes. "It's the expertise and the know-how that is basically exported from the Iraqi insurgency."

Veterans of the Iraqi insurgency lead training workshops for Taliban fighters in Waziristan, the tribal areas of western Pakistan, the French newspaper Le Monde reported this month. Critics say Pakistan has virtually allowed North Waziristan to become a safe haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The Afghan insurgency itself is metastasizing, Iraqi-style, with at least four insurgent groups -- not just the Taliban -- now attacking Afghan and coalition troops and Afghan civilians, said Katz.

The other three groups, according to Katz, are al Qaeda; a group led by Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan-born al Qaeda member who escaped from the U.S. prison at the Bagram Air Base in 2005; and Jeish al-Mahdi (al-Mahdi Army), a group composed mainly of Afghans and Pakistanis. (The Afghan Jeish al-Mahdi is a Sunni group and bears no relation to its Iraqi namesake, the militant organization of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.)

The proliferation of insurgent groups means that they do not respond to a single authority, which makes it harder for the international forces to contain them, analysts said.

"I think we will see more insurgency groups in the future," Katz said. "This time last year, there was only the Taliban."

Such transformations also point to a larger problem for the international community, and for the Bush administration's war on terror, said Jenkins.

"The future concern is that down the road we'll be dealing with an entire cohort of veterans of fighting in Iraq ... that is just going to go ahead and spread throughout the entire jihadist universe," he said. "What we see in Baghdad today is what we're going to be dealing with tomorrow in a whole bunch of places."

Mysteryman wrote:

Are these the same spy agencies that said Iraq had WMD?

If they were wrong then,why couldnt they be wrong now?
If you believe them now,why didnt you believe them then?

In case you missed it MM the Senate earlier this month came out with a report that stated there was no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

It went on to say the following;

Quote:

Democrats singled out CIA Director George Tenet, saying that during a private meeting in July Tenet told the panel that the White House pressured him and that he agreed to back up the administration's case for war despite his own agents' doubts about the intelligence it was based on.

"Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said,'" Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters Friday.

Tenet also told the committee that complying had been "the wrong thing to do," according to Levin.

"Well, it was much more than that," Levin said. "It was a shocking abdication of a CIA director's duty not to act as a shill for any administration or its policy."

SOURCE

This is an example of good conservative ethics.

Bush orders Tenet to provide intelligence information to support their reasons to invade Iraq.

Tenet obeys his orders and provides information that his own agency did not support or agree with.

Later, when it is shown that the intelligence is false, Bush stabs Tenet and the CIA in the back and says it's their fault for issuing bad intelligence information.

Goes to show you MM that you can never, never trust a conservative. They are liars and backstabbers.

They knew there was no hard evidence of chemical or biological weapons
In September 2002, President Bush said Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given." The next month, he delivered a major speech to "outline the Iraqi threat," just two days before a critical U.N. vote. In his address, he claimed without doubt that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." He said that "Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" and that the government was "concerned Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

What he did not say was that the White House had been explicitly warned that these assertions were unproved.

As the Washington Post later reported, Bush "ignored the fact that U.S. intelligence mistrusted the source" of the 45-minute claim and, therefore, omitted it from its intelligence estimates. And Bush ignored the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency previously submitted a report to the administration finding "no reliable information" to prove Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons. According to Newsweek, the conclusion was similar to the findings of a 1998 government commission on WMD chaired by Rumsfeld.

Bush also neglected to point out that in early October 2002, the administration's top military experts told the White House they "sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were being designed as attack weapons." Specifically, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center correctly showed the drones in question were too heavy to be used to deploy chemical/biological-weapons spray devices.

Regardless, the chemical/biological weapons claims from the administration continued to escalate. Powell told the United Nations on February 5, 2003, "There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." As proof, he cited aerial images of a supposed decontamination vehicle circling a suspected weapons site.

According to newly released documents in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Powell's own top intelligence experts told him not to make such claims about the photographs. They said the vehicles were likely water trucks. He ignored their warnings.

