New Introduction (5-2015)

Why this post? Originally this was a debate in a forum involving a professor of history from the University of Michigan during the beginning years of the Iraq War. The forum this particular debate took place in shut down and so I lost a bulk of my responses to the professor. No matter, what i did save has transformed into a continuing response to the many past [and still popular] mantras from the left regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

While I have updated this post rececently, there shouldn’t be too many more updates needed for it. You see, when the New York Times (NYTs) caves on the issue, the Left is then forced — yes forced — to reason through the issue. Voltaire said “once the people begin to reason, all is lost.” And it is because the progressive democrat lives by emotion… simple, rudimentary, brutish responses to their environment. Deep thinking is a hand in cards they will never get.

Enjoy this rework of one of my most classic posts. It looks NOTHING like the previous version.

The NYTs

The NYT’s has written two major articles on the Iraq war in the past couple years. (See also Yahoo News.) The only reason they would ever consider going back on their previous position that Bush lied, people died, is for the simple reason they can still blame the Bush administration for improperly handling the WMDs they did find. I happen to agree with the NYTs on this… in the rush to secretly dispose of these weapons, safety was not an issue, and many of our troops that handled and disposed of them have fallen ill.

Simply put, the State Department/Department of Defense had insurgents streaming into the country with deep terrorist ties. And they did not want these “questionable” characters getting their hands on and smuggling out of the country very dangerouse ordinance. So the Defense Department had the top brass (from Bush down) play dumb on WMDs so there wasn’t a mad-rush on these weapons.

The operation code name was “Avarice.” Here is a snippet from the article (h/t The Blaze) showing that there were in fact WMDs in Iraq… as does the rest of this in-depth post!

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

[….]

Neither the C.I.A. nor the soldiers persuaded the man to reveal his source of supply, the officials said. “They were pushing to see where did it originate from, was there a mother lode?” General Zahner said.

Eventually, a veteran familiar with the purchases said, “the guy was getting a little cocky.”

At least once he scammed his handlers, selling rockets filled with something other than sarin.

Then in 2006, the veteran said, the Iraqi drove a truckload of warheads to Baghdad and “called the intel guys to tell them he was going to turn them over to the insurgents unless they picked them up.”

Not long after that, the veteran said, the relationship appeared to dry up, ending purchases that had ensured “a lot of chemical weapons were destroyed.”

…read it all…

NewsMax comments on the above and below NYT’s articles:

The New York Times reported for the first time in October that during a seven-year time frame, from 2004 to 2011, soldiers serving in Iraq encountered the abandoned chemical weapons, calling it “a largely secret chapter of America’s long and bitter involvement in Iraq.”

When the NYT’s eats crow… the case is made!

Larry Elder & the NYTs

Larry Elder reads from the NYT’s article, mentioned above and below, and he really gives this issue a thorough going through. Following Larry Elder is a Breitbart snippet on the topic:

Here is Breitbart’s excerpt:

In Wednesday’s edition of The New York Times, a report from C.J. Chivers, which is accompanied by a video, details U.S. forces in Iraq finding thousands of chemical weapons during the Iraq war.

“From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule,” Chivers wrote. “In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.”

Chivers report details “a pattern of secrecy” and raises concern of the possibility of other hidden chemical weapons leftover from Hussein’s rule possibly falling into the hands ISIS.

Below is the New York Times short documentary detailing many of these soldiers talking about improperly disposing of these chemical weapons.

NYTs Video

I only have one issue with the video worth mentioning. The video asserts that the U.S. supplied biological and major munitions to Iraq… A chart near the end of this post shows the amount of weaponry sold to Iraq from 1973-to-1990 by country.

(This and other mantras can be quickly linked to in the “Contents” area above.)

The dislike for Rumsfeld came out as the video was talking about this arming of Iraq while showing even Rumsfeld’s “hand shake” with Saddam Hussein. In other words, the impression given in the short documentary was that the U.S.A. sold Saddam these weapons because Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam. That’s their evidence.

Here is the NYT’s video:

Islamic State Aquisitions

The below includes some pictures of sites and weapons caches that have recently been acquired by the Islamic State (I.S.). The following picture is a picture of the four main WMD manufacturing sites captured by I.S. in Iraq:

Libertarian Republican emboldens the above evidence with the newest report that undermines many of the characters he deals with on his site and political world:

…Let’s cue up our friendly left-libertarian, shall we. Choose your favorite lefty-libertarian from Cato, Reason, Libertarian Party, LewRockwell.com, Ron Paul movement, antiwar.com, Jesse Ventura-ite, Alex Jones-iac, whichever.

“Bh-bh-bh-bh-bbbbbbb-but, Saddam never had WMD, Bush lied, people died… Cheney, Halliburton… Bbbbush, warmonger, No WMD… Building 9… Building 9… what about Building 9…”

And now this, breaking news from the AP, via PJ Media, “ISIS has seized thousands of rockets with Chemical Warheads”:

Iraq has informed the United Nations that the Islamic State extremist group has taken control of a vast former chemical weapons facility northwest of Baghdad where 2,500 chemical rockets filled with the deadly nerve agent sarin or their remnants were stored along with other chemical warfare agents. (Emphasis added.)

Iraq’s U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon circulated Tuesday that “terrorist” groups entered the Muthanna site June 11 and seized weapons and equipment from the protection force guarding the facility.

