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.

Opponents of President Bush and of the invasion of Iraq often claim, “Iraq did not attack the United States on Sept 11, 2001,” but Germany, Italy, and the rest of the Axis didn’t attack Pearl Harbor either and yet the U.S. went to war with them as well as the Japanese. Why? Because those Axis powers had an alliance, an agreement to help the Japanese. It was a paper only agreement (history shows us that there were no battles with uber-racist NAZI S.S. troops fighting alongside Japanese troops), but it was an agreement none-the-less. Additionally, the Axis nations declared war on the United States after the Pearl Harbor attacks. Similarly, we know from Clinton Administration claims, from captured documents, from pre-war and post-war intelligence that Saddam’s intelligence agencies had relationships with various groups in the Al Queda terrorist network of groups. We know from the 1998 Clinton Administration indictment of Osama Bin Laden that the two had reached an agreement to get WMD into the hands of the Al Queda network of terrorist groups.

the indictment states that Al Qaeda reached an agreement
with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that
they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons
development.

We also know from 1990-2003 Saddam’s government considered itself at war with the United States and from 1992-today Osama Bin Laden’s Al Queda network of terrorist groups has been at war with the United States.

Why?

Why did Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda go to war with the United States in 1992? According to the 911 Commission’s final report, the reason that the Al Queda network went to war with the United States, and ultimately the reason for the September 11, 2001 attacks was 4 different things (pg48-49)

He [Osama Bin Laden] inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and
he protested U.S. support of Israel.

Why were American forces in Saudi Arabia from 1992-2001? They were there for one reason: to enforce no-fly-zones over Iraq which were there to protect Iraqis from Saddam. If the United States had removed Saddam in 1991, then the U.S. forces wouldn’t have been needed in Saudi Arabia, and Osama Bin Laden’s first casus belli wouldn’t exist.

Why was Osama concerned about the suffering of the Iraqi people? He was concerned-like many around the globe-because the U.S. led sanctions were starving tens of millions of people as a failed means of influencing Saddam. Again, had the United States removed Saddam in 1991, Osama Bin Laden’s second casus belli against the United States-his second reason for the 911 attacks-wouldn’t have existed.

Why was Osama Bin Laden so concerned about the United States support for Israel in the 1992-2001 period when Al Queda went to war with the United States? What was unique about that period in America’s support for Israel? In much of the Arab World (and in anti-Semitic circles around the world as well), America’s continued pressure on Saddam Hussein’s regime was viewed as an American shield for Israel; as the United States protecting Israel from Saddam and other aggressive Arab regimes.

The historical lesson and inescapable fact is that if the United States had chosen to remove Saddam from power in 1991, OR if the United States had simply walked away from Iraq in 1991 and washed their hands of Saddam’s regime without trying to compel compliance with United Nations resolutions, then Saddam’s regime would have remained in power, BUT the reasons for Osama Bin Laden and the Al Queda terrorist networks’ war on the United States simply would not exist; i.e. the reasons for the Sept 11, 2001 attacks wouldn’t have existed.

Would Osama Bin Laden and his network still have found other reasons to wage war on the United States? One cannot tell for certain, but it does seem that their nature and their destiny has been to fight superpowers, and with the United States as the sole superpower in the 1990’s, it seems more than likely other excuses for casus belli would have been claimed.

Would Saddam Hussein have still been a threat to the United States if he had been left in power in 1991, and if the United States didn’t pursue compliance with U.N. Resolutions? Absolutely. In 1992 U.N. inspectors found that Saddam’s regime had actually built a nuclear bomb, but lacked enriched uranium for it. From 1992-1995 U.N. inspectors found vast amounts of WMD. Saddam had invaded or attacked every single one of his neighbors during his reign, he’d used WMD in the past, had ordered them used against U.S. troops in the 1991 Gulf War (Iraq Survey Group Report, transcript of recording, vol II). Few reasonable leaders would argue that Saddam was not a threat, and no one would argue that a Saddam Hussein who still had ballistic missiles, WMD, and more in 1992 was not a regional or even global threat. Determined that he was a threat, Saddam either had to be removed in 1991 by the United States, in the 1991-2003 period by internal forces (multiple attempts at which all failed with increasing futlity), or by the United States in 2003.

The abstract, and more indirect relationship between the 911 attacks and the invasion of Iraq is simple: the war with Al Queda and their attacks on the United States (including the 911 attacks) were blowback, consequences, fragmentary effects of the 1991 invasion of Kuwait and Iraq.

The DIRECT relationship between the 911 attacks and Saddam’s regime is far more debated. To be clear, the hijackers were no more Iraqi than the pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were German and Italian. However, the question of direct Iraqi ties to the 911 attacks go back to that very day when-as the attacks were happening-Iraq shot down an unarmed Predator drone over Iraq that was searching for WMD etc. On that day, after getting sparse, scattered, and chaotic information about the attacks-while they were happening, and while getting 2-3x as many false reports and rumors of attacks, members of the Bush Administration were not at all culpable or irresponsible for asking if Saddam’s regime was behind the attacks.

In fact, at the time it had become a common cultural expectation. During the 1990’s the Clinton Administration repeatedly claimed that Saddam’s regime and the Al Queda network worked together. Mass media reports of the time carried this theme fully and without question. It was even showing up in movies where characters would claim anything-even meteor showers on New York City were the result of Saddam (Armaggeddon ffwd to 1:40).

Unfortunately, on Sept 11, 2001 there was no way to tell if the attacks were directly or just indirectly related to the on-going American war against Saddam (a war that was so poorly reported that most Americans even today fail to realize it even happened, but conversely was so burned into the minds of the Arab Street at the time that it still conjures up bitter memories in the region).

The question of direct Iraqi involvement in the 911 attacks was investigated first by the Bush Administration, and they found no evidence to make a conclusion. Subsequent investigations by the CIA, FBI, the House and Senate intelligence committees, the entire intelligence community, the 911 Commission and more all ran into the same problem: there was no evidence. For political partisans opposed to President Bush and/or the invasion of Iraq that was enough to support their argument that the invasion was somehow not necessary. The conclusion they promoted-that there was “no evidence” of a direct involvement was but 1/3 of the truth. Another 1/3 was the reason that there was “no evidence’ was because almost none had been collected or analyzed, and the reason for that (almost always ignored by political opponents of the Iraq invasion) was that from December 1998-December 2002 the United States had not a single spy inside Iraq. For four years there was no evidence collected, and thus there was “no evidence.”

Most alarmingly, after 1998 and the exit of the U.N. inspectors, the CIA had no human intelligence sources inside Iraq who were collecting against the WMD target.
- Senator Pat Roberts 070904 SIC Release of WMD investigation report
Press Conference transcript

The last 1/3 is the most obvious, and the most deliberately ignored for political purposes: every single investigation that looked at the question of direct regime ties to the 911 attacks and/or the Al Queda network of terrorist groups ALWAYS pointed out that because so little evidence had been collected, the issue was to remain open-not closed or concluded.

After the invasion, innumerable direct ties between the Al Queda network of terrorist groups and Saddam’s regime have been uncovered. These ties are shown in captured and authenticated documents, in the interrogation of former regime leaders, and in the capture of Al Queda operatives. In fact, the relationship between the regime and the network was far far more involved than any relationship between Germany and Japan or Mussolini and Tojo.

Yet it remains a political issue more than a historical one today. six years after the second invasion of Iraq, eight years after the 911 attacks, 17 years after Osama and the Al Queda network declared war on the United States, and 18 years after the United States and Saddam’s regime went to war over Kuwait.

Perhaps, now that President Bush is gone, and there is no more need to use the invasion of Iraq as a draw issue for his opposition…perhaps now people can be mentally brave enough to recognize the undeniable blowback/more-indirect relationship between the Ignored War on Saddam’s regime (1991-2001) and the 911 attacks. There certainly is no more reason to deny this fact, and there’s no more reason to avoid a conclusive investigation into the depth of regime ties to the Al Queda network of terrorist groups.

It was on the 20th of August that Curt posted on the return of the Lockerbie convicted bomber to a hero’s welcome. As Obama was busy in the news, condemning Scotland, his admin was launching an assault on our own by releasing redacted details on our CIA’s EIT methods for AG Eric Holder to use as fodder for potential prosecution. But then, slipping under the radar of almost all but the former USS Cole Commander, was a quiet story speaking out about the return of AQ member Gitmo grad, Mohammed Jawad, to Afghanistan.

The three combined events do indeed document a “change” in tone by this administration when it comes to the “overseas operations contingencies”. But it also highlights our deteriorating relationships with, heretofore, close allies. The question now is whether that tone “change” is in the best interests of US national security.

Curt posted on the hero’s welcome (as linked above). And by the 25th, was pondering the Iran connection. Certainly it’s no surprise that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi proclaimed his innocence all along. If indeed he was a sacrificial lamb, offered up by Iran, there may be more to that angle of the story as time goes on. But al-Megrahi’s guilt or innocence is not the point of my particular examination of the Lockerbie events.

Rather, the Lockerbie bomber release is the quintessential example of our POTUS being ineffectual with our allies on a very important issue. Obama failed to persuade either UK’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, or even their Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, to appeal to the Scottish judicial system to hold a convicted terrorist.

Ken Blackwell is asking if the Obama admin actually green-lighted Meghri’s release in his op-ed appearing on the Fox News site. This becomes even more ironic when you consider that Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and the ACLU ACRU … (American Civil Rights Union… excuse the original typo please)… a group that normally confines itself to American civil liberties and monitoring of judicial nominees, judges, and legal organizations – not international foreign relations.

We simply do not know of any subterfuge from this most “transparent” administration. (yes, Virginia… that was sarcasm…) What we do know is that on August 18th, Obama mouthpiece, Robert Gibbs, was insisting that Obama believed he should remain to die in that Scottish jail. Joining that sentiment were the usual power houses… SOS Clinton, and more than a few Congressional Democrat powerhouse leaders. All to no avail.

Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for the US President, said: “It’s the policy of this administration that this individual should serve out his term where he’s serving it right now.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already called Scottish justice secretary Keny MacAskill to urge that Megrahi serve out his term in Scotland.

And seven US senators, including Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, have written to MacAskill urging him to keep Megrahi, 57, behind bars.

The White House statement came hours after a court heard Megrahi may be close to death and wants to spend his last few hours with his family in Libya.

We also know that the hoopla that constituted al-Megrahi’s reception was condemned by the POTUS as “highly objectionable”. And, in an effort to make a bad situation more palatable, has insisted that Libya keep al-Megrahi under house arrest for his remaining days.

Needless to say, all Obama’s pleas, warnings, suggestions – whatever you may call his public “tut tut’s” – have fallen on deaf ears. No one… not the UK, nor Scotland, or even Libya gave Obama more than a second glance.

If, indeed, Obama did give a covert blessing to the release of al-Megrahi to either Scotland or the UK, he is taking a page from the playbook of Pakistan’s Musharraf… who constantly gave the silent nod for US bombings, while publicly condemning them to his enraged Pakistani countrymen.

Mr. Blackwell will ponder a long time as to Obama’s involvement in this event. Obama is unlikely to admit he supported it, despite his public condemnation, because he scores no humanity points with common citizens all over the world.

Then again … if genuine in his outrage… Obama now finds himself completely impotent of influence over what was a very strong US-UK relationship during the prior administrations of both countries. I can’t believe Obama’s poor choice of diplomatic gifts, cool snubbing, or the return of the Churchhill bust played into this complete disconnect between leaders of two of the strongest western civilization on an issue of this magnitude.

But I do know that while Obama publicly “condemns”, PM Gordon Brown and David Miliband remain strangely quiet. Both refuse to express any opinions on Scotland’s controversial decision, other than to say they (like Obama) deplored the Libyan hero’s welcome.

