“This is a Christian Holocaust” ~ And Obama Brings Up Crusades?

But… but… we shouldn’t forget the Crusades!

They’re massacring every Christian they see and we face extinction, the oldest Christians in the world. Early today I spoke with White House officials and I told them if they keep not doing anything to protect Christians around the world, they’re sentencing my people to death. And, they’re not acting, so we have to put the pressure on… The American government and the White House are not doing enough… This is a Christian holocaust. …The absence of leadership in the White House is leading to more and more Christians to be persecuted and beheaded. Our churches are being bombed. Nobody’s acting. This is, as we keep saying, a full-blown Christian genocide and Washington isn’t doing anything. This is a Christian holocaust.

(Gateway Pundit)

Brian Williams Fib Is Exposed by Stars and Stripes (UPDATED)

Watch the original report…

Politico notes that William’s has told the story multiple times, as the above video shows:

Williams has told the story several times, including during a 2013 appearance on “The Late Show” with David Letterman.

“Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47… we were only at 100 feet doing 100 forward knots,” he told Letterman. “We landed very quickly and hard, and we were stuck, four birds in the middle of the desert. And we were north out ahead of the other Americans.”

(Cartoon by Foden!)

This video comes from NewsBusters:

Here is more via the Weekly Standard, Stars and Stripes first uncovered the fake story:

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.

Williams himself repeated the claim Friday during NBC’s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry.

The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.

 

Red State writes well on this topic!

…The mind boggles. That a man who has risen to the top of his profession would need to imitate Baron von Munchausen and claim experiences that were so blatantly false defies explanation… or rather any explanation that doesn’t include the word “sociopath.” That he would use the occasion of a senior non-commissioned officer’s retirement to spin the web of deceit once again is tawdry beyond words.

His excuse is priceless:

“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”

Have you ever been shot at? For real? Have you ever been in an aircraft that had to set down with an actual in-flight emergency? These are not things you “conflate” with anything else….

…read more…

Also… don’t forget: “Sharyl Attkisson: Brian Williams Not Alone; Hillary Clinton Lied About Being Shot At In Bosnia

Foreign Policy: Even the Mainstream Media Called Obama’s Bluff

This comes from a great post over at Gateway Pundit, and has to do with a previous post regarding Canadian special forces engaging in ground battles with the Islamic State. Can you guess where? In Iraq. IN OTHER WORDS, our allies (as well as U.S. special forces) are on the ground in Iraq. so to hear this critique from the mainstream media is refreshing… but as I will note, it is indicative of the worldview of the Obama admin:

Richard Engel in the above video got it exactly right… Obama is looking at the world as how he “wishes” it could be. The Left has a view of economics, politics, and world affairs that especially since the “new Left” of the 60’s has displayed a Utopian proclivity. While the following audio is long (and you can choose to skip it), the insight into how this new Left thinks outside of the real world is required listening for the person interested in political science:

The President’s SOTU speech on foreign policy was soo bad that even “thrill up my leg” Matthews got it, Wolf Blitzer as well. But the conservative (who is typically more religious, by far) has a belief that ONLY God can bring perfection to earth. The leftist (typically more secular, by far) believes that mankind can impose perfection by edict (e.g., government legislation). This is why Democrats in a majority think man can control weather by legislation as well as calling millions of years of Nature (or God, or both) honing the male/female species into question. It is hubris that knows no bounds.

Here is some Utopian ideals defined via Conservapedia:

A utopia is a fictional society considered perfect by its proponent, but whose implementation in reality is unrealistic. The term, greek in origin, was first used by Thomas More, for its 1516 eponymous book, which describes a fictional state whose laws and organization are purportedly ideal. However, More’s intent was, at least in part, ironical, as some ambiguities in the text clearly show: the word “utopia” can mean both “good place” or “place that doesn’t exist”, and the narrator’s last name, Hythlodaeus, literally means “purveyor of nonsense”.

Utopian literature was, however, not created by More; it comes from the fusion of several archetypes, which can be found in classical literature and mythology, religion, and philosophy. The most important influences were the Greek accounts of voyages in faraway, fantastic lands (such as Hyperborea or Thule), the narration of a fall from a privileged and carefree condition in religion and mythology (such as Hesiod’s Golden Age, or the Genesis’ Fall from Eden), and philosophical inquiries about the nature of the perfect state, of which the most influential was undoubtedly Plato’s Republic. More and Plato disagree on what makes a perfect society: for example, while both societies are socialist, Plato advocates the communion of women and families, whereas More, a Christian, could not agree with that. This shows that utopias are, by their own nature, subjective and arbitrary, as different individuals will have different ideas on what constitutes a “good” society. A utopia, seen from a different point of view, can become a dystopia, that is, the description of a society which claims to be ideal but which ends up being a nightmare.

