Oh, puh-leeze. Rjung absolutely nailed your ass to the wall, and this is the best you can do?
Do you want to provide specifics or just make blind assertions? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Nailed my ass to the wall? Let’s go back to my posts, shall we?
In my original post, I said:
Here we go again: It appears as if we may have found some banned chemicals, including a mixture of cyclosarin and mustard gas. I guess we’ll have to wait on this one again.
Hmm…what could I have possibly meant by “I guess we’ll have to wait on this one again?” Oh yeah, it really sounds like I’m just jumping to the conclusion that we’ve found “the smoking gun.” WTF?
And another of my posts:
Very true. I shouldn’t have expressed that so simplistically. That particular line, as well as the one that followed, are generally directed towards a few (not all) of my fellow college brethren, who basically object to the war on the grounds that there is a Republican in office. I realize that not all people who are against this war think that way, but there are certainly a vocal minority who do, and it’s been too damn irritating. Thanks for letting me vent.
Let’s see. I said “I shouldn’t have expressed that so simplistically,” referring to my original post in which I lept to conclusions. I even reinforced this in a follow-up post in which I said, “SOME” and “A FEW” anti-war protestors have been harping these claims. Gee, sounds like another frikin instance of me saying, “commie pinko!” You’re frikin clueless.
Now let’s go back to your “post” again:
Rjung’s post perfectly described what this thread is all about, and I note that nowhere do you dispute the substance of what he (or she) said – you’re just arguing with the particularities of his phrasing. Best just give up and admit that you’re completely in the wrong. In the long run, it will hurt less.
He NEVER provided any particularities. They’re all GENERALIZATIONS. Can your mind grasp that concept? He categorized the ENTIRE “pro-war” movement as nothing but bloodthirsty hawks who believe anyone who disagrees is a “commie pinko.” What kind of frikin’ logic is that?!?! Yet, you follow it. Go figure. I should give up and admit that I’m completely in the wrong? No, that would be you, for completely basing your arguments on generalizations and assumptions. Now that I’ve exposed you and nailed your ass to the wall, I’ll expect an apology. Thanks.
tomndebb: Thanks for the info regarding the NY Times situation. I rescind my previous comment regarding that particular claim.
GigObuster’s spot on, IMHO. The difficulties the UK security agencies have had dealing with Downing Streets desire to paint Saddam in as bad a light as possible have been steadily leaked, sorry ‘reported’.
MI5/6 don’t like their factual information being managed by a party political elite for political ends. In their view, what they do is in the in the national interest, not to be made self-serving capital out of. I believe they’ve made that quite clear in recent weeks.
Thus far, every cooperative ‘link’ between Saddam and OBL has been discredited - anyone remember that odd one about the meeting between representatives in Prague ? Indeed, I believe there is some evidence that OBL has tried, on at least two occsasions, to kill Saddam – but then who hasn’t ?
‘Ideologically opposed’ would be about as accurate as it gets - OBL calls Saddam a bad Muslim, and OBL’s big on Islam.
There is evidence of South Korean officials meeing North Korean officials, the first since North Korea claimed to the US that it had nuclear devices.
This obviously means that South Korea is supporting and helping the North Korean nuclear policy.
Mr Robert Mugabe attended a heads of state meeting for African and Europena leaders in France late on last year, this obviously menas that Chiraq is complicit in the policies of land eviction in Zimbabwe.
The singer Lulu is working on behalf of a charity in Sri Lanka, assisting locals with basic needs, it is obvious that she is helping out the Tamil Tigers gain control of the northen end of the island.
So what we have here at most, is a purported meeting between representatives of the Iraqi regime, and Al-Qaeda, absolutely nothing else.
Yes there might be more to come, but it seems there is a certain amount of indecent haste to provide the evidence that would fit with the reasons given by GWB for starting this war.
I could agree that Saddam was a despot who needed to be removed because of his human rights record, but humanitarian reasons seem to generally be lacking when first rate powers tolerate such regimes in oiless nations.
