History-like hindsight-is supposed to be 20:20, but the deliberate partisan, political divide regarding the invasion of Iraq makes that hard.
It’s not a new phenomenon. Long ago it was said that the true story of a war can’t be told until the last of its veterans has passed away, and only a few months ago did the last World War One veteran go to his great reward. For decades after the Civil War (and some would argue even today) the debate raged on, and the healing of Southern Reconstruction didn’t really start culturally until the unity of the Spanish-American War turned foes into brothers-in-arms.
Conspiracy theories-often fueled by politics-still rage over the 911 attacks, the invasion of Iraq, whether or not Roosevelt deliberately allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to happen, whether or not the U.S. Navy knew the U.S.S. Maine had a boiler explosion and wasn’t sunk by a mine. People still think that the Lusitania was set on a suicide mission to get the United States into World War One. These myths will always remain, and it’s good that they do because they spark investigation and a search for understanding of these world changing events. The relationship between the 911 attacks and the invasion of Iraq is interesting in that both have a long list of conspiracy theories attacked to each, and yet the abstract, more indirect relationship between the two events is dismissed out of hand. To that end, even if one believes the relationship between Iraq War and 911 attacks is a conspiracy theory, it’s worthwhile to examine if for no other reason than harvesting a better understanding. Read the rest of this entry »
LONDON (Reuters) – Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be asked to testify to a panel investigating the Iraq war, the head of the inquiry said Thursday.
Former civil servant John Chilcot said the inquiry, set up by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, would look at British involvement in the war, covering the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July this year.
“The people we invite to give evidence will be those we judge … are best placed to supply the information we need to conduct our task thoroughly,” the inquiry chairman told a news conference.
Blair’s decision to send 45,000 troops to join the U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein six years ago provoked massive anti-war protests in London and the resignations of ministers.
No Truth Commissions here in the US (though if Obama’s poll numbers take another hit, and Healthcare fails…it’s a good bet there’ll be more dancing & calling for one from the distraction driven Dems.
Call me Tony. I’m happy to help w the timeline & pics
This is one of those articles that I really REALLY hope people will read before just commenting on the headline or the quoted sections. In fact, I think it’s one of the best articles I’ve seen on this subject in half a decade. Yes, it’s long, detailed, and forces many readers to question their previously held beliefs about regime ties to the Al Queda terrorist network, but it’s not the typical anti-Bush/anti-war piece or a woohoo-Bush-was-right piece either. It is EXACTLY why: members of the 911 Commission, Sen Intel Com, as well as others (and why every investigation into the subject of regime ties) have called for MORE investigation (while specifically saying the matter should not be closed). Mark’s done a fantastic piece of work here, and it deserves reading.
-Scott
During a series of email and telephone exchanges Matthew Degn relayed to www.regimeofterror.com… his vast array of experiences working with intelligence issues relating to the current and former situation in Iraq. Among his responsibilities during his years in Iraq Degn worked as a civilian interrogator attached to the U.S. Army in Iraq before working as a Senior Policy/Intelligence Adviser to Deputy General Kamal and other top intelligence officials with the Iraq’s Ministry of Interior. Degn, currently working on a book about his experiences in Iraq (personal website here), continues to argue against those that feel there was no link between terrorism and Saddam Hussein’s regime based on his involvement with hundreds of interrogations in Iraq and his involvement with many of the Iraqi Intelligence officials with the Ministry of Interior. Degn says that much of the public perception about Saddam Hussein’s regime and terrorism are incorrect.
Degn is currently the Director of the Intelligence Studies Program and a professor at American Military University currently a professor at American Military University whose testimony about events in Iraq has been cited by NPR, ABC News, the Washington Post and elsewhere.
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Another reason for conflicting reports that Degn pointed out is both the chain of command in the U.S. government’s many agencies and compartmentalization of information (”need to know”). Degn said he saw firsthand how these two factors led to vital wartime information being “watered down” before it mades its way to official reports and investigations.