It is also interesting to note that utopias, while having some similarities with religious paradises, are incompatible with them: to be perfect, a paradise only needs an act of will by a deity; man only needs to gain access to the paradise through his actions on Earth (the exact requisites change from religion to religion: in the old Norse religion only valiant warriors fallen in battle could access the Valhalla, whereas the Christian Paradise is reserved for the righteous) and no special laws or measures are required to keep that paradise perfect. On the contrary, Utopia is a man-made paradise; it is perfect because it is carefully engineered to be so, and constant human intervention is required to prevent it from declining or falling.

This, according to professor of sociology Krishan Kumar, reflects two particular Christian views of human perfectibility: utopianists believe in the Pelagian view that man can make himself perfect through his actions, whereas the dystopian view reflects St. Augustine’s doctrine: God can be the only source of perfection, everything that man does is doomed to fail, and only faith can save man….

Canadian Spec-Ops Engage I.S. in Iraq (Plus: Breaking News)

Gateway Pundit points out that although Obama said in the above video he “ended the war in Iraq,” allied troops are fighting the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq.

Brig. Gen. Michael Rouleau says Special Forces came under direct attack and used sniper fire to neutralize the attackers.

A very interesting headline comes from Digital Journal, entitled: “Boots on the ground – Those putting ISIS on the defensive

From Canadian special forces on the ground in Iraq to Kurdish fighters in Syria ISIS is slowly, but surely, being put on the defensive thanks to those brave men and women who are risking their lives in order to repel that groups murderous onslaughts.

[….]

Canadian special forces have recently become the first of any western military forces to engage this enemy on the ground after they came under attack from machine gun and mortar fire while out surveying the front-line firsthand. The act was dubbed a “defensive” one on the part of those Canadian forces. Nevertheless they are the first western force to engage in a firefight with ISIS. They, thankfully, sustained no injuries.

News of this came as the Syrian Kurds defending the town of Kobani continue to make gains in repelling the vicious attempt on the part of ISIS to crush them and ensure they don’t stand as a symbol of resistance to ISIS’s heartfelt efforts to establish their so-called caliphate. The Kurds have defied them and have stood up as an unwavering symbol of resistance having withstood everything ISIS could throw at them for an awe-inspiring 150 days. They have recently re-captured a strategic hill there which they can use to their advantage against an enemy who has already been repelled from most of the town.

Furthermore in Kobani U.S. air strikes have contributed to blunting ISIS’s ability to mount a prolonged siege by bombing its supply lines and also its positions around the town. Turkey has also assisted by allowing Peshmerga fighters from Iraq to cross through its territory to help reinforce those defending Kobani. All form of assistance to people who needed every bit of help they could get, and now the bravery they exhibited in their unwavering stand against this group is finally beginning to pay off….

There is BREAKING news that the leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, has been killed. This was stated before… let’s hope it is true this time!

President Bush “A Class Act” ~ According to the New York Times

This is the shorter description of why the Bush admin didn’t take the offensive during all the scurrilous attacks against it on WMDs. The longer reading by Larry Elder of the NYT’s article can be found at my YouTube channel, HERE. My VERY in-depth discussion of WMD’s (or AMDs if you wish) is HERE.


For more clear thinking like this from Larry Elder… I invite you to visit: http://www.larryelder.com/ ~AND~ http://www.elderstatement.com/

WMDs and the Myths of the Left (Mantras 2.0) ~ UPDATED

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:

CH5

The jihadist group bringing terror to Iraq overran a Saddam Hussein chemical weapons complex Thursday, gaining access to disused stores of hundreds of tons of potentially deadly poisons including mustard gas and sarin.

(Gateway Pundit) ISIS terrorists showed off a captured SCUD missile today in Raqqa, Syria (to the right, click to enlarge). Scud is a series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The name Scud has been widely used to refer to these missiles and the wide variety of modern variants.

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.

But at Wired Magazine’s Danger Room (HTs to Ace and Gateway Pundit via an e-mail), Noah Shachtman identifies substantial contrary evidence in the WikiLeaks docs to add that what has already been accumulated. Shachtman tries to minimize the impact by overstating the Bush administration’s actual position, but that doesn’t change what the WikiLeaks docs contain:

WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results

[….]

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.

…The WMD diehards will likely find some comfort in these newly-WikiLeaked documents. Skeptics will note that these relatively small WMD stockpiles were hardly the kind of grave danger that the Bush administration presented in the run-up to the war.

Sorry, Mr. Shachtman, the “diehards” are those on the left who have never backed away from “no WMDs” claim, which has once again (previous examples here, here, here, and here, to identify just a few) been proven to be demonstrably false.

[….]

Gateway Pundit wonders: “Do you suppose this will make any headlines?” Prognosis: Doubtful. There’s too much at stake in protecting the left’s folklore.

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

1) A clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

2) A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

3) Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist’s home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

4) New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

5) Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists’ homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

6) A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

7) Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

8) Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km – well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

9) Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles –probably the No Dong — 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

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:

(BAGHDAD, June 9 [AFP]) – Iraq said Sunday it has sent 20 planeloads of humanitarian assistance to Syria to help victims of Tuesday’s Zeyzoun dam collapse in the north of the neighboring country. “Iraqi Airways planes have made 20 flights to Damascus until today to take foodstuffs and pharmaceutical products to the victims,” Transport Minister Ahmad Murtada Ahmad told the official INA news agency.