Saddams appalling human rights record has not been used as a reason for this war, and yet it is the only one so far that stands up to scrutiny. It has of course been used as an add-on by afterthought since this overwhelming amount of evidence for other matters has remained stubbornly elusive.
I would be prepared to accept as evidence, the US publishing some of its so so secret information on the location of these materials, and then actually going to said location and finding it.
The US is now clearly involved in a fishing trip they think they know what they are looking for, but not where or how much, basically the CIA and all the rest seem to have screwed up again.
Weren’t you the person who chastised the administration for misleading the public about how difficult the war would be? Remember? It was back during those halcyon “quagmire” days when the “no blood for oil” gang could crow about all these “lies,” before those contentions were rendered laughable with stunning swiftness. Weren’t you the same person who used these very same thoughts to support the notion that the Iraqi Minister of Information really wasn’t much different in terms of honesty than Rumsfeld and that anyone who felt differently was “amazingly naive”? The friggin’ Iraqi Minister of Information, that paragon of honest discussion–any of this ringing a bell?
Yeah, right, I thought that was you. You have clearly earned the right to chastise others for a supposed rush to judgment. :rolleyes:
Milo – The US trained OBL and it gave Saddam the cultures with which he allegedly created WMD – all that stuff comprises rather stronger “links” than trying to establish some form of ‘link’ here and from that extrapolating a connection with the events of 9/11.
If anything, the US / CIA / Rumsfeld is the link between the two - he’s the guy that did all the dealing.
Well, you can forget about your side note: it is irrelevent. Just before the US declared war, Hans Blix said that he’d only need 2-3 more weeks to complete his inspections. The US apparently knew Iraq had WMD, and hence should have found them in even less time than Hans Blix required to complete his inspections.
That seems rather uncalled for. Certainly one could make equivalent speculations that the Telegraph has a large cadre of Arabic translators, or has had the foresight to stake out some of the more interesting sites. It could also be that incriminating documents are so thick on the ground that it’s not hard to find interesting stuff.
As for the Al Queda connection – even if, as GIGOBuster’s cite of the BBC indicates, this meeting went nowhere – does the (if these documents hold up to scrutiny) now established fact that Iraq was attempting to form ties with anti-American terrorist groups mean nothing?
It seems to me that a good part of the rationale for the war went something like:
a. Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and they are eagerly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
b. Iraq is supporting and/or developing ties with terrorist organizations.
c. We really, really don’t want the stuff mentioned in (a) getting into terrorist’s hands.
d. This presents a clear and present danger to the US.
Now (d) is where the administration lost my confidence – I was never convinced that the danger was immediate. But (a) seems indisputable – they haven’t found the stuff in quantities that would be dangerous in open warfare, but I think the evidence supports the existence of this stuff in Iraq pre-March 2003 in amounts that would be very dangerous in a terrorist attack.
(b) is supported by this document. OK, so maybe Iraq and Al Qaeda decided that they don’t work and play well together. They’re not the only extra-national terrorist group on the block – just one of the better funded and organized.
So we’re not finding a lot of evidence that * contradicts * the argument above – the missing piece to me is the “immediate danger” part.
As for rjung’s list of reactions to news – it seems fairly accurate, but to be fair, you do have to add a fifth item:
The anti-war contigent immediately leaps forward declaring “The evidence isn’t convincing enough and besides, it looks fishy.”, “The intelligence was wrong about the uranium so this intelligence is wrong too.”, not to mention, “It doesn’t matter what you find, we didn’t know about it before the war so the war was illegal.”
Both sides of this debate have had their knee jerk reactions and the beam in the eye of the anti-War crowd is just as big as the beam in the eye of the pro-war apologists.
Even if it can be proven that Iraq met with al-Qa’eda five years agto, so what? That’s a long way from proving hat Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, whixch is what the Bushistas have so desparately wanted to imply.