The Foreign Sec’y and PM are, of course, not granted any particular authority over the Scottish judicial system. England and Wales have one judicial system, the Scots another, and the Northern Irish a third. There is an exception. But that common law also happens to lie in common immigration and asylum laws, as well as special tribunals.

There is also the swirling stories in the UK press of Britain’s denial of rumours they struck a deal with Moammar Gadhafi, combined with the Scottish government’s refusal to provide details of the doctor’s expertise and qualifications on al-Megrahi’s medical condition, as demanded by UK’s Labour and Conservative pols.

All in all, this “compassionate” decision by the Scottish courts, the rumours of back room deals, sketchy medical details by potentially unqualified physicians, and the bigwigs’ silence sniffs of suspicion. If the Sec’y, the PM and Parliament wielded (or refused to wield) no political influence over Scotland, we can also say they demonstrated no interest to pursue common judicial systems that may possibly been used to keep al-Megrahi in jail either.

Either way, Obama has been left in the cold – alone in his insistence that al-Megrahi remain imprisoned. This leaves him standing alone on the foreign stage, unacknowledged by our western allies, and his opinions considered virtually irrelevant.

It’s entirely possible that the UK refused to hear Obama’s opinions on al-Megrahi’s release since his hypocrisy is simply overwhelming. Case in point…. on Monday, August 21st, Gitmo detainee, Mohammed Jawad, was returned to Kabul, Afghanistan… warmly welcomed by friends and families.

Out of the 229 Gitmo detainees, 26 have been released and returned to various locations, while five have remained – their detention upheld by federal judges.

Jawad was charged with the attempted murder of two US soldiers by a grenade. He confessed, but both a civilian and military judge decided the confession was coerced, and thereby could not be admissible as evidence.

According to the Summary of Evidence from the Defense Department**, six men recruited Jawad to clear Russian mines in Kabul, Afghanistan. “The detainee was affiliated with the Hazb-E-Islami organization,” the Pentagon report says. “The Hazb-E-Islami organization is a terrorist organization with long-established ties to [Osama] Bin Laden.”

[**Mata Musing: The linked summary contains profiles of 70+ detainees... Mohammed Jawad is on pg 52]

The Pentagon Summary of Evidence states that “The detainee attended training camp in late 2002 and received instruction on the AK-47, shoulder held rocket launchers, and grenades.”

It continues, “The detainee admits to telling terrorist organization associates that he would kill Northern Alliance and American forces,” and “The detainee was captured approximately 17 December 2002 in Kabul, Afghanistan while fleeing from the scene of a grenade attack targeting American soldiers.”

According to the Summary of Evidence, linked above in the blockquotes, Jawad is originally from Pakistan, and recruited while attending a local mosque. He attended a Jihad Madrassas, as well as a training camp in late 2002. How coincidental he was trained in rocket launchers and grenades, and also found fleeing the site of an attack of that nature.

Aside from the admissible status of his “confession” – supposedly coerced by some bizarre standards of what constitutes “torture” – this is clearly a man who’s history of associations on record dictate he should not be back on the streets of Kabul to take another aim at US or NATO soldiers. Nor should he be set free to resume his relationship with his Taliban Muslim comrades.

But there he is… released by US District Court Judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle, much to the pleasure of ACLU staff attorney Jonathon Hafetz. Why? Because “more evidence” was not presented within the designated time frame.

What is most interesting is just why the military and civilian judges decided that Jawad’s treatment was labeled “torture”. Most certainly, he was not one of those named as being waterboarded. Nor is his treatment outlined in the released Summary of Evidence. Was he the “victim” of cigar smoke? Diapers? Well, we just may find out.

What I predicted some time ago is happening today. Jawad – captured outside US soil, and never setting foot in the US – now having enjoyed jurisdiction by the US court system, is busy planning a lawsuit, alleging US soldiers made insults towards Islam and behaved in an “inhumane way.” One can only imagine where his proceeds may go… The US government, in their folly, may now unwittingly find themselves as direct Taliban terrorist sponsors.

It’s no surprise that, during the health care townhalls, Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard vacation, and the Lockerbie bomber’s release, this news should slip thru the cracks of a tunnel-visioned media’s coverage. In fact, the only voice raised in indignation came from former USS Cole Commander Kirk S. Lippold.

Though a federal court ordered the release, Lippold blames the Obama administration for not appealing the district court ruling. He argued politics were involved.

“If you want to close Guantanamo Bay and release as many people as possible, why would you want to present more evidence?” he said.

The bigger problem, he said, is the prevailing wisdom of combating terrorism under law enforcement rules.

“A federal judge views the world through the mind of what evidence standards are for a U.S. court of law,” Lippold said. “If we are going to impose that standard of evidence on our U.S. soldiers when they capture someone, we have lost the war.

“You can’t expect a private out there, just finishing a firefight, to lay down his weapon and pick up an evidence bag and ensure whatever evidence he gathered that the al Qaeda guy that just tried to capture or just tried to kill him is al Qaeda. To have that standard of evidence in order to detain battlefield terrorists is setting us up for failure.”

This is, in fact, the heart of Obama’s “non-policy” on Gitmo. He can quietly send home all but the most notorious that he cannot hide from the press, under the cover of more strict criminal court evidentiary criteria. Then simply blame the previous administration for holding “innocent men”. But are they so innocent?

This style of evasive governance by a POTUS has it’s repercussions. Obama’s credibility is eroded. He appears the foolish stooge on the world stage… morally insisting Scotland hold the Lockerbie bomber… when he allows the release of those known to have worked for, and been trained by the Taliban, and captured on the battlefield. If the standard is that there must substantial proof that Jawad, trained in RPGs, actually propelled the grenades himself, then even Lockerbie’s al-Megrahi’s evidence could be questioned… which was his six degrees of separation from a MST-13 timer.

All of which begs the question, just what will it take to convict an obvious enemy combatant using the US judicial system evidentiary criteria? And what demands does this make of our troops in the battlefield?

But Cmdr. Lippold has made an even more serious point… why would Obama – bent on keeping his promise to close Gitmo – make much of an effort to detain and prosecute detainees when it’s easier to just throw it all out, and send them back to the battlefield? Which brings me to my last event showing Obama’s foreign policy/jihad impotence…

It’s an odd (or not…) coincidence that the release of the CIA interrogation techniques to the public, plus the Obama admin announcement that the WH would be assuming top dog position on future interrogations with “interrogation czars”, occurred almost simultaneously to Jawad’s return to Afghanistan. The power shift in interrogations away from the CIA and to the WH was a coindence that did not go unnoticed by the former USS Cole commander.

After many Democrats and some Republican lawmakers called the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation techniques such as playing loud music and waterboarding “torture,” President Barack Obama reassigned interrogation responsibilities from the CIA to the National Security Council – which is run out of the White House, the Washington Post first reported.

“They are taking a page right out of the Lyndon Johnson Vietnam playbook, where it’s ‘let’s run things right out of the White House on a day-to-day basis, because we trust no one else in the government to be competent enough, talented enough or dedicated enough to be able to run a major war time effort,” former USS Cole Commander Kirk S. Lippold told CNSNews.com….

~~~

The release of Mohammed Jawad and his return to Afghanistan is the latest of dangerous decision by the Obama administration, argued Lippold, a senior military fellow at Military Families United, an advocacy group for military families. Obama has pledged to shut down the controversial prison by January 2010.

“Now we are in the awkward position of judges, lawyers and everyone else thinking they now have a piece of this legal pie with respect to detainees, when in fact the administration has no policy in place; they have no plan for how to deal with the detainees in Gunatanomo Bay,” Lippold said.

Some will say the Helgerson Report (see below docTOC) is another Obama/Axelrod “distraction” meant to pull the media focus away from the heat of the health care debate. I’m not convinced of that “too easy”, or obvious explanation. Granted, it does give the media the opportunity to spread the focus.

However this refusal of the Obama admin to continue to appeal the ACLU’s insistence to expose detailed interrogation techniques has too many down sides for Obama. It becomes yet another Obama “broken promise” – to not to look back, but ahead. It was a President-elect Obama who commented during his vast run of Sunday talking head shows.

While strongly condemning the practices during his campaign, Obama has publicly signaled a reluctance to launch a formal inquiry that could, in the view of some advisers, undermine the agency’s effectiveness at a time when it is helping wage two foreign wars. In a televised interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Obama said his “orientation’s going to be to move forward.”

“When it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past,” he said.

Another drawback to this “distraction” is it adds yet another pothole to the already rocky road Obama has traveled in his first months with the CIA. First with his baffling pick of a bureacratic political figure, Leon Panetta. Then further acerbated by his decision to release the OLC memos in spring. Taking the CIA morale and mistrust to a new low, Obama had promised *not* to prosecute CIA interrogators.

So much for promises.

Now we have to compound that broken promise of “no prosecution” with Obama’s seizure of CIA authority, and creation of his interrogation czars – aka the HIG, or the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group – based within the FBI offices. Word is that the bureaucratic paperpusher, Panetta, is stepping up to the plate big time for the CIA, and going toe to toe with the admin. Rumours abound that he’s threatened to quit, and the WH has another, no doubt more pliable guppy, lined up for the gig. Time will tell.

But none of this can bode well for a POTUS at odds with our intel agency. First Obama’s sold us all some bridges to get elected, and now he’s making sure he burns them – agency by agency.

We can certainly attempt to give the Obama admin the benefit of the doubt and say that they insist on interrogation oversight and control in order to prevent the release of those like Jawad. But sans any “crime scene” evidence (which would require soldiers on the battlefield acting as law enforcement crime investigators in addition to warriors), we still run into the same end game realities. Sans a “smoking gun”, any interrogator – whether CIA or Obama appointee – must deal with the realities of the level of evidence required by the federal courts.

This leaves us only to question the motivation and dedication of the interrogators themselves. Instead of CIA operatives, who’s devotion to country and the desire to keep this nation safe is well known, we’ll now have a group of hired Obama guns who may think more about their job security and their boss’s image than results. So I wouldn’t expect much effort extended beyond plying detainees with Mickey D happy meals to gain intel.

When you examine Obama’s deliberate slap at the CIA, the threat of prosecutions, the seizure of power… combined with a steady stream of Gitmo detainees quietly being put on jets out of the country with lawyers’ business cards tucked in their pockets … Obama is castrating our ability to wage war on “overseas operations contingencies” by gutting our intel, the morale of our operatives, and making sure the WH is constantly looking over the agency’s shoulder.

It’s small wonder that Ghadafi merely shrugged off any Obama criticism or warnings that a hero’s welcome for al-Megrahi was inappropriate. Even the Libyan leader can see there’s a paper tiger at the helm, with little desire to wage war on the global Islamic jihad movements.

Instead, our enemies know they will not be pressured if caught. In fact, a clever terrorist will exploit Obama’s system by getting nabbed merely to get processed thru the US court system, then filing for a cash settlement to add to their jihad coffers.

Our western allies don’t bat an eye at the POTUS utterings. And our CIA, no longer in charge of one of their prime directives – obtaining intelligence from detainees – are instead waiting for the doorbell to ring by the court summons servers.

All these actions send a very clear message to our western allies, as well as to our enemies. To return to a pre-911 mentality would be an improvement over this impotence our Commander in Chief demonstrates to the world today.

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.

“That will, of course, include the former prime minister and other senior figures involved in decision taking,” he added.

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

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.

~~~

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.

A study byThe Combating Terrorism Center at West Point of al Qaeda documents deemed the “Sinjar Records” indicates that al Qaeda was, in fact, able to operate inside the country during the rule of the former regime. The center also has previously posted internal al Qaeda documents in which al Qaeda members revealed to one another that “some of them went to Saddam” likely in referrence to al Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan to Iraq.

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.

In an interview last year conducted by Michael Totten a Sunni Iraqi stated that al Qaeda wasn’t out in the open in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq but was there in some capacity.