Planes continued to take off from Baghdad’s international airport on Sunday in the airlift put in place on Thursday at the request of President Saddam Hussein, Ahmad said.

Iraq’s Health Minister Omid Medhat Mubarak added that the sanctions-hit country would also send teams of specialized doctors, surgeons and chemists to Syria….

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:

…[he] was a militant Islamist from Jordan who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War.

He formed al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in the 1990s, and led it until his death in June 2006. Zarqawi took responsibility, on several audio and video recordings, for numerous acts of violence in Iraq including suicide bombings and hostage executions. Zarqawi opposed the presence of US and Western military forces in the Islamic world, as well as the West’s support for the existence of Israel. In late 2004 he joined al-Qaeda, and pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. After this al-Tawhid wal-Jihad became known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and al-Zarqawi was given the al-Qaeda title, “Emir of Al Qaeda in the Country of Two Rivers”.

In September 2005, he declared “all-out war” on Shi’ites in Iraq, after the Iraqi government offensive on insurgents in the Sunni town of Tal Afar. He dispatched numerous suicide bombers throughout Iraq to attack American soldiers and areas with large concentrations of Shia militias. He is also thought to be responsible for the 2005 bombing of three hotels in Amman, Jordan. Zarqawi was killed in a targeted killing by a Joint US force on June 7, 2006, while attending a meeting in an isolated safehouse approximately 8 km (5.0 mi) north of Baqubah. One United States Air Force F-16C jet dropped two 500-pound (230 kg) guided bombs on the safehouse.

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:

THE United States once described Abu Nidal as “the world’s most dangerous terrorist”. It was not an exaggeration. In a grisly campaign stretching over two decades and three continents, his Fatah Revolutionary Council (FRC) was responsible for the deaths of perhaps 1,000 people in 20 countries, usually at the behest and in the pay of this or that Middle East regime. (The Economist)

Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist, was murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein after refusing to train al-Qa’eda fighters based in Iraq, The Telegraph can reveal.

Despite claims by Iraqi officials that Abu Nidal committed suicide after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Saddam, Western diplomats now believe that he was killed for refusing to reactivate his international terrorist network.

According to reports received from Iraqi opposition groups, Abu Nidal had been in Baghdad for months as Saddam’s personal guest, and was being treated for a mild form of skin cancer.

While in Baghdad, Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, came under pressure from Saddam to help train groups of al-Qa’eda fighters who moved to northern Iraq after fleeing Afghanistan. Saddam also wanted Abu Nidal to carry out attacks against the US and its allies.

When Abu Nidal refused, Saddam ordered his intelligence chiefs to assassinate him.

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

In other words, German, Italian, Saudi, Jordanian, Australian, the CIA, MI6, French, Russian, Israeli, and most other intelligence agencies all lied. So did, then, Bill Clinton, Madeline “Anti-Semite” Albright, Al “Internet” Gore, Hillary “What Difference Does It Make” Clinton, John “Reporting for Winter Soldier Duty” Kerry, Ted “Chappaquiddick” Kennedy, Robert “KKK” Byrd, Nancy “See What’s In the Bill” Pelosi, and Sandy “Socks” Berger. Not to mention the head of the operation to get rid of WMDs to Syrian, Saddam’s 2nd in command of his air-force. Or the Jordanians who foiled a chemical attack many years ago, tracing these WMDs (really AMDs) through Syria back to Iraq. How bout the head of Saddam’s nuclear program hiding stuff under his garden?

And ISIS getting their hands on WMDs must also be a lie by the Bush admin… deep into Obama’s presidency… that is, his imperial presidency.

Ohh the mantras that still fly from the professional left today (my head hurts). Imperialist presidencies only happen if you have an “R” after your name (liberal professors be damned); and WMDs designation in Iraq only count in the media if the President has a “D” after his name.

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 lied, then he must have known there were no weapons in Iraq.  However, if you say you believe something to be true, and it ultimately becomes false, that’s not called a “lie,” that’s called a “mistake” – a mistake that would have been made by the CIA (and the world) that was beyond the Bush’s control.

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.

(Video Description) This broadcast was made before we declared war on Saddam Hussein. The caller is an Iraqi who asks a anti-war organizer a pointed question about leaving Saddam in power. The clip is 6 minutes long and she never answers the question.

According to Georges Hormis Sada, an Iraqi General who served under Saddam Hussein, Saddam is the only world leader to use weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He also states that the WMD’s were flown to Syria before the Invasion of Iraq began. He states that in his book “Saddam’s Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein.”