Did You Catch That?

1. A “vast former chemical weapons facility.”
2. Not a small chemical weapons facility.
3. Not a medium-sized weapons facility.
4. But a vast chemical weapons facility.

I will ask again, for LR’s sake, Did You Catch That?

WikiLeaks!

This comes mainly by way of Wired Magazine, However, the picture they show in their article I have had for YEARS! And the cunundrum is this for the left. WIKI Leaks is loved by the left, mainly, because “the WikiLeaks cables because they make America look bad” (Daily Caller).

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

[…..]

In August 2004, for instance, American forces surreptitiously purchased what they believed to be containers of liquid sulfur mustard, a toxic “blister agent” used as a chemical weapon since World War I. The troops tested the liquid, and “reported two positive results for blister.” The chemical was then “triple-sealed and transported to a secure site” outside their base.

Three months later, in northern Iraq, U.S. scouts went to look in on a “chemical weapons” complex. “One of the bunkers has been tampered with,” they write. “The integrity of the seal [around the complex] appears intact, but it seems someone is interesting in trying to get into the bunkers.”

THAT BEING SAID, the Left is now having to admit that there were WMDs in Iraq if they believe Wiki Leaks. It is a double edged sword in other words. This is a thorn in the side of the activist Left! They support Julian Assange releasing classified, United States [and other government] information ~ B-U-T ~ at the same time it refutes their long-held position on the reasons behind the Iraq war:

Newsbusters explains how the “WikiLeaks” massive dump of classified documents show that WMDs were found.

I want to comment on the picture Wired Magazine used in their article. This is a picture of some viles. In reading the CIA report on them from years ago these were recovered from a safehouse in the initial months of sweeping homes in the suburbs of the capital. I used “it” in concert with a Daily News article found in their Sunday Viewpoint entitled, “Altered Reality: Look Past The Dogma and You’ll See the WMDs” (October 26, 2003, p. 3):

Picture Used

Shells

May I can also add here that 750 shells with sarin gas were found. As well as 500 shells with mustard gas in them. Some say that these were old and abandoned. This doesn’t mean, however, that they were harmless. One sites discussion about this topic has a commentator astutely noting: “These are 500 shells, 15 shells like this killed 5,000 Kurds. There is a difference between degraded and harmless.” Only in the Left’s vernacular does this equal no WMDs. Scurrilous politics on display if there ever were. Two things come to my mind, and they are two slogans I heard all the time.

More on this later.

Intelligence & First Hand Knowledge

This next section will have subheading and deal with some solid information dealing with or adding to the already water-tight screed above. It will deal with those with first hand knowledge of operations of hiding and smuggling out of Iraq WMDs. Or intelligence known through reporters from the area.

Senior Syrian Journalist

A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq’s WMD located in three Syrian sites:

(Debka… link dead, preserved at Free Republic) Nizar Nayuf is a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “De Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s WMD are kept. The storage places are:

✦ Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles.

✦ Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels.

✦ The village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian airforce camp. Vital parts of Iraq’s WMD are stored there.

✦ The city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of the city Homs.

Najoef writes that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein’s Special Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat, Bashar Assad’s cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.

In February 2003, a month before America’s invasion in Iraq, DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly were the only media to report the movement of Iraqi WMD, the efforts to bring them from Iraq to Syria, and the personal involvement of Bashar Assad and his family in the operation.

Najoef, who has won prizes for journalistic integrity, says he wrote his letter because he has terminal cancer.

#2 Man

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

(The New York Sun) Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed. The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”

Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”

Democrats have made the absence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a theme in their criticism of the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in 2003….

Below  is Larry Elder interviewing General Sada (3-31-2011). Don’t you see this is information that undermines heavily the idea that WMDs didn’t exist? They were being moved to Syria… what was being moved? Lies? Myths?

Jordan

Quite a few years ago Jordanian officials thwarted a chemical attack on their soil. In fact, it would have been successful minus faulty equipment giving authorities time enough to discover the plot. (AMMAN, Jordan [CNN]) ~ Jordanian authorities said Monday they have broken up an alleged al Qaeda plot that would have unleashed a deadly cloud of chemicals in the heart of Jordan’s capital, Amman.

The plot would have been more deadly than anything al Qaeda has done before, including the September 11 attacks, according to the Jordanian government. Among the alleged targets were the U.S. Embassy, the Jordanian prime minister’s office and the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence. U.S. intelligence officials expressed caution about whether the chemicals captured by Jordanian authorities were intended to create a “toxic cloud” chemical weapon, but they said the large quantities involved were at a minimum intended to create “massive explosions.” Officials said there is debate within the CIA and other U.S. agencies over whether the plotters were planning to kill innocent people using toxic chemicals.

At issue is the presence of a large quantity of sulfuric acid among the tons of chemicals seized by Jordanian authorities. Sulfuric acid can be used as a blister agent, but it more commonly can increase the size of conventional explosions, according to U.S. officials. Nevertheless, U.S. intelligence officials called the capture of tons of chemicals that together could create several large conventional explosions “a big deal.” The plot was within days of being carried out, Jordanian officials said, when security forces broke it up April 20.

