July 25, 200422 yr Where did you hear this. Cause I sure as hell heard that there was NOT a connection at all. NYT article That's a San Fran rag reprinting a NYT piece. Gotta believe it kills them to have to print some of that. While there had indeed been periodic contacts in the late 1990s between al Qaeda representatives and Iraqi officials, principally in Sudan, the commission found, those contacts did not amount to much. "To date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship," the commission wrote Note VERY carefully the language the commission used: "To date we have seen no evidence...". These people are pros - unlike some here, they've been to college, law school, etc and know how to sculpt their language to mean exactly what they want it to say. The commission wisely keeps open the possibility that SUBSEQUENT evidence of a collaporative relationship might possibly surface at some point. This is quite a different notion than definitively stating that "it don't exist, period" - which is a foolish statement - if something comes out down the road, you look like a moron. Anyone who thinks the story on Iraq is over is a damn fool. Its been almost 60 years since WWII and the books are not even 100% closed on that one yet! Oh yeah, knowing where it came from is relevant. It just goes to show that it came from the criminal Rumsfeld and that they haven't found anything else... 474619[/snapback] Where's the evidence we ever shipped chem weapons or any significant weapons systems for that matter? Dude, you've seen the footage from gulf war v1.0 and v2.0 - look at it. All I see there is a lot of French, Soviet, and domestically produced stuff. Mirages, Mi21/23/29, Scud, Exocet, etc Where's is this claimed American stuff? Where? You keep asserting this but offer not the slightest shread of evidence other than you assertion. Given that your haughtily offered "technical" 45 degree swastika assertions were proven 100% bogus, why should anyone believe you now? You've blown your credibility - now you have to prove things definitively. Bold assertion isn't good enough anymore. 474629[/snapback] Hahaha. I love it your contradicting yourself in everything. Don't you know your history? Rumsfeld in the 80's gave Iraq chemical and biological weapons. I am done arguing with you on this matter.
July 25, 200422 yr I didn't know Rumsfeld gave them chemical weapons, but it is known during the Iran-Iraq war that the US supplised Iraq with all kinds of weaponry. Now, I dont know what kind, it oculd have been chemical or lobster guns...who knows.
July 25, 200422 yr Author Hey Ly.... I understood long ago that you had issues with the reasoning behind the war, and I'll even grant you that some of your reasons retain a significant amount of resonance, even to a conservative like me. But Iran is an apples and oranges comparison. Iran's council of elders has so alienated a burgeoning and rapidly evolving quasi-western Iranian society that it's only a matter of time before the Iranian gov't falls, regardless of western intervention. Anyways, methinks there is enough meat left on the bone for you Dems out there to snipe on the reasonings used for the war without resorting to this type of stuff. Okay, sorry for the interruption. You all go back to arguing with Tonyi. That is all. 474534[/snapback] Fish, I am absolutely aware of this. BTW you were not interrupting, this whole thread is about Iran. My point is not that we need to "invade" Iran, but rather that we invaded Iraq for the wrong reasons. We should have let the UN inspectors do their job and give them the time they needed. We should have done the thorough investigation we did after the fact with the 9/11 commission before going heads on into this war. We should have not gone, period. We should have concentrated our efforts in Afghanistan and finding Bin Laden. But it is all done, there is no way of going back. I just wish this President would admit his mistakes and stopped playing politics with the lives of these soldiers overthere. I want him to tell us what the hell is hi planning to do to bring them home and that he is not going to waste more lives, money and time bombing third world countries without justification. I don't think that is too much to ask. To Tonyi, Since you seem to be delusional once again, here I show the proof of a fact EVERYBODY knows; the US gave WMDs to Saddam: Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate) Page S8987-S8998 HOW SADDAM HAPPENED Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, yesterday, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I asked a question of the Secretary of Defense. I referred to a Newsweek article that will appear in the September 23, 2002, edition. That article reads as follows. It is not overly lengthy. I shall read it. Beginning on page 35 of Newsweek, here is what the article says: America helped make a monster. What to do with him--and what happens after he is gone--has haunted us for a quarter century. The article is written by Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas. It reads as follows: The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment. The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident," according to a now declassified State Department cable obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld "conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad," wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries. Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions.Rumsfeld is not the first American diplomat to wish for the demise of a former ally. After all, before the cold war, the Soviet Union was America's partner against Hitler in World War II. In the real world, as the saying goes, nations have no permanent friends, just permanent interests. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld's long-ago interlude with Saddam is a reminder that today's friend can be tomorrow's mortal threat. As President George W. Bush and his war cabinet ponder Saddam's successor's regime, they would do well to contemplate how and why the last three presidents allowed the Butcher of Baghdad to stay in power so long. The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons. Let me read that again: It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons. But it happened. LINK
July 25, 200422 yr Author un inspectors were a joke, everyone should be aware of that... 474688[/snapback] We should have let them continue with the "joke"... It turns out that the joke was on us.
