Clinton Back's Bush's War in Iraq

[Ramo]

[q]
Obviously you forget my orginal posting of the OPED WSJ peice that predated the Weekly Standard dealing with the same issue.


[/quote]

From what I've read, the Weekly Standard originally got the most credible part of the story (i.e. Feith's propaganda), which was of course carried by such paragons of journalism as Newsmax and the WSJ OP-ed section. What the WSJ came up with was the nonsense about the "similar" names on the various lists.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

So now WSJ = Newsmax



Good one Ramo.

[Giancarlo]

Anybody against the war doesn't have a clue and I don't listen to what they say either. No clue and no brain. They just liked the world as it was with Saddam murdering people. Oh well.. it is called blind ignorance.

Now that they found a clear link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, that basically proves the case for the war and makes the anti-war nuts look like absolute fools. I knew it would only be a matter of time until it got out. One of Saddam's high ranking Feyadeen officers was in fact a Al Qaeda operative. But then again to the blind peace activist, they don't give a **** about Saddam planning to blow up different sites in the US. They just want everything their way.

[Ramo]

So now WSJ = Newsmax



Good one Ramo

The OP-ed section might as well be.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

So its the universde coming to bite the admin. in the ass. Thank you universe.

Ah, so it's the universe that is trying to ruin Bush's chances at re-election, not the media. That makes sense...

BTW, nice pwning of GePap, Ogie. I always love to see other people jumping on the pile.

You mean when cut and paste man gets pasted, he must wait for others?

Lets go back to your little WS article and that Iraqi colonel- the article claims a direct link between the planning of 9/11 and Iraq. Now even Dick Cheney won't make that claim, and while I agreed with Ogie that the report only deals with 9/11 and not after or non-related matters, that Iraqi colonel story contradicts what even the admin. has said multiple times.

So how on earth would a commissioner get from the CIA or whomever claims that the US intelliegence community has not in any way accepted?

Sorry, but another logical failure for cut and paste man.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ramo

So now WSJ = Newsmax



Good one Ramo

The OP-ed section might as well be.

Right on. Lets all remember back to the piece soon after 9/11 on how the president should exploit his tmporary popularity to appoint right-wing judges. Very classy.

[Imran Siddiqui]

And Ramo's credibility on anything is shot to ****. Good job .

[GePap]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And Ramo's credibility on anything is shot to ****. Good job .

Oh, I would love to see the logic for that claim.

I have seen the WSJ op-eds. They are about as coherent as the NY Post op-eds.

[Ramo]

WASHINGTON -- The CIA concluded "a long time ago" that an al-Qaida associate who met with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia was not an officer in Saddam Hussein's army, as alleged Sunday by a Republican member of the 9/11 commission.

Commissioner John Lehman, who was Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan, said "new ... documents" indicated that "at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen," an elite army unit, "was a very prominent member of al-Qaida."

Lehman's remarks on NBC's "Meet the Press" lent support to the Bush administration's insistence that there were strong ties between Hussein and al-Qaida.

The administration official said the CIA and U.S. Army obtained the lists of members of the Fedayeen shortly after the invasion of Iraq last year. Some, he said, had names "similar to" Ahmad Hikmat Shakir. But, he said, the CIA had concluded "a long time ago" that none were the al-Qaida associate. He would not say whether the al-Qaida associate is in U.S. custody. Other sources said he was not.

A report last week by the 10-member commission concluded that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had "explored possible cooperation" with Iraq and that there had been contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida, but that these did not result in a "collaborative relationship."

Lehman said that, since the report was issued, new intelligence had arrived "from the interrogations in Guantanamo and Iraq and from captured documents. ... Some of these documents indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al-Qaida."

His comments were made after Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration's strongest advocate of an alleged link between Hussein and al-Qaida, said in an interview Friday that he, Cheney, "probably" saw intelligence not reviewed by the Sept. 11 commission.

In alleging that a Hussein army officer was an al-Qaida operative, Lehman also acknowledged that the claim "still has not been confirmed" by the commission. But he insisted that Cheney "was right when he said he may have things we [the commission] don't have yet."

An administration official familiar with the CIA intelligence on the matter identified the al-Qaida associate who met with hijackers Khalid al Midhar and Nawar al Hazmi in Kula Lampur, Malaysia, in early 2000 as Ahmad Hikmat Shakir al-Azzawi. Some of the early planning for Sept. 11 allegedly occurred at the meeting.

Lehman could not be reached for comment. Commission spokesman Jonathan Stull said the commission staff was looking into the allegations and, if deemed credible, they would be included in the final report to be released in July.