In a nighttime raid in Amman, Jordanian security forces moved in on the terrorist cell. After the shooting stopped, four men were dead. Jordanian authorities said. They said at least three others were arrested, including Azmi Jayyousi, the cell’s suspected ringleader, whom Jordanian intelligence alleges was responsible for planning and recruiting. On a confession shown on state-run Jordanian television, Jayyousi said he took orders from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a suspected terrorist leader who has been linked to al Qaeda and whom U.S. officials have said is behind some attacks in Iraq.

“I took explosives courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to obey him without any questioning,” Jayyousi said. Jordanian intelligence suspects Jayyousi returned from Iraq in January after a meeting with al-Zarqawi in which they allegedly plotted to hit the three targets in Amman. In a series of raids, the Jordanians said, they seized 20 tons of chemicals and numerous explosives. Also seized were three trucks equipped with specially modified plows, apparently designed to crash through security barricades.

The first alleged target was the Jordanian intelligence headquarters. The alleged blast was intended to be a big one. “According to my experience as an explosives expert, the whole of the Intelligence Department will be destroyed, and nothing of it will remain, nor anything surrounding it,” Jayyousi said….

….A Jordanian government scientist said the plot had been carefully worked out, with just the right amount of explosives to spread the deadly cloud without diminishing the effects of the chemicals. The blast would not burn up the poisonous chemicals but instead produce a toxic cloud, the scientist said, possibly spreading for a mile, maybe more.

The Jordanian intelligence buildings are within a mile of a large medical center, a shopping mall and a residential area. “And there is no one combination of antidote to treat nerve agent, choking agent and blistering agent,” the scientist said. Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, has been accused of plotting chemical attacks before, and authorities said it would not be his first attempt to strike Jordan. In 2000, a Jordanian court charged him in absentia with planning to blow up a hotel and attack tourist destinations.

U.S. officials have said he was behind the 2002 assassination of American diplomat Lawrence Foley, who was gunned down outside his home in Amman. According to the televised confessions, $170,000 came from Zarqawi via messengers from Syria.

20 Plane Loads

Relief Web is the global hub for time-critical humanitarian information on Complex Emergencies and Natural Disasters connected with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. They reported in an article, “Iraq sends 20 planeloads of aid to Syrian victims of dam collapse,” the following on June 9th, 2002:

Twenty planeloads containing “humanitarian aid” while he [Saddam] was under U.N. Sanctions and he didn’t have enough food for his own people who dies of malnutrition and lack of medical assistance. How gullible are we ~ well, the Left is VERY gullible. Come on. We know from the previous three stories that these plane loads were likely something else.

Defining WMDs

Question: what was Faisal Shahzad (the “Time-Square Bomber”) and Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab (the “Dingaling Bomber”) charged with?

1. (CBS Source) A Pakistani-born U.S. citizen admitted involvement in the failed Times Square car bombing and will face terrorism and weapons of mass destruction charges, Attorney General Eric Holder said.
2. (CNN Source) The seven-page indictment charges AbdulMutallab with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

They were charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction! If we found WMDs in New York and Detroit… surely we found them in Iraq. What I have attempted above is a pretty airtight case that WMDs did exist, maybe not in the form found in the movie Spies Like Us, with a Iraqi standing over a mobile ICBM control panel with a nuclear warhead… about to press the launch button. WMDs nonetheless.

I believe the Bush administration could have made a better case in arguing that one of the reason we were going in were for Agents of Mass Destruction (AMDs). But this is neither here-nor-there since I feel the case above is sound for there being WMDs as well as AMDs. I will also point out a reason or two for us to enter Iraq even if WMDs were not part of the argument.

Reasons for Entering Iraq

This next portion is taken from a series I do in responding to a local writer in a small journal. The original post is entitled, “Concepts: Are We Insane? Nope, Just You Van Huizum.“

U.N Resolutions

Yet another unfounded swipe at the Iraq War. John Van Huizum lives in a bubble where if he has come to a conclusion years ago… that’s it! History forever stays right where John wants it to stay. Here is an excerpt of John’s (click to enlarge it) article shows a complete lack of history.

I doubt he think any differently about Vietnam based on his 1970’s conclusions. It wouldn’t matter that after 1990 — the fall of the Wall — 100,000 of thousands of Soviet era documents were now being translated and reviewed by military historians and good books based on MORE historical documents. Because these new documents support the traditional (and not the Left’s reasoning) for entering and fighting this proxy war of WWIII (the Cold War), this new information is rejected from the matrix of the left’s consciousness. But that is neither here-nor-there.

So, let’s deal with some of the contentions in John’s excerpted article. Firstly he notes that there were insufficient reasons for going to war.

May I remind him there were many U.N. Resolutions against Iraq that were almost all not met:

1. UNSCR 678 – November 29, 1990
2. UNSCR 686 – March 2, 1991
3. UNSCR 687 – April 3, 1991
4. UNSCR 688 – April 5, 1991
5. UNSCR 707 – August 15, 1991
6. UNSCR 715 – October 11, 1991
7. UNSCR 949 – October 15, 1994
8. UNSCR 1051 – March 27, 1996
9. UNSCR 1060 – June 12, 1996
10. UNSCR 1115 – June 21, 1997
11. UNSCR 1134 – October 23, 1997
12. UNSCR 1137 – November 12, 1997
13. UNSCR 1154 – March 2, 1998
14. UNSCR 1194 – September 9, 1998 (“Condemns the decision by Iraq of 5 August 1998 to suspend cooperation with” UN and IAEA inspectors, which constitutes “a totally unacceptable contravention” of its obligations under UNSCR 687, 707, 715, 1060, 1115, and 1154.)
15. UNSCR 1205 – November 5, 1998
16. UNSCR 1284 – December 17, 1999

….See Additional UN Security Council Statements…

Official U.N. resolutions aside, Bush went to Congress and made his case with these and many other points. One point being that Iraq was firing almost everyday on our fighter pilots in the no-fly zone. In the cease fire of the First Gulf War, this was enough — under international law — to RESUME aggression….

