November 15, 2003
WELL, THAT'S NOT HELPFUL FOR THE DWARVES, IS IT?:
SADDAM-OSAMA LINK (CLEMENTE LISI , 11/15/03, NY Post)
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein gave terror lord Osama bin Laden's thugs financial and logistical support, offering al Qaeda money, training and haven for more than a decade, it was reported yesterday.Their deadly collaboration - which may have included the bombing of the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks - is revealed in a 16-page memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee that cites reports from a variety of domestic and foreign spy agencies compiled by multiple sources, The Weekly Standard reports.
Saddam's willingness to help bin Laden plot against Americans began in 1990, shortly before the first Gulf War, and continued through last March, the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, says the Oct. 27 memo sent by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.
Two men were involved with the collaboration almost from its start.
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim - who's described as the terror lord's "best friend" - was involved in planning the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Another terrorist, Hassan al-Turabi, was said by an Iraqi defector to be "instrumental" in the relationship.
Iraq "sought al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors," a top-level Iraqi defector has told U.S. intelligence.
One big problem you can develop in politics is to begin to believe your opponents are like you tell your supporters they are. Democrats have this trouble when it comes to the Administration generally, but they have it as regards the President, VP, and neocons particularly. When Dick Cheney keeps going on Meet the Press and saying there's an Iraqi connection to al Qaeda you can either assume he's a complete pathological liar, as Democrats have, or that he knows something you don't, yet. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 15, 2003 9:11 AM
Do you suppose this is why Bush has remained silent on that issue? Another example of -- by inaction -- allowing your enemy to unreel all the rope he wants, shinny up the tree with it, and wrap it around his own neck.
Nothing like watching your opponent get all excited about his two pair while you are holding 5 aces.
And the best part ---- they keep doing it over and over again.
Posted by: ray at November 15, 2003 12:32 PMEspecially when you know what you dealt them.
The most elegant way to lie is to tell the truth when it will not be believed.
Posted by: mike earl at November 15, 2003 9:33 PMLouis Black has a hilarious bit in his stand-up where he rants about how ever Halloween he forgets what happened before and eats a piece of candy corn. This is how I see the democrats. They just keep eating the candy corn thinking it's going to be delicious.
Posted by: NKR at November 15, 2003 10:09 PMIf they could tell the difference between fantasy and reality, they wouldn't be Democrats.
It doesn't speak well of the Bush administration if they keep important information hidden from the public just to play "Gotcha!" with their political enemies later.
The best evidence for an Iraq connection to 9/11 that Hayes has wriiten about in his Weekly Standard articles is Ahmad Shakir, an Iraqi national who is clearly closely associated with al-Qaeda. Whether he was an Iraqi agent is unknown. In his "Meet the Press" appearance last September, Dick Cheney said "we don't know" if Saddam had a connection to the 9/11 attacks, but then only gave weak evidence to back up a possible connection. If Cheney knew about this Shakir guy, why didn't he say so?
He believes in representative democracy?
Posted by: oj at November 16, 2003 6:16 PMUPDATE: Or maybe he was lying. Or at least proceeding with reckless disregard for the truth, by saying something he knew or should have known to be very likely false as if it had a decent chance of being true. The CIA and DoD are backing away from the memo in double time: http://www.msnbc.com/news/752664.asp#031117