“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.”

Also on this topic Thomas Joscelyn points out that a fairly recent Senate Intelligence Committe report on prewar Bush adminstration statements on the topic backed up allegations that al Qaeda was in Saddam’s Iraq and not limited to Kurdistan. Joscelyn found that the report included the following statements:

Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al Qaeda-related terrorist members were substantiated by the intelligence assessments. Intelligence assessments noted Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq and his ability to travel and operate within the country. The intelligence community generally believed that Iraqi intelligence must have known about, and therefore at least tolerated, Zarqawi’s presence in the country.

Joseph Shahda translated and explained a 2008 al Qaeda document, reportedly written by Saif al Adel, who denied links between the group and Saddam Hussein’s regime but said the group did have a presence in the Sunni areas of Iraq building cells prior to invasion.

Jeff Stein’s interview with former CIA operative Charles Faddis revealed that al Qaeda did have a presence in Iraq prior to invasion though Faddis argues that there was no link to Saddam Hussein’s government (more on Farris’s thoughts on the topic will be shared in a yet to be published interview with this website).

A story posted on al Sumaria’s website (link is now down) stated that followers of Saddam Hussein welcomed al Qaeda into Iraq during the invasion and worked together to cause chaos in the country.

It is to be noted that in the wake of the US invasion to Iraq, Sunni Arabs, followers of former President Saddam Hussein welcomed Al Qaeda and allowed for the flow of foreign fighters across the borders to fuel insurgency in Anbar province and establish quasi military structures in Falluja mainly. Al Qaeda and Saddam supporters have imposed their power in these regions and went through fierce battles with the Marines. However, as Al Qaeda’s arbitrary violence has mounted against civilians, Arab tribes formed awakening councils funded by the US aimed against Al Qaeda.

In another Senate report looking into the reported mistreatment of detainees Senior Guantanamo Bay interrogator David Becker told the committee interviewing him that “only ‘a couple of nebulous links”’ were uncovered between al Qaida and Iraq (An interview with someone in charge of interviewing detainees in Iraq by this website is also in the works.)

In a post on his Global Terror Alert website in January 2006 Evan Kohlman analzyed al Qaeda in Iraq’s “Distinguished Martyrs” series which included a document discussing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al Qaeda members and saying that they did not fight alongside members of Saddam Hussein’s regime at the start of the Iraq war though the document does not give the reasons for this decision.

Abu Umar al-Masri – A 37-year old senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) leader trained in Yemen and Afghanistan who later joined a group of other elite EIJ operatives in Albania preparing for jihad in nearby Kosovo. When other members of the infamous “Albanian Returnees” group were seized in a joint mission by Albanian security services and the CIA for targeting the U.S. embassy in Tirana, Abu Umar fled Albania for Italy, where he was imprisoned for several years as a suspected terrorist. After a harrowing trip through Germany, Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria, Abu Umar eventually ended up in Iraq just prior to the fall of Saddam Hussein and joined Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Evan Kohlman also posted another document which old CT Blog post cited Abu Ismail al-Muhajir saying:

“As I have explained before, the brothers in Iraq decided to stay out of the war and not to fight alongside Saddam until the war was over and Saddam’s regime was eliminated. They had many reasons for making this decision… Nonetheless, the situation took a turn for the worse after the regime’s collapse... we decided to stay and hide [in Iraq].

The Institute for Defense Analysis investigation of Saddam Hussein era documents showed regime support for EIJ and EIJ has been documented as having had a presence in Saddam’s Baghdad.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev , a professor at the Naval War College and editor at The National Interest, relayed a guest post from Alexis Debat in a June 2006 at The Washington Realist stating that:

According to Jordanian intelligence sources, these individuals were highly instrumental in setting up Zarqawi’s network in Iraq in 2002. Abu Ayyub al Masri, for example, was reported by the US military to have set up Zarqawi’s first cell in Baghdad in mid-2002. This Egyptian group, led by al Masri, is reported to have played a critical role in Al Qaeda in Iraq, which cell structure and modus operandi are almost identical to those of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the 1980s.

Abu al Masri was also said to have close ties to Ayman al Zawahiri, who reportedly had links to Iraq going back many years. In 2004 TIME magazine reported on al Qaeda documents showing Zarqawi and some of his associates were in Baghdad during Saddam’s rule:

He spent the months leading up to the war moving through Iran and northern Iraq, where he attached himself to the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam. A confidential al-Tawhid document obtained by TIME describes a fighter killed in Fallujah last April as having joined al-Zarqawi in Baghdad “just before the fall of the previous regime”—a claim that backs up the Bush Administration’s disputed assertions that al-Zarqawi passed through the Iraqi capital while Saddam Hussein was in power. Al-Zarqawi has built his network in Iraq by exploiting the furies unleashed by the fall of Saddam.

The notion that an Iraq-al Qaeda link was based solely, or even primarily, on one or a few mistreated al Qaeda detainees is not a very serious one when al Qaeda documents, Baath documents, detainee admissions and other revelations, both old and new, show that al Qaeda was in areas of Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s control and the full extent or reason for this presence has yet to be thoroughly explained to the general public.

Crossposted from Regime Of Terror

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.]

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a “deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country.”

In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information “was valuable in some instances” but that “there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. …”

[NOTE: The Admiral doesn’t make clear if by “other means” he means other enhanced interrogation techniques or something more extreme. However, the CIA documents that President Obama declassified for political purposes clearly show that the use of EITs was only done AFTER traditional interrogation methods had been used, AFTER multiple levels of higher authority had approved their use, and a clear requirement for using the EITs instead of traditional interrogation methods had to be demonstrated before they were authorized.]

“…The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

[NOTE: The admiral and writers miss the point that it’s not JUST the secret techniques that damaged American image abroad-as the revelation of most secret programs would do, but that the illegal exposure of the EIT program by the economically struggling New York Times (whether for financial or political reasons) is what caused the damage. Had the program remained as secret as other offensive covert CIA programs…there would have likely been no damage at all. In fact, the program didn’t include any sort of public relations staff or plan at all.]

A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general’s investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any “specific imminent attacks,” according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.

[NOTE: the CIA’s Inspector General investigation only looked at CIA involvement regarding the EIT program. It did not look at how intelligence gained from EITs was used by American leaders and the 16 other intelligence agencies. However, people who did have that knowledge-like 4 CIA Directors, Vice President Cheney, President Bush, and more-have all said that the intelligence gathered by the CIA led to attacks being thwarted.]

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn’t think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

[NOTE: Vanity Fair? Gosh, I wonder what he “revealed” to Rolling Stone, GQ, and TEEN Magazine?! Is this the same FBI Director Mueller who told a concerned President Bush in August 2001 that the FBI had the situation in control, was conducting 70+ investigations, had the 20th hijacker in custody w the entire 911 plot on his laptop (also in Mueller's custody), and still the 911 attacks occurred? One wonders if the 911 plot could have been thwarted had EIT's been used on Zacarias Moussoui, or even if they'd have had the political courage to open his laptop despite the ominous presence of the ACLU's shadow protecting the right to privacy on that laptop?]

LINK TO BUSH’S SEPT 6.2006 SPEECH DETAILING HOW IT PREVENTED ATTACKS

_ Cheney said that President Barack Obama’s decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was “flatly contrary” to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.

However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, “strongly supported” Obama’s decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that “we do not need these techniques to keep America safe.”

_ Cheney said that the Bush administration “moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks.”

The former vice president didn’t point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri, remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban.

[NOTE: Let the leftist talking points begin! VP Cheney is correct that the US devastated Al Queda in 2001 and 2002 as well as later covertly. Writers of this article, however, can’t seem to pick up a calendar and realize that Al Queda largely escaped Afghanistan in December 2001, and was almost completely driven from the country in the first 3 months of 2002. When there were just remnants of Al Queda in Afghanistan, the US handed over most of the responsibility for the war there to our NATO allies, and left mopping up forces in country with the belief that relying on allies was a good idea. Then there was a 4-5 month period in 2002 when the US began to update its military strategies for Iraq, and in September 2002 (6 months after the final major battle with Al Queda in Afghanistan), the US began its military/political/diplomatic runup to war in Iraq. Partisan political opponents of the Iraq invasion called this September 2002-March 2003, 6-month period the “Rush to war,” but sometimes that term also encompasses the additional, previous 6-months during which Al Queda fled to Pakistan and the war in Afghanistan dwindled to a mopping-up operation. Only ONE U.S. military unit was shifted from Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq (the 5th Special Operations Unit), and that unit specialized in using indigenous forces to overthrow a country covertly and with the support of air power rather than full out invasion. No other units were diverted from fighting Al Queda in Afghanistan (which had already fled Afghanistan) to the invasion of Iraq. These are chronological, historical facts that the writers of the article are either ignorant of realizing or chose to deliberately ignore for purposes of misleading. Short version: someone needs a calendar]

There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan.

[NOTE: Eight years after driving Al Queda from Afghanistan, they are still not back in anywhere near the same size in forces, and remain in Pakistan-not Afghanistan. Sending troops to fight Al Queda in a country that they are not largely in…is a mistake, and while the writers use correct facts about a Taliban offensive and the numbers of US forces in Afghanistan eight years after driving out Al Queda, these facts are distractions from the reality that the fight against Al Queda in Afghanistan never resurged to post April 2002 levels. The fight against Al Queda’s allies, the Taliban has resurged, and relying on America’s allies has proven to be folly at best which is why the offensive has happened, and why US forces have been sent back in en masse.]

_ Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on “a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency.”

However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

“The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own,” said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz. “The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees.”

[NOTE: Notice how the writers take Cheney’s core point-that Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are not connected-and distract from it by focusing on three words used to describe Abu Ghraib. The point remains unchallenged: the EIT program at Gitmo which is the subject of much debate and discussion these days is not an episode in history identical to the criminal abuses at Abu Ghraib.]

_ Cheney said that “only detainees of the highest intelligence value” were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.

He didn’t mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed’s alleged role in 9-11.

The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods “was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida,” Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow, who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration’s detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.

[NOTE: The writers are completely incorrect in their claim, and in their poor writing, that Cheney somehow said only 1 person was subjected to waterboarding. He specifically said there were three. He just didn’t give their names, hair color, weight, or grandmothers’ maiden names all of which would have been as relevant as their names to his point: that only 3 people were waterboarded.]

_ Cheney said that “the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence,” but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.

[NOTE: One of the problems with writing under the influence of emotion and a lack of historical hindsight is that what pops up on the screen can sometimes be an oxymoron rather than a clear point. Here the writers are trying to say that Cheney claimed “accurate intelligence” is important, but that he somehow didn’t rely on “accurate intelligence” for the 2003 war. Does this mean that having “accurate intelligence” is not important? Are they trying to say that Cheney is correct, and having “accurate intelligence” IS important? If the first, then they’re ignoring the fact that 6yrs after the invasion of Iraq Cheney thinks it is important, and he is correct. If they’re trying to make the second point (that “accurate intelligence” is not important, then they’re effectively saying that the intelligence used for the invasion of Iraq was enough. Either way, they present an oxymoronic argument that ignores the two greatest lessons of both the 911 attacks and the invasion of Iraq: 1) America’s intelligence services were woefully inadequate from 1998-2007…at least, and 2) Of course having “accurate intelligence” is important, but it’s been almost a decade since American intelligence services were brought back up to speed and strength after the peace dividend cuts of 1998, and historical flashpoints and the actions of America’s enemies do not wait for “accurate intelligence”; they strike when its weakest. “Accurate intelligence” is important, but NEVER accurate enough, and rarely in sufficient qualities.]

Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri, who’s known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi, whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002. While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq’s links with al Qaida, which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.

A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.

[NOTE: al Libi was alive in US custody, and the Bush/Obama policy of handing over unsavory characters to their home countries didn't work out too well for him.]