…read it all…

Regime Change

This next audio is a challenging call into the Michael Medved Show when his guest, Paul Wolfowitz, gets into some of the history that started with Bush Sr., was ignored by Bill Clinton, and finally considered reasonable by “Dubya’s” team:

Terrorist Connections

This next section deals with the idea that we heard a lot of during the war, and it is this: “there were no connections with Al Qaeda and Saddam.” Alternatively, there is a weaker version of this, “there were no support [state sponsored terrorism] given to terrorism/terrorists by Saddam/Iraq.”

This next section will deal with these mantras from the Left. The first example being very simple.

Al-Zarqawi

Here is a WIKI bio excerpt explaining who Al-Zarqawi is to catch the younger generation up with history:

Again, he was hiding out in and training terrorist fighters in, and eventually killed in… wait for it… in Iraq!

The Weekly Standard reports that, before the invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi ran a “terrorist haven” in Kurdish northern Iraq.[33] According to a March 2003 British intelligence report, Zarqawi had set up “sleeper cells” in Baghdad before the Iraq war. The report stated “Reporting since (February) suggests that senior al Qaeda associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has established sleeper cells in Baghdad, to be activated during a U.S. occupation of the city…These cells apparently intend to attack U.S. targets using car bombs and other weapons. (It is also possible that they have received [chemical and biological] materials from terrorists in the [Kurdish Autonomous Zone]),…al Qaeda-associated terrorists continued to arrive in Baghdad in early March.”[34]

(Replaced WIKI’s dead links with good ones)

CONNECTIONS

These news items show that Saddam was very busy on the Syrian border, and that some chemical weapons made it into Jordan from Syria via a network of Al Qaeda that led right to Iraq. The Telegraph explains in a bit more detail:

A Conversation

In one forum a detractor starts out a thread with the following:

There’s no evidence Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaida, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence that Democrats say undercuts President Bush’s justification for invading Iraq. Bush administration officials have insisted on a link between the Iraqi regime and terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Intelligence agencies, however, concluded there was none…

But another responded with this to again, set the historical record straight:

Except for the following from the 9/11 Report… Hmm..someone isn’t telling the truth.

What was the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda?

The Commission specifically finds that Saddam’s regime “tolerated and may have even helped” Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda sponsored group in northern Iraq affiliated with senior al Qaeda associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who continues to be responsible for terrorist attacks inside Iraq today. The Commission’s mandate did not include a more thorough examination of Zarqawi, his pre-war activities in Baghdad , or his activities and his associates’ activities in Iraq until the present day. Some of the extensive, known pre-9/11 contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda catalogued by the Commission are:The Commission catalogs some of the extensive contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. The report demonstrates that there were “friendly contacts” and, at different times, both Iraq and al Qaeda proactively sought to develop closer ties. Before 9/11, the Commission believes this relationship had not yet grown into a “collaborative operational relationship” for “carrying out attacks against the United States .” (chapter 2, § 2.5, page 66)

• “Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq.” (chapter 2, § 2.4, page 61)
• Saddam’s regime “tolerated and may have even helped” al Qaeda sponsored groups in northern Iraq including Ansar al-Islam. (chapter 2, § 2.4, page 61)
• “Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995.” (chapter 2, § 2.4, page 61)
• Bin Ladin proposed cooperation to Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1997 but was rebuffed. “In mid-1998, the situation reversed: it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative” during a time of “intensifying U.S. pressure.” (chapter 2, § 2.5, page 66)
• The Commission report documents a March 1998 visit to Iraq by two al Qaeda members to meet with Iraqi intelligence. It also documents a July 1998 Iraqi delegation that traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. (chapter 2, § 2.5, page 66)
• Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin “a safe haven in Iraq ” in 1999. (chapter 2, § 2.5, page 66)

Abu Nadil’s “hit” list from the same forum:

The CIA failed to note that Abu Nidal, terrorist chief responsible for well over 100 attacks against western and Israeli interests, was alive and well and in Baghdad as late as August, 2002. Here are a few of his more memorable operations:

• the wounding of Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, in June 1982, which triggered Israel’s invasion of Lebanon;
• the hijacking of EgyptAir Flight 648 at Malta in November, 1985, resolved when Egyptian commandos stormed the plane on the next day at about 8 p.m., slaying the hijackers, with 58 of the 91 passengers also dying;
• the Rome and Vienna Airport attacks on December 27, 1985, which left 18 people dead and 120 injured;
• the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 on September 6, 1986 in Karachi, Pakistan;
• a gun attack that left 22 people dead and six wounded inside the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul during Sabbath services;
• a car bomb outside the Israeli embassy in Cyprus in 1988, which killed three people (and for which the organization claimed responsibility);
• the attack on the cruise ship City of Poros on July 11, 1988, which killed nine people and wounded 98;
• Abu Nidal’s organization is believed to be responsible for the bombing of TWA Flight 841 in 1974 and Gulf Air Flight 771 in 1983.

