Put simply, the article that came out before the report (the article based on the word of a single anonymous source rather than the report itself) was almost completely wrong, and this report should not only reopen the issue of ‘how deep was the relationship’, but it should also confirm/document that yes, removing Saddam was in fact a direct part of the war against Al Queda. Anyone who still doubts that….just hasn’t read the report. Anyone who rants the “there were no ties”…..either hasn’t read the report and is ignorant, or has read the report and is being deceitful.

Thanks Mark

Scott, I’ll assume you know the full version of the report is out now and I expect you to do something more in depth on it soon.

Steve, you asked why the Bush admin doesn’t put out this information. They do. The problem is only half of it gets reported. I ask, WHY do we only get half quotes that mislead instead of the full quotes presented by the admin? How many times have I seen the quote where Powell says he never saw evidence of regime ties, but the second half of the quote is omitted-the part where he says he expects to see em. How many times do we hear “no evidence” based on the Sen Intel Com phase I report, but no mention of how the report says no evidence is a result of no evidence gathering, and that the matter should be investigated further? How many times do we hear references to the 911 Commission’s statement of no collaborative ties, but the request by 911 Commission members to have the issue of regime ties re-examined and reassessed in light of captured docs and detainees that suggest the relationship was deeper than expected? It’s the world of half quotes and half truths as presented by the opposition politicals and the msm. Steve asks why doesn’t the admin tell us this stuff, and my answer is that they have, but it was only half reported because some people don’t want to hear the other half of the truth. It’s too ugly. Easier to fingerpoint/scapegoat “neocons” or “conservatives” or Bush, etc.

If you want to ask why the admin doesn’t report this “stuff”, then (since the admin does report it), one has to ask why we only hear cherry-picked half quotes and misperceptions presented as fact? Take a look back Steve. You’ll see that those you consistently label as conservatives or neocons or Bush apologists, or whatever…do not rely on Newsmax, Free Republic, or Fox as you claim. Most take their information from govt reports, military blogs, or have actually been at war and are reporting on what they saw as opposed to what the protest leaders describe in their rantings. It shouldn’t be about conservative or liberal, but about truth-THE WHOLE TRUTH, and not the spin you get from the left, or from a media that’s too often lazy, biased, and/or covering their own ineptitudes.

Re: “Answer (imo), to face the truth: that the invasion of Iraq was in fact necessary (and imo inevitable), is to admit the failures of the Golden Age of the Democratic Party; the 1990’s.”

Of course. Once again it is all someone else’s fault.

I’m not asking why the Conservatives on this board are 100% convinced that Sddam had a WMD program when the invasion took place in 2003.

Then why bring up, within your same comment, two paragraphs later

The Bush Administration sent Colin Powell to dsplay all those “Mobile Biological Weapons” factories to the world when they thought they were not weather balloon trailors.

???

Missy asked #64:

and I did post this in the old forum. Do you remember this?

I’m not quite sure I follow what you are asking me. Are you talking about a previous discussion here at FA? Or just the incident, itself, you describe of Iraqis who feared showing open support against Saddam’s regime?

Here we have a thread about an article where a guy gets an anonymous tip about a report on regime ties to AQ. He writes all kinds of stuff about the report without ever having seen it, without corroborating sources, and the article goes everywhere. MSNBC carries it, then CNN, FOX, NYT, LAT, every anti-war site on the web, and so on. Fast forward 2days, and when the report comes out it turns out almost everything in the original article was wrong. Why would that be? Here we have the media version supported by the political opposition on the web, and then the government version that tells the truth but doesn’t get the same coverage-not even on FOX. Why would that be? Why doesn’t the government version that we so often point to, or the version from the troops like Chris who have actually been there…why doesn’t that get reported, and instead all we get is your talking points that are almost always half quotes and the like?

Answer (imo), to face the truth: that the invasion of Iraq was in fact necessary (and imo inevitable), is to admit the failures of the Golden Age of the Democratic Party; the 1990’s. It’s also very hard for people in the media to admit that the threat from Saddam in terms of WMD and terror was ignored (see also CNN’s admission that they deliberately didn’t report on atrocities in Iraq when they were in Iraq), and it’s ultimately hard (again imo) for bureaucrats who rose to power in the 90’s to admit their share of the blame for the effects of failed “containment” policies against Saddam.

Just ask yourself, why is the article that started this thread so completely opposite from the real report?

He has that authority. If the evidence completely exonerates his administration about the “no WMD’s” conclusion of the previous administration reports, why does George W. Bush not go on TV and declare, “I told you so”?