On March 6, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, the president went further than Powell. He claimed, "Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents."

To date, no chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq.

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.

xingu wrote:

Mysteryman wrote:

Are these the same spy agencies that said Iraq had WMD?

If they were wrong then,why couldnt they be wrong now?
If you believe them now,why didnt you believe them then?

In case you missed it MM the Senate earlier this month came out with a report that stated there was no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

It went on to say the following;

Quote:

Democrats singled out CIA Director George Tenet, saying that during a private meeting in July Tenet told the panel that the White House pressured him and that he agreed to back up the administration's case for war despite his own agents' doubts about the intelligence it was based on.

"Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said,'" Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters Friday.

Tenet also told the committee that complying had been "the wrong thing to do," according to Levin.

"Well, it was much more than that," Levin said. "It was a shocking abdication of a CIA director's duty not to act as a shill for any administration or its policy."

SOURCE

This is an example of good conservative ethics.

Bush orders Tenet to provide intelligence information to support their reasons to invade Iraq.

Tenet obeys his orders and provides information that his own agency did not support or agree with.

Later, when it is shown that the intelligence is false, Bush stabs Tenet and the CIA in the back and says it's their fault for issuing bad intelligence information.

Goes to show you MM that you can never, never trust a conservative. They are liars and backstabbers.

I missed the part where Mysteryman linked Iraq with al Qaeda. Could you highlight it for me please? Otherwise, what you have here is a Strawman and just another of your posts that get scrolled by.

It didn't get scrolled by you did it McG?

In any event, the bush administration ignored the Intelligence communities doubts of WMD in Iraq before the war too.

Quote:

They knew there was no hard evidence of chemical or biological weapons
In September 2002, President Bush said Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given." The next month, he delivered a major speech to "outline the Iraqi threat," just two days before a critical U.N. vote. In his address, he claimed without doubt that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." He said that "Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" and that the government was "concerned Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

What he did not say was that the White House had been explicitly warned that these assertions were unproved.

As the Washington Post later reported, Bush "ignored the fact that U.S. intelligence mistrusted the source" of the 45-minute claim and, therefore, omitted it from its intelligence estimates. And Bush ignored the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency previously submitted a report to the administration finding "no reliable information" to prove Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons. According to Newsweek, the conclusion was similar to the findings of a 1998 government commission on WMD chaired by Rumsfeld.

Bush also neglected to point out that in early October 2002, the administration's top military experts told the White House they "sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were being designed as attack weapons." Specifically, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center correctly showed the drones in question were too heavy to be used to deploy chemical/biological-weapons spray devices.

Regardless, the chemical/biological weapons claims from the administration continued to escalate. Powell told the United Nations on February 5, 2003, "There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." As proof, he cited aerial images of a supposed decontamination vehicle circling a suspected weapons site.

According to newly released documents in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Powell's own top intelligence experts told him not to make such claims about the photographs. They said the vehicles were likely water trucks. He ignored their warnings.

On March 6, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, the president went further than Powell. He claimed, "Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents."

To date, no chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/they_knew_0802/

Quote:

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/09/AR2006020902418.html

Add this one on for good measure.

The Lie Factory

...

ican wrote:

The SIC [Senate Intelligence Committee] on September 8th concluded:
Quote:

Quote:

(Conclusion 6) Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq

I'm glad to see you finally came around to the truth that Zarqawi's camp was in "Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq" and not in Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq. There is a difference you know.

Since this territory was controlled by the Kurds and not by Saddam we cannot hold Saddam responsible for its existence. Being as how the camp was in "Kurdish-controlled" terrority it would be the Kurds who should shoulder the blame for protecting Zarqawi and not Saddam.

I have repeatedly stated that I hold al-Qaeda responsible for the al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam re-establishing its existence in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq, after 9/11.

I have repeatedly stated that Saddam is responsible for continuing to allow sanctuary to the al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam after the USA (i.e., the Bush adinistration) repeatedly asked him to extradite their leadership.