The U.S. was ready to pull out once the new Iraqi government was established and elections were up and running, but once it was evident that surrounding factions and civil war threatened to collapse the new republic, the U.S. decided to stay in and eliminate all threats to the new freedom that they fought so hard to allow the Iraqi citizens to live under. That is the point of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The sooner we get the job done, the sooner we can pull out without any trouble. Support our troops, why don’t you?

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.

That was it… these guys paint themselves into a corner with motivations that they think was behind the war and none of it is true… so you end up with them fantasizing positions and they bow out of the conversation because there is no evidence to back up their slogans.

Dispelling The “CIA Trained-Funded Bin Laden/Taliban” Myth/Mantra

Politicians and leaders from both sides of the aisle make mention of this myth that we funded/created Al Qaeda via weapons, training, and money to the likes of Osama Bin Laden. The Daily Caller in 2013 notes:

…in just a one-month span, Sen. Paul has — not once, but twice — advanced a conspiracy theory that says that during the Reagan era, the U.S. funded Osama bin Laden.

During John Kerry’s secretary of state confirmation hearing, Paul said ”We funded bin Laden” — a statement that prompted Foreign Policy magazine’s managing editor, Blake Hounshell, to fire off a tweet saying: “Rand Paul tells a complete falsehood: ‘We funded Bin Laden.’ This man is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

But that didn’t discourage Paul. During a much anticipated foreign policy speech at the Heritage Foundation today, Paul doubled down, saying: “In the 1980’s the war caucus in Congress armed bin Laden and the mujaheddin in their fight with the Soviet Union.”

The only problem is that this is, at best, highly speculative — and, at worst, the perpetuation of an outright myth.

This also puts Paul in the same camp as Michael Moore, who said: ““WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden! Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!”….

…read it all…

And this is the crux of the matter.

Truthers took Michael Moore’s non-evidential presentations and statements and ran with themAnother example that shows this myth isn’t necessarily one owned by strictly by politicians, as, this conversation on a friends FaceBook shows:

Antony: failed foreign policy means today’s buddies are tomorrows boogiemen.

Hunlsy: I just love the fact they’re fighting us with the weapons and training that we gave them.

Antony: Oh where oh where did Iran get those P3s and F-14 Tomcats?

Antony: it was the US – we used to be buddies with Iranians too. We played both sides of the Iran/Iraq war, which predicated Gulf I.

Hunsly: Likely from the Russians. Regardless, we’re fighting a group, not a country. This group makes all of its IEDs & buys all of their weapons with the money that we gave them.

Here is my short intercept of the above conversation. More info will follow it:


Weapons

This is somewhat of a myth — that we sold the majority of weapons to the Taliban, to Iraq, and the like. For instance, in the following graph you can see that (in the instance of Iraq, which I was told over-and-over-again was weaponized by the U.S.) you have to combine the U.K. and the U.S. to equal 1%.

Iraqi Weapons

Moral Position

Much like us supporting Stalin in defeating Hitler, we were aligned with people whom we didn’t see eye-to-eye with in order to beat the USSR during the Cold War (WWIII)… a war that was fought from 1947–1991.

History

And thirdly, the Taliban didn’t exist when Reagan said this:

Reagan didn’t say that about the Taliban because the Taliban didn’t exist yet. He said that of the Mujahedin, the same men who would later go on to fight the Taliban under the name “Northern Alliance”

The Afghan Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (Persian: ‏جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستانJabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barā-yi Nijāt-i Afghānistān), was a military front that came to formation in late 1996 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was assembled by key leaders of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, particularly president in exile Burhanuddin Rabbani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Initially it included mostly Tajiks but by 2000, leaders of other ethnic groups had joined the Northern Alliance. This included Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Qadir, Sayed Hussein Anwari and others.

The Northern Alliance fought a defensive war against the Taliban government. They received support from Iran, Russia, India, Tajikistan and others, while the Taliban were backed by al-Qaeda. The Northern Alliance was mostly made up of ethnic Tajiks, but later included Uzbeks, Hazaras, and Pashtuns. The Taliban government was dominated by Pashtuns with other groups being the minority. After the US-led invasion and establishment of the Karzai administration in late 2001, the Northern Alliance broke apart and different political parties were formed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Alliance

The mujaheddin fighters who had previously defeated the communist government and formed the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA) came under attack and in 1996 lost the capital to the Taliban. At this juncture the Mujahedin resorted to the creation of UIF because Rashid Dostum and other warlords who belonged to various tribes but to no specific political party did not want to recognize the ISA as a legal entity, so the defeated government devised a military strategy to utilize these forces while not offending their political sensibilities.

In October 1996 in Khinjan, Ahmed Shah Massoud and Dostum came to an agreement to form the anti-Taliban coalition that outside Afghanistan became known as the Northern Alliance.


CNN was doing a special on Afghanistan and Peter Bergen asked for questions from viewers that he would answer. One of the questions is as follows: “If it’s true that bin Laden once worked for the CIA, what makes you so sure that he isn’t still?”~ Anne Busigin, Toronto, Canada

Peter Bergen responds:

This is one of those things where you cannot put it out of its misery.