Conservatives here can, and will, post volumes of that “rock-solid” proof. Why do we not see it from the Oval Office? The Bush Administration sent Colin Powell to dsplay all those “Mobile Biological Weapons” factories to the world when they thought they were not weather balloon trailors. So there is precedent. Why does the White House not do it again?

First off, the “relentlessly secular” claim from the article is completely contrary to the previous Iraqi Perspectives Project report as well as the highlights from this one, and most likely equally contrary to the details of the report that the reporter never even saw. It’s not that Saddam wasn’t secular, but that he went to great efforts to pretend NOT to be secular, and more importantly the “relentlessly secular” line is there to suggest that a secular Saddam would never work with Islamic extremists, but the first IPP report and the highlights from this one as well as others make it abundantly clear that Saddam’s regime did work with/use Jihadis for the individual and joint benefit of both the regime and those Islamic mujahedeen.

Second, the reporter tries to insinuate that Al Queda in Iraq didn’t exist inside Iraq until 2004, but that’s only when the various Islamic extremist groups found working with the regime started to work close enough together to call each other Al Queda in Iraq rather than a laundry list of confusing independent groups bent on Islamic Holy War. Prior to the common name in 2004, they all were in Iraq, they all worked with Saddam, and they were all Al Queda affiliates (recall that UBL etc only run the councils of “The Base”/Al Queda, and that it’s from this “Base” that they coordinate the actions of other groups…groups like those which were in Iraq in 2001, 02, 03+).

Lastly, this bit about “operational ties.” There are a few problems with the idea that there’s evidence of operational ties.
1) not a lot of people would be involved in coordination between the regime and AQ groups=not a lot of people to get intel from=little intel
2) not a lot of people=not a lot of documentation (my guess is that there’s not a lot of clerks in the caves of Afghanistan)
3) the Iraqi Intelligence services selectively burned “stuff”, poured “stuff” into the desert sand, and moved truckloads, shiploads, and planeloads of “stuff” out of Iraq. It’s not at all inconceivable that the most damning evidence would be burned, dumped, or shipped out in 15-17months of preparation time.




Still, even with all that…the highlights from this report as well as previous reports (particularly the previous Iraqi Perspectives Project Report) suggest that operations like the “Blessed July” operation and more were in fact examples of the regime working with AQ affiliates.

Nope. The reporter that “broke” the story based on a leak from an anonymous source was waaaaaaay off. Had he just read the highlights, he’d have seen the difference between what he believed and wrote, and what is real and should have been written.

“We weren’t greeted as liberators? During the march into Baghdad, were there not Iraqis cheering our arrival? When the statue of Saddam was brought down, were those puppets of the CIA dressed as Iraqis, tearing it down and hitting it with their shoes?”

Just a small point/question. We had the “not greeted as liberators” discussion way back then at a forum I used to post in, now defunct. I recall in one of the Iraqi blogs, I’m thinking it was Iraq the Model because that’s the one I read most frequently, that the Iraqis were afraid to come out because they still feared the secret police. Some did come out, cheered, kissed our troops, etc. but many others were afraid to be seen cheering and I did post this in the old forum. Do you remember this?

I’ve tried to go back and find the reference in the past, because this constantly comes up, but was never able to locate it again.

These libtards are just all out of sorts and lost to boot.

Reading the link now.

This is interesting because in many ways it is CONTRARY to what the McLatchy reporter claims. He claims there was no “operational relationship,” and that’s only partially true because the report does say Iraq was a state sponsor of terror, and did have operational ties to various groups-including Islamic radicals (another thing the reporter got wrong), and if we look closer anyone who knows anything about AQ knows that 2/3 of its leadership stemmed from Egyptian Islamic Jihad of which there’s plenty of evidence (FBI even confirms this) that Iraq supported EIJ . The report also suggests that Iraq sponsored other AQ affiliates, and it sounds like those groups were the forerunners of the AQ in Iraq coalition which was in Iraq before the war (and before they renamed themselves Al Queda in Iraq).

Honestly, just reading the the summary that I linked to makes it sound like
1) Almost all of the repeated claims from the right re regime ties are correct-NOT wrong
2) the McLatchy newspapers report is a COMPLETELY incorrect characterization of this report

One final thing, this is apparently pt II of V. The first part (The Iraqi Perspectives Project report) mentioned something called Blessed July, and that’s included in more detail in this.

I cannot WAIT to get a copy to read!!!