Furthermore, even if we find a video tape of Saddam and OBL together, cackling over the plans for 9/11, that still will not have justified the invasion. All that matters is what Bush knew before the invasion, ande clearly, he knew jack shit. He just claimed to have some extra super duper double-secret information that even the CIA didn’t know about (remember, even the CIA said that Bush was full of shit on the WMD claims). Shrubya was just gambling and hoping that some WMDs would be turned up quickly after the invasion and then voila that would just so happen to jibe with his extra super duper double-secret information.
Only nothing has turned up, so either his information was shit or it never existed. I know the WH is floating a cover story now that Iraq destroyed all the WMDs right before the invasion. That explanation is logistically improbable and would not explain the total disappearance of any parts, factories, labs etc. Even destroyed WMDs would be discoverable.
That’s not a nitpick, inasmuch as the usual suspects always blame the administration for this. Anyone who’s paying any attention should admit that the Bush Administration throughout this war has been very cautious about making claims.
EVERY time I’ve heard a government spokesman weigh in on one of these supposed finds, he’s said something like, “Let’s not jump to conclusions yet. We’re confident we’ll find something, but whether this particular find is a ‘smoking gun’ will have to wait for verification. It may turn out to be nothing.”
So how do all these false positives happen? Simple. The first reports come from embedded reporters in the field. This means the tests were carried out with field testing kits. These kits are intentionally designed to be overly sensitive, on the theory that it’s better to give off a false positive than to miss a deadly chemical. Also, it’s easier to make a field test that tests for a single compound that’s present in a wide range of dangerous materials (as well as regular materials like pesticides) than to try make a kit that can target dozens of different specific agents.
So what happens is the soldiers find a few barrels, and the field test reads positive for ‘potential chemical agents’. The reporters report the find, the wire services pick it up, and soon we have “POSSIBLE CHEMICAL WEAPONS FOUND” headlines.
Then the sample goes back for full testing in a gas chromatograph, and it turns out to be weed killer.
That said, ABC is reporting this morning that a third test of the chemicals found a couple of days ago at that large military complex still came up positive for WMD. And given that the barrels weren’t found in an ‘agricultural’ complex, but out in the field surrounded by missiles and mobile labs, and this one’s looking more and more likely. But still, let’s wait until the government itself weighs in on this.
I’d suggest you actually read the Telegraph article. Then click on the link in the upper right of that page and read some more of what was said in the documents, verbatim. And again, these are from Saddam’s intelligence agency.
Here’s an excerpt:
These aren’t chemicals that need a series of verification tests. There isn’t going to be any, “After further review, these documents don’t mean what they appear to mean.”
**
Cling to that position as you see fit. But it appears it is about to become morally and logically untenable to an awful lot of people.
If Iraq was pursuing a relationship with the terrorist organization responsible for (at the time) the bombings of U.S. embassies, and later 9/11 it is full justification for what occurred in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein, in addition to being one of the most oppressive, brutal and aggressive leaders in the Middle East and the world, was actively affiliating with a group that was actively attacking America. If that isn’t enough justification for you, I don’t know what to say to you.
GIGObuster:
**
Huh?
I hardly see how the link you’ve provided trumps what’s been discovered in recent days in the bombed headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence agency. I rather imagine British intelligence was not privy to this explicit of information at the time they made their reports three-plus months ago.
Perhaps Saddam’s and Osama’s relationship did wane in the years since the late '90s. (And where’s the incontrovertible evidence of that?)
If Saddam was pursuing a relationship with the terrorist organization actively attacking the United States, while at the same time either developing, continuing to possess or failing to adequately account for significant stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, to a good many people, that seems to offer justification for the action the U.S., U.K. and others took.
This will particularly be true for those who don’t base their judgement on their dislike for Bush, and their desire not to vindicate him or make him look good. Which, as Shane has pointed out, I don’t intend to say is everybody opposed to the war. But I also wouldn’t say the number is insignificant.
Apos:
That makes the assumption that the U.S., U.K. and others took this action when they were knowingly uninformed. Where did you get that idea?