The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There’s no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn’t have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn’t have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.

The real story here is the CIA didn’t really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.

One person in a forum that was similarly challenged pointed out that this surely wasn’t the Taliban because they hated women in any position of authority — look at the pic at the top again.

As you read on, keep in mind Mr. Bergen was not a fan of conservatives, or Republicans. With that in mind, enjoy the rest, it is posted here so it will never disappear on me:

Northern Alliance (WIKI)

U.S. government officials and a number of other parties maintain that the U.S. supported only the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. They deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with the Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) or Bin Laden, let alone armed, trained, coached or indoctrinated them. Scholars and reporters have called the idea of CIA-backed Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) “nonsense”,[6] “sheer fantasy”,[7] and “simply a folk myth.”[8]

They argue that:

  • with a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land
  • with several hundred million dollars a year in funding from non-American, Muslim sources, Arab Afghans themselves would have no need for American funds
  • Americans could not train mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of U.S. agents to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan;[9]
  • the Afghan Arabs were militant Islamists, reflexively hostile to Westerners, and prone to threaten or attack Westerners even though they knew the Westerners were helping the mujahideen.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner.[10]

Bin Laden himself once said “the collapse of the Soviet Union … goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan … the US had no mentionable role,” but “collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant.” [11]

According to CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997,

The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There’s no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn’t have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn’t have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA did not understand who Osama was until 1996, when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.[8]

Bergen quotes Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987:

It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune. The CIA supported the mujahideen by spending the taxpayers’ money, billions of dollars of it over the years, on buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy. It was, however, a cardinal rule of Pakistan’s policy that no Americans ever become involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.[12]

Marc Sageman, a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987–1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan’s Mujahideen, argues that no American money went to the foreign volunteers.

Sageman also says:[13]

Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention [the Afghan Arabs]. Many were not serious about the war. … Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties.

No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers. They simply traveled in different circles and never crossed U.S. radar screens. They had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders.”[14]

Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration’s Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987, puts it,

The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all. They thought it would end up with them being blamed, like in Guatemala.” So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, … the skittish CIA, Cannistraro estimates, had less than ten operatives acting as America’s eyes and ears in the region. Milton Bearden, the Agency’s chief field operative in the war effort, has insisted that “[T]he CIA had nothing to do with” bin Laden. Cannistraro says that when he coordinated Afghan policy from Washington, he never once heard bin Laden’s name.[15]

Fox News reporter Richard Miniter wrote that in interviews with the two men who “oversaw the disbursement for all American funds to the anti-Soviet resistance, Bill Peikney – CIA station chief in Islamabad from 1984 to 1986 – and Milt Bearden – CIA station chief from 1986 to 1989 – he found,

Both flatly denied that any CIA funds ever went to bin Laden. They felt so strongly about this point that they agreed to go on the record, an unusual move by normally reticent intelligence officers. Mr. Peikney added in an e-mail to me: “I don’t even recall UBL [bin Laden] coming across my screen when I was there.[16]

Other reasons advanced for a lack of a CIA-Afghan Arab connection of “pivotal importance,” (or even any connection at all), was that the Afghan Arabs themselves were not important in the war but were a “curious sideshow to the real fighting.”[17]

One estimate of the number of combatants in the war is that 250,000 Afghans fought 125,000 Soviet troops, but only 2000 Arab Afghans fought “at any one time”.[18]

According to Milton Bearden the CIA did not recruit Arabs because there were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight. The Arab Afghans were not only superfluous but “disruptive,” angering local Afghans with their more-Muslim-than-thou attitude, according to Peter Jouvenal.[19] Veteran Afghan cameraman Peter Jouvenal quotes an Afghan mujahideen as saying “whenever we had a problem with one of them [foreign mujahideen], we just shot them. They thought they were kings.”

Many who traveled in Afghanistan, including Olivier Roy[20] and Peter Jouvenal,[21] reported of the Arab Afghans’ visceral hostility to Westerners in Afghanistan to aid Afghans or report on their plight. BBC reporter John Simpson tells the story of running into Osama bin Laden in 1989, and with neither knowing who the other was, bin Laden attempting to bribe Simpson’s Afghan driver $500 — a large sum in a poor country — to kill the infidel Simpson. When the driver declined, Bin Laden retired to his “camp bed” and wept “in frustration.” [22]

According to Steve Coll, author of “Ghost Wars”, the primary contact for the CIA and ISI in Afghanistan was Ahmed Shah Massoud a poppy farmer and militia leader known as the “Lion of the Panjeer”. During the Afghan Civil War which erupted once the Soviets had left, Massoud’s army was routed by the Taliban (who were being helped by Pakistan’s ISI) and restricted to the northern region of the country. A loose entente was formed with several other native tribal militias which became known as the Northern Alliance who operated in opposition to the Taliban. On September 10, 2001 a camera crew was granted access to Massoud under the premise they were interviewing him for a documentary about the Mujahadeen. The crew members were actually Al Qaeda operatives who detonated a bomb killing themselves and Massoud. The purpose of the assassination was to eliminate a key ally for the US in anticipation of an invasion in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks which were to take place the following day.