_ Cheney accused Obama of “the selective release” of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.

“I’ve formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained,” Cheney said. “Last week, that request was formally rejected.”

However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA, which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.

[NOTE: President Obama had no problem releasing politically suggestive documents regarding the EIT program despite the fact that they too are subject of the exact same lawsuits as the documents VP Cheney, as well as both Democrats and Republicans, want to see released. The same executive order cited by the writers allows President Obama to release the Cheney documents, but the writers chose not to let the readers believe there’s duplicity on the part of the Obama Administration, themselves, or that politics are being played with national security.]

_ Cheney said that only “ruthless enemies of this country” were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.

[NOTE: This is completely not true, and anyone who actually watched Vice President Cheney and/or read the text of his speech knows it. The writers know it, and that’s why the word “ONLY” is not included in the quote. It’s not there because he didn’t say “ONLY.” That false claim is put forth by the writers-writers who follow up their false quote by arguing against their own false quote that it wasn’t “only ruthless enemies of this country.” What the writers do not dispute (conveniently) is that “ruthless enemies of this country” were held at Gitmo exactly as Vice President described.]

A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.

[NOTE: This has nothing to do with what Vice President Cheney said. He never said there were no innocent detainees, and the writers acknowledge that by not putting the word “ONLY” in the quote from VP Cheney.]

In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005, that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri, from Macedonia in January 2004.

Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania.

In January 2007, the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.

[NOTE: This has nothing to do with what Vice President Cheney said. He never said there were no innocent detainees, and the writers acknowledge that by not putting the word “ONLY” in the quote from VP Cheney.]

_ Cheney slammed Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.

[NOTE: This is incorrect. The Vice President opposed the ignorant choice to close Gitmo before having a plan to close it.]

The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush’s second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

“One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back,” Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007, interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. “So we need help in closing Guantanamo.”

_ Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account “dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.”

[NOTE: This claim that Saddam Hussein had known ties to Mideast terrorists was never disputed by any Director of the CIA, by President Clinton, by President Bush Sr., or by the FBI. In fact, part of the 1998 Department of Justice indictment of Osama Bin Laden specifically cites his ties to the Saddam Hussein regime.]

Cheney didn’t explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida, a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.

[NOTE: This is completely false. No intelligence leader, no intelligence publication, and no independent commission has ever said that the issue of regime ties to the Al Queda network and its affiliates (using the Obama nomenclature) has ever been fully investigated, or concluded. In fact, quite the opposite is true: all bi-partisan and/or independent investigations have called for more investigation into the matter as initial intelligence was almost non-existent and post-invasion intelligence shows a trend of demonstrating more and more ties rather than fewer.]

The late Iraqi dictator’s association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.

The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam’s regime “has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President (George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait.”

[NOTE: The writers here are actually suggesting that the State Department’s intelligence assessment (or any intelligence assessment before 911) was accurate? After the 911 attacks, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees formed a bi-partisan investigation into how and why the attacks succeeded. Among the shocking revelations was the fact that from 1998-9/11/01 there was an average of 4-40 people in the entire 16 American intelligence agencies watching the entire Al Queda network. Later, a Senate Intelligence Committee, bi-partisan investigation pointed out in 2004 that between 12/98 and 12/03 (FIVE YEARS!) there was not a single human intelligence asset inside all of Iraq. Yet, these same writers who danced with the idea of how important “accurate intelligence” is earlier in their article want to rely on a report that formed a conclusion about a 2 entities where one had not a single human intelligence asset, and the other had a whopping four people watching the entire network. Their focus on the need for “accurate intelligence” is clearly subjective to whatever point they’re trying to make rather than consistent.]

A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad, at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no “direct operational link” with al Qaida.

[NOTE: This is not true. If it were, the writers would have included the entire quote. In almost every case, those who believe that the threat of Saddam’s regime working with Al Queda was non-existent are basing those beliefs on at least one of three things:

1) Hope. The thought of a rogue regime with WMD is a nightmare that many cannot imagine.

2) Denial. Whether it was the 1998 Clinton impeachment, the 2000 election, the 911 attacks, or the invasion of Iraq, partisan divide has become engrained in many Americans over the last 11 yrs. For those who follow the news, politics, and history it is particularly acute. As such, skepticism reigns. If someone tends to doubt Democrats, then anything said by a Democratic leader is automatically so doubtful for many people that it is assumed to be either a lie or at least not true. The same is conversely true for people who have followed those dividing events closely and view anything said by a Republican as intrinsically false, misleading, a lie, or a cover-up of some sorts.

3) Half truths come from half quotes. As we’ve seen throughout this oped article, relying on partial quotes is extremely irresponsible sometimes. It’s mostly irresponsible when a person deliberately ignores an important caveat. If there is a sign that says, “No Turn On Red During Weekday Hours 5-7pm,” and the driver ignores the second part…then they’re likely to cause an accident or get fined. When a quote says, “There is no evidence of a tie between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein…” it’s important to read the rest of the quote and not dismiss it because it fits one’s political agenda or conflicts with a mental fear.

If the FULL QUOTE/FULL TRUTH is, “There is no evidence of a tie between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein because we had no one watching either Iraq or Al Queda for 4yrs, and more intelligence needs to be collected before a conclusion can be reached.” Then ignoring the second half of the quote, ignoring the whole truth in favor of a false, half truth is wrong.

The only thing more wrong is marketing that half truth as though it were fact. Take for example the very last part of this article-the part about the investigation into the 600,000 captured documents from Saddam’s regime. Did the writers mention that only about 1/5 of those documents had been examined? Did they mention that the very same report cited multiple, confirmed, documented, operational ties between Saddam’s regime and Al Queda network groups/affiliates? No. Why would they leave that out and present a false impression that the issue had been fully investigated, fully concluded, and is closed?]

More on ties between Saddam’s regime and (as Pres. Obama likes to say….) “the Al Queda terrorist network and its affiliates.”

NYT’s Robert Pear is reporting on the detailed approach both House and Senate are taking for Obama’s “reform”. And for the ingenues who believe that Obama and his minions are not out for universal health care, they should stop listening to the honey-tongued “just words” and start getting a grip on reality by reading.

The Senate version is mandating everyone carry health care as of 2013… exempting only illegal immigrants and those opposed for religious reasons. Odd concept since in some parts of the country, it is the illegal immigrant population driving up the costs.

All employers will be mandated to provide insurance to their workers, or face a “special tax”. Additionally, the government will be mandating the four levels of coverage provided by that employer… from lowest to highest. And no annual or lifetime limitations allowed either.

Not only will the government regulate the marketing of commercial insurance premiums to families and employers, they will also regulate premium prices, allowing workers to drop out and seek a better deal…. no doubt that offered by the federal government plan.

Not enough? They plan to dictate sales commissions as well.

Under the Senate proposals, the government would regulate not only insurance products, but also the marketing of insurance and sales commissions paid to insurance agents and brokers.

Under these auspices, the private insurer – who requires a profit to stay in business – cannot compete with the government who just sucks more out of the taxpayer as their costs increase. With government mandates controlling everything from premium price for coverage to marketing, their demise is imminent. Indeed, it is being orchestrated.

One of the most notable features of the Senate proposals is that workers could drop out of an employer’s group health plan and buy private insurance on their own, outside the workplace. The employer’s normal contribution for a worker would be paid to the insurance exchange.

Democrats said that people dropping out of employer plans would, in many cases, be eligible for tax credits to defray their premiums.

Employers worry that this feature would destabilize the health plans they provide to employees.

“If people can opt out of employer-sponsored insurance and get a tax credit, that will lead to a death spiral for employer-sponsored plans,” said James P. Gelfand, senior manager of health policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce.

“People who are sick will stay in employer plans, and many young, healthy people will opt out,” Mr. Gelfand said.

The House version accomplishes something similiar, using a government “health insurance exchange” that mandates participation by all private insurers. The government would also label all insurers with “quality ratings”…. a Good “House”keeping Seal of Approval, so to speak.

Consumers could sign up for insurance at hospitals, schools, Social Security offices and state departments of motor vehicles.

~~~

Under the Democratic proposals, the government would offer tax credits to help people buy insurance. The credit would be available to people with incomes up to four times the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four).

The government would also provide tax credits to help small businesses buy insurance for employees. The credit would be available to businesses with up to 25 employees, and businesses with the lowest-wage workers would get more aid.

And how do they propose enforcing their mandates?

Taxpayers would have to report their health insurance coverage on their federal income tax returns. Under the main Senate proposal, the penalty for not being insured would be an excise tax, which could be as high as 75 percent of the premium for the lowest-cost health plan available in the area where a person lives.

Under the proposal, all employers with more than $500,000 in total payroll would have to offer insurance to full-time workers or “pay an assessment,” in the form of a new excise tax.

An employer offering insurance would have to pay at least 50 percent of the premium. An employer not offering insurance would have to pay the excise tax, which would increase with a company’s payroll, so the largest employers might pay $500 per employee per month.

Along these same lines, Katie Connollly at Newsweek’s The Gaggle has some interesting observations on a few more of Pear’s reports this week. One of the more amusing is the backpeddling of Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform:

The second article worth noting is Pear’s story about how the health industry leaders that met with Obama at the White House this week claim that the President overstated their committment to reduce costs by $2 trillion by 2019. From Pear’s piece:

Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding that has caused a lot of consternation among our members,” said Richard J. Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association. “I’ve spent the better part of the last three days trying to deal with it.”

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said “the president misspoke” on Monday and again on Wednesday when he described the industry’s commitment in similar terms. After providing that account, Ms. DeParle called back about an hour later on Thursday and said: “I don’t think the president misspoke. His remarks correctly and accurately described the industry’s commitment.”

Apparently that’s still not entirely the case, and ” The Washington office of the American Hospital Association sent a bulletin to its state and local affiliates to “clarify several points” about the White House meeting.”

In the bulletin, Richard J. Pollack, the executive vice president of the hospital association, said: “The A.H.A. did not commit to support the ‘Obama health plan’ or budget. No such reform plan exists at this time.”

Moreover, Mr. Pollack wrote, “The groups did not support reducing the rate of health spending by 1.5 percentage points annually.”

He and other health care executives said they had agreed to squeeze health spending so the annual rate of growth would eventually be 1.5 percentage points lower.

I guess that would be the “audacity” of “hope” for support that just isn’t there.

WaPo’s Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown – a couple of legal eagles specializing in media and 1st Amendment issues – have come up with some legislative suggestions to aid the struggling media. Most of it entails kneecapping their Internet competition.

They start out by applauding the proposed media bailout I posted on late March. Then the piling on begins.

Since their suggestions are not already law, I guess I’ll escape their legal wrath when I just let you read their advice.. direct from the horses mouth below.

– Bring copyright laws into the age of the search engine. Taking a portion of a copyrighted work can be protected under the “fair use” doctrine. But the kind of fair use in news reports, academics and the arts — republishing a quote to comment on it, for example — is not what search engines practice when they crawl the Web and ingest everything in their path.

Publishers should not have to choose between protecting their copyrights and shunning the search-engine databases that map the Internet. Journalism therefore needs a bright line imposed by statute: that the taking of entire Web pages by search engines, which is what powers their search functions, is not fair use but infringement.

Such a rule would be no more bold a step than the one Congress took in 1996 rewriting centuries of traditional libel law for the benefit of tech start-ups. It would take away from search engines the “just opt out” mantra — repeated by Google’s witness during the Kerry hearings — and force them to negotiate with copyright holders over the value of their content.

I especially love the one above (yes, sarcasm). Just what do they think will happen to the efficiency of search engines when they prohibit text searches of the entire article? Research will suffer… as will the “well informed” status of voters. The value of tapping into all aspects of issues from different points of view, found easily by adept search skills, leads one to a better concept of truth.

But hey… we’re not done. No more “rephrasing” of news will be allowed. (is any thought really original?) And let’s not allow any commercial enterprises that make ad money by providing news links anymore… Hey, who needs their tax dollars anyway, right?

– Federalize the “hot news” doctrine. This doctrine protects against types of poaching that copyright might not cover — the stealing of information not by direct copying but simply by taking the guts of the content. While the Internet has made news vulnerable to pilfering because of the ease of linking from one site to the next, the hot-news doctrine has limited use because it is only recognized in a few states.

Now that many news aggregator sites have taken “linksploitation” to a commercial level by selling ads wrapped around the links they post, Congress has the incentive it needs to pass a federal law protecting hot news. Such a law would give publishers an additional source of legal leverage outside of copyright to demand fair compensation for the content they create.

Here’s another oldie but goody. The Democrats hate big business… unless, of course, it’s media. No ownership caps and give them an anti-trust exemption.

– Eliminate ownership restrictions. Media insolvency is a greater threat today than media concentration. Congress should abolish caps on ownership of broadcast stations and bars on newspaper and television ownership in the same market. These outdated rules belong to an era when the Web was a home for spiders.