Stephen Hayes

Stephen Hayes compiled much of the above connections in his book, The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America.

Almost two years after his writing it, some more information came out that supported his position.

(Arrggh! I will first post here the appearance of Stephen Hayes from Hannity and Colmes <<This video is gone.)

Replacements for the above missing video can be found at a C-SPAN has an extended book interview where Stephen Hayes takes calls. There is also a full manuscript of this missing video which was Stephen Hayes appearance on Hannity and Colmes at Fox News one can read. Hayes was also on Special Report with Brit Hume.

There is also this audio of Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson responding to a question. It is bad audio (hard to find and very old), so I apologize. PLEASE check you audio levels BEFORE listening to this… it is very loud and tinny sounding.

Here is an excellent interview of Stephen Hayes by National Review (or, a portion thereof) reagrding his book:

NRO: Your new book is on connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Isn’t that all a neocon myth? Isn’t bin Laden on record dissing Saddam? Secular Saddam, meanwhile, was no Islamic fundamentalist or extremist? Did anti-American hatred trump all?

Stephen F. Hayes: If the Iraq-al Qaeda connection is a neocon myth, those neocons are even more resourceful than the conspiracy theorists suggest and they sure have got a lot of unlikely people making their arguments. Evan Bayh, Democrat from Indiana, has described the Iraq-al Qaeda connection as a relationship of “mutual exploitation.” Joe Lieberman said, “There are extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein’s government and al Qaeda.” George Tenet, too, has spoken of those contacts and goes further, claiming Iraqi “training” of al Qaeda terrorists on WMDs and provision of “safe haven” for al Qaeda in Baghdad. Richard Clarke once said the U.S. government was “sure” Iraq had provided a chemical-weapons precursor to an al Qaeda-linked pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Even Hillary Clinton cited the Iraq-al Qaeda connection as one reason she voted for the Iraq War.

Saddam was, for a time, an avowed secularist. He began to use Islamist language during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and stepped it up during the first Gulf War. By the mid-1990s, when his son-in-law Hussein Kamel defected (and was later killed when he foolishly returned to Iraq), Saddam was interrupting Baath-party meetings for prayers.

Bin Laden has dissed Saddam several times. And I would certainly never argue that they were buddies. It was an on-again, off-again relationship based, as Bayh says, on mutual exploitation and a common enemy.

NRO: Who is Ahmed Hikmat Shakir?

Hayes: Shakir is one of the most intriguing and puzzling potential links between Iraq and al Qaeda. He was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where U.S. intelligence officials believe the planning for the attacks on the U.S.S. Cole and September 11 took place. Shakir was working, ostensibly, for Malaysian Airlines as a VIP greeter. He told associates that he got the job through a contact at the Iraqi embassy and the same contact determined his schedule. Shakir escorted one of the 9/11 hijackers (Khalid al Mihdhar) to the meeting and left his airport “job” days after the meeting broke up. Making things even more interesting, Defense Department investigators recently found Shakir’s name — with a slight spelling discrepancy — on three separate lists of Saddam Fedayeen officers. He was captured twice after September 11 — once in Qatar, once in Jordan — and let go. The Iraqi government reportedly showed a keen interest in his release. What was he doing at the meeting? How did he know the hijackers? And what, exactly, was his relationship to the Iraqi regime? He may have been a bit player, but it sure would be nice to know more. I hope the 9/11 Commission includes a discussion of Shakir in its final report.

NRO: What is the Feith memo and how important is it?

Hayes: The Feith Memo is a report that Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee last fall, in response to a request by that panel to see information the Pentagon gathered on Iraq-al Qaeda connections. Analysts in the DoD policy shop pored over old intelligence, gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies, and unearthed some interesting nuggets — some of them from raw intelligence reports and others from finished intelligence products. CIA Director George Tenet was asked about the Feith Memo at a Senate hearing in March and distanced his agency from the Pentagon analysis. He submitted another version of the document to the committee with some “corrections” to the Pentagon submission. My understanding is that there were but a few such adjustments and that they were relatively minor (although my book challenges two of the most interesting reports in the memo). Some of the stuff — telephone intercepts, foreign-government reporting, detainee debriefings, etc. — is pretty straightforward and most of the report tracks with what Tenet has said publicly; it just provides more detail. That said, there were two items that seemed to require more explanation and, when weighed against available evidence, seem questionable.

NRO: Mike Isikoff from Newsweek and others have tried to discredit some of your reporting on these connections. Do you concede any of their points?

Hayes: Well, Isikoff is a very good investigative reporter and I have long respected his work. We simply disagree on much of this. Intelligence reporting is quite subjective, of course, and lends itself to various interpretations. My problem with so much of the media reporting on this issue is that most journalists have chosen not to investigate the connection, and seem too eager to dismiss them. Why? This wasn’t the case in the late 1990s, when Iraq-al Qaeda connections were more widely reported in the establishment press. After I first wrote about the Feith Memo, the Pentagon put out a statement designed to distance itself from any alleged leak of classified intelligence. It was a classic non-denial denial — virtually devoid of content. It was something any veteran Washington reporter would dismiss without a second thought. But reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post, typically quite cynical about anything that comes from the Pentagon’s public- affairs shop, suddenly found it a remarkably credible source.

