The War in Iraq Thread (post here)

[Sirotnikov]

Instead of having zillions of small little threads for each subtopic, I think that it's worth to have a central thread on the topic of the ensuing war in Iraq.


I'll start with an article form a rather untrustable source, but it's point of view, and the fact that it's Arab based, is interesting.

Opposition: Saddam sent squads to assassinate opposition leaders in Europe; European intelligence discovers his plans

04-02-2003, 17:13

The Dutch secret service called a group of the Iraqi opposition leaders residing in Holland and alerted them against assassination operations that might target them by Iraqi regime groups, Al Bawaba.com was told Tuesday.

The name of the Iraqi military council member and secretary general of the Iraqi Center for Democratic Studies, Dr. Musaddaq Al Janabi, comes at the top of the hit list. He told Albawaba.com that the Dutch Intelligence obtained a document from the office of the Iraqi Ambassador to Algeria, Awad Fakhri, with the names of the Iraqi opposition prominent leaders in Europe to be assassinated.

“The list includes many names of opposition leaders in Holland in addition to others in Britain,” Janabi told Albawaba.com, indicating that the names of General Tawfiq Al Yaseri and leader of the Kurdish National Unity party, Jalal Al Talibani, were on the list.

Janabi added that the Iraqi intelligence contacted his family in Iraq on a previous occasion and told them that Saddam Hussein issued an amnesty for me and that I would be promoted to the rank of a general by law. Saddam’s agents told his family also that all his properties would be returned to him provided that he returns home and abandons the opposition.

Afterwards, Janabi pointed out, he received life threats because he turned down the offer and told them that he would return his own way with all the opposition leaders.

Janabi conveyed Saddam thinks that if he threatens the European security, the European governments will face pressure by their people to stop their support for the USA.

Previous reports indicated that the Iraqi president had formed special squads to operate in Europe and some Arab countries, including Syria and Jordan, in order to assassinate Iraqi opposition leaders and other intellectuals who were forced to leave Iraq. This came in view of the fact that these leaders refused his amnesty and temptations for high ranks and other incentives. (Albawaba.com)

[Az]

Yay! an iraq thread! I've been waiting for one of these!

[lord of the mark]

I prefer threads on subtopics, but thats just me.

[lord of the mark]

I note the "vilnius 10" will be issuing a statement tomorrow on the need to enforce 1441. I think that includes all the baltic states, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia.

So we have the 8 plus the 10, for 18.

In the axis of weasels we have France, germany, belgium, lux, greece, serbia, russia, belarus, ukraine(?), sweden, finland, 11
undecided - Netherlands, Norway, Iceland(?)

[DuncanK]

I vote for unitopic threads. Since they don't exist I vote for making threads with the least amount of subtopics.

[Willem]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


In the axis of weasels we have France, germany, belgium, lux, greece, serbia, russia, belarus, ukraine(?), sweden, finland, 11
undecided - Netherlands, Norway, Iceland(?)

Include Canada. We won't support any actions unless they go through the UN.

Kind of ironic that the countries that are supporting Bush are the ones with the most to gain from American financial support.

Coincidence?

[Sirotnikov]

Ok, why don't you at least reply to the article I quoted?

[Sava]

Not much to reply to Siro... it's interesting, and almost goes without saying that Saddam wants to kill opposition leaders.

[Sirotnikov]

How about this then:

At Home, the FBI Keeps Tabs On Iraqis
Hoping to prevent terror in the U.S. in the event of war, the bureau is watching some of Saddam's suspected spies

By ELAINE SHANNON, TIM BURGER AND DOUGLAS WALLER
TIME Magazine

Tuesday, Feb. 04, 2003
FBI agents are keeping a tight watch on a handful of suspected Iraqi intelligence officers in the US, according to government sources. They're also quietly keeping looser tabs on as many as 1,000 Iraqi nationals considered "persons of interest" because they are suspected to be fervent Saddam partisans. These covert monitoring programs, along with a recently disclosed overt FBI effort to interview about 50,000 Iraqi emigres scattered around the US, are aimed at spotting early warning signs that the Baghdad regime is attempting to organize terrorist attacks on US soil.

Senate Intelligence Committee member Evan Bayh, D-Ind., believes one reason Saddam has sought chemical and biological weapons may be to blackmail the US into standing down if he invades Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or other neighbors. "To smuggle a few vials of anthrax or some other sinister agent like that into our country is far easier than a nuclear weapon," says Bayh. Saddam could then threaten: "You want to stop my action here? Fine. But you should know what I have in Los Angeles, you should know what we have in Chicago, or fill in the blank." Or, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told members of the House last week, according to Congressional sources, Saddam could strike inside the U.S. by handing off horrific substances to terrorist groups able to operate here.

