Extensive Updates to this post apologies to all:
What has always been tremendously frustrating for me regarding the Bush administration, was their allowing WMD’s to be portrayed as the central issue for going to war. Even though the Administration certainly made other tremendously strong arguments such as its violations of treaties and Saddam’s connections to terror they basically allowed the Press and Democrats to set those arguments aside by not defending them. There was so much available open source information that could have been used to destroy the meme of Saddam not having serious connections to terror that one must consider this to be one of the gravest errors of the war.
Furthermore as a parent, I can assure the President that while I would be skeptical of sending my children to war for breaking some UN resolutions, show me that he was connected to terror in the ways that are obvious from the documents attached and I will cry but help them pack. That essential point was forgotten by the Lawyers who put together the reasons for going to war. The reasons did not strike a parent as being important enough to lose a child. That point is essential. Intellectual exercises may be fine stuff for debates over coffee but show me the meat when you want to send my children to war.
Here is a letter I sent in some time ago (April 5, 2004 ) to the Opinion Journal that they helpfully posted.
The Bush administration failed to pursue its strongest reason for going to war with Saddam. The ties to terrorism and al Qaeda not the WMDs should have been its focus. While Mr. Bush has been walking out to the edge of the plank looking for the WMDs the Democrats and media have been busy little bee’s sawing off the other end by falsely stating that there were no ties to al Qaeda. The Bush administration believing it had to have the sort of evidence one would bring to court to make any of the serious charges on ties of Osama bin Laden and Saddam decided to not do anything. Nature abhors a vacuum. The Democrats stepped in and defined the terms for them and now it will be almost impossible to make the case for those ties. Had that case been made early with the evidence that is available unclassified they wouldn’t have to worry about the people losing heart in the war, instead they didn’t and now people are starting to believe the nonsense about their being no ties which leads to why are we there.The WMD violations were always the absolute weakest way to go if you were interested in having the American people behind you. Of course they were effective in bring the U.N. along, big deal. The war will be won or lost on whether the American people understand that Iraq is central the war on terror.
Bring out the evidence, explain to the people that intelligence does not provide you with courtroom quality evidence, but that the evidence of the al Qaeda and Saddam being linked goes back a long way. Then immediately respond to the unnamed sources, the fight for the hearts and minds of the American people is the most important fight yet. Do not allow disgruntled employees to destroy the war on terror.”Ultimately this was my response to 9/11 to scour open source material looking for connections. Here is a taste of the introduction to that page 0.
Bring out the evidence, explain to the people that intelligence does not provide you with courtroom quality evidence, but that the evidence of the al Qaeda and Saddam being linked goes back a long way. Then immediately respond to the unnamed sources, the fight for the hearts and minds of the American people is the most important fight yet. Do not allow disgruntled employees to destroy the war on terror.”Ultimately this was my response to 9/11 to scour open source material looking for connections. Here is a taste of the introduction to .This list started for me as basically just an area to drop links that I found interesting. That something like this has been so easy to put together is testament only to the base motives of those who say there were no links between Al Queda and Saddam. It is simply impossible to hold the view that there were no links with an honest appraisal of these connections. Furthermore to continue to hold the view that there were no links exposes you as one of three things, minority political party, traitor or idiot, which are you? It is possible to be all three, indeed in my prejudiced view it is likely.
UPDATE: Some editing done to make this a bit clearer. Also a note regarding several items that David Corn mentioned in regards to this call for articles by OSM. Let me also commend David for asking a terrific question during the OSM launch party. Why wasn’t George Tenet fired. I suspect that David has different reasons for wanting him fired than I but regardless its worthy that we both agree that he should have never received a Medal of Freedom.
David declared that if the left could not prove that the Pre War intelligence was misrepresented by the Bush administration that they simply weren’t trying hard enough, interesting. He specifically praised Carl Levin’s post on his website regarding Pre War fabrications by the Bush administration. Let’s take a look at them.
From Carl Levin’s site with my response to the right. Now some may quibble with the fact that none of this constitutes proof, to that I would answer you are absolutely correct. None of the CIA, FBI or DIA or even Foggy Bottom evidence constitutes proof…heh. Furthermore I do believe that Saddam was tied to the 9/11 attacks and am not shy of saying so.
