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Journal ceejayoz's Journal: No wonder most Yanks still think Iraq did Sept 11... 28

Journal by ceejayoz

...Cheney's still spreading the discredited rumor!

In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with a Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker five months before the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that first made the allegation.

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No wonder most Yanks still think Iraq did Sept 11... More

No wonder most Yanks still think Iraq did Sept 11...

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  • Were Saudis. Well, sorta kinda...
  • ...but unfortunately many of my compatriots can't even find Iraq on a map [cnn.com]. Many believe that the 9-11 hijackers were Iraqis [philly.com] (actually, none of them were).

    Sad. Truly sad.

    Cheers,

    Ethelred

    • hell, that's not the scariest thing... from the Iraq map article:

      • 11% can't find the US on a map
      • 49% can't find New York state on a map
      • 70% can't find New Jersey on a map
      • 29% can'f find the Pacific Ocean on a map
      • How many can find burundi? [cia.gov]

        I can find things on maps, I am a superior American Specimen. ;)
      • I'm really tempted to make a cheap New Jersey joke here.

        What blows me away is I've run into people in my area who 1) didn't know where Vancouver, BC was, 2) didn't know Vancouver, BC was in Canada, and/or 3) know that the Canadian border was 150 or so miles North of here.

        Mind you it's not that many people but enough to scare me.

        I've also run into people who say they've lived here all their life who don't know where Olympia, WA is or know that it is the state capital.
  • When the "discredited rumor" has origins like this: "Stanislav Gross, the Czech Republic's interior minister, said publicly that al-Ani and Atta had met in Prague. A short while later, Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman told Powell that the two had discussed targeting the Radio Free Europe building, not the Sept. 11 targets." - that country's interior minister and prime minister say so, and the US agencies only say that they have no proof it happened - it's not very "discredited".

    There are stronger links, t

    • the US agencies only say that they have no proof it happened

      The Czechs had reviewed records using Atta's name and his seven known aliases provided by the CIA and found nothing to confirm the April 2001 trip. Meanwhile, CIA and FBI officials were running down thousands of leads on Atta and the other 18 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 plot.

      U.S. records showed Atta living in Virginia Beach in April 2001, and they could find no indication he had left Virginia or traveled outside the United States.

      A few

      • [Absence of proof] I'd say that discredits it.

        No, it makes it unsubstantiated. Only a single source supporting the statement, with no corroborating evidence. Just like half the drivel spouted as fact on most "news" services these days, but that never stopped them...

        Similar problems call for similar solutions. The US Delta Force and the Soviet Spetznatz (sp?) special forces teams during the Cold War used similar weapons, equipment, and tactics, but that certainly doesn't mean they cooperated!

        More simil

    • You addressed one point, but convienantly ignored the leak charge. The irony of that charge made me laugh, and I don't honestly believe it(come on, an administration being honest, hah!).

      The training you are referring too took place in the largely Kurdish controlled North. An area Saddam did not have full control of after the first Gulf War due to the no-fly zone. That area would be more fairly attributed to being controlled by Iranian militants. (Hell, the entire North is/was controlled after the imple
      • You addressed one point, but convienantly ignored the leak charge. The irony of that charge made me laugh, and I don't honestly believe it(come on, an administration being honest, hah!).

        Right now, I don't know very much about what happened regarding that leak - I've only seen brief references to it. (Wrong side of the Atlantic ATM for it to get much airtime.)

        The training you are referring too took place in the largely Kurdish controlled North. An area Saddam did not have full control of after the first

        • Al Queda supported him, and the set of students he trained bears a significant resemblance in makeup to those who carried out the 911 attacks.

          e.g. they're Islamic fundamentalists? Woah, there's a shocker... :-p Got any sources on Al Qaeda supporting him? One would think the US would have paraded such a thing in front of the world and the American public, but I haven't heard anything about it.

          I haven't seen any evidence pointing to Saudi... You think it more likely that he was helped by a government
          • e.g. they're Islamic fundamentalists? Woah, there's a shocker... :-p

            It is if you believed the claim about Hussein having nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalists ;-)

            This [mirror.co.uk] made interesting reading, too; this [cnn.com] CNN report of the Al Queda tape in support of Hussein seems relevant. Far from the claimed position of regarding all countries as evil and hence his enemy, it seems Bin Laden viewed matters as Muslim vs non-Muslim - putting Iraq clearly in the former category.

            Members of the Saudi Royal Family (hu

            • Read a little more carefully, from your cnn link:
              But while the broadcast message declared solidarity with Iraqis, it made no mention of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and even denounced his socialist Baath party as "infidels."

              Infidels, the exact word used to describe Americans.

              This may have been deliberate misinformation, it may not have, but the message showed solidarity with the Iraqis, not with Hussein and the Ba'athists. A subtle, but IMO, important distinction to make unless you want to lead peop
            • Given the choice, Bin Laden would be far safer in the US than in Saudi: the US would at least be likely to provide a quick and relatively painless death, while Saudi is more likely to favor the Egyptian approach.

              I'd be extremely surprised if the US didn't honor an extradition request from Saudi Arabia for exactly that reason.
        • The incident is cropping up all over the blogsphere, even showing up in the Drudge report. I'll post a bunch of links to a JE if you want. Some have been calling it Plamegate.

          My mistake, I thought you were referring to Ansar al-Islam who have definitive and very provable ties to al Qaeda.

          The best examples of proof of your claim that I can find are here [telegraph.co.uk] and here [chron.com].

