I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Nice spin. Now we see why some people come here for their does of Atrios comfort food.
Our pointing out the many flaws and lies in Instahack's writings reminds me of the Democrats pointing out the hypocrisy of the Republicans in the whole confirming justices imbroglio. They use overblown rhetoric, we reply with damning facts, and it all amounts to farting in a windstorm.
overwrought
overuse
of
the
obviously
obnoxiously
obtuse.
Why give Glenn Reynolds any ink at all?
Ignoring the asshole will be a punishment worse than he would otherwise get.
So, oops, based on the Feith memo, we are to believe Saddam and AQ had a cozy relationship back to 1990 (preceding Gulf War I), and Saddam aided and comforted Mohammed Atta, but Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, as W has stated repeatedly?
Would you agree that the Feith memo raises a lot more questions than it answers, like exactly what GWB knew on 9/10/01?
The memo, dated October 27, 2003...
That's all you need to know to know the memo is bullshit.
And the moronic brownshirt fucks will flock to it like flies to shit.
More MBF bullshit:
...there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.
Translation: Keep clapping, boys, I think I see Tink's chest starting to move...
Err...from someone too lazy to actually read through the Standard article, is there any actual *evidence* presented in it, or just assertions? In 1990, didn't Osama offer the Saudi government that he would lead a jihad against Saddam?
"And the moronic brownshirt fucks will flock to it like flies to shit."
I'm sorry. Here, borrow my handkerchief.
Um...from Doug Feith? He of the "I don't need any help with the analysis, just send me the intercepts so I can pick which ones to believe" school?
We're supposed to take this guy's memo as proof of the Iraq-AQ connection?
Sorry. Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me twice -- um, erm -- fool me -- you won't get fooled again.
I don't know, i read that thing, and it seems fairly well caveated. Seems.
The question is, why now, and why leak it to the Weakly Standard rather than a more credible source?
Hmmm. Maybe the CIA didn't support this memo, and Feith had to get it out, and found a receptive audience.
And what about protecting sources and methods? If this was leaked by Republicans, isn't that a problem?
Will the BIS be vindicated and will Tenet still hold his job?
Anyone else think we're going to see a replay of the Tennessee judge here? That it'll come out soon enough that this is largely based on crap filtered through a series of conservative expectations?
Calpundit has a good words of the Feith leak.
Does any of this help the Iraqis or our soldiers now?
.. another "noble lie" to justify their existence.
Just keep it up Instafool, we've got three ducks with your name on them.
So Feith, of the Yigal Amir fan club, makes an assertion.
Lemme guess. He found his evidence from this fantastic source he just discovered. He calls it, "The Internet".
Does any of this help the Iraqis or our soldiers now?
No, and whether there's anything to this or not, New York is looking more and more like the worst possible site for Chimpy's convention.
Is this supposed to be another packet of info Condi didn't read?
Where's P.T. Barnum when you need him?
so some leaks are more important than others?
More Feith based intelligence for sure.
So they really think we will believe they actually have proof of this OBL and Hussein connection, and that they have waited until October 27th, 2003 when the war has clearly gone to hell in a handbasket and the international community has balked at sending troops, that now is the time to reveal it. Plus, it comes out in an article in the Weekly Standard. I mean why wouldn't Rummy amd Shrub hold some major press conference to tout this new important development.... Come on! I may be dumb but I am not stupid.
Why do I feel like I am in some Neocons-R-Us store, where you shop around until you find just the right kind of bullshit you want to buy, cause that is all they sell there. These people love to insult the intelligence of the average person don't they.
Just how does this square with GWB's recent "correction" of the VP to the effect that we have no evidence of a Saddam/Al Qaeda link? If Feith's info is so hot why did Bush reject the conclusion categorically? I think even Bush sees that Feith is just re-stirring the same crock that was used to get him into this mess.
Any memo leaked to the Weekly Standard is fish wrap until otherwise validated.
Leaked on a Friday?? That's proof that this is meant for W's base, to keep the knuckle-draggers in thrall.
>New York is looking more and more like the worst possible site for Chimpy's convention.
Oh, we are going to have a very, very warm welcome for Duhbya when he comes to New York.