And here is another great post responding to the non-evidential/conspiratorial [leftists] on the subject:

Bin Laden trained and funded by the CIA

“Osama bin Laden was trained and funded by the CIA” – you’ll read the claim everywhere, and it’s rarely opposed: everyone just seems to accept that it’s true. But why? How much evidence have you ever seen presented to support this?

The reality is that there are many people who say this is simply a myth. And we’re not just talking about neo-con friendly journalists, either.

Take Jason Burke, for instance, a major contributor to the BBC documentary “The Power of Nightmares”. In his book “Al Qaeda”, he wrote the following:

It is often said that bin Ladin was funded by the CIA. This is not true, and indeed it would have been impossible given the structure of funding that General Zia ul-Haq, who had taken power in Pakistan in 1977, had set up. A condition of Zia’s cooperation with the American plan to turn Afghanistan into the Soviet’s ‘Vietnam’ was that all American funding to the Afghan resistance had to be channeled through the Pakistani government, which effectively meant the Afghan bureau of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the military spy agency. The American funding, which went exclusively to the Afghan mujahideen groups, not the Arab volunteers [bin Ladin’s groups], was supplemented by Saudi government money and huge funds raised from mosques, non-governmental charitable institutions and private donors throughout the Islamic world. Most of the major Gulf-based charities operating today were founded at this time to raise money or channel government funds to the Afghans, civilians and fighters. In fact, as little as 25 per cent of the monet for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states.

Page 59, Al Qaeda: The true story of radical Islam, Jason Burke

Steve Coll, former Managing Editor of the Washington Post, also suggests bin Ladin passed largely unnoticed by the CIA, in his book “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001”:

…According to [Ahemd] Badeeb, on bin Ladin’s first trip to Pakistan he brought donations to the Lahore offices of Jamaat-e-Islami, Zia’s political shock force. Jamaat was the Pakistani offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood; its students had sacked the US embassy in Islamabad in 1979. bin Ladin did not trust the official Pakistan intelligence service, Badeeb recalled, and preferred to fund his initial charity through private religious and political networks.From the beginning of the Afghan jihad, Saudi intelligence used religious charities to support its own unilateral operations. This mainly involved funneling money and equipment to favoured Afghan commanders outisde ISI or CIA control… “The humanitarian aid-that was completely separate from the Americans”, Badeeb recalled. “And we insist[ed] that the Americans will not get to that, get involved–especially in the beginning,” in part because some of the Islamist mujahedin objected to direct contact with Western infidels…

In spy lexicon, each of the major intelligence agencies began working the Afghan jihad–GID [General Intelligence Department, Saudi Arabia], ISI and the CIA– began to “compartment” their work, even as all three collaborated with one another through formal liasons…

bin Ladin moved within Saudi intelligence’s compartmented operations, outside of CIA eyesight…

Page 86/ 87, Ghost Wars, Stevel Coll

In a Q&A session following the release of his book, Coll said:

Wheaton, Md.: There have been accusations from the left that have directly accused the CIA of funding and training bin Laden. Is there any truth to this ? Steve Coll: I did not discover any evidence of direct contact between CIA officers and bin Laden during the 1980s, when they were working more or less in common cause against the Soviets. CIA officials, including Tenet, have denied under oath that such contact took place. The CIA was certainly aware of bin Laden’s activities, beginning in the mid- to late-1980s, and they generally looked favorably on what he was doing at that time. But bin Laden’s direct contacts were with Saudi intelligence and to some extent Pakistani intelligence, not with the Americans.

Missouri EDU

Peter Bergen expanded on the supposed CIA/ bin Ladin links in his book, Holy War Inc:

But were the CIA and the Afghan Arabs in cahoots, as recent studies have suggested? One author charges: “The CIA had funded and trained the Afghan Arabs during the war”. Another refers to “the central role of the CIA’s Muslim mercenaries, including upwards of 2,000 mercenaries in the Afghanistan war”. Both authors present these claims as axioms, but provide no real corroboration.Other commentators have reported that bin Ladin himself was aided by the CIA. A report in the respected British newspaper The Guardian states: “In 1986 the CIA even helped him [bin Ladin] build an underground camp at Khost [Afghanistan] where he was to train recruits from across the Islamic world in the revolutionary art of jihad”…Bin Ladin, meanwhile, had expoused anti-American positions since 1982, and thanks to the fortune derived from his family’s giant construction business had little need of CIA money. In fact, the underground camp at Khost was built in 1982 by an Afghan commander, with Arab funding.

A source familiar with bin Ladin’s organisation explains that bin Ladin “never had any relations with America or American officials… He was saying very early in the 1980’s that the next battle is going to be with America… No aid or training or other support have ever been given to bin Ladin from Americans.” A senior offical unequivocally says that “bin Ladin never met with the CIA.”

