Stalin and Hitler, sitting in a tree… I think in the 1930s the Germans did some tank development in the Soviet Union, or not. I can’t seem to find that on the internet.
Fox News? Of the hundred odd notes in that one article I provided, I don’t recall seeing one mention of Fox News. There were some decidedly “conservative” news sources cited, along with some “mainstream” news sources.
xtisme, smart historical person.
Beagle: you are ignoring the OP.
Speaking of history:
This hijack to Hitler and Stalin is interesting to me, because it makes me stand more in awe of the far outlook England and the US had in accepting Stalin as an ally. I will always say that, for the war on terror, Saddam could have been our Stalin. Of course, I am saying that once the war on terror was under control (Capturing or killing Osama and henchmen was the priority IMO) that then we would again go after Saddam.
If you still want to follow a WWII analogy, it would be necessary to imagine Roosevelt deciding to attract the USSR and at the same time, Germany and Japan!
I’m ignoring the OP? To me the whole point is, was / was not there a relationship? I cited an article which cites a lot of other cites. These relationships are complex and not so simple as to say that any one person or group of people does everything. Al Qaeda isn’t the Marine Corps. Mukhabarat is not the State Department.
Just scroll down past a few dozen sources and click the interviews with Iraqis. Credible? I don’t live there.
Here is an example of why things are complicated. Is this guy now cooperating with the Iranians?
We now know he is there, I would argue. He could be meeting with people and designing missiles for the next several years, or play golf in his early retirement.
Saddam help us in the war on terror? Seriously, go read that entire article and at least judge the cites from “experts” and the “mainstream” media. Saddam does not want to openly associate with al Qaeda terrorists, and vice versa.
The whole point of al Qaeda (among other ramblings) was getting the US the heck out of Saudi Arabia and Iraq and establishing a theocracy over the whole region. Just read what they say. Again, linked in the article. That’s better than a marriage of convenience right now – that’s virtual necessity.
I have no doubt there are links betweeen people who are in different groups or factions, where those people and groups share similar or the same agendas. I also fear this tagging of individuals and groups is a convenience of the westen mindset; ‘this guy belongs in this box and this box has this capability (we think) and speaks to this other box’. It don’t work that way for them, folks!
As I understand it, it’s more homogenous and loose. Guy has a gun, guy worked for the Taliban a while cos they fed him, knew a couple of dudes who got fed better by ObL’s guys so he did a little bomb-making with them. Those guys then went one way and our guy went another. Now Iraq’s kicking off, someone else will feed him for a while . . . one day he might learn to read and write, maybe not. What ‘twin towers’ ?
At the administration level. History shows ‘terrorist’ groups always connect, they have much to gain from sharing information, skills and resources. Be stupid not to; ask the old IRA who had links with/in, for example, Libya, South America, Lebanon, Germany, Holland, Spain, etc . . it’s the way it has to be.
It only became an issue *in relation to Iraq *becasue Bush was looking for justifications, as many as possible. Or just one, even. In any other circumstances, it’s a given.
They were just too smart for him, this time. Looks like folks have been learning.
Beagle:
The problem is that the footnotes in that article do not link to the news sources, but to the same article in “Worldtreats”.
That sounds more like an Ann Coulter maneuver. 
Seriously, a link to the sources will be better so then we can judge if the implications in the article are valid or not.
And you asked were Fox was in all this, that is why I pointed to the OP, Fox and the Weekly Standard are the reason why we are having this exercise.
It’s all a lie, cleverly footnoted to deceive us. Just go read the interviews. I cited those in my first “Attack Iraq” thread back in the good old days before the war. Many of the other terrorist connections are well known.
This is not earth-shaking news except at DU.
“Worldtreats”? I wish. That’s something we all could use occasionally. Given my nick, maybe I should go feed my youngest beagle to shut her up.
For the record, I only lurk at DU. I have also said before that the reason I am active in the SDMB, is that I do not believe in ignoring anybody’s points of view. On the whole, on this subject, I agree with London_Calling.
That BTW, does not exclude that the report by Feith in The Weekly Standard, Fox news, etc was a plant.
Boy, just wait till Ann Coulter finds out that the Weakly Standard had a hand in leaking top secret documents and damaging national security! She’ll rip them a brand new Nixon! One thing she won’t tolerate, its treasonous behavior that damages national security!
And doesn’t Rush come back tomorrow? Boy, I bet he really blasts those guys, huh? Huh?
A very good analysis of the story and its sources is here, at Mr. Josh Marshall’s invaluable blog Talking Points Memo. Basicly, he points out that everything cited in the “leaked” memo was old news: Mr. Feith merely compiled everything he could put hand to, regardless of the validity of the source.
"So, the first point to make is that there seems to be little if anything here that the folks in the rest of the Intel Community – outside of Special Plans – did not see before concluding that there were no significant links between Iraq and al Qaida.