...

ican wrote:

Yes, three times Bush did refuse to attempt to kill Zarqawi. Bush's opportunities to kill Zarqawi required an attack on Iraq--either a lucky aerial assault or a ground assault. Bush eventually chose both March 20, 2003.

Nonsense. It did not require an attack on Iraq. Clinton attacked Al Qaeda's camps with cruise missiles in Afghanistan and he didn't invade that country. Your excuse is lame.

Your retort is childishly silly. Yes, Clinton did not invade Afghanistan and did not kill Osama bin Laden with a cruise missile attack on Afghanistan ... but Clinton tried!

But the poor baby, tried! Oh, yes, he tried!

The reason Bush wanted to keep Zarqawi alive is to lie to Americans about how Saddam is supporting Al Qaeda. Bush knew Saddam had no control over Zarwawi's camp but he refused to tell the American public that. It was a lie by omission. That's why people like you still believe that Saddam supported Al Qaeda. You believed his lies.

Bunk! Are you really obtuse enough to believe that? Also, I never accused Saddam of supporting al-Qaeda! I did not and do not think Saddam supported al-Qaeda!

I have repeatedly stated that I hold al-Qaeda responsible for the al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam re-establishing its existence in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq, after 9/11.

I have repeatedly stated that Saddam is responsible for continuing to allow sanctuary to the al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam after the USA (i.e., the Bush administration) repeatedly asked him to extradite their leadership.

Did you know ... what this administration is all about.
Did/Do you know? Answer: Not only no, but hell no!

...
Clinton gave a very good explanation of his efforts to kill bin Laden. He tried. He failed but at least he tried.

But the poor baby, tried! Oh, yes, he tried! He really tried! Golly gee, He really tried! The little dear tried so hard.

Conversely, in the first eight months of the Bush administration they did nothing. Absolutely nothing.
...
"Bush ... did ... absolutely nothing" You actually believe that stupid lying Clinton line But, what the hell, you tried.

Quote:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saying "there will be no sanctuary for terrorists," President Clinton on Thursday said the U.S. strikes against terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a facility in Sudan are part of "a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism."

SOURCE

Yes, Clinton baby said lots and lots and lots of stuff. But he accomplished little if anything in his war on terrorism.

www.m-w.com
Main Entry: prag·ma·tism
Pronunciation: 'prag-m&-"ti-z&m
Function: noun
1 : a practical approach to problems and affairs <tried>
2 : an American movement in philosophy founded by C. S. Peirce and William James and marked by the doctrines that the meaning of conceptions is to be sought in their practical bearings, that the function of thought is to guide action, and that truth is preeminently to be tested by the practical consequences of belief
- prag·ma·tist /-m&-tist/ adjective or noun
- prag·ma·tis·tic /"prag-m&-'tis-tik/ adjective

...
This is why we need an investigation of the events that led up to this war.
...
You'll never get this investigation with the Republicans in charge of Congress.

xingu wrote:

...
This is why we need an investigation of the events that led up to this war.
...
You'll never get this investigation with the Republicans in charge of Congress.

I thought all this is already known by you: Clinton tried and Bush lied.

Do you truly harbor any doubts?

If you are correct, all that is sufficient to impeach Bush is for you in November to get a Democratic majority elected in the House. No additional investigation is necessary. On the other hand, to remove Bush from the presidency, you'll need in the Senate "the Concurrence of two-thirds of the members present". You can achieve that without replacing any Republican Senators. All you have to do is secretly schedule the trial by informing only Democrats and the Chief Justice when the trial is to be held.

Your losing it ican. Your starting to get crazy.

...
ican
All I'm asking for is an honest investigation. You won't get that with the Republicans in control of Congress.

I didn't say anything about impeachment.

Except, the invasion of Iraq hasn't stopped the growth of AQ. Not at all. In fact, if anything, it has added to their numbers and provided them with legitimacy that they didn't have before.

Do you disagree with this assessment?

Cycloptichorn