          The first is information that is dated at best. Over 5 years old and before Bin Laden bombed two of our Embassies. The second link doesn't es
          • The second link doesn't establish a clear tie to Al Qaeda, just to other terrorist groups at best and internal paramilitary forces at worst (for your argument that is).

            From that link: He said they used a Boeing aircraft to practice hijacking a plane or a bus without weapons. Later, A former Iraqi intelligence officer who defected in 2001 described "Islamicists" training on a Boeing 707 from about 1995 to 2000.

            I've seen more detailed reports from a defector, who talks about the origins of those hijackers

            • Were they 9/11 style? Or were they more Black September style(as would be fitting of his support for Palestinians)? Most of the defector information has not been found to be highly accurate to date, unfortunately.

              The camp, is, at most, a coincidence, and one that is disturbing, but it is quite the leap from that to Al Qaeda and 9/11 ties without other supporting evidence.

              There are far more than just one radical islamic group. Some share a lot more in common with Hussein than Al Qaeda does.

              Your last po
              • Were they 9/11 style? Or were they more Black September style(as would be fitting of his support for Palestinians)? Most of the defector information has not been found to be highly accurate to date, unfortunately.

                They certainly weren't Palestinians (mostly Saudi). I doubt the methods correspond, either: they appear to favor using guns smuggled on board.

                The camp, is, at most, a coincidence, and one that is disturbing, but it is quite the leap from that to Al Qaeda and 9/11 ties without other supporting

                • I've admitted to the possibility, but possibility does not mean fact. If we open this up to a discourse on the links between various international terrorist groups (as well as revolutionaries and the drug trade) we'll be here til the thread closes. As to supporting evidence, most of it has come from defectors as far as I've seen(feel free to post something from another source), and, as I addressed earlier, information from defectors has not been the most reliable to date.

                  Is Saddam linked to terrorist gro
                  • If and when the link is shown, then Bush's claim on this issue is validated.

                    No - other way round. His claim was that Hussein was not involved - why, I don't know. It's Cheney who's making the opposite claim. Hedging their bets? :)

                    Is Saddam linked to terrorist groups that could be linked to Al Qaeda, yes, this is known.

                    Unless you disbelieve all the witnesses and believe he was training a counter-terrorism team to handle the scenario of an airliner (from his non-existent airline) being hijacked, we kn

            • Let's put the question another way: Given that Hussein was training "Islamicists" in hijacking aircraft "without weapons" (which appears to mean without guns, using knives or improvised weapons instead), if those Islamicists weren't Al Queda, who were they? Which airliners were they trained to hijack using those methods? (And if the 9/11 hijackers weren't trained there, where were they trained in hijacking?)

              Probably any of the large number of other Islamic terror groups. Hijackings by fundamentalists hav
              • AFAIK the 9/11 terrorists were mostly trained in Afghanistan's camps.

                How do you know? These claims have almost identical origins to the story about Atta meeting a Mukhabarat member in the Czech Republic, except they're far more widely reported.

                Regardless, it doesn't take too much training to learn to hijack a plane - you stick a boxcutter at the throat of a flight attendant and say "take me to the cockpit". Whee, all done.

                Presumably the Iraqis disagree with you there, since they went to the expense of

                • How do you know? These claims have almost identical origins to the story about Atta meeting a Mukhabarat member in the Czech Republic, except they're far more widely reported.

                  IIRC the US tracked down their movements... most had been to Pakistan and probably crossed the border from there.

                  Presumably the Iraqis disagree with you there, since they went to the expense of running a training camp to teach precisely that...

                  I'd imagine the training camps would focus on counter-surviellance, fitting in, commu
                  • IIRC the US tracked down their movements... most had been to Pakistan and probably crossed the border from there.

                    All the reports I can find cite the German security services as a source - who, in turn, got the information from a single defector. Just like their Czech counterparts did with the story of Atta meeting a Mukhabarak member - the story referred to as a "discredited rumor"...

                    I'd imagine the training camps would focus on counter-surviellance, fitting in, communications techniques, etc. Hijacking

        • Al Queda supported him, and the set of students he trained bears a significant resemblance in makeup to those who carried out the 911 attacks. I haven't seen any evidence pointing to Saudi - which would be even less likely, since Bin Laden has hated the Saudi government for far longer than he has hated the US. You think it more likely that he was helped by a government he's been fighting for one third of a century than by one he said he supports?

          The Saudis and Pakistanis are in up to their necks with Al Q
          • The Saudis and Pakistanis are in up to their necks with Al Queda and 9/11.

            No. There are some Saudi and Pakistani people who are involved - but claiming the country or people as a whole are involved is like claiming "the Americans" were behind the Oklahoma City bombing!

            There is fairly good evidence for some of the Whabbist factions within the Saudi government having supported (and continuing to support) Al Queda.

            Yes, members of the royal family have supported Al Queda. (And died as a result: the Saudi

    • Sorry Cyberdyne but both the President and the Secretary of Defense say there is no link between 9/11 and Iraq. None, nada.

      Pretty much the entire US government except for VP Cheney is saying there is NO link.
      • Sorry Cyberdyne but both the President and the Secretary of Defense say there is no link between 9/11 and Iraq. None, nada.

        I know. Considering how ready people are to assume the President was "lying" when he accurately reported Britain's statement, I think I should be allowed to disagree with them here given the evidence to the contrary ;-)

        Pretty much the entire US government except for VP Cheney is saying there is NO link.

        Something of an exaggeration I think; the party line is that Hussein wasn't be

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