The Terror Ties That Bind Us to War! Updated Info, page 1
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Topic started on 8-11-2004 @ 10:36 PM by edsinger
Some new information has come to me in my searchs, so instead of starting a new thread, I will continue this one as they are related very closely.

Breaking up terrorists networks requires getting rid of their sanctuaries

Before the Iraq war, the US intelligence community reported that from 1996 to 2003, the Iraqi Intelligence Service [IIS] had focused its terrorist activity on Western interests, including the United States; "throughout 2002, the IIS was becoming increasingly aggressive in planning attacks against US interests;" Saddam Hussein was open "to enhancing bin Laden's operational capability" and may have provided training to al Qaeda; bin Laden had made direst and specific requests for Iraqi assistance; al Qaeda had demonstrated an "enduring interest" in WMD expertise from Iraq; the Iraqi regime "certainly" knew that al Qaeda agents were operating in Baghdad and northern Iraq; and Saddam Hussein had made a "standing offer" to Osama bin Laden for safe haven in Iraq.

Iraq - Alqaeda Links

The Terror Ties That Bind Us to War

NRO: Your new book is on connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Isn't that all a neocon myth? Isn't bin Laden on record dissing Saddam? Secular Saddam, meanwhile, was no Islamic fundamentalist or extremist? Did anti-American hatred trump all?



Stephen F. Hayes: If the Iraq-al Qaeda connection is a neocon myth, those neocons are even more resourceful than the conspiracy theorists suggest and they sure have got a lot of unlikely people making their arguments. Evan Bayh, Democrat from Indiana, has described the Iraq-al Qaeda connection as a relationship of "mutual exploitation." Joe Lieberman said, "There are extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda." George Tenet, too, has spoken of those contacts and goes further, claiming Iraqi "training" of al Qaeda terrorists on WMDs and provision of "safe haven" for al Qaeda in Baghdad. Richard Clarke once said the U.S. government was "sure" Iraq had provided a chemical-weapons precursor to an al Qaeda-linked pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Even Hillary Clinton cited the Iraq-al Qaeda connection as one reason she voted for the Iraq War.


NRO: How much of what is in The Connection are al Qaeda-Iraq connections the Bush administration could/should be using publicly to connect the dots for people?
Hayes: I think they could be doing a lot more on this. On the one hand, I understand why the Bush administration is reluctant. After all, the CIA director says privately that he believes the Atta-Prague meeting probably took place but the conventional wisdom today dismisses that possibility. But I don't think the administration can get away with simply avoiding the discussion.
One thing the White House could do is insist that the intelligence community put together a team to explore the connections. The 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group has been looking for WMDs for more than a year; there is no equivalent on Iraq-al Qaeda connections.



Osama and Saddam — two peas in a terror pod?










I have added some new links at the bottom that support the reasons for war in Iraq. Most in here think we are there for oil, and just to have fun killing, lets take a serious look at WHY we are in IRAQ and WHY it was a JUST war. Keep in mind that the sooner we win it, the sooner we leave, and folks at home pulling a Jane Fonda only delay that homecoming.

PLEASE NOTE GO TO THE BOTTOM FOR A LINK to:
The Link Between Iraq and Al-Qaeda - Posted Sept. 29, 2003




(MODS) Please dont erase this as no one seems to follow a link and ACTUALLY read it. I am not posting the whole thing.

Iraq: The Failure of Containment and the Strategic Necessity of War - Part I

Executive Summary
Far from being a war of choice or a strategic distraction, military action against Iraq was an American and international strategic imperative. The U.S., in particular, could not fi ght the war against terrorism while allowing Saddam Hussein’s regime—in the heart of the Middle East—to break out from containment as was happening on the eve of the war. The Iraq campaign was not a preventive war. U.N. resolutions foresaw the restoration of stability in the Middle East through the use of force against Saddam’s outlaw regime—if that regime continued torefuse to account for the Weapons of Mass Destruction it was known to have possessed, and would not verifi ably disarm. Other mechanisms for restraining Saddam—economic sanctions and arms inspections—had already been successfully subverted by theIraqi dictator.