Over the past many months a number of interviews, documents, admissions and other revelations have come to light that continue to undermine the notion that al Qaeda and al Qaeda linked groups were not able to operate inside Iraq during the rule of Saddam Hussein. These findings match up with older reports on the hotly contested that may now deserve re-examination.
These documents match the testimony of what a former overseer of Iraqi prisons, Dan Bordenkircher, claims he was told by numerous prisoners. In an interview with Ryan Mauro, Bordenkircher says that he was told that al Qaeda was not limited to areas beyond Saddam Hussein’s control but was present in Mosul and Kirkuk and received assistance from one of Saddam Hussein’s sons.
In an interview with FrontPage magazine, Osama al Magid, a former police officer in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from 1992-2003, said that al Qaeda was present and protected in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
FP: How about Al Qaeda in Iraq?
Al-Magid: Al Qaeda and other people who believed the same as Al Qaeda had been in Iraq for many years. When I say “believed” I mean people who hated America and wanted to destroy the U.S. Saddam had this in common with Al Qaeda and this is why he provided them protection.
“We can’t compare that to the situation we have now with all these different types of organizations running around all over the country. Before there was nothing like an Al Qaeda organization here. I mean, they were here, but they were secretive, they were not in the field, they were not recognized yet. But now we feel that they are serious, that something big is going on.”
Propaganda is described in many ways, but one of those has got to be the kneejerk reliance and subsequent marketing of half quotes as whole truths. A half quote is a half truth, and this poor excuse for honest, factually accurate information is no doubt why newspapers are failing, and why their writers are fleeing to the Obama Administration for PR employment as spinmeisters. Take for example this article:
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s defense Thursday of the Bush administration’s policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that’s considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were “legal” and produced information that “prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.”
[NOTE President Bush’s Sept 6, 2006 address on this topic listed specific examples of this. Also, recently declassified CIA documents show that Congress was briefed on the “actionable intelligence” that the EIT program yielded. A partial list of thwarted attacks is available here.] Read the rest of this entry »
Maybe now that President Obama’s in charge of the war in Iraq, and there’s no need to lie, distort, or half quote truths to oppose the war (can’t oppose it if it’s run by a Democrat)…maybe now people will realize:
1) the matter was never closed by any investigation
2) there’s hundreds of times more information demonstrating ties than there is dismissing them
BAGHDAD — The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki said Al Qaida worked closely with former operatives in Saddam Hussein regime.
Officials said leading members of the Al Qaida network have coordinated operations with Saddam aides since 2003. They said Al Qaida and Saddam forces attacked Shi’ites in an effort to spark a civil war in Iraq.
The Al Qaida-Saddam link, asserted by then-U.S. President George Bush in 2002, came in wake of the reported capture of a leading Al Qaida commander in Iraq.
At the very least, it’s 100% clear (hindsight is 20-20) that yes, Saddam’s regime and the Al Queda network did have operational ties in 2003, and that means the invasion of Iraq HAS ALWAYS BEEN PART OF THE WAR ON TERROR. ht regimeofterror
Mark Eichenlaub
Earlier this week an article by Jonathan Landay was published by the failing McClatchy Newspapers. The article asserted that innumerable people had been tortured with the intent and purpose of proving a tie between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. The article asserted that there never were any ties between the two, and that the torturing of captured Al Queda terrorists was done largely to create a fictional narrative that would support the case for invading Iraq (let’s ignore that the alleged “torture” happened AFTER the invasion of Iraq-just as was done in the article).
I attempted to contact Jonathan Landay to nicely and politely inform him that the issue of regime ties had never been closed. He responded nicely, pointed me in the direction of a few reports, then categorically declared that no ties existed and that the intelligence community had known this all along, but the Bush Administration “cherry-picked” intelligence to make its case for war.
After that initial email, Jonathon refused to respond to further attempts at educating him. SO, here we go… Read the rest of this entry »
Ahmed’s election, bin Laden claimed, was “induced by the American envoy in Kenya,” a reference to the U.S. ambassador in Nairobi.