NRO: It’s been suggested by Isikoff and others that some of the evidence turns up nowadays is forged, that you can’t take it on its face value. To what extent is the evidence you present corroborated by other evidence, other documented meetings, etc?

Hayes: I think they’re right on that point — and it’s almost never a good idea to take these things at face value. There was a report that surfaced in December 2003 that suggested that Mohammed Atta had been in Baghdad during the summer of 2001. And, a little too conveniently, the very same document claimed that the U.S. was seeking uranium from Niger. There’s little question that the three-page report was forged. (An interesting side note: That document came not from Ahmed Chalabi, but from CIA favorite Iyad Allawi, the new Iraqi interim prime minister. Allawi has long argued that there was a significant relationship between Saddam’s Mukhabarat and al Qaeda.)

Much of the evidence in the book comes from open sources — media reporting, court documents, interviews, etc. With respect to the information from the Feith Memo, many of the bullet points corroborate one another or previous intelligence on the relationship. For instance, the U.S. intelligence community has long believed that bin Laden met with the deputy director of Iraqi intelligence, Faruq Hijazi, in the mid-1990s. When we captured Hijazi, we asked him about the meeting. Bin Laden, he reported, asked for anti-ship limpet mines and training camps in Iraq.

NRO: Did Mohammed Atta meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague — multiple times?

Hayes: I wish we knew. Atta was in Prague under very strange circumstances in May 2000. What’s unclear is whether he returned, as initially reported, in April 2001. If he did, it wasn’t under his own name. But news reports claiming that the meeting couldn’t have taken place because U.S. intelligence has documentation placing him in the U.S. are not accurate. One of the things I report in the book is that both George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice say privately that they believe the April 2001 meeting took place.

NRO: What is the strongest evidence that Iraq was a collaborator in the Sept. 11 attacks?

Hayes: Probably the Shakir story, which is far from conclusive. But it seems to me that the presence of a suspected Saddam Fedayeen officer at a key 9/11-planning meeting can’t be dismissed. There have been additional recent developments in the Atta story reported by Edward Jay Epstein. If those turn out to be true, they would be significant. I’m trying, but as yet have been unable to prove or disprove them.

NRO: What’s the deal with Richard Clarke? Why is he so adamant to defend Iraq vis-à-vis al Qaeda?

Hayes: I put that question to a top Bush-administration official not long ago. This person said: “If Iraq was involved with al Qaeda, whether they were involved with 9/11 or not, the whole counterterrorism policy of the 1990s was a failure.” And we all know who was responsible for the counterterrorism policy of the 1990s. One thing that perplexes me about Clarke was his expressed certainty that there was an Iraqi hand in al Qaeda chemical weapons production in the Sudan in the late-1990s. (Top Clinton advisers — several of them now working for John Kerry — continue to believe that today.) And Clarke’s current views (no connection) certainly put him at odds with CIA Director George Tenet. …

From this we can see that the typical bumper sticker statements/mantras we heard projected from street corners in close proximity to the Whole Foods market I worked at just never took into account much of anything, except, that is, these persons almost crazed dislike of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush (BDS: Bush Derangement Syndrome).

Impeachment

An example comes from an almost elated exclamation about Kucinich’s “attempt” to start impeachment of Bush and friends, via a friend of mine on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Actually, this comes from a friend who is a local blogger and “political nemesis.” (Every good guy [me] has to have a villain [Kimba] in his life.):

(The World According to Kimba) Breathtaking in that I believe some, if not most of the charges to be true. Although certainly not all of the charges constitute or necessitate a call for impeachment (as was the case when [Kucinich] offered up articles of impeachment for Dick Cheney last year), they do add up to quite a record for a sitting administration, and I for one, am glad he got them on the record…. Obviously, the political climate these days in Washington are such that they will not touch this hot potato and let King George II serve out his full second term without incident. But, what does it say for our regard for the law, not to mention the constitution, when we refuse to prosecute for wrongs committed against the public good? (emphasis added)

Often times people don’t follow their logic to the end… for instance, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski reads from a NYT’s op-ed that slams the Bush-Iraq war. The problem is, as Joe Scarborough points out, that every intelligence agency and a well-respected CIA head (not to mention leading Democrats) — and even Saddam himself… said they had WMDs. And they did, as this extensive post clearly shows. Unfortunately the file was corrupted near the end so when Joe was making his best points there is a bit of audio missing (around the 13:37 mark). This video segues into the next section nicely to support the points Joe Scarborough was making :

Bush Lied/People Died

• LIE: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive. [So the person knows what they are stating is false, and say it to deceive.]

One thing I have heard and gave an example of is the Left saying and truly believing that Bush lied about WMDs. If this is the case, what about these other politicians?

If Bush lied about WMDs, then what did President Bill Clinton do when he said: “If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program” (Feb. 17, 1998).

Or how about Madeline Albright, John F. Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and the like? Here is an article via the L.A. Daily News (2-21-2004)

Democrats Lied

MAYBE I’ve been living in a time warp — a Rip Van WinkIe who fell asleep and missed the past four years.

The Democratic candidates running to replace President George W. Bush, including the front runner, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., claim Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction — that Iraq was Bush’s war and that he got us into it for purely personal political purposes. Saddam was never a threat to the United States.