WMD: The U.N.’s Failure
The U.N. failed because of a combination of two factors, Iraqi deception and a lack of genuine U.N. will to unravel the Iraqi programs. Unknown to the U.N., Saddam had constructed a WMD system designed to beat the inspection system. There was also an extent to which the U.N. simply did not look, at least according to U.S. monitoring of the U.N. inspectors. According to Bob Woodward, “The intelligence indicated that Blix was not
reporting everything and not doing all the things he maintained he was doing.”

The U.N. missed the Iraqi “strategic intention,” a vital part of the threat.
Although Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was largely dormant after 1991, Iraqi nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi has written that “our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein’s fingers… Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary.” Yet the U.N. wanted to give Saddam a clean bill of health. Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had told the U.N. Security Council on January 27, 2003 that “we should be able within the next few
months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons program.”


Enforcing the Suspended Sentence after 9/11

The Iraq position in 2001 was not stable. The crumbling sanctions regime
and the lack of inspections meant that the strategic tide had turned in Saddam’s favor. The international community could not “let sleeping dogs lie.” It was the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that made tackling Iraqi defiance of
the U.N. all the more urgent. The reason was not that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 atrocities. There is noevidence that Iraq was directly involved in
9/11. Indeed, such a direct provocation of the U.S. would not have served Saddam’s interests at a time when he was defeating economic sanctions and was free from arms inspections. Just weeks before 9/11, in August 2001, the Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri had told the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera that sanctions had crumbled.69 What would, however, have served Saddam well was for the international community, and in particular the U.S. and Britain, to be so thoroughly distracted by al Qaeda and the war against terrorism that they ignored, or were unable to prevent, his emergence from containment.


Conclusion
The war of 2003 was not a U.S. war of choice, nor a U.S. war of prevention, but a war of Saddam’s choosing. Conflict was not inevitable. Iraq was offered repeated concessions, whether through serial “last chances” or relaxation of sanctions and the inspections regime. Justice for the Iraqis
was certainly delayed by the decision not to topple Saddam in 1991, whether with U.S. force or by assisting the Iraqis then rebelling against him. The legal right to enforce the sentence passed upon his regime had never lapsed. After 1991, the reasons to do so accumulated rather than diminished. War was the option that Saddam chose. The Iraqi regime was afforded the opportunity to comply with its U.N. obligations, a genuine “last chance” that it chose not to take.




Some quotes:

The alternative is to carry on with the sanctions regime, which has resulted, because of how Saddam implements it, in thousands of people dying needlessly in Iraq every year. In addition, of course, many thousands of people are political detainees or are executed as a result of their political views.—Tony Blair

After spending 1995 to 2000 criticizing Iraq sanctions, the Germans and French fell in love with containment. —Jamie Rubin

It is not enough to open doors. Inspection is not a game of “catch as catch can.”—Hans Blix

Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly.—Bill Clinton



Link for the entire article that you can download and save and READ.

www.defenddemocracy.org...(4).pdf




Iraq War 'Lawful and Necessary'

By Jamie Lyons, Political Correspondent, PA News

The Government today insisted the war in Iraq was “not only lawful but necessary” after the UN Secretary General said it was illegal.

Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt said Britain and the US acted to uphold the will of the United Nations, expressed in the first resolution.

Kofi Annan has said the war was “not in conformity” with the UN Security Council or with the UN Charter, and warned there could not be credible elections in Iraq next January if the current unrest continued.

Asked if there was legal authority for the war on Iraq, Mr Annan told the BBC World Service: “I have stated clearly that it was not in conformity with the Security Council, with the UN Charter.”

The Secretary General added there should have been a second UN resolution before the war on Iraq.

He said the Security Council had warned Iraq there would be “consequences” if it did not comply with its demands.

news.scotsman.com...