Point two is that Feith’s shop, the Office of Special Plans, the original source of this memo, gained an apparently richly-deserved reputation for what intel analysts call cherry-picking. That is, culling raw intel data to find all the information that supports the conclusion you want to find and then ignoring all the rest. "
News – planted or so negligent it’s unbelievable – tricking me? Could. Not. Happen. Did a computer glitch scramble all the “one second after discovery” WMD posts? Oh, that was later. Could. Happen. Eventually it became a game: “Mobile bioweapons labs”? Um, Ice cream trucks? “Traces of chemical weapons.” Pesticides? “Chemical suits.” Raincoats?
One breathless reporter after another with their imbedded “scoop.” You could see the Army guys back there… “Dude, chill out.” “This is SO a false positive.” *Nobody wearing masks in background. * The DoD was much more responsible than the media that wanted to get every so-called discovery (hastily noted as officially “very preliminary”) on the air for rampant speculation, and ratings. Those matter also.
Wait, if I ignore DU’s point of view, how do I know what it is? Better question, how did I know it was YOU that surfs there?!!! Oh, I didn’t. 
World treats? I meant “World threats” but yes, time to feed the doggie :). Just don’t forget: Fox news is famous for giving treats to entertain their biased audience.
elucidator: I had the felling that was going to be the case: old news put together in a misleading way.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46460-2003Nov15.html
And this just in…
CIA Finds No Evidence Hussein Sought to Arm Terrorists
[znip]
"Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator there; and military officials.
“No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists,” Cordesman wrote of Kay’s briefing. “Only possibility was Saddam’s Fedayeen [his son’s irregular terrorist force] and talk only.”
I worry about Mr. Feith, I fear he isn’t spending enough time with is family.
I forget, does it help or hurt the Amdin’s case that they couldn’t known whether or not Hussein intended to give banned bio-weapons to terrorists?
Ah, SimonX, there’s the catch. What the Administration was saying back then was that maybe, someday, sometime, Saddam might just possibly decide to give some terrorist to be identified in the indefinite future biological agents. I t was irrelevant that we had no reliable information that Saddam was about to do that or had the weapons to give. That is why it was referred to as a preemptive invasion–also known as shoot now and ask questions afterward. When you act to preempt the possible no one can say you were wrong because no body can show that beyond doubt the possible would not happen.
Damn you´re dead right Spavined Gelding, :eek: just :eek:
They are going to get away with it.
By the way, Xtime, Beagle, I stand corrected, I should check my very-shadowy-corners-of-history- books more often; now that you mention it I remember hearing somewhere about the tanks affair.
No worries Ale…I live to serve. 
-XT
I’m pretty sure that the tank incident actually occurred in 1939-1940 (ie after the non-aggression pact) when Soviet attaches visiting a German tank factory did not believe that the German PzKfw IV was their heaviest tank. This clued in German intelligence that the Russians most likely had heavier tanks in production or development (which they did in both the KV series and the T-34).
On the more general point of Russo-German co-operation, the existing co-operation from the 1920s was forbidden by Hitler when he arose to power in 1933. This was much to the annoyance of the army as it had found Russian testing grounds very useful for testing new models of tanks and aircraft well away from western observers, both items being forbidden to Germany under the Versailles treaty. Co-operation resumed after the 1939 pact and this is the extent of it that I am aware of:
a. Very large scale provision of strategic materials by the Soviet Union to Germany, most notably oil
b. Provision of technical drawings, machine tools, industrial equipment, some weapon examples, and an incomplete cruiser by Germany to the Soviet Union
c. German refusal to allow war materials destined for Finland to cross its territory during the Russo-Finnish Winter War
d. Dual German and Russian invasion of Poland, and division of the country, and agreement to split the Baltic states between them (in the event Russia took them all and Germany took a larger slice of central Poland as compensation)
e. German pressure on Romania to give in to Russian territorial demands
f. Agitation by the Western European communist parties for an end to the war after the Polish surrender. This was directed by the Comintern at behest of the Russians
g. Provision of Soviet icebreakers in the arctic circle for German merchant raiders
Items D and G are explicitly active military co-operation
No, they only signed non-agression treaty and divided Poland.
Kind of like Brazil and Argentina would sign non-agression treaty and divide Uruguay. More like slicing the cake…
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Concerning the possibility of interaction and/or cooperation between Iraqi Baath and Al-Qaida.
During GWI Iraqi parked their Air Force in Iran, to prevent its destruction. That was less than 3 years after the end of Iraq-Iran war, which was extremely bloody, lasted almost a decade, killed more than 1,000,000 people and is still remembered in both countries like WWI is remembered in Europe. If such an accomodation was possible so soon, than anything was theoretically possible between SH and ObL. The extent of cooperation between USSR and Weimar/Nazi Germany was demonstrated already by Eolbo. “Politics makes strange bedfellows” is a very old adage.