Did I misread or misunderstand what Democrats said prior to the current campaign for the White House? Note the following pronouncements and the people who uttered them:

a) “Iraq is a long way from the USA but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.” ~ Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Feb. 18, 1998

b) “We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.” ~ Former Vice President Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

c) “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.” ~ Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct. 10, 2002

d) “Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.” ~ Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23, 2003

e) “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” ~ Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

f) “The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons…” ~ Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

g) “Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” ~ Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

h) “He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.” ~ Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

So now these Democrats say President Bush lied about Iraq and about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction, that there never were any such weapons and that he took us to war for his own political interests?

In the two years since Sept. 11, President Bush has liberated two countries, crippled the Taliban and al-Qaida, forced Libya to open its doors to inspectors without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people at a cost of 600 American lives, while preventing another 9-11 terrorist attack here in the United States.

Now who’s credible and who’s not? The record speaks for itself.

So now these Democrats say President Bush lied about Iraq and about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction, that there never were any such weapons and that he took us to war for his own political interests?

Restated

Bob Woodward

Here is Bob Woodward, a legend in investigative reporting, pointing out that while one can argue if going to ware in Iraq intially was a bad idea, one could not say that Bush lied:

HOST CHRIS WALLACE: I want to turn to a different subject in the time we have left and that is the politics of Iraq which has gotten a lot of attention in the last couple of weeks with Jeb Bush, with Marco Rubio and with a bunch of other people and these questions of was it was a mistake to go in in 2003, was it a mistake to get out in 2011, and what impact this could have both in the Republican race and also the Democratic race. …

WOODWARD: Iraq is a symbol and you certainly can make a persuasive argument it was a mistake but there’s a kind of line going along that Bush and the other people lied about this. I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq and lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don’t let anyone stretch the case on WMD and he (Bush) was the one who was skeptical. And if you tried to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum. The war plan kept getting better and easier and finally at that end people were saying, hey look, it’ll only take a week or two and early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months and so Bush pulled the trigger.

A mistake, certainly, can be argued and there’s an abundance of evidence but there was no lie in this that I could find.

(NewsBusters)

This next section will reintroduce some more information on WMDs being found in Iraq as a support for my point to be found about Bush lying… and it will show just how bad the logic of the Left is. Again, these positions the Left holds to are emotional in there basis, and so, are not typically drawn out to their logical conclusion. I will do that.

WMDs II

So what are some of the examples that counter the Left’s claims and bolster the Bush administration as well as the intelligence agencies from Germany, Russia, France, Israel, Britain, China, Jordan, as well as others showing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (Saddam even saying he had them)? Well let’s see… the following short list below is from the book, Disinformation: 22 Media Myths that Undermine the War on Terror, by Richard Miniter:

• Found: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium;
• Found: 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons;
• Found: Roadside bomb loaded with sarin gas;
• Found: 17 chemical warheads–some containing cyclosarin, a nerve agent five times more powerful than sarin.
• Found: 1,000 radioactive materials–ideal for radioactive dirty bombs;

Mahdi Obeidi

How about the fact that Mahdi Obeidi (Saddam’s head nuclear scientist) buried a prototype of his gas centrifuge, the most direct and efficient route to enriching uranium, in his backyard in Baghdad. Hence the name of his book, The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam’s Nuclear Mastermind. You can see a two part presentation from Dr. Obeidi in PART 1, there are many more that follow.

So the question becomes, if the belief is that Bush knowingly mislead the American public in order to get us into war. First, lets revisit what a lie is:

• LIE: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive. [So the person knows what they are stating is false, and say it to deceive.]

Which Is It?

But this poses a problem for the Left. Why? Well, because the Left repeatedly says that Bush is dumb. But wait. Was Bush and his administration soo clever as to trick/deceive Democrat leaders, Western and Middle-East based intelligence agencies, Saddam Hussein, and the like?

So:

a) IS BUSH AN IDIOT?

b) OR DID HE LIE?

AGAIN, Bush, while being called a dunce or ignoramus by the left is s-o-o-o-o intelligently diabolical that he got every United States intelligence agency and every major intelligence agency in the world ~ not to mention every Democrat ~ to lie for him as well. So is Bush still the “dunce of the class,” as the Left paints him; or is he so intelligent that he fooled the world, as the Left paints him. Which is it? Or are both views partisan?

If Bush was as diabolical as the some of the Left made him out to be… why don’t we have evidence of him “planting” evidence in Iraq so he could go out and point to the examples to tell the Media and Democrats to “speak to the hand”? Instead, as the NYTs points out, he kept his mouth shut in the onslaught of his detractors so that the Defense Department could destroy WMDs as they found them so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Instead of being diabolical, or dumb, or of questionable character… Bush sounds pretty damn noble! However, I have shown there was no mistake. I have yet for someone to show me that this cumulative case can be taken from its lofty place here at my blog. And may I say that I have not seen such a case made yet on this World Wide Web.

#2 Man ~ a Second Time

Let’s hear how the above issues play out in real conversation, and I would entreat the reader to listen to the entire call. One may not like the term “little girl,” but this gets explained near the end.

Iraq is Not Bush’s Fault

Larry Elder gives “10 Reasons Why Iraq’s Bloodbath Is Not ‘W’s’ Fault.” In this article he goes through some of the convoluted thinking that Voltaire preferred. I only import over a few of his points, however, I also import one of Elder’s videos that compliment his article well. This video can be found over at his blog, The Elder Statement:

2) Nearly everybody assumed Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Of the newspaper editorials that opposed the war, not one challenged the assumption that Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMD.