So the "relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War". Could it have been in response to our military action? In other words, did Bush I's policy create al Qaeda? Hmm...
Regardless, I don't doubt that the memo is real. It's got _deus ex rectum_ written all over it. Support for the war dropping like a stone? Send a memo alleging an AQ-Saddam link to the SIC and have it fall into friendly hands in the media. BushCo has this shit down.
'twill be interesting to see if Bush continues to act indignant about leaks, given his attitude after the Plame Affair.
Meanwhile, here's 12 more bodies for Tipsy to piss on:
12 killed when 2 Black Hawks crash in Mosul
BAGHDAD (CNN) -- Twelve U.S. soldiers were killed and nine were wounded Saturday evening when two U.S. military helicopters crashed in a residential area of the northern city of Mosul, a coalition military spokesman said.
The two UH-60 Black Hawks crashed at about 6:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. ET) in the western part of the city, Col. William Darley said. He could not say if the aircraft collided or under what circumstances they crashed. He said soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, Iraqi police and Iraqi firefighters were on the scene.
HEADLINE "Feith Says Sky Falling: Urges War on Clouds"
Well, gryptype, will they pull this stunt:
UK on second highest terror alert
Previous alerts have led to roadside checks by police
Britain's security services have been put on their second highest state of alert amid intelligence of a possible al-Qaeda attack, the BBC has learned.
The internal "severe general" alert is said to be unconnected to US President Bush's forthcoming UK visit.
Bush is coming, and mass demonstrations are planned. The second highest terror alert has just been issued, BUT it has NOTHING to do with his visit.
Okay.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_ne...ews/
3272569.stm
Bob
Bush said no direct Iraqi involvement in 9/11, he did not deny any Iraqi-Al Quaeda connection
Bob
Bush's statement was there was no direct evidence of an Iraqi link directly to 9/11, not that there were no Iraqi - Al Quadea links or cooperation.
I'm not all that familiar with the process for vetting intelligence. If the assertions that Feith makes are true, where does the blame go? The CIA? Were they sitting on unassailable evidence of a connection? Why? Pat Roberts has been pushing this line. From here it looks like another attempt to assert an argument that has already been made, by the same people who have already made it. Am I missing something?
Bush is coming, and mass demonstrations are planned. The second highest terror alert has just been issued, BUT it has NOTHING to do with his visit.
"Hey Saddam? News just in, Blair and Bush are going to be together in Britain where, get this, the cops don't even carry guns!"
"You're shitting me, Abdul!"
"Nope boss, no lie. We know where they're going to be and who they're visiting. One Fedayeen with a British driving licence and -- poof!"
"Hmmm, sound like a plan...."
Of course security is going to be beefed up big-time; there are enough home-grown loons in the UK who would be happy to die for Allah never mind foreign imports with a grudge from the Middle East. Even a spectacular (tm IRA (Provisional)) during the visit not actually aimed at B&B would garner a lot of publicity; an suicide bomb attack on an Army base somewhere, perhaps.
We're used to it here in the UK after thirty years of mortar attacks and bombs in the streets (we didn't call them IEDs then). We'll get through it.
kinda funny how this memo surfaces only now, just when Bush's nuts are in the fire over Iraq.
I mean, dont'cha think it would have been useful to disclose some of this info when they were trying so desperately to make a case for war?
More disinformation from MiniTrue.
Weird question: Is this better evidence of the Administration lying to Congress than of any purported connection?
We're used to it here in the UK after thirty years of mortar attacks and bombs in the streets (we didn't call them IEDs then). We'll get through it.
Sorry for the disruption Bush will cause. (Any chance you guys could keep him for a while? The Tower is available, no?)
Waitasec... Osama and Saddam working hand-in-hand *before* the first Gulf War?
Are we talking about Saddam the bad Muslim, Saddam the socialst infidel, working with Osama, the guy who offered mujahedin freshly minted in Afghanistan to the House of Saud for defence of the Kingdom when Saddam invaded Kuwait and got kicked out when he wasn't allowed to send his holy warriors after Saddam? Working together?
This doesn't even pass the mell test. Someone had better come back with credible sources and evidence before I put any weight in this story. It certainly seems mighty convenient to reveal at a time when many people are questioning whether Bush might have led everyone down the road to hell over Iraq.
