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Banned
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Originally Posted by samcol
Yes the war on iraq and terror is a complete disaster. We are creating more terrorists by the day. I think they lie so much they believe themselves. I like how Powell says the report was flawed. It seems like every report that comes out that isn't pro war, or that the wars are improving is "flawed."
It seems like these wars are really going no where. We are just fed 'we are fighting for freedom, don't ask questions' it starts to get old. And to think we are gearing up for Iran over the same thing as Iraq  |
<a href="http://www.iraqbodycount.net/">17384</a> Iraqi civilian deaths and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/">1,723</a> coalition troop deaths......but, for the time being......discussion at TFP Politics seems to favor topics such as "erring on the side of life" for Schiavo, and why using the "N" word is a no-no.
This is a peculiar, disconnected time in history. Things will go along like this until they don't. The absurdities in national/world politics that no one seems to want to focus on now, are not confined to this end of the English speaking world, either. This season of misinformation and incompetence seems to be a deliberate and collaborative effort of equally inept British and American government extremists and their propagandists:
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<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/12/sprj.irq.powell.ricin/">http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/12/sprj.irq.powell.ricin/</a>
<b>Europe skeptical of Iraq-ricin link</b>
Wednesday, February 12, 2003 Posted: 2:58 PM EST (1958 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- European intelligence officials questioned U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's contention Wednesday that the lethal poison involved in a terrorist plot broken up in Britain came from Iraq.
Powell cited the plot in testimony before the House International Relations Committee, arguing that part of the danger of not disarming Iraq lay in possible alliances with terrorists.
"The ricin that is bouncing around Europe now originated in Iraq -- not in the part of Iraq that is under Saddam Hussein's control, but his security forces know all about it," Powell said.
But investigators have said that arrests in Europe found suspected terrorists trained in biological and chemical weapons in the Pankisi Gorge region of Georgia and nearby Chechnya -- and the traces of the ricin found in a British raid were clearly "homemade."
A French intelligence source said he was "stunned" by Powell's comment.
"There is no, repeat, no suggestion that the ricin was anything but locally produced," he said. "It was bad quality, not technically sophisticated."
Further, the source said, British authorities "are clear" that the poison was "home-made."
"Don't forget, intelligence is like a supermarket, and at that level in government, you see everything, and can pick anything," the source said.
State Department officials said that Powell was likely referring to the "knowledge and capability" to produce ricin originating in Iraq -- perhaps a reference to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, said by European judicial sources to be one of the men who trained the arrested suspects in chemical and biological weaponry.
President Bush last October mentioned Zarqawi as a "very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."
It is the second time in as many days that Powell's interpretation of purported Iraq-al Qaeda connections has been questioned. On Tuesday, Powell said that an audiotape said to be al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was indisputable proof of such a connection.
But translations of the tape show that bin Laden, while voicing support for the Iraqi people and urging them to resist any U.S.-led attack, called the Baath party of Saddam Hussein "infidels" and said he wouldn't be disappointed if Saddam Hussein and his supporters "disappear."
Other Bush administration officials defended Powell's comments. Asked about the distinction bin Laden appears to make between the Iraqi government and the Iraqi population, CIA director George Tenet told a Senate committee that such distinctions blur "very, very easily."
"It's a distinction that people have tried to make, particularly in the terrorism world, which I don't think very much of, to tell you the truth," Tenet said.
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<b>Fast forward to disclosures this week:</b>
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<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_murray/20050415.html">http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_murray/20050415.html</a>
DON MURRAY:
Poison in the air
CBC News Analysis | April 15, 2005
<i>
Don Murray is one of the most prolific of the CBC's foreign correspondents, filing hundreds of reports - in French and English - from China, Europe, the Middle East and the Soviet Union. He is currently based in London as the senior European correspondent for CBC Television News.
During his 30 years with CBC, Murray has covered a multitude of major
stories...................
</i><b>
The headlines were howls of fear and warning. It was time to cower under the bed.
"The Toxic Terrorist." "He Wanted YOU Dead." "The al-Qaeda plot to poison Britain."</b>
They graced the front pages of London newspapers after a draconian publication ban was lifted on an extraordinary trial.
An Algerian named Kemal Bourgass was convicted of conspiring to cause a public nuisance through the use of poisons and explosives. He was sentenced to 17 years in jail. In an earlier trial he had been sentenced to life in prison for stabbing a police officer to death while trying to escape arrest.
The trials took place in secret.
Bourgass's intention was to make ricin, a highly toxic poison that can be made from castor beans. Police found a recipe, written in Arabic, and some ingredients in the flat where he was staying. Other men were arrested at the same time. This was in January of 2003.