President George W. Bush relied on the same intelligence — and on the same CIA director — as did President Bill Clinton. Kenneth Pollack, Clinton’s Persian Gulf adviser, said not one government intelligence analyst disagreed with the assumption that Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMD.

“The intelligence community,” said Pollack, “convinced me and the rest of the Clinton Administration that Saddam had reconstituted his WMD programs following the withdrawal of the U.N. inspectors in 1998, and was only a matter of years away from having a nuclear weapon. … The U.S. intelligence community’s belief that Saddam was aggressively pursuing weapons of mass destruction predated Bush’s inauguration, and therefore cannot be attributed to political pressure. … Germany … Israel, Russia, Britain, China and even France held positions similar to that of the United States. … In sum, no one doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.”

3) Saddam Hussein did possess stockpiles of WMD. James Clapper, the current director of National Intelligence, said in 2003 that materials for WMD had “unquestionably” been moved out of Iraq, to Syria or perhaps other countries, in an effort to “destroy and disperse” evidence just before the war began.

One of Saddam’s top generals, Georges Sada, in his book called “Saddam’s Secrets,” said truck convoys and 56 airplane flights moved tons of WMD into Syria.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in December, 2002, said, “Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria.”

4) Had we not invaded, Saddam Hussein would have soon restarted his chemical and biological program — and resumed his pursuit for a nuclear capability. After the war started, Bush sent David Kay, a weapons hunter, to locate the assumed stockpiles of WMD. Kay found no stockpiles, but he did find that Saddam had the intent and the ability to restart his WMD program as soon as the heat was off.

5) George Bush did not “rush” America into the war. He obtained a consensus — a resolution from the House, a resolution from the Senate and a resolution from the United Nations. There was a 15-month run-up before the war, during which time Saddam could have declared what he did or did not do with the WMD.

6) Americans supported the Iraq War, overwhelmingly at least at first. Gallup found 76 percent of Americans supported the Iraq War when the military action began, about the same percentage that supported the first Persian Gulf War.

[….]

8) We were greeted as liberators in Iraq. The New York Times Iraq reporter John Burns said: “The American troops were greeted as liberators. We saw it.” In April, 2003, the New York Daily News reported, “Jubilant crowds chanted, ‘Thank you, Bush’ and showered troops with yellow and pink flowers, exactly as administration hawks had promised.”

Conclusion

What was discovered in Iraq were dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment, chemicals, and specialists to make it happen that Iraqi concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002 and was the final straw in the U.S. military’s back. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG (Iraq Survey Group) has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.

This caused the United States and a larger coalition than the First Gulf War to resume (not preempt) military operations. Just the fact alone that Iraq was firing on our Air Force jets in the no-fly zones was reason enough to resume (not preempt) operations based on the cease fire agreement brokered by the United Nations via the first war.

There are other peripheral issues that I have already dealt with that touch this issue in some way, like yellow cake uranium, or the cost of the war and contracts given to Halliburton. However, these issues are easily dismissed, at least for those that do not project their psychoses onto Bush and Cheney.

A Facebook Postscript

This was a confrontation via my Facebook. Enjoy the conversation:

HIM

Benghazi, so funny. Your boy starts a fake war which takes over 4000 lives and caused post traumatic things for the rest of their lives and you guys keep talking about Benghazi. The fact that you guys have respect for dick cheney says it all. You can post all you want but the fact remains that the Bush administration was an abomination on every level. Democrats had to vote yes because of the Bush propaganda machine. They would have been called anti- American with all the fake hysteria the right created. I did not watch the Benghazi video you posted because there is no need, Do you guys not have any memory of Reagan and all his dealings with terrorists, I guess not.

ME

How was the war fake [John Doe]?

HIM

Saddam was not the enemy, Bush Jr had to clean up the mess his father started

ME

That is the reason the war was fake?

HIM (3-responses)

ego

wmds never existed

The right loves a war machine because they make money

ME

Ego is the reason you have to say the Iraq war was fake. Are you a psychotherapist? You interviewed Dubya to have this authority to say this?

WMDs did exist, in fact, I am working on rewriting my WMD page right now for smoother reading.

Here is a snippet: “The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.”

Here is the interview with him: http://youtu.be/eQ9CgDEPlHE

You love bumper stickers that are nothing more than a reflection of ego:

• “The right loves a war machine because they make money”

That isn’t an argument, that is a t-shirt.

HIM

Sean, post all you want the fact is they are liars.

ME

Y-O-U can ignore facts, but ISIS (as reported by CNN) has captured and gained access to disused stores of hundreds of tons of potentially deadly poisons including mustard gas and sarin. This was last week.

They exist now… as I type. They were found by our men in Dubya’s action, and there is first hand eyewitness evidence WMDs existed. But go to your bumper sticker statements.

HIM

The Bush administration called it Operation Iraq Liberation which stands for OIL, They later changed it after everyone realized the lies. There is a reason he has stayed out of the spotlight, he has no answer for his lies.

Bumper sticker, funny. The right only has comical comebacks

ME

We didn’t get any oil, or paid back for the operation?

I have shown you this in the past [John Doe], which is that other countries, like China, got the contracts with Iraq.