Read the stories that TV news networks forget to report!
CIA Learned in '02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says - Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and two GOP colleagues on the committee disclosed this information for the first time in the panel's report on Iraq released last week. They wrote in the "additional views" section of the report that the Cabinet-level Iraqi official "said that Iraq has no past, current, or anticipated future contact with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda" and that the official "added that bin Laden was in fact a longtime enemy of Iraq."
The often cited claims of links between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda were not only ideologically absurd but the global intelligence community believed the claims were ridiculous as well. This was known way before the Bush/PNAC administration announced its intentions to invade Iraq. 9/11 was the excuse for proceeding with PNAC’s decade long desire to take over Iraq so the Bush/PNAC administration had to make this claim otherwise there was no justification at all for invading this already beaten down nation that had not made any threats to any other nation.
Iraq/Al Qaeda Links?
Keep in mind that when the Bush/PNAC bunch make claims about Al Qaeda links to Iraq based on the fact that some Al Qaeda have received training in Iraq, it is the same thing as the hundreds if not thousands of Al Qaeda members that received training in the US! Are we forgetting that the 9/11 hijackers were trained right here in the US? Are you aware of how close the Bush and Bin Laden families are? Is anyone discussing this? No, The assertions are baseless and they are meant to get the American public to support the unjustified invasion of Iraq.
For those who do not know the history of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, I will provide links to this information. For now I will remind you that one of the reasons that Bin Laden turned his sights on the US is that during the 1st Gulf War Bin Laden had offered to use his troops to oust the Iraqis from Kuwait. He did not want Americans on holy Saudi soil. Saddam was a secular leader. He did not rule Iraq based on Islam law. Women did not have to cover themselves, they are educated and hold jobs, even in government. Christianity is permitted in Iraq. Teriq Aziz, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, is a Christian, not a Muslim. Saddam is a natural enemy of Bin Laden.
Establishing this link was a key element in the US justification of going to war with Iraq.
Reports undercut Iraq, al-Qaeda link - "These documents are additional compelling evidence that the intelligence community did not believe there was a cooperative relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite public comments by the highest ranking officials in our government to the contrary," Senator Carl Levin said today. - The declassified documents undermine the Bush administration's claims regarding Iraq's involvement in training al-Qaeda operatives and the likelihood of a meeting between September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001, Senator Levin said in a statement.
Captives Deny Qaeda Worked With Baghdad - Two of the highest-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in American custody have told the C.I.A. in separate interrogations that the terrorist organization did not work jointly with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, according to several intelligence officials.
Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments - Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.
Distorted Intelligence? - Secret German records cast doubt on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Plus, why Qatar is footing the legal bills for an “enemy combatant’ - TVNL asks: Are American people totally oblivious to the increadible number of lies to come out if this administration. Can someone please e-mail us with any evidence of information to come out of the White House since Bush/PNAC has taken office that has not been chock full of lies?
Al Qaeda mutating like a virus - Terror networks operating with renewed vigour- Iraq war helping bin Laden recruit suicide bombers. - Part of the problem, analysts say, was the war in Iraq, which unsurprisingly created a new wave of animosity toward the United States and Britain, acting as an effective recruiting tool among disaffected Muslims. - TVNL comment: We told you so! We all told you so!
U.N. Panel Reports No al-Qaida-Iraq Ties - "Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and al-Qaida," said Michael Chandler, the committee's chief investigator.
Al Qaeda claims exaggerated: analysts - Intelligence unable to find connection 'No significant pattern of co-operation' U.S. overplayed links, analysts say - TVNL comment: We knew this before we incaded Iraq!
The Next Debate: Al Qaeda Link - The invasion of Iraq, after all, was billed as Phase II in the war on terror that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But was there ever a credible basis for carrying that battle to Iraq?
Iraq link to terror judged not likely before Bush speech - In fact, the estimate, completed Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his regime were collapsing after a military attack by the United States
Secret report undercuts - Iraq connection to WTC - 'No specific information' Saddam behind 1993 bombing, any other attack on U.S. - Their findings were presented to the president Oct. 2 in a still-secret report on Iraq. The summary, or "key judgments" section, of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate was declassified Friday. WorldNetDaily obtained a copy from the National Security Council.
Commissioner: Bush Deliberately Delayed Inquiry Report Until After Iraq War - "The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," said Cleland. "There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of bin Laden's terrorist followers ... What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends."
Ghost of al-Qaeda left out of story - Links between Saddam and the terrorist group were cited among reasons to prosecute a war. Jason Burke finds little to support the claims - On 5 February Tony Blair told Parliament there were - 'unquestionably' - 'links' between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group and Saddam Hussein. 'It is a matter of speculation,obviously, how far those links go,' the Prime Minister said. The answer, we know now, is not very far.
Did war compromise al-Qaida hunt? - Senior terrorism experts are asking whether the United States could have done much more to go after Osama bin Laden if it had not diverted counterterrorism resources away from Afghanistan and into Iraq. - TVNL comment: This just adds to the notion that invading Iraq was NOT part of the war on TERROR!!!