Either way, US experts believe the Iraqi intelligence service will set the plots in motion, then recruit or extort amateurs to do the dirty work. That's why the FBI is aggressively monitoring the 20 or so employees of Baghdad's mission to the United Nations and the smaller Iraqi interest section at the Algerian Embassy in Washington. Some of them are believed to be professional spies, others "co-opted" to do the intelligence service's bidding. "The fact the Iraqi regime doesn't have a business presence, an airlines presence or a diplomatic presence takes away a platform Saddam could have used" for spying and terrorism, says a retired FBI counter-espionage veteran. "The Iraqi intelligence apparatus wordwide was dramatically diminished in the Persian Gulf crisis." In 1991, the U.S. expelled most Iraqi diplomats, including all known Iraqi intelligence officers using diplomatic or business cover. The CIA and FBI passed information about Iraqi agents and assets to allied security services. "We shared the names with each other so they couldn?t reappear somewhere else," says the ex-G-man. According to the Washington Post, the CIA is currently conducting a similar intelligence-sharing program to expose and neutralize Iraqi agents worldwide.

FBI agents believe even one or two Iraqi agents could do a lot of damage. Small amounts of chemical or biological agents could be secreted in diplomatic pouches dispatched to the Iraqi UN mission, located across the street from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's residence in Manhattan, to the Iraqi interest section in Washington's ritzy Kalorama Triangle or smuggled across the US-Canadian border.

When it comes to the risky work of planting lethal substances or detonating bombs, Saddam is not likely to expose his few trained agents. In the past, says an FBI veteran, "They've used people who are expendable" — and amateurish. During the Persian Gulf war, two Iraqi students blew themselves up trying to bomb a US Information Service building in Manila. FBI laboratory scientists who examined an unexploded bomb recovered in 1991 from the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Jakarta, a second device intercepted by Turkish authorities and a third bomb seized in April, 1993, by Kuwaiti police when they arrested 10 Iraqis for plotting to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush determined, says a retired FBI agent, that "the wiring board was done by the same person." The conclusion: all four devices were built by Baghdad.

The FBI is worried that Iraqi agents will try to coerce students and other Iraqi nationals in the US into participating in terrorist plots by threatening to torture and kill their relatives back home. "They've raised family extortion to new level," says one veteran counter-terror hand. That concern is behind the FBI's 50,000 interviews in immigrant communities — agents hope reluctant recruits will blow the whistle on Saddam's schemes.

To prevent Iraqi agents from making contact with al-Qaeda fanatics willing and able to carry out terror schemes inside the U.S., the FBI is expected to dust off a few tricks developed during the Cold War to "bumper-lock" — confuse and immobilize — the KGB. A favorite: waves of double-agents, called "cold walk-ins," approach enemy agents and "volunteer" for nasty missions. If the ploy works, the FBI has achieved a penetration. Sooner or later the walk-ins are revealed as plants. IF they're burned a few times, so the theory goes, the Iraqis will suspect and reject even bonafide volunteers from al-Qaeda.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
Ok, why don't you at least reply to the article I quoted?

So what, the Israelis have done the same thing. IIRC, they were caught red handed in England a number of years ago.

[Pekka]

I'm going to have to defend our country, we have stated that we will go what security council says. Or if the evidence is good, so we're not that against. But I agree we are sissies and need to do some thinking before we sell ourselves like that.

[Sava]

Contrary to the stereotypical "liberal" viewpoint, I don't think that surveillance is necessarily a bad thing. Sure, the whole big brother thing bothers me, but I know that the government isn't going to waste it's time with me if I'm not planning to blow up a bunch of people. So ....

[Pekka]

Also you have to think about this more. Many of these countries are NOT NATO members, or NOT even allied in any military way, or do not have a veto in UN. Many of these countries also has said they will get along if everyone agrees.

So, in the axis of weasel, like you put it, it only matters what France, Germany and Russia thinks. And that's that.

[Sirotnikov]

So what, the Israelis have done the same thing. IIRC, they were caught red handed in England a number of years ago.

huh?
what were they going to do? kill Israeli left wingers / right wingers?

[Pekka]

Yeah, I don't know if it's only leftist propaganda, but several papers have said in last few weeks that Israel also sent 'squads' in other countries including friendly countries to take some people out, including their citizens. I'm not going to say anything else about this news, because I don't know if it's true or not.

Besides, we have a hippie for foreign minister.. he really was a hippie, and still is. And everytime he opens his mouth, we have to be ashamed, because he says what he thinks, not what the official opinion is. He almost wrecked our relations with Israel some time ago, going about his hippie leftists crap. I'm glad he got angry reception in here, because he's such ... damn those hippies!