While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don’t make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of grey. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to fund the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.

Former CIA officer Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency’s Afghan operation in the late 1980’s, says: “The CIA did not recruit Arabs,” as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight…

Moreover, the Afghan Arabs demonstrated a pathological dislike of Westerners. Jouvenal says: “I always kept away from Arabs [in Afghanistan]. They were very hostile. They would ask, ‘What are you doing in an Islamic country?” The BBC reporter John Simpson had a close call with bin Ladin himself outside Jalalabad in 1989. Travelling with a group of Arab mujahideen, Simpson and his television crew bumped into an Arab man beautifully dressed in spotless white robes; the man began shouting at Simpson’s escorts to kill the infidels, then offered a truck driver the not unreasonable sum of five hundred dollars to do the job. Simpson’s Afghan escort turned down the request, and bin Ladin was to be found later on a camp bed, weeping in frustration. Only when bin Ladin became a public figure, almost a decade later, did Simpson realise who the mysterious Arab was who had wanted him dead.

Page 67/68, Holy War Inc, Peter Bergen

This level of hostility to Westerners doesn’t suggest a warm working relationship with the US, and there’s some confirmation in a story retold by Richard Miniter:

…the handful of Americans who had heard of bin Ladin in the 1980’s knew him mainly for his violently anti-American views. Dana Rohrabacher, now a Republican congressman from Orange County, California, told me about a trip he took with the mujihideen in 1987. At the time, Rohrabacher was a Reagan aide who delighted in taking long overland trips inside Afghanistan with anti-Communist forces. On one such trek, his guide told him not to speak English for the next few hours because they were passing by bin Ladin’s encampment. Rohrabacher was told, “If he hears an American, he will kill you.” 

Page 16, Disinformation, Richard Miniter

Bin Ladin was himself asked about US funding by Robert Fisk:

Fisk: …what of the Arab mujahedin he took to Afghanistan – members of a guerilla army who were also encouraged and armed by the United States – and who were forgotten when that war was over? bin Ladin: “Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help…

Fisk interview, 1996

And Ayman al-Zawahiri, second-in-command of al Qaeda, explains more in his text “Knights under the Prophet’s Banner”. Here he claims the “Afghan Arabs” had plenty of funding from various Arab sources, and points to other indications that they never supported the US:

“While the United States backed Pakistan and the mujahidin factions with money and equipment, the young Arab mujahidin’s relationship with the United States was totally different.”Indeed the presence of those young Arab Afghans in Afghanistan and their increasing numbers represented a failure of US policy and new proof of the famous US political stupidity. The financing of the activities of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan came from aid sent to Afghanistan by popular organizations. It was substantial aid. “The Arab mujahidin did not confine themselves to financing their own jihad but also carried Muslim donations to the Afghan mujahidin themselves. Usama Bin Ladin has apprised me of the size of the popular Arab support for the Afghan mujahidin that amounted, according to his sources, to $200 million in the form of military aid alone in 10 years.

Imagine how much aid was sent by popular Arab organizations in the non-military fields such as medicine and health, education and vocational training, food, and social assistance (including sponsorship of orphans, widows, and the war handicapped. Add to all this the donations that were sent on special occasions such as Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha feasts and during the month of Ramadan.”

“Through this unofficial popular support, the Arab mujahidin established training centers and centers for the call to the faith. They formed fronts that trained and equipped thousands of Arab mujahidin and provided them with living expenses, housing, travel, and organization.”

Changing Bin Ladin’s Guard

About the Afghan Arabs’ relationship with the United States, Al-Zawahiri says in his book: “If the Arab mujahidin are mercenaries of the United States who rebelled against it as it alleges, why is it unable to buy them back now? Are they not counted now-with Usama Bin Ladin at their head-as the primary threat to US interests? Is not buying them more economical and less costly that the astronomical budgets that the United States is allotting for security and defense?”

“The Americans, in their usual custom of exaggeration and superficiality, are trying to sell off illusions to the people and are ignoring the most basic facts. Is it possible that Usama Bin Ladin who, in his lectures in the year 1987, called for boycotting US goods as a form of support for the intifadah in Palestine, a US agent in Afghanistan?….

“Furthermore, is it possible that the martyr-as we regard him-Abdallah Azzam was a US collaborator when in fact he never stopped inciting young men against the United States and used to back HAMAS with all the resources at his disposal?

“Is it possible that the jihadist movement in Egypt can be a collaborator movement for the United States when Khalid al-Islambuli and his comrades killed Anwar al-Sadat, even before the phenomenon of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan emerged?”

“Is it possible that the jihadist movement in Egypt can be a US collaborator movement when in fact it brought up its children, ever since the movement started, to reject Israel and all the agreements of capitulation to it and to consider making peace with Israel as a contravention of Islamic Shari’ah?”

Book, His Own Words: A Translation of the Writings of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri

Richard Miniter has a little more on this in “Dispelling the CIA-Bin Ladin Myth“, and while you may not exactly trust the source, there were further comments worth at least a look on the US State Departments “Identifying Misinformation” site.