Read Between the Lines of Those 28 Missing Pages - Yet even in its sanitized version, the bipartisan report, long delayed by an embarrassed White House, makes clear that the U.S. should have focused on Saudi Arabia, and not Iraq, in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Questions grow over Iraq links to Qaeda - The link between Hussein and Al Qaeda was a component of Bush's larger assertion that Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States -- that ''secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists.'' - But a review of the White House's statements and interviews with current and former intelligence officials indicate that the assertion was extrapolated from nuggets of intelligence, some tantalizing but unproven, some subsequently disproved, and some considered suspect even at the time the administration was making its case for war.
Spanish intelligence service says no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda: report - Spain's counter-espionage service believes there is no link between toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the extremist Al Qaeda network, national media has reported. - The head of the National Intelligence Centre, Jorge Dezcaller, added that Al Qaeda had even accused Saddam of not respecting the principles of Islam, the media said. - TVNL Comment: So far the only people on the planet to claim connections between Iraq (Saddam) and Al Quaeda are the neocons in the White House. Oh, we forgot to mention the American news media who act as megaphones for the neocons.
Poll: 70% think Hussein, 9/11 linked - Belief persists despite lack of evidence of any direct link - “The notion was reinforced by these hints, the discussions that they had about possible links with al Qaeda terrorists,” - TVNL Comment: This shows that the very news agencies who took this poll are to blame. They have completely failed in their responsibility to report news. They have merged gossip and speculation into reality helping to create a public to misinformed that we are the intellectual laughing stock of the world. In addition to this our ignorance has allowed us to become the largest threat to world peace in history. We went to war because the US news media fooled the American public by making them believe that the Iraq invasion was part of a war on terror. It was not.
Wolfowitz retracts al-Qaida, Iraq claim - The Pentagon's No. 2 official retreated Friday from his assertion that key lieutenants of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden are plotting with Saddam Hussein loyalists to kill Americans in Iraq. - Wolfowitz argued long before the war against Iraq that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, which he would sooner or later share with al-Qaida or other terrorists bent on targeting America. No such weapons have been found.
Media Must Explain Lack of 9/11-Saddam Link - Now, how much can we blame the media for this woeful misinformation? It's not a minor question, since surveys also show that avenging the 9/11 attacks proved to be the single most important reason Americans backed President Bush in his war on Iraq earlier this year -- and continue to support our presence in that country.
No Iraq link to 9/11 - Rummy, Rice say it isn't so - Breaking with other top Bush administration officials, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice disputed the possibility yesterday that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. - "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say" Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda's suicidal hijackings, Rumsfeld said. - "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11," Rice added. - TVNL Comment: Rice may be the most prolific liar in the entire Bush/PNAC administration but nobody every mentiones it. Think about the big one where she said that they never imagined that anyone would fly a plane into a building and then the reports came out showing that she was warned about this!
Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked By Cheney - In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with a Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker five months before the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that first made the allegation. - TVNL Comment: OK, so what does that prove? How many American intelligence agents have met with Al Qaeda members including the hijackers of 9/11?
CIA Finds No Evidence Hussein Sought to Arm Terrorists - The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert. - "No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists," Cordesman wrote of Kay's briefing. "Only possibility was Saddam's Fedayeen [his son's irregular terrorist force] and talk only."
Pentagon Debunks Reports on Osama-Saddam Ties - Several newspapers and other media outlets had egg on their face Monday after reporting or endorsing a Weekly Standard story revealing new evidence of an "operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. - Several outlets, including the New York Post, The Washington Times and FOX News, ran with the story. There was just one problem: On Saturday, the Pentagon issued a press release stating that "news reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq ... are inaccurate."
Case Decidedly Not Closed - The Defense Dept. memo allegedly proving a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam does nothing of the sort - A leaked Defense Department memo claiming new evidence of an “operational relationship” between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein’s former regime is mostly based on unverified claims that were first advanced by some top Bush administration officials more than a year ago—and were largely discounted at the time by the U.S. intelligence community, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.
The truth leaks out - Both the committee and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation of the leak, which took the form of an article published Monday by the influential neo-conservative journal, The Weekly Standard. - Investigative reporters and Iraq war critics have accused Feith's office of having manipulated or ''cherry-picked'' the intelligence on Iraq's purported ties to al-Qaeda and WMD programs before the war to persuade Bush and the public that Saddam posed a serious threat to the United States.
White House assertion of terror network in Iraq may undermine own case for war - Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking at fund-raisers on Monday, offered his rationale for the American presence in Iraq.- "Iraq has now become the central front in the war on terror," he said - "We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there, so we do not have to face them on the streets of our own cities." - It's a line that generates applause. It's also a line that makes several military and intelligence analysts cringe. - "Militarily, their statements are almost absurd," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security and military intelligence expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There is no evidence of activity … by extremist terrorist groups affiliated with al-Qaida."