~~~

– Grant an antitrust exemption. Congress first came to journalism’s defense with antitrust relief in 1970, when it permitted endangered newspapers to combine their business operations without fear of antitrust suits if their newsrooms remained independent.

As noted in the Kerry hearing, publishers need collective pricing policies for their Web sites to finally break out of the expectation of free content that is afflicting the industry. Antitrust immunity is necessary because most individual news sites can’t go it alone by walling off their content for fees — readers will simply jump to sites that are still free.

A temporary antitrust shelter would serve the public interest by enabling the industry to take steps today to preserve for tomorrow the journalism that benefits us all.

I think this last one is my favorite of all. I thought tax cuts were not the way to economic recovery? Evidently very liberal Washington State likes to deliver that as lip service, but acts differently by slashing business tax cuts for media by 40%.

– Use tax policy to promote the press. Washington state is taking a lead in the current crisis with legislation signed into law this week to slash business taxes on the press by 40 percent. Congress could provide incentives for placing ads with content creators (not with Craigslist) and allowances for immediate write-offs (rather than capitalization) for all expenses related to news production.

Lawrence Wilkerson picks up where he left off on his previously waged war on Cheney back in 2005 – not long after his boss, Colin Powell, was politely asked to resign, and Ret. Col. Wilkerson followed suit.

Mind you, I have a great amount of respect for those that serve our country. But I haven’t yet gotten on board with Wilkerson’s seeming witch hunt, nor been convinced of his long standing theory of a “Rumsfeld-Cheney cabal”. While I respect high powered military advisors having different positions on issues and policy, and their service, I have to wonder if it’s in the nation’s best interests to be calling for war crimes on former Executive office administration members.

Wilkerson is advocating that the Rumsfeld-Cheney cabal implemented a policy of torture commencing April 2002 approx, that was consumed with finding AQ/Saddam links to justify an impending regime change in Iraq. According to him, preventing another terrorist attack was never their interest. A great deal of this revolves around Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, and his confessions of a link between AQ and Saddam INRE chemical and biological training camps. This information formed an important part of Colin Powell’s (Wilkerson’s boss) UN presentation in Feb 2003.

Ret. Col. Wilkerson’s timeline is somewhat shaky, as well as where he places the blame. As Thomas Joscelyn points out in his Weekly Standard post on the 14th:

I’m not going to recount all of the ins and outs of the intelligence debate concerning al Libi’s interrogation here. The bottom line is: Al Libi initially said that al Qaeda had sent trainees to Iraq for specialized chemical weapons training, but later recanted that testimony. To this day, some of the officials involved (including former CIA Director George Tenet) say they cannot tell whether al Libi’s initial story or his recantation was accurate. The problem is that al Libi recanted everything, including his admitted role inside al Qaeda, which no one seriously denies. Al Libi was clearly a terrorist training camp commander. And Tenet says that the testimony of another senior al Qaeda operative was consistent with al Libi’s original story. Other intelligence officials, of course, dismiss the reporting entirely.

[Mata add: al-Libi was recently found dead in his Libyan cell by "suicide", or murdered, if you listen to self-proclaimed expert, Andy Worthington. ]

Now, Wilkerson purports to offer new details concerning al Libi’s interrogation. Wilkerson writes (emphasis added):

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

Wilkerson’s facts do not add up. Al Libi’s original testimony regarding Iraq-al Qaeda links occurred months before Wilkerson says waterboarding was used to get this admission out of him. We know this because the DIA filed a report saying that it did not trust al Libi’s testimony regarding the training of al Qaeda operatives in Iraq in February 2002 -– two months before Wilkerson says the Bush administration authorized the Egyptians to use harsh interrogation methods on al Libi.

So, when Wilkerson writes that “the [Bush] administration authorized [the] harsh interrogation [of al Libi] in April and May of 2002” and al Libi “had not revealed any al Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts” until then, he is clearly wrong. Al Libi, according to the DIA, first discussed this putative tie between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda before Wilkerson says that harsh interrogation techniques were authorized by Vice President Cheney.

Say what you will of al Libi’s testimony, which was cited by Secretary Powell in his presentation before the UN in February 2003. There is legitimate room for debate, according to the intelligence professionals, on the veracity of his original story.

Summary? al-Libi was sent to Egypt, and circa Feb 2002, he was saying there was a link between AQ and Iraq INRE chem/bio training. We do know today that Saddam did indeed host terror training camps in Iraq. The DIA issued a caveat that, since the information was obtained while not in US custody, they didn’t know how much to trust. And they did say it was likely he could be appeasing his interrogators. But they also said there was other corroborated detainee testimony as well.

This was presented to Powell (and Wilkerson) not long before Powells’ UN appearance. al-Libi did not recant his story until Jan 2004, almost a year later. And when he did, he also recanted what was already known as fact.. his AQ alliances. Which means it’s hard to believe anything he said.

This also means that the blame Wilkerson seems determined to apply might be better directed at the CIA for not providing the State Dept the DIA caveats attached to the al-Libi confessions. Instead, it’s all Cheney’s fault.

Spencer Ackerman, at the Washington Independent, scored some email responses from Wilkerson to Joscelyn’s comments:

Joscelyn wrote, “It is doubtful that any part of Wilkerson’s story is true.” I asked Wilkerson if he wished to respond.

If their account is the accurate one, explain to me why Tenet and McLaughlin [then the director and deputy director of the CIA] came to Secretary Powell in February 2003–yes, 2003–with the information about al-Libi as if it were fresh as the morning dew. Powell was ready to throw out almost everything Tenet had given him on the contacts of Baghdad with terrorists, particularly al-Qa’ida. Suddenly, on 1 Feb, there was the shocking revelation of a high-level al-Qa’ida operative who had just revealed significant contacts between al-Qa’ida and Baghdad. Powell changed his mind and that information went into his presentation to the [United Nations Security Council] on 5 Feb 2003. We were never told of the DIA dissent.

And what about the timeline — or suggested timeline — in the original post?

I am basing my conclusions on the fact that DCI Tenet and DDCI McLaughlin presented the information about al-Libi to Secretary Powell in Feb 2003 and not in Feb 2002. The strong impression was that the interrogation had just occurred or, at a minimum, that Tenet had just received the information (otherwise, why wouldn’t they have given it to Powell much earlier, say when he first expressed concerns over the terrorist links some days earlier?).

I have no idea when the Egyptians waterboarded al-Libi other than what Tenet and McLauglin implied in their presentation to Powell –which, incidentally, was quite effective on him.
Who says the Egyptians tortured al-Libi in Feb 2002? I’m prepared to modify my views if that can be proved. But not by much because that is a minor part of my position.

There’s a bit more “I have no idea” caveats in much of Wilkerson’s historical review. In an interview with Stephen Grey/Frontline, Wilkerson was asked if, based on data he’s seen, the CIA carried out torture in CIA secret detention camps.

Wilkerson: I have no way of knowing that or proving it. I would suspect and expect that’s true — that they probably did carry out untoward interrogation methods in those locations — but I don’t know that they did. They might have been in one case, a holding area for high-value detainees; and in another case they might have been both a holding area and a detainee interrogation area. I just don’t know. I do believe that there were harsh interrogation methods used, even torture used by the CIA in certain locations. But I don’t know what those locations were other than Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. That they were done on someone else’s soil than those, I just don’t know.

Grey: And what makes you think that they did use torture at those locations?

Wilkerson: Well this might surprise you, but the reason I am not clear on it is not just that access was not given to me — I’m not even sure it was given to the secretary of state — but also because I don’t believe there were more than about 25 detainees that anybody considered high value.

When asked why he and Powell did not speak up about their assumptions, Wilkerson stated they believed the admin was basically going to clean up their act…. based partially on Rumsfeld’s continued offers of resignation. He believes that Cheney seemed to thwart this “correction”. However, what it’s based on also seems to be assumptions rather than first hand knowledge.

Grey: So who intervened? What was the role, for example, of the vice president in actually taking those memos and …?

Wilkerson: I think the vice president probably said something like this to the secretary of defense: “You know what you’ve got to do? Go out and do it.” I wasn’t there, I don’t know that those were his words, but I can conceive of that having happened. I don’t think the secretary of defense would have done what he did without the cover of the vice president’s office. Now, let me hastily add that often times when you saw Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld together, you didn’t know who the boss was — the body language, the mannerisms, you really didn’t know who was running whom. As you probably know, Donald Rumsfeld once was Dick Cheney’s boss. Donald Rumsfeld was instrumental in bringing Dick Cheney as a 34-year-old into the White House, as I recall. So you don’t know who’s telling whom what to do in this relationship, which was one of the problems with the relationship in terms of national leadership, in my view, and I teach this, so, I’ve studied everything. First of all, never has there been a vice president in American history with this unprecedented degree of power. The only man who comes to mind since World War II who’s had this unprecedented degree of power was Henry Kissinger, particularly when Henry took on both positions, National Security Adviser, and Secretary of State, and essentially sent himself memos.

Considering he’s portraying himself as a protocol kind of guy, one has to wonder about his obvious silence on the Obama admin power grab in almost all arenas… as well as his continuation of Bush policy for detainees. Then of course, there is that mind meld between Rahm’bo and Obama, and Axelrod on other issues. But back to Wilkerson.

As for his knowledge on the practice of rendition, Wilkerson appears to be mostly informed by the media, as opposed to being in the informational loop.

Grey: So tell me about renditions. Were you aware these were going on when you were in government? And what were you told?

Wilkerson: Well, I was aware that the program existed, as I think most people were. I was not aware that we had transmogrified the program into more or less a massive effort — it wasn’t one or two rendered terrorists. And I wasn’t aware that we were doing it in a way that, for example, might render one to Saudi Arabia, or Syria, or most recently, to Ethiopia out of Somalia. I’m not even sure the Secretary of State was aware of that, because if you’re going to do something like that, again, probably you’re going to do it under a presidential finding. And one of the things you want to do in a presidential finding is limit severely the number of people who know, to keep it secret. And so I’m not even sure the secretary of state knew that this was going on, at the level and the way that it was going on.

Grey: So when and what did you learn about it?

Wilkerson: I learned about that from open source information — by reading the papers and by watching the television and listening to the news. I think they’ve been pretty accurate in the way they’ve, you know, [reported] everything — from Europeans who counted planes flying over and sitting in airports to European Commission reports to what’s going on in this country in open source publications. I think they’ve gotten a fairly accurate picture of what the CIA was doing.

In fact, according to a CNN article in 2005, neither Rumsfeld nor Gen. Peter Pace ever recall seeing Wilkerson in any meetings with Rumsfeld or Cheney… confirming the likelihood that Wilkerson is not working off of first hand knowledge. Instead it is speculation that, perhaps (as just when the AQ/Saddam confession from al-Libi was obtained), is formed without the complete story from all related agencies.