One significant reason that the action in Iraq was taken was precisely because we were “uninformed.” How many times must this be pointed out? It is demonstrably proveable that Iraq was not complying substantively with U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding its verifiable disarmament. That’s not a Bush and Blair position; it’s a Hans Blix position.
We knew what they once had; we knew what they refused to or could not account for.
RickJay:
**
And I am in perfect agreement with you. As far as I’ve seen, so, too, is the U.S. government.
I do hope, however, that you will be willing to acknowledge that the drawn-out nature of the diplomatic avenues that were tried prior to this war would have afforded Saddam Hussein ample opportunities to secret away any WMD that he may have had, thus making it difficult to find in a matter of days or weeks, without the help of informants.
We have a very good idea of what Saddam had; we also have the knowledge that he was unable or unwilling to account for what he had.
You seem to be saying, “Why is it taking so long to show us the smoking gun?” See what I said two paragraphs above. Also, factor in what exactly our military is doing over there right now. They were in a hot war only a few weeks ago. Now, they are attempting to secure a large nation in a time of radical power transition.
There hasn’t been a thing to-date that’s occurred in Iraq that has shown the Bush-Blair-Aznar position to be wrong, and much to show it was correct. Do you disagree?
blowero:
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First of all, whether a connection was proven or not seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
This position is unbelievable. And seems to be uniquely held by those who would not be satisfied with anything less than Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein starring together in a new sitcom entitled “We’re Going to Wipe Out the USA.”
Following this position, what America and the UK were supposed to do is sit idly by, despite the evidence that Saddam was not accounting for significant amounts of WMD. Despite the mountains of circumstantial evidence that WMD production continued unabated. Despite the demonstrable evidence that Saddam was evading and rendering irrelevant the U.N. weapons inspection process. Despite the evidence - now proven - that Iraq and Al Qaeda were at the very least quite interested in teaming up in recent years.
Magically, the U.S. was supposed to provide a smoking gun, from outside Iraq. Circumstantial evidence would not do.
Nope. The U.S. and U.K. did what they should have done. They demanded Saddam account for WMD he was refusing to account for, or face military consequences. (Ironically, a position that was held by the entire U.N. Security Council as recently as last October.)
Saddam didn’t, and he faced military consequences.
Pjen:
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These contacts occurred in 1998, after the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa. After Al Qaeda-supported guerillas killed U.S. servicemen in Somalia. And after OBL made public his full support, if not involvement in, the first World Trade Center bombing.
rjung:
Go read. Don’t read interpretations. Read first-source. The Telegraph is providing it for you.
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I think Saddam being involved with an organization that perpetrated 9/11 is quite enough for some of us, thanks.
Did Saddam Hussein know at the time he is showing this eagerness to affiliate with Al-Qaeda what it stated its goals were, in regard to the U.S.? Do you think that, just maybe, that might have had something to do with this seeming eagerness?
Do you think that the U.S. might have some reason to worry about both things they knew, and things they didn’t know? Do you think those worries were probably heightened when Saddam Hussein refused to answer straightforward questions about the whereabouts of significant portions of his known WMD stockpiles?
Sorry, but I think your position is ridiculous - that Saddam could look to affiliate with Al-Qaeda, knowing what it’s about. But if no direct link can be proven that Iraq was involved in 9/11, it’s “so what?”
A) 1998: Iraq and al Qaeda purportedly engage in talks
B) 2001 - 2002: Bush (and to an extent, Blair) continue to link Iraq and al Qaeda as partners while providing no evidence beyond a mis-reported connection in Prague
C) Feb, 2003: British Intelligence releases a report noting that Iraq and al Qaeda engagd in talks, but that such talks disintegrated
D) April 2003: The Telegraph purportedly finds notes indicating the 1998 meetings (and no follow-up information).
The issue is not that the British Intelligence report is three months old, it is that the “new” documentation supports only the report that British Intelligence already acknowledged three months ago. No new information has been provided, showing that the 1998 meetings resulted in a partnership and the “new” documentation does not contradict the Intelligence report.