Issue: Iraq Ties to al-Qaeda
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Administration Statements Before the War |
What the Intelligence Community Said Before the War (now declassified) |
What we amateurs know from super top secret open source information that somehow eludes the CIA,DIA and FBI. Superduper top secret info here |
| President Bush: You can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror. September 25, 2002, Photo Opportunity with President Uribe of Colombia
President Bush: Saddam Hussein would like nothing more than to use a terrorist network to attack and to kill and leave no fingerprints behind . - January 31, 2003, Remarks with Prime Minister Tony Blair On the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, where the banner said Mission Accomplished, on May 1, 2003, President Bush said We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda . |
“Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.” (emphasis added)†February 2002, Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary
This paper’s conclusions especially regarding the difficult and elusive question of the exact nature of Iraq’s relations with al-Qaida are based on currently available information that is at times contradictory and derived from sources of varying degrees of reliability (emphasis added) “ CIA report Iraqi Support for Terrorism, January 2003 Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge…. Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qa’ida … could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct. In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist terrorists in conducting a CBW attack against the United states would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him. (emphasis added) - October 1, 2002, National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction |
We must wonder exactly where this information came from if the CIA was so hampered by its lack of adequate HUMIT (Human Intelligence) that it had to ask a washed out Ex-Ambassador to go on a sensitive mission to Niger. It’s not often that a Vice President will ask for specific information, when that does happen usually competent Intelligence Operations will send their best. We have three choices here. Joe Wilson was the best person to send or the CIA wanted to sabotage the President by sending a hack or the CIA simply did not have anyone else to send. I pick the last two…
The CIA was especially capable of massive sorts of failures in relation to Iraq. Consider how often it is that an Intelligence arm is so incompetent that it’s attempt to overthrow a government not only fails with all the operatives captured but its own super duper top secret communications gear is captured and used to inform them of the plots failure. Welcome to the CIA of the 90’s. But enough pounding on the hapless CIA. Since I don’t have any HUMIT either lets just consider these facts.
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Issue: Issue: Alleged Atta Meeting in Prague with Iraqi
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Administration Statements Before the War |
What the Intelligence Community Said Before the War (now declassified) |
What we amateurs know from super top secret open source information that somehow eludes the CIA,DIA and FBI. Superduper top secret info here |
| Vice President Cheney: It’s been pretty well confirmed that he [Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. - December 9, 2001, NBC Meet the Press
Vice President Cheney: Mohammed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center…. Tim Russert: What does the CIA say about that? Is it credible? Vice President Cheney: It’s credible. - September 8, 2002, NBC Meet the Press (In January 2004, Vice President Cheney said: We did have reporting that was public, that came out shortly after the 9/11 attack, provided by the Czech government, suggesting that there had been a meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, and a man named al-Ani, who was an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague, at the embassy there, in April of ‘01, prior to the 9/11 attacks¦ That’s the one that possibly tied the two together to 9/11 .- interview with the Rocky Mountain News, January 9, 2004 ) |
Reporting is contradictory on hijacker Mohammed Atta’s alleged trip to Prague and meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer, and we have not verified his travels .(emphasis added) - June 21, 2002, CIA Report Iraq and al Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship
Some information asserts that Atta met with IIS chief¦ al-Ani, but the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on this possibility. A CIA and FBI review of intelligence and open-source reporting leads us to question the information [deleted] claimed that Atta met al-Ani. (emphasis added) - January 29, 2003, CIA Report Iraqi Support for Terrorism |
Well not only do know that Atta went to Prague several times, not the once that many try to claim, but we now also have in our hands Al Ani’s Appointment book that was acquired by Czech Intelligence after the war . That digest shows a meeting with the “Hamburg†student on the day that Atta was reported to have met with Al Ani.Atta was well known at the Hamburg student.
Keep in mind that while the CIA and FBI may question whether Atta was at that meeting the Czech Foreign Service has none. It is also worth noting that both the FBI and CIA are not the all knowing fearsome weapons of brilliance we have all hoped they were. Matter of fact that the CIA was reduced to sending Joe Wilson to Niger says a bunch about their abilities. Finally much of the doubt that the FBI and CIA have about the Atta Meeting revolves around timelines. ABLE DANGER destroyed the timelines that the FBI and CIA have been trying to sell. One of the reasons that ABLE DANGER is such a threat to most of the Washington establishment, both on the right and left. |
In closing this extensive post let me again remind you that I am but a mere amateur at this and do not claim to have any special knowledge or abilities. Perhaps many of you are saying that is obvious, that is fine with me. This has always been done by me simply as a way to understand in a small way the forces that are threatening my family. After a while it became clear that while its obvious that there are divisions in Washington between Democrat, Republican, Left and Right there is another group that we as common citizens would do well to remember. The government itself is a group of that see’s its self interest at times as avoiding the responsibility of close analysis and acts upon it. Both the left and right engage in this theater, sometimes on the same side of the fence across from us. I believe that much of the 9/11 Commission was theater intended to distract our attention from the grievous failures of our own government. Failures that have not stopped nor has there been much of an attempt to correct. We are in peril in our ignorance.
Connections and Collaborations Saddam and Al Queda 0 Terrorism 0 Iraq 0 Middle Bush 0
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[...] Pre War Open Source Intelligence Regarding Saddam’s Threat to the United States What has always been tremendously frustrating for me regarding the Bush administration, was their allowing WMD’s to be portrayed as the central issue for going to war. Even though the Administration certainly made other tremendously strong arguments such as its violations of treaties and Saddam’s connections to terror they basically allowed the Press and Democrats to set those arguments aside by not defending them. There was so much available open source information that could have been used to destroy the meme of Saddam not having serious connections to terror that one must consider this to be one of the gravest errors of the war. [...]