Earlier, on the same CNN program, Rumsfeld dismissed as “ridiculous” the claim that he was involved in a cabal.

Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they had no recollection of Wilkerson having attended meetings with Rumsfeld or Cheney.

“In terms of having first-hand information, I just can’t imagine that he does,” said Rumsfeld. “The allegation is ridiculous.”

“I was in every meeting with the joint chiefs. I was in every meeting with the combatant commanders. I went to the White House multiple times to meet with the National Security Council and with the president of the United States. I have never seen that colonel,” added Pace.

“They made my point for me,” responded Wilkerson. “The decisions were not made in the principals’ process, in the deputies’ process, in the policy coordinating committee process. They were not made in the statutory process.”

Wilkerson said his “insights” came from Powell “walking through my door in April or March of 2004 and telling me to get everything I could get my hands on with regard to the detainee abuse issue — ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] reporting, memoranda, open-source information and so forth — so that I could build some kind of story, some kind of audit trail so we could understand the chronology and we can understand how it developed.”

While he acknowledged having no proof that the United States is torturing detainees, Wilkerson said, “I can only assume that, when the vice president of the United States lobbies the Congress on behalf of cruel and unusual punishment and the need to be able to do that in order to get information out of potential terrorists… that it’s still going on.”

Since the largest debate is over waterboarding, and if it is torture, here’s Wilkerson’s comments INRE waterboarding.

Waterboarding induces the sensation that you’re dying. Waterboarding can kill you, too, when done inexpertly, on someone who has a bad heart or a condition you’re not aware of. Here I’m relying on CIA and military interrogators who’ve talked to me about this. Depending on how it’s done, it can be what I would call severe torture; or it can be mild torture if you want to use those kinds of adjectives. But again, I use the reverse theory. I think about an American soldier, female or male, being put through these interrogation techniques. And if I decide that I’m outraged at that thought, then that becomes torture or near torture to me, and then definitions become sheer semantics. They’re irrelevant.

Wonder if those semantics apply to SERE training…

So why the sudden sequel to Wilkerson’s war? Probably because Cheney’s the only conservative demonstrating the cajones INRE the waterboarding vs results issue. And we all know that it’s important to discredit the messenger… even if he is one of the most despised men in the US already.

Seriously…listen to her promises from 2006-from THREE YEARS AGO, and ask yourself,
“Can she be replaced with someone better for less political cost?”

For a full view of this timeline, please email me at smalensek@neo.rr.com… , and I’ll be happy to send you an Excel version w references, links etc. Sometimes (as in the case of thwarted attacks claimed by the Bush WH), dates could not be nailed down other than by year. Perhaps the Obama Admin will open up those documents and be transparent rather than hide information that counters their spin?

circa date detail

circa 10/1/1997 A meeting is held in Sudan between Bin Ladin, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Hasan al-Turabi, leader of Sudan’s National Islamic Front regime, about the construction of a CBW factory.

circa 8/1/1998 John Gannon, chairman of the National Intelligence Council, reveals that the CIA discovered that Bin Ladin had attempted to acquire unspecified CW for use against U.S. troops stationed in the Persian Gulf.

8/16/1998 A leaked intelligence report states that Bin Ladin allegedly paid over two million British Pounds to a middle-man in Kazakhstan for a “suitcase” bomb.

9/26/1998 A Bin Ladin aide, Mamduh Mahmud Salim, is arrested in Munich, Germany, on charges of trying to obtain nuclear materials (allegedly for al-Qa`ida), including highly enriched uranium.

11/8/1998 Bin Ladin is supposedly engaged in a comprehensive plan to acquire nuclear weapons, and reportedly has given a group of Chechens $30 million in cash and two tons of opium in exchange for approximately 20 nuclear warheads.

circa 12/1/1998 In an interview with Time magazine, Bin Ladin asserts that acquiring weapons of any type, including chemical and nuclear, is a Muslim “religious duty.”

12/20/1998 Wadi al-Hajj, a Lebanese national, is arrested in Arlington, Texas, for perjury. The FBI contends that he had lied about his affiliation with Bin Ladin in 1997 and 1998 court testimonies. A grand jury investigates al-Hajj’s possible activities in procuring CW for Bin Ladin.

circa 4/1/1999 Bin Ladin allegedly purchases CW over a two-year period prior to 1998 from European states and the former Soviet Union. This information is allegedly provided under custody by the Jihad leader (arrested on August 20, 1998 in Baku, Azerbaijan) during the April 1999 “Trial of the Returnees from Albania” in Egypt.

circa 6/1/1999 Usama bin Ladin reportedly constructed “crude” CBW laboratories in Khost and Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and acquired ingredients for CW and BW from former Soviet states.

circa 7/1/1999 An Islamist lawyer states that Bin Ladin’s organization has CBW, and will likely use such weapons against the United States.

8/1/1999 Bin Ladin and his followers allegedly obtain BW substances through the mail from countries of the former Soviet Union (the Ebola virus and salmonella bacterium), from East Asia (anthrax-causing bacteria), and from the Czech Republic (botulinum toxin).

circa 12/1/1999 Local Afghan sources say that Bin Ladin is using a plant in Charassiab, a district 30 kilometers south of Kabul, to produce CW.

6/4/2000 Associates of Bin Ladin are reported to have bought anthrax and plague from arms dealers in Kazakhstan.

circa 11/1/2000 Bin Ladin allegedly obtains seven enriched uranium rods, which were supposedly US-made, from mafia connections.

12/1/2000 December 2000 – U.S. intelligence community begins to report increase in “traffic” concerning terrorist activities.

12/24/2000 Bin Ladin allegedly sends envoys to several Eastern European countries to purchase enriched uranium. These efforts reportedly were both unsuccessful and very costly for the organization.

12/24/2000 The intelligence agency of an unnamed European country reportedly intercepts a shipment of approximately twenty nuclear warheads–originating from Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and the Ukraine–intended for Bin Ladin and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan.

circa 2/1/2001 Jamal al-Fadhl claims that, on behalf of Bin Ladin, he investigated purchasing uranium for nuclear weapons.

circa 2/1/2001 The United States allegedly aborts a planned air strike against Afghanistan for fear of a retaliatory chemical attack by al-Qa`ida, after receiving warnings from an Arab embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan.

2/1/2001 Bin Ladin’s elite 055 Brigade is supposedly reorganized under the leadership of Midhat al-Mursi, aka Abu Khabab, an Egyptian and an expert in sarin gas production.

4/1/2001 April-May 2001 – Specific threat that al Qaeda attacks against U.S. targets or interests might be in the works, with main concern among U.S. officials the possibility of attack overseas, notably the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe.

5/29/2001 ERRI alert

5/30/2001 ERRI alert

5/31/2001 ERRI alert

6/1/2001 June 2001 – “Threat spike” in intelligence reports.

6/1/2001 Summer 2001 – Central Intelligence Agency makes major push to try to deal with potential attacks, manages in concert with foreign countries to disrupt attacks in Paris, Turkey, Rome.

6/22/2001 June 22, 2001 – Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issues an “information circular” to commercial airlines citing concern about possible hijackings.

6/22/2001 June 22, 2001 – State Department issues worldwide caution to U.S. citizens, noting indictment of 14 people for the 1996 bombing that killed 19 U.S. servicemen at a Saudi housing complex, and saying Americans and U.S. interests “may be at increased risk of a terrorist action from extremist groups.”

6/23/2001 ERRI alert

6/30/2001 Late June 2001 – U.S. government counterterrorism security group meets to discuss possible threats.

7/1/2001 July-August 2001 – CSG meets several times a week; no new threat information discovered.

7/2/2001 July 2, 2001 – FAA issued another information circular citing possible threat of an attack using explosives in an airport terminal.

7/2/2001 July 2, 2001 – FBI tells local law enforcement agencies that it is worried about threats overseas and, while it did not foresee a domestic attack, it could not rule one out.

7/5/2001 July 5, 2001 – Rice, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, National Security Council counterterrorism official Dick Clarke meet. Core counterterrorism security group (CSG) meets and decides to bring domestic agencies into threat discussion.

7/5/2001 July 5, 2001 – Threat reporting sufficiently “robust” with “a lot of chatter in the system” that Bush asks Rice to see what U.S. government is doing about such threats.

7/6/2001 July 6, 2001 – CSG core players meet because of very high concern about potential attacks in Paris, Turkey, Rome. CSG bars U.S. counterterrorism officials from nonessential travel.

7/15/2001 Mid-July 2001 – Rice cites “major threat spike” related to Group of Eight (G8) summit in Genoa, Italy, including specific information about a threat to Bush.

7/18/2001 July 18, 2001 – FAA issued information circular saying there were terrorist threats overseas, and while there were no specific threats directed at civil aviation, tells airlines to use “highest level of caution.”

7/31/2001 Late July 2001 – FAA issues information circular citing no specific target or credible information of attack to U.S. civil aviation but warning airlines terrorist groups are planning and training for hijackings and urging carriers to use caution.

8/1/2001 Aug. 1, 2001 – FBI issues another alert to local law enforcement on upcoming third anniversary of bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, reiterating warning from July 2, 2001.

8/6/2001 Aug. 6, 2001 – Bush gets a one-and-a-half page “analytic report” during his daily intelligence briefing on vacation in Crawford, Texas discussing bin Laden’s historical methods of operation. Rice says the report cited general possibility of “traditional” hijackings by al Qaeda, perhaps to demand the release of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the radical Muslim who plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

8/16/2001 Aug. 16, 2001 – FAA issues information circular warning carriers to be on alert for potential attack by people using weapons disguised as cellphones, key chains or pens.

9/7/2001 ERRI alert

9/10/2001 ERRI alert

9/11/2001 Sept. 11, 2001 – Suspected al Qaeda operatives crash two commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York, causing both towers to collapse, and a third into the Pentagon near Washington. A fourth airliner crashes in a Pennsylvania field after a scuffle between the hijackers and passengers. About 3,000 people die in the attacks.

circa 9/13/2001 attack on US embassy in Paris and NATO HQ in Brussels

9/19/2001 Russian intelligence allegedly blocks a deal in which a Pakistani firm controlled by Bin Ladin attempted to purchase Soviet-origin uranium.

9/22/2001 ERRI alert

10/8/2001 attack on U.S. embassy and Eagle Base airfield, used by some 3,000 U.S. peacekeepers in Bosnia thwarted

10/8/2001 ERRI alert

10/14/2001 Ivan Ivanov claims he met Bin Ladin just over the Pakistani border in China, and discussed setting up an environmental company to buy nuclear waste. Ivanov was then approached by a Pakistani chemical engineer interested in buying nuclear fuel rods from the Bulgarian Kozlodui reactor.

10/20/2001 Various reports describe Muhammad Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers, meeting in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent, who allegedly gave him a vial of anthrax. This claim, originally made by foreign intelligence sources, was later contested by the Czech government.

10/28/2001 Ahmad Rassam, arrested in a plot to bomb LAX, testifies that Bin Laden is personally interested in using low-flying aircraft to dispense BW agents.

circa 11/1/2001 In an interview, Bin Ladin claims “We have chemical and nuclear weapons as a deterrent and if America used them against us we reserve the right to use them.”

11/10/2001 In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper reporter, Usama bin Ladin states that “we have chemical and nuclear weapons as a deterrent, and if America used them against us we reserve the right to use them.”

11/12/2001 Two Pakistani scientists allegedly share nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons information with Bin Ladin, and thereby learn of radiological material given to him by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They tell Bin Ladin that there is insufficient material for use as a weapon.