The claim that the Iraqi officer and al-Qaida figure are the same first appeared in a Wall Street Journal editorial on May 27. A similar account was then published in the June 7 edition of the Weekly Standard, which reported that the link was discovered by an analyst working for a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit under Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscia223863038jun22,0,6059318.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

I'm afraid y'all have been PWND.

And, something blatantly wrong with a WSJ Op-ed piece, how can that be?

All that's left to the story is Feith's insistence that the Iraqi embassy was particularly vehement about getting Shakir back. And I have little doubt how that'll pan out.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Ramo,

Please continue your rant on equating WSJ to disreputable sources.

Such talk only confirms your lack of objectivity and reputability.

I'll find the orginal article. It clearly indicates that the possibility existed that the personage involved may not have been the same person.

But please continue your normal hack attempts at discredit. Unlike you though, sources such as WSJ will keep an open mind and will lay out with objectivity the possibility of error.

[Ramo]

WSJ made the claim that two people with similar names are likely the same person. Maybe it said that they weren't certain, but it was an absolutely ludicrous claim to make in the first place. I, myself, share my name (not just a "similar" one) with an Islamic terrorist.

[Ramo]

And save your self-righteousness for someone who gives a damn.

And once again, WSJ news is perfectly valid, it's their OP-ed pieces that are disreputable.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Saddam's Files
New evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Thursday, May 27, 2004 12:01 a.m.

One thing we've learned about Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein is that the former dictator was a diligent record keeper. Coalition forces have found--literally--millions of documents. These papers are still being sorted, translated and absorbed, but they are already turning up new facts about Saddam's links to terrorism.
We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix. But John Ashcroft's press conference yesterday reminds us that the terror threat remains, and it seems especially irresponsible for journalists not to be open to new evidence. If the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn't it have also missed Saddam's terror links?

One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.




It is possible that the Ahmed Hikmat Shakir listed on the Fedayeen rosters is a different man from the Iraqi of the same name with the proven al Qaeda connections. His identity awaits confirmation by al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody or perhaps by other captured documents. But our sources tell us there is no questioning the authenticity of the three Fedayeen rosters. chain of control is impeccable. The documents were captured by the U.S. military and have been in U.S. hands ever since.
As others have reported, at the time of the summit Shakir was working at the Kuala Lumpur airport, having obtained the job through an Iraqi intelligence agent at the Iraqi embassy. The four-day al Qaeda meeting was attended by Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi, who were at the controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Also on hand were Ramzi bin al Shibh, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant and mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Shakir left Malaysia on January 13, four days after the summit concluded.

That's not the only connection between Shakir and al Qaeda. The Iraqi next turned up in Qatar, where he was arrested on September 17, 2001, four days after the attacks in the U.S. A search of his pockets and apartment uncovered such information as the phone numbers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers' safe houses and contacts. Also found was information pertaining to a 1995 al Qaeda plot to blow up a dozen commercial airliners over the Pacific.

After a brief detention, our friends the Qataris inexplicably released Shakir, and on October 21 he flew to Amman, Jordan. The Jordanians promptly arrested him, but under pressure from the Iraqis (and Amnesty International, which questioned his detention) and with the acquiescence of the CIA, they let him go after three months. He was last seen heading home to Baghdad.




One of the mysteries of postwar Iraq is why the Bush Administration and our $40-billion-a-year intelligence services haven't devoted more resources to probing the links between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. In his new book, "The Connection," Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard puts together all of the many strands of intriguing evidence that the two did do business together. There's no single "smoking gun," but there sure is a lot of smoke.
The reason to care goes beyond the prewar justification for toppling Saddam and relates directly to our current security. U.S. officials believe that American civilian Nicholas Berg was beheaded in Iraq recently by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, who is closely linked to al Qaeda and was given high-level medical treatment and sanctuary by Saddam's government. The Baathists killing U.S. soldiers are clearly working with al Qaeda now; Saddam's files might show us how they linked up in the first place.


Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Bolding mine.

I see no inference in this article especially the bolded part that lays claim to the certainty of the fact only the certainty of the evidence and that cross checks were ongoing.

As for self righteousnous, pot for sure.

[Ramo]

Having reading comprehension problems?:
"WSJ made the claim that two people with similar names are likely the same person. Maybe it said that they weren't certain, but it was an absolutely ludicrous claim to make in the first place. I, myself, share my name (not just a "similar" one) with an Islamic terrorist."

[Spiffor]

Ramo:
Yet more evidence that you ARE an Islamic terrorist. And anarchist on top of that