Iraqi Agent Denies He Met 9/11 Hijacker in Prague Before Attacks on the U.S - .A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter.
Dubious Link Between Atta and Saddam - A document tying the Iraqi leader with the 9/11 terrorist is probably fake. PLUS, how terror financiers manage to stay in business - Mneimneh says the wording of the document makes him highly suspicious: Iraqi intelligence officials were notoriously conservative and rarely—if ever—put incriminating information in writing. The reference to the Iraqi intelligence working with a "small team from the Al Qaeda organization" is "too explicit," he says.
Hussein's Capture Not Likely to Harm Al Qaeda - Experts Say Terrorist Operation May Be More Likely to Prove Its Relevance - The more common view, however, is that there was never a strong link or even an ideological bond between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, and that the capture could well push al Qaeda to prove it is still relevant.
No proof links Iraq, al-Qaida, Powell says - Chief weapons inspector reportedly about to quit - As recently as September, President Bush declared that there was “no question” that Saddam had ties to al-Qaida. - TVNL Comment: The entire world knew this BEFORE the war! The US TV news meda hid this from us however.
Saddam told his militia to avoid al Qaeda - The ousted leader told Iraqi militants that Muslim extremists had a different agenda to the Ba'ath party because they wanted to launch a religious war and establish an Islamic state in Iraq. In contrast, the aims of Saddam's supporters were limited to the expulsion of US-led coalition invaders and a return to secular power in Baghdad.
Sources: U.S. distorted Saddam-al Qaeda link - Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence that Saddam's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league. At most, occasional meetings may have occurred.
Saddam's Links To 9/11? - How the Pentagon Made Its Case - Where did Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hard-liners get the information they used to make controversial comments linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and 9/11? One principal source was a slide show, classified "Top Secret/Codeword," prepared by an obscure Pentagon policy unit nicknamed "Team B." The office, originally composed of two analysts (one of whom, David Wurmser, now works as a Mideast adviser to Cheney), was assigned shortly after 9/11 to pore through raw intelligence reports looking for data CIA analysts might have missed, linking foreign governments to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda
Ex - Advisor Says Bush Eyed Bombing of Iraq on 9 / 11 - ``Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq. ... We all said, 'but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan,'' recounts Clarke, ``and Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.''' - ``But the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying, 'We've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection,''' says Clarke. - TVNL Comment: This is not new information. Informed people knew about this prior to the invasion.
Original Plan for 9/11 Attacks Involved 10 Planes, Panel Says - As horrendous as they were, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were only a small part of terrorist visions that foresaw using 10 hijacked airplanes to attack targets on both the East and West Coasts, including the United States Capitol and the White House, the staff of the independent commission investigating 9/11 reported today. - The staff also said in a companion report that it had found "no credible evidence" that Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists cooperated in the attacks, a conclusion likely to fuel the debate over President Bush's decision to go to war to topple Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the commission staff said, Iraq apparently rejected Osama bin Laden's requests to provide space for training camps and help Al Qaeda acquire weapons.
Al Qaeda Link to Iraqi Militia Doubted - A U.S. intelligence official expressed skepticism Monday that a member of Al Qaeda had served as an officer in Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militia, contradicting a claim made the day before by a member of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. - The agency determined that the militia member and the terrorist operative were not the same person, the official said. "We think that it is not the same guy," said the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Levin Releases Newly Declassified Intelligence Documents on Iraq-al Qaeda Relationship - “These documents are additional compelling evidence that the Intelligence Community did not believe there was a cooperative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, despite public comments by the highest ranking officials in our government to the contrary,” Levin said. “At a time when the Senate is considering nominees for the newly restructured leadership of the Intelligence Community, these documents remind us of the need to strengthen the independence and objectivity of intelligence assessments, and to guard against the misuse or exaggeration of intelligence by policymakers.”
Fabricated Links? - A CIA report casts new doubt on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Plus, tensions between FBI Director Bob Mueller and his predecessor, Louis Freeh. - The allegation that Zarqawi had visited Baghdad in May 2002 with Saddam's sanction—purportedly for medical treatment—was once a centerpiece of the administration's arguments about Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Zarqawi's alleged visit in his speech to the United Nations Security Council. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred obliquely to Zarqawi's purported trip as an example of "bulletproof" evidence that the administration had assembled linking Saddam's regime with Al Qaeda. - But like the uranium yellowcake claims—since determined to be fraudulent—that are at the heart of the CIA leak case, the administration's original allegations about Zarqawi's trip also seem to be melting away. An updated CIA re-examination of the issue recently concluded that Saddam's regime may not have given Zarqawi "safe haven" after all. - But before the American-led invasion, Saddam's government may never have known he was there. The reason: he used an alias and was there under what one U.S. intelligence official calls a "false cover." No evidence has been found showing senior Iraqi officials were even aware of his presence, according to two counterterrorism analysts familiar with the classified CIA study who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