11/14/2001 al-Qa`ida reportedly acquires a Russian-made suitcase nuclear weapon from Central Asian sources. The device is reported to weigh 8 kg and to possess at least 2 kg of fissionable uranium and plutonium. The report said the device, with a serial number of 9999 and a manufacturing date of October 1998, could be set off by a mobile phone signal.

11/19/2001 A Times (London) reporter discovers a blueprint for a “Nagasaki bomb” in files found in an abandoned al-Qa`ida house in Kabul, Afghanistan.

11/28/2001 The Kabul office of Pakistani scientist Mehmood is reportedly found to contain documents indicating an interest in anthrax, including calculations concerning the aerial dispersal of anthrax via balloon, and an Associated Press photo showed something at the anthrax vaccine laboratory described as “anthrax spore concentrate”.

circa 12/1/2001 A reporter purchases two computers from a looter in Kabul, Afghanistan, that had been found in an abandoned al-Qa`ida office. The U.S. government confirms the existence of the computers. One of the computers allegedly contains a file describing “plans to launch a chemical and biological weapons program.” Bin Ladin’s deputy al-Zawahiri reportedly created computer documents describing his CW and BW program, codenamed “Curdled Milk,” which included work on a pesticide/nerve agent that used a chemical to increase absorption and was tested on rabbits and dogs. He was assisted by Midhat al-Mursi / Abu Khabbab, a chemical engineer.

circa 12/1/2001 Dirty bomb attack on London

circa 12/1/2001 In December 2001, Yazid Sufaat was arrested in Malaysia for terrorist activities as a member of Jemaah Islamiyah. According to subsequent interrogations of two captured terrorists, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad of al-Qa’ida and Hambali of Jamaah Islamiyah, Sufaat was part of a plan to obtain and weaponize biological warfare agents. Jamaah Islamiyah maintains close ties to al-Qa’ida.

12/3/2001 ERRI alert

12/9/2001 U.S. operatives in Afghanistan allegedly discover evidence indicating that one or more Russian scientists were helping al-Qa`ida weaponize anthrax.

12/10/2001 Reports claim that al-Zawahiri’s home in Kabul tested positive (perhaps falsely) for traces of anthrax, as did five of nineteen al-Qa`ida labs in Afghanistan.

12/18/2001 ERRI alert

circa 1/1/2002 2002 Bush Assn attempt

circa 1/1/2002 Arabian Gulf Shipping attacks per WH site

circa 1/1/2002 attacks on US using hijacked aircraft per WH site

circa 1/1/2002 Buffalo Six

circa 1/1/2002 Documents found in Afghanistan ostensibly reveal that al-Qa`ida was doing research on using botulinum toxin to kill 2,000 people.

circa 1/1/2002 LAX Attack

circa 1/1/2002 Singapore attack on Carl Vinson etc

circa 1/1/2002 Straits of Hormuz attacks on Shipping per WH site

1/2/2002 ERRI alert

1/4/2002 ERRI alert

1/31/2002 Diagrams of U.S. nuclear power plants are found in abandoned al-Qa`ida camps and facilities in Afghanistan.

2/1/2002 An apparent plot by nine Moroccans to poison the water supply of the U.S. Embassy in Rome using a cyanide compound is foiled by Italian police.

2/11/2002 ERRI alert

2/13/2002 ERRI alert

2/20/2002 Zarqawi chem attack in Italy foiled

2/26/2002 No evidence was discovered in Afghanistan that al-Qa`ida possesses nuclear weapons, raising the question whether al-Qa`ida might have been tricked into buying metal containers with phony nuclear symbols filled with worthless material.

3/17/2002 ERRI alert

3/22/2002 US forces discover a BW laboratory under construction near Kandahar that was abandoned by al-Qa`ida. It was allegedly being built to produce anthrax, but no biological agents or traces thereof were found in the facility.

4/19/2002 ERRI alert

4/22/2002 Abu Zubayda claims al-Qa`ida has the interest and know-how to produce a radiological weapon, and the group may already have one in the United States.

4/22/2002 ERRI alert

4/22/2002 ERRI alert

4/24/2002 ERRI alert

5/19/2002 ERRI alert

5/20/2002 ERRI alert

5/21/2002 ERRI alert

5/24/2002 ERRI alert

5/24/2002 Terror alerts on small planes scuba divers

6/2/2002 ERRI alert

6/3/2002 al-Qa`ida allegedly attempts to acquire 11 lbs of radioactive thallium from measuring devices on decommissioned Russian submarines, but Russia’s Federal Security Service claims to have blocked the attempt.

circa 6/5/2002 Padilla Dirty Bomb US attack

6/8/2002 ERRI alert

6/9/2002 ERRI alert

6/11/2002 ERRI alert

6/11/2002 U.S. citizen Abdullah al-Muhajir (formerly José Pedilla), is arrested in Chicago and alleged to be involved with al-Qa`ida in planning to perpetrate a radiological bomb attack in the United States.

6/21/2002 ERRI alert

6/23/2002 A so-called “Superbomb” manual, which discusses the advanced physics of nuclear weapons and dirty bombs, is found in Kabul in November 2001.

6/23/2002 The 11th volume of al-Qa`ida’s 5,000-page Encyclopedia of Jihad is devoted to how to construct CBW.

6/30/2002 ERRI alert

7/1/2002 ERRI alert

7/13/2002 Among the items seized during the arrest of Sami Uthman, a Lebanese national who moved to the US and became an Imam at a Islamist mosque in Seattle, are papers by London-based al-Qa`ida recruiter Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Masri, firearms, military manuals, and “instructions on poisoning water sources.”

7/14/2002 Islamic extremists, including al-Qa`ida members, are allegedly trained in secret camps near Baghdad in how to use CW and BW by instructors from the secret Iraqi military intelligence Unit 999.

7/18/2002 Stephen Younger, director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, claims that al-Qa`ida’s interest in BWs is focused mainly on anthrax.

7/26/2002 ERRI alert

7/31/2002 CNN correspondent Mike Boettcher reports that coalition intelligence agencies have detected several recent purchases of cyanide by al-Qa`ida operatives.

8/18/2002 ERRI alert

8/19/2002 Ahmad Rassam (an al-Qa`ida terrorist who pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb LAX) claims in court in 2001 that he had witnessed the gassing of a dog with cyanide.

8/19/2002 CIA Director George Tenet tells the Senate that Bin Ladin has shown a strong interest in CW and that his operatives have “trained to conduct attacks with toxic chemicals or biological toxins.”

8/19/2002 CNN releases videotapes, allegedly made by al-Qa`ida, showing dogs being killed by unidentified toxic chemicals (experts believe either a crude nerve agent or hydrogen cyanide gas is used).

8/20/2002 Ansar al-Islam is reported to have been experimenting with ricin, a deadly toxin, including on at least one human being. This report is denied by Ansar spokesman Muhammad Hasan Muhammad.

8/20/2002 Iraqi military instructors allegedly trained al-Qa`ida fighters in northern Iraq in the use of CBW agents, and possibly also in the handling of nuclear devices. Between 150 and 250 al-Qa`ida trainees purportedly passed through the training facilities.

8/25/2002 One of the facilities of Ansar al-Islam, a radical Islamist group operating in northern Iraq with ties to al-Qa`ida and Iran, produces a form of cyanide cream (not a WMD) that kills on contact.

9/5/2002 FBI alert to possible 911 anniversary attacks

9/8/2002 Bin Ladin allegedly buys 48 “suitcase nukes” from the Russian mafiya.

9/9/2002 ERRI alert

9/14/2002 Pentagon officials admit that lab equipment found near Kandahar, Afghanistan, supports the assessment that al-Qa`ida might have acquired what it needed for “a very limited production of biological and chemical agents.”

9/18/2002 ERRI alert

9/24/2002 threat level raised

10/3/2002 John Walker Lindh allegedly told interrogators that battlefield rumors suggested that a biological attack was expected to be a “second wave” al-Qa`ida attack.

10/11/2002 ERRI alert

10/24/2002 ERRI alert

11/4/2002 ERRI alert

11/18/2002 British security officials arrest three men reportedly plotting a cyanide attack on the London subway.

circa 12/1/2002 possible IIS terror strike on Turkey

circa 12/1/2002 possible IIS terror strike on Turkey

12/12/2002 The Islamist group Asbat al-Ansar, a Lebanon-based Sunni organization affiliated with al-Qa`ida that is currently operating in northern Iraq, reportedly obtained the nerve agent VX from the Iraqi regime.

12/29/2002 ERRI alert

circa 1/1/2003 attacks on E coast USA per WH site

circa 1/1/2003 attacks on Heathrow per WH site

circa 1/1/2003 attacks on Saudi oil fields thwarted

circa 1/1/2003 attacks on W coast USA per WH site

1/5/2003 • British police raid two addresses in north and east London and discover traces of ricin, one of the world’s deadliest poisons. Six men of Algerian origin are arrested, as is a woman who is later released.

1/5/2003 • French intelligence services provided the tip that led British authorities to make the arrests, sources tell CNN.

1/5/2003 • Sources tell CNN the suspects have been in Britain no more than three months. Two of them are asylum-seekers living in government housing.

1/5/2003 ricin attacks in UK, France, and poss Italy and Spain

1/7/2003 • Anti-terrorism police investigating the ricin discovery in London arrest a seventh man, aged 33, and hold him at a London police station.

1/9/2003 Six Algerians were arrested in London and charged with plotting to produce ricin. Authorities discovered traces of ricin and equipment used to process castor beans in the apartment. According to news sources, the group was plotting to attack a British military base by poisoning the food. Later reports indicate that the substance tested in the apartment was not ricin.

1/10/2003 • The FBI advises U.S. law enforcement agencies about the dangers associated with ricin following the discovery of the deadly poison in London. The FBI notice says ricin “could be used in a terrorist operation to contaminate closed ventilation systems … drinking water, lakes, rivers and food supplies.”

1/11/2003 • Four of the seven men arrested in connection with the ricin investigation are charged with terrorism offences, Scotland Yard tells CNN. The four are charged with “possession of articles of value to a terrorist” under the Terrorist Act 2000 and with “being concerned in the development or production of chemical weapons” under the Chemical Weapons Act 1996.

1/11/2003 ERRI alert

1/12/2003 • Anti-terrorism police arrest five men and a woman in Bournemouth, on England’s south coast, in connection with the London ricin discovery. Police refuse to confirm the arrests are connected to the ricin discovery, but sources admit privately to CNN the arrests are linked. Officers search two premises in the Bournemouth area; no chemical materials are found.

1/13/2003 • Four men charged with terrorism offences in connection with the ricin discovery appear at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court in central London and are remanded in custody. Three of them are named as Mouloud Feddag, Samir Feddag and Mustapha Taleb. The fourth is a 17-year-old who can not be named for legal reasons.

1/14/2003 • A police officer is killed and four others are wounded during a raid in Manchester, England, into the alleged ricin terror plot. Detective Constable Stephen Oake is stabbed to death as police arrest three men — all described as north Africans — in the northern England city.

1/16/2003 ERRI alert

1/17/2003 ERRI alert

1/23/2003 • A 31-year-old north African man is arrested by police investigating the January 5 discovery of ricin in north London.

1/25/2003 ERRI alert

1/30/2003 British intelligence discovered documents in western Afghanistan which suggest that al-Qa`ida members built a dirty bomb in Afghanistan. British officials also claim that the Taliban provided medical isotopes to al-Qa`ida members to help construct the bomb. U.S. officials cannot substantiate this claim.

1/30/2003 With the capture of Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, investigators uncovered detailed information about production plans for chemical and biological weapons. According to captured documents, certain members of al-Qa`ida had plans and the requisite material to manufacture cyanide and two biological toxins, and were close to producing anthrax bacteria.

circa 2/1/2003 Al-Qa’ida operatives allegedly planned to poison U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan and Kuwait. Afghan terrorists allegedly delivered an “unspecified poison” to Afghan nationals who were hired as cooks for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The incident has been tied to the January 2003 arrest of 11 al-Qa’ida suspects in Britain who were reportedly in possession of the biological toxin ricin. Some sources also indicate that the group Ansar al-Islam was involved in this plot to use ricin against U.S. troops.

