Richard Clarke: Bush Admin Negligent in Antiterrorism

[Ramo]

Because the author's other claims are bogus, because intel agencies all around the world are confirming that there are no ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, not even Shrub is touching it, I say it very likely is not true (and if true, not very important).

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ramo
The two defectors are members of the INC. INC propaganda is bad:

http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/special_packages/iraq/8194211.htm

Thank you, come again.

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/04/07/Worldandnation/Jet_shell_reinforces_.shtml

Hmmm. The plane found as described. People foreign to Iraq giving intel after having been trained there...

Perhaps you would like to try again?

SALMAN PAK, Iraq -- The rusted shell of an old passenger jet sat out in a field, its tail broken off. Good for hijacking practice, U.S. Marines speculated Sunday as they examined an Iraqi training base about 20 miles south of Baghdad.

The Americans also found a full obstacle course as well as a three-story concrete tower draped with ropes, apparently for rappelling.

President Saddam Hussein's regime has said the camp, part of a larger military reservation, was used for antiterrorism training for Iraqi special forces.

But U.S. officials and others have long suspected the camp trained terrorists. Two former Iraqi military officers told the New York Times and PBS's Frontline in the fall of 2001 that Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs were brought here to practice hijacking planes and trains, planting bombs and staging assassinations.

U.N. inspectors looking for biological weapons reported seeing a plane there.

Another part of the base was Saddam's main biological weapons center before the first Persian Gulf War, the U.N. inspectors learned in the 1990s. They said about 10 scientists and 100 other people worked on developing ways to deliver anthrax, ricin and other deadly substances over wide areas.

The Republican Guard 2nd Corps headquarters also is nearby, and some intelligence experts have said another camp trained young members of the Fedayeen Saddam militia in assassination, sabotage and espionage.

The military reservation sprawls next to Salman Pak, a town named for a 7th century Persian convert to Islam who was the prophet Muhammad's barber. Salman Pak, "Salman the Pure" in Farsi, died in the region, and a shrine to him in the town attracts many Muslim pilgrims.

At U.S. Central Command in Qatar, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Marines raided the complex using information obtained from captured foreign fighters of various nations, including Egypt and Sudan.

"The nature of the work being done by some of those people we captured, their inferences about the type of training they received, all these things give us the impression that there is terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak," Brooks said Sunday.

He said the camp was "just one of a number of examples" of such training activity found in Iraq by coalition troops. "It reinforces the likelihood of links between this regime and external terrorist organizations," he said.

Lab complex scoured

NEAR SALMAN PAK, Iraq -- Acting on a tip from local residents, Marines on Sunday raided an abandoned branch of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission south of Baghdad and found several laboratories, gas masks, chemical suits, vats of industrial chemicals, and a map listing buildings that contained "radioactive material."

Troops from the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, scoured the fortified government complex, but a cursory inspection revealed ordinary levels of radiation and chemical contamination. Commanders said they saw enough to call in a "sensitive site exploitation" team to conduct a thorough analysis.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Very good question, considering we have Saddam on tape sponsoring homicide bombings. Doesn't seem to me like a hard case to make if tolerance for state sponsored terror is now zero.

You mean Saddam paying the family of suicide bombers. Not exactly the same as sponsoring suicide bombings.

Originally posted by notyoueither
Why do you suppose that the US and UK would go to war and not expose their real reasons for doing so, if those real reasons were intelligence based and the game is still on?

Since Saddam is no longer in power, I cannot see any possible reason of asserting "the game is on."

Or that the anti-war crowd has been right all along, that the Bush Administration has one or more ulterior motives for invading.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
You mean Saddam paying the family of suicide bombers. Not exactly the same as sponsoring suicide bombings.

Since Saddam is no longer in power, I cannot see any possible reason of asserting "the game is on."

Or that the anti-war crowd has been right all along, that the Bush Administration has one or more ulterior motives for invading.

re Saddam and cheques to sponsor homicide bombers, I disagree. However, that is the link that is on tape and cannot be denied. A good place to start, no?

Saddam is gone, but last I checked AQ and others are still out there. There are still people that the administration would not want to know what the administration knows or how exactly they know it. First rule of intelligence gathering. The Brits didn't want the world to know about Enigma even after the war was over and the users of that code system were long gone, for instance.

Could you clarify your last statement? Are you saying that Bush and Blair had reasons for invading that have not been clearly stated, or not?

[uh Clem]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Lying about not recalling something like that? How was I doing that?

Because you're not an ignoramus. You know good and well that Bush was touting a link between Saddam & AQ.

If you support the invasion, fine, make your case. But this act by the administration and its apologists...this "Goodness me, nobody ever said anything like that!...it's tedious and stupid. Lose it.

[Kuciwalker]

You mean Saddam paying the family of suicide bombers. Not exactly the same as sponsoring suicide bombings.

sig material

[mindseye]

Originally posted by DinoDoc

I don't recall any government official suggesting that.

Might be time to look into some memory-enhancing dietary supplements

... or subscribe to a better newspaper

[DinoDoc]

Perhaps. I don't remember everything the government spews out though.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Kucinich

You mean Saddam paying the family of suicide bombers. Not exactly the same as sponsoring suicide bombings.

sig material

Why is this sig material? Sponsoring the suicide bombers would mean paying for the materials, training, giving the attacker himself money, as opposed to giving the family money after the fact when they have lost one of their means of income.

[DinoDoc]

The materials were already provided and what purpose would giving the attacker money serve. How's he going to spend it?

[chequita guevara]

nye, despite the fact that certain right-wing agendas have tried to link AQ and Hussein, endlessly recycling the same material over and over, the FBI has discredited all of it. There are and were no known links between the Iraqi government and AQ.

Hussein did sponsor Palestinian terrorism in the 70s and 80s, and probably the 90s as well. Almost every Arab government does that, even some of our "allies." The only possible AQ operation in Iraq, however, was Ansar al-Islam, and the links between that group and AQ are debatable, especially considering AI is sponsored by the Iranians, and Shi'ites and Whabbists don't exactly get along.

I'm really amazed at the WSJ article, and I have to assume it came from their editorial section, which is notoriously slip-shod and plays fast and loss with the facts as long as they serve it's agenda. If it's from the news section of the paper, I'd be very surprised, as it has a reputation for high standards.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
The materials were already provided and what purpose would giving the attacker money serve. How's he going to spend it?

The material cost money. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Brigade aren't exactly swimming in money. I'm swure the organizations could use the funds to buy new material, safe houses, etc.

As for giving the money to the bomber, they could use it to enjoy life for a little bit before going off to meet oblivion: nice food, nice clothes, vacation, etc.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The material cost money. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Brigade aren't exactly swimming in money. I'm swure the organizations could use the funds to buy new material, safe houses, etc.

I'm not able to comment on Hamas and Islamic Jihad but Arafat's PLO of which the al-Aqsa Brigade is part of is worth billions.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Kucinich

You mean Saddam paying the family of suicide bombers. Not exactly the same as sponsoring suicide bombings.

sig material

why? there's a big difference between the two... Saddam wasn't sponsoring suicide bombings... he was paying Palestinians money who had lost their homes due to Israeli retaliations.

[chequita guevara]

Clarke today,

It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida. Maybe the vice president was so busy running Halliburton at the time that he didn't notice.