Ahmed “changed and turned back on his heels … to partner up with the infidel” in a national unity government, bin Laden said. “How can intelligent people believe that yesterday’s enemies on the basis of religion can become today’s friends? This can only happen if one of the two parties abandons his religion.”
In the recording, bin Laden also tells Islamic fighters in Somalia that Ahmed “must be dethroned and fought” and says the militants’ are obliged to “continue fighting the apostate government.”
WOW! Great idea: spend your entire life posturing to run for President, then spend your Senate career being a professional Presidential candidate instead of a senator, and when you finally get the job…
THEN READ UP ON IT
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that Senator Obama is finally getting national security briefings, reading up on the dangers in the world by reading 4yr old books about 20yr old subjects. I’m really thrilled. I’d of course prefer he read MY BOOKS, but maybe he’ll get around to it. More than anything, I really would have loved-I MEAN LOVED(!!!!) to have been a fly on the wall at the first NatSec briefing of his cabinet appointees. Oh MAN that had to be a conundrum!
“We have to leave Iraq 18 months from now per the campaign pledge, but the DoD says they can’t do it logistically. Hillary Clinton at State says it’d ’cause chaos and force a third invasion of Iraq (OUCH, tough sell to the DNC base!). Intel guys are saying that 1) AQ was in Iraq before the invasion, 2) AQ chose to make Iraq the central front in the gwot (not Bush), 3) AQ is being decimated by Bush’s Surge so leaving now let’s AQ revive in an oil-rich/money rich country. They also tell me that Iran’s gonna be making 40+nukes a month starting in January, India is moving troops to border w Pakistan & both sides are on their bi-annual brink-of-nuclear-war escapade. Oh, and despite the speech in Germany…ain’t nobody in the world gonna stop the anarchy in Africa or SE Asia.”
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE!
Suggestion: Appoint Dennis Kucinich to form a Dept of Peace and abolish the DoD. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Poor Obama. He honestly had no clue & actually believed the leftist rhetoric. He followed Kos and Huffpo instead of the Milblogs and Flopping Aces. If he HAD been reading FA, then he wouldn’t need to be such a “voracious” reader of dated books. I’m only shocked he’s not skipping to the Cliff’s Notes.
Eclipsed by the election campaignining, this story slipped under the radar. Much has been said about the invasion of Iraq. Often there are claims that there were no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to Al Queda. In fact, most of the WMD claims that were made before the invasion turned out to be true. Iraq was not clean and innocent in regards to WMD, and the ties to Al Queda were wrongly dismissed.
One of those ties regard Saddam’s involvement with Al Queda groups like Ansar al Islam which no one disputes was present and active in the northern section of Saddam’s Iraq. Opponents of the war dismiss that tie by saying that if they weren’t in the part of Iraq that Saddam controlled, then they weren’t under his control. That’s a nice piece of rhetoric, and it’s good spin, but it’s ignorant of the fact that Ansar was the ONLY means of influence Saddam had in the North (that, and the threat of invading the north). He used Ansar as his proxy guerrilla force to attack his Kurdish enemies and impose his will in the North.
The point remains, Ansar and other Al Queda groups were inside Iraq in 2002, and the CIA knew it. They knew it because they sent extremely brave people there-into Iraq, and those people monitored the Al Queda until the Pentagon blew the opportunity to destroy the camps.
Charles “Sam” Faddis, who led a CIA team into northern Iraq following the 9/11 attacks, says the Pentagon’s “endless planning and delays” foiled a chance to wipe out a band of al Qaeda leaders who were fleeing American bombs in Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Eight years ago, the American destroyer, U.S.S. Cole was on its way to aid in the “containment” of Saddam Hussein’s regime via a naval blockade/U.N. sanctions in the Persian Gulf. It stopped for fuel in the port of Aden, Yemen, was attacked by Al Queda, and almost sank. Only extremely brave (desperate) measures taken on the part of the surviving crew members saved the ship. What lesson(s) did those 17 sailors give their lives for us to learn?
-Did you ever notice that no one in the government was ever fired for “letting” Bin Laden escape in Tora Bora?
-Did you ever notice that no one in the government was ever fired for the pre-invasion intel failures in Iraq?