July 25, 200422 yr Author For further info on how Saddam got his WMDs in the 80s: How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them Counterpunch.com Article US gave Germs to Iraq in the 1980s
July 25, 200422 yr For further info on how Saddam got his WMDs in the 80s: How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them Counterpunch.com Article US gave Germs to Iraq in the 1980s 474707[/snapback] Thank you Lina. Show everyone the truth, how horrible it is.
July 26, 200422 yr Well, supposedly they found a ton of mustard gas over there, which they werent supposed to have. But no REAL WMD's. But I've read reports aying that they found Uranium.... now what could they possibly be using Uranium for? Time Travel? err, wait thats plutonium...Anyway.....we can all agree on this: Oswald didn't kill kennedy. Lets just agree on that...
July 26, 200422 yr Author For further info on how Saddam got his WMDs in the 80s: How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them Counterpunch.com Article Nothing substantial here.? The same sort of 3rd/4th/5th party allegations one might see on WND.? The main hardware seems to have been a handful of hellicopters.? Oscilloscopes, spectrometers etc are pretty common lab gear - find that stuff in any university - I got a scope out in my garage.? Looks like mostly innocuous stuff to me.? The referenced Senate report is nowhere to be found (intact, un-sliced/diced edited) online.? Where's the original? US gave Germs to Iraq in the 1980s 474707[/snapback] (from the Technology reports article you reference)'I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs,'' said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector UN bio weapons inspectors apparently don't think its accurate to make spin this the way you want to. I thought UN inspectors were your heros? Or is that only when its convenient? Normally I heavily devalue any article that someone isn't willing to attach a byline too, like this TechReport article. If someone isn't willing to put their name(s) on it, it should be instantly suspect. I'm going to look elsewhere for this Tucker quote and see if it can be turned up on some original source, not something that's been regurgitated numerous times and edited by others. 475247[/snapback] Head in the sand. Believe what you want to believe dear. It seems that you are the only one who doesn't know we gave the weapons to Saddam. I am honestly done with you, I don't care for arguing endelessly with somebody who doesn't want to understand. Case closed.
July 26, 200422 yr Author Well, supposedly they found a ton of mustard gas over there, which they werent supposed to have. But no REAL WMD's. But I've read reports aying that they found Uranium.... now what could they possibly be using Uranium for? Time Travel? err, wait thats plutonium...Anyway.....we can all agree on this: Oswald didn't kill kennedy. Lets just agree on that... 475852[/snapback] They didn't find "tons" of mustard gas. They found ONE shell that came from the 1980s weapons. It wasn't even potent enough to kill a fly anymore. Second, No Uranium was found. What happened was that the Brittish investigation into intelligence failures still holds that Saddam was trying to get Uranium from Nigeria. I repeat no Uranium was found in Iraq, since Saddam didn't have the infrastructure necessary to produce nuclear weapons.
July 26, 200422 yr Author Second, No Uranium was found. 476170[/snapback] What's your explanation for this story saying we transfered 1.7 tons of uranium out of Iraq to the US recently? Spin away... OAKRIDGER story As part of the project, more than 20 experts from the Department of Energy's national laboratory complex - including some from Oak Ridge - packaged 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and roughly 1,000 highly radioactive sources. Officials said the items could be used in so-called "dirty bombs." The material had been placed under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex, 12 miles south of Baghdad. However, Department of Defense officials airlifted the material to the United States last month. "The American authorities just informed us of their intention to remove the materials, but they never sought authorization from us," said Gustavo Zlauvinen, head of the IAEA's New York office. Under U.N. resolutions adopted after the 1991 Gulf War, the IAEA was authorized to oversee the destruction of Iraq's nuclear program and monitor its activities to ensure that the program was not revived. Paul Longsworth, deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation in the National Nuclear Security Administration, said Wednesday the United States didn't need IAEA approval for the transfer. "We believe we have the legal authority to do it," he said. "We are in custody of the material only, and we have the permission of the Iraqi government to take this out of the country." Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, in disclosing the secret airlift Tuesday, called it "a major achievement" in efforts to "keep potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists." 476466[/snapback] This article doesn't prove anything Tonyi. Try again. This uranium could be from the 1980's WMD programs. The truth is the article doesn't say anything about WMDs. Only that the Uranium was taken out of Iraq and into the US. Do you have a link to a news website like CNN or MSNBC?
July 26, 200422 yr Author Do you know what/where Oakridge is? The local rag is going to have a lot more interest in this sort of "its in our backyard" thing than national news outlets. 476509[/snapback] I don't know Tonyi but I would be careful to post unknown sources. I for one don't like to post any link if it isn't a trusted source, specially when there are so many websites out there that claim to be news.
July 27, 200422 yr Well, I heard and saw pictures saying otherwise about the mustard gad. I read that they found a hell of alot of it. Whether or not they were planning to use it, that is the question. But it was there, when it wasn't supposed to be. Heres something I found interesting about: http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-D...renheit-911.htm its a link that counters everything said in F911, now i don't know how much is true, but its a nice read.
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