Obama’s Defense Secretary/CIA Director, Leon Panetta: Iraq Withdrawal

Former Obama Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta told CBS News that some U.S. troops should have remained in Iraq. Panetta spoke with Scott Pelley in a segment that aired Friday.

✿ Scott Pelley: Were you confident in that moment that pulling out was the right thing to do?

✿ Leon Panetta: No, I wasn’t. I really, I really thought that it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq.

But, Barack Obama overruled Panetta and withdrew all troops from Iraq in 2012 – one of the biggest foreign policy errors in US history.


 

So what do we have so far in foreign affairs? So far we have Bush warning about pulling troops out of Iraq too soon and its disastrous effects; Sen. John McCain also said this troop withdrawal was bad mojo; Glenn Beck warning of ISIS years ago; Obama ridding himself of senior military staff that were involved in Iraqi success; Mitt Romney said it was counter to his plan in the 2012 election debates to pull troops from Iraq; Russia is now buzzing Alaska regularly with it’s nuclear bombers, as well as Europe — but both Romney AND Palin warned of Russia while Obama joked that the 80’s called and want their foreign policy back; Romney was right on Syria; from Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” when Romeny said Jeep was going to China (he was right), to Sarah Palin’s “Death Panels” ~ time-and-time again the Obama admin’s/Democrats direction for the country has been shown to be wrong, misguided, and dangerous. When will people get it? 

Where Are the Anti-War Protesters? ~ Ohhhh, They’re Partisen

My first uploaded YouTube video (April 2007)

  • Evan Coyne Maloney is the man… He uses the Socratic method to show just how shallow these anti-war protestors are in their knowledge. (From: http://www.brain-terminal.com/ )

This comes by way of both Twitchy AND the American Thinker:

A clarifying moment in the history of the far left. Since 2009, the US has gone to war in Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and the odd military action in Nigeria – all without specific congressional authorization And yet, the anti-war movement – who never met a policy by President Bush that they didn’t turn out in massive numbers to protest – has remained dead silent in the face of a massive expansion of another war in Iraq (or maybe it’s the same one) and Syria.

The Boston Herald’s Howie Carr noticed this too:


It’s all very confusing. When George W. Bush considered invading Iraq without a declaration of war, the Democrats wanted to try him for war crimes in The Hague. When Obama does the same thing … crickets.

Which raises another question: Where exactly is the anti-war movement?

Have you see a single “No Blood for Oil” sign in Cambridge?

To paraphrase the John Kerry of 2004: “Can I get me a candlelight vigil here?”

Whatever happened to Cindy Sheehan? Where is Code Pink? I haven’t seen an “EndLESS War” bumper sticker in years, since 2009 to be exact.

The anti-war movement is MIA as this war, er counter­terrorism operation, begins. Back when Bush was waging war, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now it’s “racism.” If you speak truth to power in the Obama era, they call it hate speech. The IRS will audit you.

[….]

Gee – could it be that the anti-war movement is just another partisan creation of the Democratic party? Looks that way.

[….]

With no lefty media calling for protests, there probably won’t be any. Even the anarchists and commies are silent. It’s a phenomenon that proves the shocking level of hypocrisy and partisanship inherent in any leftist protest movement, but especially the anti-war crowd.

[….]

The anti-war movement is MIA as this war, er counter­terrorism operation, begins. Back when Bush was waging war, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now it’s “racism.” If you speak truth to power in the Obama era, they call it hate speech. The IRS will audit you.

Obama’s media sycophants described his prime-time speech as “nuanced.” I’d call it ragtime.

I thought the moonbats didn’t want the U.S. “going it alone.” You hear that phrase on the networks now about as often as you hear the words “full employment.”

And why is the president so outraged about a couple of beheadings? When a Muslim terrorist yelling “Allahu akbar!” murdered 13 servicemen at Fort Hood, Obama shrugged it off as “workplace violence.”

Now Obama’s suddenly “all wee-wee’ed up” about non-Muslim Muslims murdering Americans.

Flag-draped coffins at Dover AFB are no longer a feature of the nightly news. Remember Wolf Blitzer’s nightly trumpeting of Bush’s plummeting approval ratings?

Now the polls are so bleak for the Kenyan Katastrophe, CNN doesn’t even mention them anymore. I’m surprised they ran the Kerry soundbite even once about how we’re not really at war against SIS, or is it SIL?

Can I get me a “War Is Not the Answer” bumper sticker here? Not in Cambridge I can’t.

Erin Burnett (CNN) Gets Smacked Down by Paul Bremer

Larry Elder (and Paul Bremer) dismantle older as well as new mantras flying around via our friends on the left. In the interview that is the centerpiece of the segment[s] here via Larry Elder, Erin “Monkey” Burnett gets all of her talking points smacked down. The only thing Miss Burnett accomplished was showing her bias/sarcasm well.