-Did you ever noticed that no one in the government was ever fired for failing to implement an occupation plan for Iraq back in 2003?
-Did you ever notice that no one in the government was ever fired in the aftermath of the 911 attacks?
-Did you ever notice that no one in the government was ever fired in the aftermath of the U.S.S. Cole attack?
There’s a common denominator here, and aside from the world economic crisis, this common denominator is, in my opinion, the biggest problem facing the United States of America. Read the rest of this entry »
Last night I watched Hardball with Chris Matthews. As usual he had on spin doctors from both the Democratic Party and Republican Party, and they were discussing the ABC Charles Gibson interview with Governor Sarah Palin. In that interview, Gibson tried to assert that the so-called Bush Doctrine of foreign policy was a practice of pre-emptive attacks on the chance that a nation might someday attack the United States. Governor Palin said that when an attack is imminent from another country (as was the case with Israel in 1967 for example) that the United States would be right to attack given that the intelligence reporting was as good as possible.
It was those two words that Mr. Matthews seized upon, “Imminent Threat.” He claimed that President Bush had said Saddam’s Iraq was an imminent threat, and he specifically said that it was not Democrats who made that claim even when the Democratic Party propagandist he had on as a guest tried to correct Mr. Matthews to no avail. Matthews is wrong, and he is misleading millions of people around the world as well as fueling the lie that Operation Iraqi Freedom is not about freedom (a war Senator Obama promises tp continue for at least a year and a half-perhaps as long as 2013).
Sorry Chris…it was the Democrats who claimed Saddam was an imminent threat-not President Bush.
“Can we really leave this to chance, when we could eliminate this deadly threat by acting now in concert with the international community, or alone if the threat is imminent — which it is not now? In my view, we cannot. ”
-Sen. John Kerry (D) 10/09/2002
If we wait for the danger to become clear, it could be too late.
Sen. Joseph Biden D-Del., September 4, 2002
On the night when Senator Obama accepted his hard fought nomination for the Presidency his opponent, Senator McCain, paid a lot of money to run a TV ad that congratulated him. McCain said that out of respect he wouldn’t detract or distract from the moment with competing campaigning that night. In contrast, on the night that Senator McCain accepted his party’s nomination, Senator Obama scheduled an interview with FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly in an obvious and arrogant attempt at taking some of the spotlight away from Senator McCain. It was not a courteous, respectful, or honorable move. It was also not a truthful interview.
Very often when it comes to the Iraq War people are forced to conclude that a politician who was wrong about something war-related was either ill-informed about a matter or that the politician lied. With President Bush, it’s all too easy to believe that he was ill-informed or incapable of processing information…yet, it’s more politically expedient to believe that he is lying when he’s wrong about something. Often this stems from the intrinsic belief that he gets briefed on all the information the Men-In-Black can possibly give him. Since getting his official nomination, Senator Obama now gets similar briefings. Read the rest of this entry »
Now, let’s face it…Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews aren’t gonna change their minds and suddenly face the reality that Saddam’s regime was willing to work with AQ groups, did work with AQ groups and leaders, and the threat of the so-called “Nexus of Evil” connection even existed.
Captured members of Al Queda groups from this same camp claim that they were assisted, trained, supplied, and funded by Saddam’s IIS as well as taking orders from Saddam’s IIS.
Captured documents confirm their claims.
Captured regime members confirm their claims.
Now even highly anti-war/pro-Democrat MSNBC confirms the claim itself.
Al Queda leaders confirm the claims (Zawahiri and Zarqawi specifically).
Why believe “Bush Lied”? Because it’s easier to believe that the solution to today’s problems can be solved by changing a circle to a dot on a ballot than it is to face the real and scary threat as well as own up to the failures of the past.
Yet AGAIN there’s another document showing that Saddam’s regime was not only willing to work with Al Queda groups, but in fact did so. This time, it’s a 2002 memo from Saddam’s regime to Al Queda’s strategic planner (often described as the real brains of the terror group alliance).
The “no ties” myth gets another shovel of dirt on its grave