2/7/2003 ERRI alert

2/9/2003 Credible threat info pushes alert level higher

2/12/2003 ERRI alert

2/13/2003 ERRI alert

2/24/2003 ERRI alert

circa 3/1/2003 NYC subway chem attack per TIME

circa 3/1/2003 On 20 March 2003, the FBI announced that they were searching for Adnan al- Shukrijuma in connection with the Jose Padilla case. Padilla was arrested May 2002 for plotting to obtain materials in Canada for a dirty bomb. Shukrijuma was identified from documents obtained in connection with the 2002 arrest of Ramzi bin al-Shib, a key 9/11 architect.

circa 3/1/2003 Spring Pakistan bombings per WH site

3/6/2003 ERRI alert

3/17/2003 terror alert level raised to orange

3/19/2003 ERRI alert

3/30/2003 ERRI alert

circa 5/1/2003 Yemen bombings thwarted

circa 5/15/2003 Kenya flights

5/18/2003 ERRI alert

5/20/2003 “Federal law enforcement organizations — and some state and local authorities — ramped up vigilance when the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded national terror alert level was raised May 20 from “”elevated,”" or yellow, to “”high,”" or orange, the top domestic anti-terrorism official said today on Capitol Hill. …

The combination of current intelligence information, the recent terrorist attacks in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, and the release of the purported al Qaeda audiotape message convinced national leaders the terror alert level needed to be raised, Ridge noted.

[This High (Orange) Threat level remains in effect until May 30, 2003 when it was lowered to Elevated (Yellow)]”

6/7/2003 After the 2003 Casablanca bombings, a police roundup of Salafia Jihadia exposed a plot by ‘Abd al-’Aziz ibn Laysh to attack a French nuclear power plant at Cap de la Hague. Additional evidence indicates that members of al-Qa`ida trained Salafia Jihadia for this mission.

7/29/2003 threat of sucide attacks on planes

9/5/2003 al queda planning new attacks

12/21/2003 terror alert level

circa 1/1/2004 London bomb plots per WH site

circa 1/1/2004 Reports indicate that an al-Qa’ida affiliate named Midhat Mursi may have been constructing a “dirty bomb” in early 2004. Mursi is reportedly in contact with Ayman al-Zawahiri and was suspected of managing al-Qa’ida chemical labs in Afghanistan. Mursi allegedly uses the name “Abu Khabab”.

1/18/2004 A publication posted by members of al-Qa`ida on the internet included an article by ‘Abd al-’Aziz al-Muqrin (Abu Hajir), a leading al-Qa`ida fugitive in Saudi Arabia, which called for supporters to use nuclear and biological weapons in attacks against the Saudi government.

1/25/2004 On 23 January 2005, German police announced the arrest of an Iraqi al-Qa’ida member who had allegedly attempted to purchase uranium in Luxembourg. In September 2002, Ibrahim Muhammad K. attempted to purchase 48 grams (1.5) ounces of uranium from an unnamed group in Luxembourg. Prosecutors claim that the amount of uranium was insufficient for the construction of a nuclear device.

circa 2/1/2004 British Airways attacks

2/1/2004 Homeland Security Sec Ridge steps down

2/7/2004 U.S. forces found 3kg of cyanide at the Baghdad house of Ahmad Fadhl Nazzal al-Khalayila, an aide to Zarqawi. The cyanide was to be placed in construction bricks and used against coalition troops. Troops also uncovered a document thought to be written by Zarqawi asking al-Qa’ida for aid.

2/8/2004 On 8 February 2004, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Hayat reported that al-Qa’ida had purchased tactical nuclear weapons from the Ukraine in 1998 and was “storing them for possible use”. Al-Qa’ida allegedly purchased the bombs in Kandahar after a visit from Ukrainian scientists. The Ukrainian government denied that the transaction had taken place, stating that all nuclear weapons stored in the Ukraine had been transferred to Russia as of 1996.

3/2/2004 U.S. Government officials announced that a group of al-Qa’ida members along with Zarqawi established a weapons lab in Kirma, Iraq. The lab was to be used to produce ricin and cyanide.

3/3/2004 In a secret interview with Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, Ayman al-Zawahiri allegedly claimed that al-Qa’ida possessed nuclear weapons purchased in Central Asia. Zawahiri reportedly told Mir that al-Qa’ida sent representatives to “Moscow, Tashkent, [and] countries in Central Asia” in order to purchase “portable nuclear material.”

3/21/2004 state dept issues terror warning-possible wmd attacks

4/2/2004 FBI issues warning that terrorists might target rail and other transport networks

4/5/2004 British authorities announced they had thwarted a possible chemical attack tenuously linked to al-Qa’ida. The plot, which was in an early planning stage, involved the use of conventional explosions enhanced with osmium tetroxide in London’s shopping centers, railway stations, and the Underground.

circa 4/17/2004 Jordan chem attack by Zarqawi-70-100,000 people estimated as casualties/chems from Iraq

4/21/2004 The Jordanian Intelligence Service seized six trucks wired with explosives containing 20 tons of an unknown chemical. The trucks were reportedly part of a plot by Zarqawi and a number of al-Qa’ida members to destroy Jordan’s Intelligence Department, Prime Minister’s Office, and the U.S. Embassy.

5/25/2004 Major terror attack possible this summer

6/3/2004 DCI Tenet resigns

circa 6/14/2004 Ohio malls

6/15/2004 Justice Dept announces it thwarted imminent attacks on Ohio malls

6/16/2004 According to the 9/11 Commission, al-Qa’ida operatives in Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks were considering ways of using WMD, including mustard and cyanide, against Jews in Iran, “forcing Russian sceintists to fire a nuclear-armed missile at the U.S.”, and using air conditioning systems in buildings to pump poisonous gas.

7/8/2004 HS Sec Ridge warns of possible attacks on major events this summer

8/1/2004 Eight men were arrested in Britain and charged with conspiracy to murder after they were discovered with information on chemicals, explosives, and radiological materials. Also in their possession were plans of the New York Stock Exchange, the Citigroup Building in New York, the International Monetary Fund in Washington, and the Prudential Building in New Jersey. The arrests occured two weeks after a series of 13 arrests of men allegedly affiliated with the al-Qa’ida network. The men were identified as Dhiren Barot, Omar Abdur Rehman, Zia ul Haq, Abdul Aziz Jalil, Nadeem Tarmohammed, Moammed Naveed Bhatti, Quaisar Shaffi, and Junade Feroze.

circa 8/2/2004 NYC Citicorp plots

circa 8/5/2004 Chicago bomb plot

9/10/2004 ERRI alert

circa 11/23/2004 hijacked flights against London

12/17/2004 Director of National Intelligence established

12/17/2004 Tom Ridge seen kickin back at Terror conference in Hawaii

12/19/2004 An al-Qa’ida insider has alleged that Usama Bin Ladin was pressured by network affiliates to purchase radiological material through contacts in Chechnya. The insider has been named as Abu Walid al-Misri. Misri is reportedly planning to publish a book detailing his relationship with Usama Bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida leadership.

1/3/2005 French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin claimed that al-Qa’ida affiliates have produced chemical and biological weapons in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge. De Villepin told members of a bio-terrorism conference in Lyons, France, that after the fall of the Taliban, al-Qa’ida cells moved to the Pankisi Gorge in order to continue efforts to produce anthrax bacteria, ricin, and botulinum toxin.

2/11/2005 Pakistani businessman Saifullah Paracha allegedly told al-Qa’ida operatives that he knew where to obtain nuclear weapons that could be used against U.S. troops. Paracha denied the allegations but admitted to meeting Usama Bin Ladin in 1999 to discuss business deals. Paracha owns an import company in New York.

2/17/2005 Bush nominates Negroponte to DNI job

4/22/2005 Director of National Intelligence activated

7/7/2005 terror alert level raised to orange; for transit systems

8/21/2005 London gas attacks

circa 1/1/2006 2006 plot to attack SEARS Tower and FBI HQs

circa 1/1/2006 Canadian Parliament attacks

circa 1/1/2006 Jordan bomb plots

circa 1/1/2006 UK bomb plots

circa 1/1/2006 2006 plot to attack SEARS Tower and FBI HQs

Watch this, and consider that we’re not talking about beating up a Marine, but getting rough with the people who planned and executed the 911 attacks, who tried to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, who SUCCESSFULLY MURDERED 3000 civilians.

Chris,

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

Poor Ford. He knows torture’s an issue that-in the end-causes more damage to Democrats than to Republicans. He knows the reality that in 2001, 2002, and 2003 the US intel community was freaking out, dazed, and confused (as every 911 and Iraq investigation shows), and he just can’t tell the Bush haters to stop, let it go, MOVEON.

Why?

Because torture, 911, BUSHLIED, etc are all distortions of the truth that come out if there’s an investigation.

Good luck Harold. I’m with CHEEENY-Show the docs. Show em all!

“From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”

I post this to point out that American “troops” that I’ve spoken with are not at all enamored with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid. It might be because Pelosi worked against their efforts to succeed in Iraq, and Harry Reid flat out said the war was lost at the very same moment it was being won. It might be because they both tried to cut off supplies to American forces in combat just to get some good political PR. There’s probably a lot of reasons, but the point here is that the by and large the “troops” were not supported IN EFFECT or even in rhetoric by Democratic Party leaders, and many people-myself included-often hear from “troops” that the frustration is much much MUCH higher than Democrats and opponents of the American forces efforts to succeed in Iraq might realize.

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.

“They agreed that Al Qaida would carry out the suicide attacks, while the Baathists [Saddam's ruling party] would do the remote-control bombs,” Al Maliki said.

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

“In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation on Monday, Mr. Maliki said all of the recent attacks had resulted from coordination between Qaeda militants and elements of Mr. Hussein’s Baathists.

“They agreed that Al Qaeda would carry out the suicide attacks, while the Baathists would do the remote-control bombs,” he said.”

Of course, other Iraqi PMs have said this as well. They’ve even claimed to have documents and captured regime members who trained Al Queda musclemen to take the planes on 911, BUT that was all moot and bs before. Now that a D is in the White House, and Democrats have complete, unchecked, unstoppable power…now it’s PC to admit the obvious; to admit what soldiers, Marines, and spooks have been telling us for years.

ht Mark Eichenlaub

Make Terrorists Choose Between Jumping or Burning: Now That Would Be Torture

So now the president is considering show trials of Bush Administration officials who issued opinions on permissibility of “harsh” interrogation techniques on Al Qaeda terrorists.

Once again, folks, this is not hard.

Let’s flash back to the sunny September day when hell was unleashed on our nation. Many horrors could be recalled from 9/11, but I’d like to bring to remembrance just one: The roughly 200 innocent souls, by one estimate, forced into the inconceivable choice to hurl themselves from the towers to escape the searing heat and smothering smoke from flaming jet fuel.

Author Michael Daly recounted the scene: “Some jumped together, holding hands. Most leapt singly, often tumbling as they fell . . . most were on their backs as they reached the lower floors, facing the heavens if not necessarily heaven. Their last sight was of the perfect baby-blue sky as they struck the pavement with a velocity that instantly turned a living person into a bright red splatter. The sound was jarring, loud, a body becoming a bomb.”

You say Khalid Sheik Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times? Cry me a river.

How about if we had tossed this cold-hearted butcher into a room on a platform some 1,300 feet up, fired it up to a toasty 2000oF, pumped in the acrid smoke of combusting fuel, and given KSM a better choice than his blameless victims got: Talk, jump or feel your flesh sizzle off?

Now that might have been torture.