I'm not terribly impressed with the memo.
Having a lot of sources is a bonus when they confirm each other. Having a lot of sources who all say different things, then putting them all in the same memo like a list, is not a positive. It's especially not a positive when you've been desperate to listen to anyone who'll tell you what you want to hear.
It looks to me as if virtually everything here is fourth hand rumour from unnamed sources. It's enough to reaffirm the faith of the wingnuts, but not enough to convince me there was a connection.
Most, if not all of this has already been reported and dismissed:
From U.S. News and World Report [Available in archives]
Truth and Consequences:
Excerpt:
Thin gruel. The back and forth between the team at the CIA and the White House intensified. The script from the White House was whittled down, then discarded. Finally, according to several participants, the National Security Council offered up three more papers: one on Iraq's ties to terrorism, one on weapons of mass destruction, one on human-rights violations. The document on terrorism was 38 pages, double spaced. By the time the team at the CIA was done with it, half a dozen pages remained. Powell was so unimpressed with the information on al Qaeda that he decided to bury it at the end of his speech, according to officials. Even so, NSC officials kept pushing for Powell to include the charge that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. He refused..."
Entire article posted @ http://www.dissidentvoice.org/
Ar...es.htm#Article1
Pie, great minds and all that!!!
Yes, they are desperate to stop the protesters here.
What is really funny is that Bush would still like to be given an open top drive in a horse drawn carriage with the Queen down The Mall in London. Blair put a stop to that for ' security reasons'
So let me get this straight, we must ban the protestors, but hey, we can go for a ride in an open top carriage where he would be an easy target for a terroist!!
You can't make this stuff up!! Hollywood would turn it down as unbelieveable.
Parts of the Feith memo can be debunked immediately. Other parts are questionable. Some will require detailed parsing. Here are a few of the high points:
In 1998, bin Laden issued a fatwa on the plight of Iraq, stating that America has been occupying Islam's holiest places. [JS: This allegation appears to be false. But the US was not occupying Iraq. It was "occupying" Saudi Arabia.]
. Immediately after America bombed Iraq in Operation Desert Fox (Dec 16-19, 199
, Iraqi intelligence officer Hijazi offered bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. [JS: This is a very peculiar statement.] CIA reporting stated that an Iraqi delegation met with bin laden in Afghanistan in late 1998, that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri met wit two Iraqi intelligence officers in December 1998 and that an Iraqi intelligence officer went to Afghanistan in late 1998 to meet with Al Qaeda and Taliban head Mullah Omar. Iraq intelligence officer Hijazi met with bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1999. The contacts were so extensive and well-known that Newsweek ran an article titled "Saddam + Bin laden?" [am currently looking for that. Probably a red herring.]
The only named source, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, "said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July 1999" Unnamed sources contradict that. "
An Iraqi living in Malaysia, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, "facilitated the arrival" of one of the 9/11 hijackers for an "operational meeting" in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. Shakir worked at the airport. One of the men at the meeting was "Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole." The CIA says that "fragmentary evidence" links Iraq to the Cole bombing. [American Spectator separately states that "Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the September 11 plot....{Shakir} was detained in Qatar on September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact information for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11 hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been plotted. " And yet, despite all these allegations, he was detained by the Qataris and released and held by the Jordanians where he was interrogated by the CIA for three months-- and released]
(continues)
Via Calpundit, here's a very timely dissection of Feith. Choice passage:
...virtually everything that has gone wrong in Iraq—especially those matters that Congress is either investigating or is poised to investigate—is linked directly to his office. "All roads lead to Feith," noted one knowledgeable administration official this week.
It was his now-defunct Office of Special Plans (OSP) office that is alleged to have collected—often with the help of the neo-conservatives' favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi—and "cooked" the most alarmist pre-war intelligence against Saddam Hussein and then "stovepiped" it to the White House via Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney unvetted by the intelligence agencies.
It was also his office that was in charge of post-war planning and rejected months of work by dozens of Iraqi exiles and Mideast experts in the State Department and the CIA, work that anticipated many of the problems that have wrong-footed the occupation. It also excluded many top Mideast experts from the State Department from playing any role in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.