Failed Containment Made Iraq War Necessary

For over ten years, the U.S. played a game with Saddam Hussein. The U.S. strategy was to keep the Middle East dictator in a "box." The so-called box included U.N sanctions, and round-the-clock air cover patrolling the northern and southern areas of Iraq.

For the entire decade of the 1990s the U.S. spent billions of dollars keeping nearly one-third its entire military strength around Baghdad

FAILED POLICY MADE WAR NECESSARY Up to five nuclear carrier battle groups, with over 100 warships, patrolled the Gulf region. Carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines and a wide variety of support vessels stayed within striking distance of Iraq.
Nearly 500 combat aircraft flew from bases in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The aircraft included both U.S. and U.K. fighters, bombers, tankers and support aircraft.

F-15s, F-16s, F-14s, F-18s, B-1s, B-52s, B-2s, A-10s, and F-117 stealth fighters dropped tons of bombs on Iraq.

www.newsmax.com...







Iraq war necessary, despite intelligence errors
By Tony Parkinson
January 31, 2004


The intelligence may have been unsound on weapons of mass destruction, but that does not mean it was wrong to go to war in Iraq.

The governments of the United States, Britain and Australia are routinely accused of selective use of intelligence material to over-dramatise the case for war in Iraq. But imagine, for a moment, the contrary: what if it emerges that they under-played some aspects of the intelligence about the dangers of Saddam Hussein's degenerate rule?

In an increasingly corrupt and chaotic Iraq, for example, how great were the risks that the knowhow arising from two decades of chemical and biological weapons research would sooner rather than later find its way onto the black market ... if it hasn't happened already.

The Iraq weapons debate has been turbo-charged in recent days by the disclosures of US weapons inspector David Kay, particularly his assessment that Saddam's regime had no large stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons at the time the US-led coalition invaded.

This has confirmed a serious intelligence failure in the lead-up to war. Kay is calling for an independent inquiry to investigate and make recommendations that would reduce the risk of similar failures in the future. Rightly so. These are crucial issues of reliability and trust.

But does this intelligence debacle invalidate the decisions taken by George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard? Not if you listen to the extended views of David Kay.

www.theage.com.au...





The Link Between Iraq and Al-Qaeda Posted Sept. 29, 2003

Senior investigators and analysts in the U.S. government have concluded that Iraq acted as a state sponsor of terrorism against Americans and logistically supported the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - confirming news reports that until now have emerged only in bits and pieces. A senior government official responsible for investigating terrorism tells Insight that while Saddam Hussein may not have had details of the Sept. 11 attacks in advance, he "gave assistance for whatever al-Qaeda came up with." That assistance, confirmed independently, came in a variety of ways, including financial support spun out through a complex web of financial institutions in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and elsewhere. Long suspected of having terrorist ties to al-Qaeda, they now have been linked to Iraq as well.

www.insightmag.com...


I do not know if this has been debunked or not , but the info is good reading nonetheless.......Go ahead Druden complain again...




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[edit on 9-11-2004 by edsinger]

[edit on 17-11-2004 by edsinger]

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reply posted on 8-11-2004 @ 10:38 PM by LostSailor
I already support it entirely, one up for freedom and one down for tyranny




by the way ed... you know most of the people are gonna reply without even reading your entire post right?

[edit on 8-11-2004 by LostSailor]


reply posted on 8-11-2004 @ 11:26 PM by Der Kapitan


Lemmings.....



Sheep....

You guys ever see these? When I look around I see lots of these intermingled with independant thinking people in our cities and towns. Apparently these creatures have earned the right to vote. Apparently they can also type.

Seriously, though... It was Saudi money and Saudi doctrine that founded and supports Al Qaeda. Not Iraq-never was. Bin Laden is Saudi and hates Saddam as an infidel. The gov't of Saudi Arabia has been on shakey ground for befriending the U.S. If I were sitting on the throne I wouldn't count on any back up from the people of Saudi if a coup takes hold.







[edit on 8-11-2004 by Der Kapitan]
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