Well, it already has, hasn’t it, Milo. Long before Fearless Misleader had so much as a scrap of evidence, he was busily fostering the notion that Saddam and AlQ were in cahoots, an accusation that had no more substantiation than reports of the nesting habits of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Please note that this connection was not forged with evidence, but by the age-old technique of innuendo and implication.
Consider this: if you were ObL, would you trust Saddam? Would you place operational intelligence in his hands? Conspire with him?
Would Saddam rat out ObL to the US, in order to gain some advantage? In a Baghdad minute.
Which leaves us with the question of why would Saddam have any contact with a sworn enemy? Why did the US have extensive contacts with the Soviet Union? In order to conspire with Kruschev?
Or mightn’t it be that Saddam was seeking to keep ObL off of his case? Your interpretation buggers the question. You imply, without so much as a hint of proof, not the faintest odor of verification, that any contact between our enemies must, necessarily, be in furtherance of skullduggery against us.
And it ain’t necessarily so, no, it ain’t necessarily so.
I agree that the fact that the two bad guys might have had some contact has no real significance unless it was proven that they were planning something bad.
BTW, some European countries were dealing with Arafat when he was still considered a terrorist by the USA. Later Arafat was a guest of the president of the US.
How quickly we forget. The Prague meeting isn’t the ONLY evidence of a Saddam-al-Qaida connection. The government’s case was:
The possibility of the Prague meeting.
The cooperation of and presence of al-Qaida in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, working with Ansar al-Islam.
During testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in mid-February, CIA Director George Tenet added, “Iraq has, in the past, provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It has also provided training in poisons and gases to two al Qaeda associates.”
The presence in Baghdad of a senior al-Qaida official who was there for treatment in a hospital. He later turned up in Europe, and the apartment he was in tested positive for Sarin.
Unless I’m forgetting something, those were the major pieces of information the U.S. had which pointed to a link between al-Qaida and Iraq.
Since the war started, plenty of evidence has cropped up to corroborate most of these claims. al-Qaida members have been involved in attacks throughout Iraq. Training camps have turned up:
As more and more documents are discovered, and more of these captured leaders begin to talk, is anyone willing to bet that the claims the Bush Administration made about al-Qaida are essentially vindicated?
So much for one Bush ‘lie’. When WMD are discovered, that will disprove another ‘lie’. You guys are running out of ‘lies’ to dump at the feet of the Bush administration.
Sam fer goodness sake, the stuff you cite isn’t just conjecture but it’s conjecture about a group not in alliance with Saddam but hundreds of miles away from Baghdad and in opposition to Saddam:
"Ansar established itself late in 2001, as the war in Afghanistan was winding down, uniting previously splintered Islamic parties. It occupied a border region in northeastern Iraq that has been out of Saddam Hussein’s control since 1991.
The group waged war against the zone’s Kurdish government, destabilizing the region with assassination attempts, guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings. “
Saddam hasn’t had control of the north of Iraq since the no-fly zones were implemented.
other than that, you were spot on !
btw, this is very old news. Nothing was proven then and nothing new has cropped since up that’s worth a Rumsfeld having a wank.
Werewolf of London, clear something up for me British slang wise. I can understand how, due to his political orientation, that Rummy classifies as a “right wanker”. Are there “left wankers” as well?
U.S. Rangers and the Kurdish pesh merga have been breaking up Ansar al-Islam training camps since the very first week of the war–long before the capture of Baghdad. In none of those camps have we found any documentation linking al Qaeda to the Iraqi military, to the Ba’ath party, or to Saddam Hussein. Ansar al-Ilam was there because it was a region of Iraq that was protected from the Iraqi government (and where the inter-group hostility among rival Kurdish factions meant that no one would assemble a united force to challenge them).
The presence and activities of Ansar al-Islam on nominally Iraqi soil has, thus far, provided the best evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda were not* cooperating.