And it is his office that, with the CPA, has recommended companies for huge and, in some cases, no-bid contracts in Iraq that have amounted, in the eyes of some critical lawmakers, to flagrant profiteering.
Sorry about the accidental smiley. To continue:
During a "custodial interview" [what does this mean?], a senior al Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi said that he traveled to Iraq in 1998 to obtain poisons and gas training. In December 2000, two al-Qaeda operatives traveled to Iraq to obtain training in chemical and biological weapons. The CIA says this statement is consistent with reports that bin Laden requested such training from Saddam in 1998.
[In a long-ago debunked charge], Mohammed Atta met with intelligence official Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani in Prague. Al Ani ordered Iraqi Intelligence to give Atta money. The CIA claims that two meetings occurred, but two are in question. "Five high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed meetings between Atta and al Ani." [but Vaclav Havel himself has said it didn't happen, as did the FBI.]
As stated by Colin Powell, al Qaeda "associate" Abu Musab al Zarqawi had contacts with Iraqi Intelligence to obtain weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles as well as a base in Iraq. A contact says that an Iraqi intelligence officer said that Iraqi Intelligence supplied weapons to Ansar al-Islam [which is Iranian-directed and then located in Kurdistan in an area outside Iraqi control]. "Pre-war intelligence" claims Iraqi intelligence gave Ansar al Islam $100,000.
But the powerful footage of a burning airship, coupled with the ridiculously overwrought commentary of the on-the-scene reporter
Right. People dying in flames,
the smell of buring metal and flesh in the air, huge explosions, death destruction.
"Oh the humanity" said the reporter, actually rather good under the circumstances.
I bet Instapundit would be wiping the
shit from his pants.
"Tell em about the plane crash with a sparkle in her eyes"
Yeah, but how much do you wanna bet during Bush's '04 campaign, he will keep using this to justify his excellent Iraiq adventure and no member of the major media will call him on it?
Holy shit-- this must mean Al Qaeda got the WMDs!!!!!!!
What is really funny is that Bush would still like to be given an open top drive in a horse drawn carriage with the Queen down The Mall in London. Blair put a stop to that for ' security reasons'
sally, even though Blair is complicit in the Iraq debacle, he has always, always been smarter than Bush. What a clueless moron we have.
JS, a "custodial" interview is when they use the pointy end of the mop.
Perfected by the NYPD.
Two months and this will be just another yellow cake story pumped out by the bush boys. Give it no weight because it deserves none. Propaganda aint workin with the people no more.
>Is this better evidence of the Administration lying to Congress than of any purported connection?
Yes, but remember for some jobs above a certain level in Defense or State in this administration, lying to Congress (e.g. Eliot Abrams) seems to be an employment prerequisite.
My favorite part of the WS article:
One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually be available to document the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. For one thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links.
Wingnuts have to the most shameless spewers of pure unadulterated horseshit ever witnessed by humankind. "Few people in the government are expressly looking for such links"?
CATALEXIS THAT WAS A GREAT POST AT 2:59 pm BECUASE U TALKED ABOUT KILLIN A MORONIC BROWNSHIRT FUCK AND I WANT 2 KILL TEHM ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
Sorry, but some of what we're seeing here may just be polling bias; if instead of phrasing the question this way...
"Do you think that President George Bush is honest and frank or do you sometimes have doubts about the things he says"
...the poll had phrased it this way:
"Do you think that President George Bush is dishonest and insincere or do you usually think the things he says are true"
...then the polling results may have been rather different.
Oops, too many comment boxes open, posted to the wrong blog!
Liquid paper!
Liquid paper!
Jeebus, they must be REALLY concerned with security!
*wipes tears from eyes*
Liquid paper...
pbg
Yeah, liquid paper caught my eye too! Just imagine the desperation at saddam headquarters when they had to give up sniffing the white out to use it on their typing paper. And it works so well!
By the way, am I the only one who thinks they are going to pull the republican convention from New York for "security reasons" and relocate it to midland, texas? I've been sure of this for a while. NO reason, except that they are notable cowards and things don't look good for them in NY right now.
aimai
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