British police and political officials let it be known that they had broken up an al-Qaeda ring that had been planning to wreak havoc in London. They said traces of ricin had been found in the raided apartment
The next month Colin Powell, then American secretary of state, made a speech to the UN security council about the threat Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed to the world. He spoke of a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network." He said the group of men arrested in Britain constituted one of the links in that chain.
According to Powell, North African extremists had been instructed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian extremist linked to al-Qaeda and based in Iraq, to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosives attacks. "A detainee who helped piece this together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence, again, proved him right. When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the disruption of the cell."
British prime minister Tony Blair echoed that: "We have seen powerful evidence of the continuing terrorist threat; the suspected ricin plot in London and Manchester."
But just how powerful was the evidence?
One hundred people were arrested in the roundup. Nine were held in a high-security prison for two years. Four men stood with Bourgass in the dock accused of plotting to make ricin and then take it to smear on door handles of cars and in phone booths to poison people.
But after a marathon trial costing almost $50 million, a jury found the other four not guilty. A further trial for conspiracy involving the remaining four still in prison was abandoned.
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1461010,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1461010,00.html</a>
Doubts grow over al-Qaida link in ricin plot
Inconsistencies put credibility of supergrass in question
Vikram Dodd
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
Fresh doubt emerged yesterday about the claim that the ricin plot against Britain was linked to al-Qaida and was hatched in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. .........................
......................This week the British police said that information from Mr Meguerba was accurate in almost every case.
Lawyers for those accused of involvement in the plot say this was because the supergrass was not only involved but was an instigator of the conspiracy.
Mr Meguerba correctly said there were two Nivea cream pots in the flat in Wood Green, north London, but claimed there was ricin in them. No ricin was found, and tests by government scientists found that none had been produced.
He gave the wrong address in a north London suburb for the alleged "poison factory", but anti-terrorism officers were able to find the right one in January 2003.
The most significant British terrorism trial since the attacks on America in 2001 ended with eight people being acquitted of conspiracy to murder and the jury deadlocked on the ninth, Bourgass.
Curiously, while being interviewed by British officers, Mr Meguerba said of his co-conspirator: "I did not say he wanted to kill people."
Bourgass was already serving life for murdering a police officer and was sentenced to 17 years this week for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
David Blunkett said about the ricin trial last November, when he was home secretary: "Al-Qaida is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over the months to come to be, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives. I am talking about people who are and about to go through the court system." ...............
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<a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=630187">http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=630187</a>
Ricin: The plot that never was
A deadly poison said to be at the heart of a terrorist conspiracy against Britain led to a dire warning of another al-Qa'ida attack in the West. The Government was swift to act on the fear that such a find generated. But, as Severin Carrell and Raymond Whitaker report, far from being a major threat, the real danger existed only in the mind of a misguided individual living in a dingy north London bedsit
17 April 2005
It was a weapon of mass destruction, a warning that we all needed to be "vigilant and alert". Weeks before the invasion of Iraq, it was presented as the final proof that Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qa'ida. Anyone wanting to exploit the politics of fear could scarcely conjure up anything more potent than the news that a suspected terrorist cell had been making ricin, one of the deadliest poisons known to man, in a north London flat.
But there was no ricin - a fact suppressed for more than two years. There was no terrorist cell, just one deluded and dangerous man who killed a police officer during a bungled immigration raid. Kamel Bourgass (probably not his real name; he used several aliases) is serving life for the murder of Special Branch detective Stephen Oake, but despite more than 100 arrests and months of investigation which took detectives to 16 countries, no al-Qa'ida plot ever materialised.....................
<h3>Charles Clarke
The Home Secretary had to apologise for the Government's failure to deport Kamel Bourgass, who was wanted for immigration offences. Mr Clarke claims it proves the need for ID cards, but faces demands to explain why ministers failed to withdraw false claims that ricin was found in Bourgass's flat.</h3>
ANATOMY OF A 'CONSPIRACY'
18 September 2002 An alleged mastermind of "ricin plot", Algerian Mohammed Meguerba, arrested in north London and fake IDs found. Bailed after suffering an epileptic fit, he absconds.
16 December 2002 Mohammed Meguerba is arrested in Algeria by security police after allegedly being smuggled in by Islamist militants.
28 December 2002 Algerian security police begin interrogating Meguerba. Within two days, he allegedly reveals poisoning plot in north London, names Kamel Bourgass as ringleader and other Algerians as co-conspirators.
5 January 2003 Police raid flat in Wood Green, north London, and arrest several men. They discover Bourgass's alleged "poisons laboratory" including recipes for ricin and toxic nicotine and cyanide gas weapons, but Bourgass is not found. Other flats raided over following days. Seven North Africans arrested, including a 17-year-old. Incriminating "poison recipes", false papers and CDs with bomb-making instructions found.
7 January 2003 David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, and John Reid, Health Secretary, issue joint statement claiming "traces of ricin" and castor beans capable of making "one lethal dose" were found in Wood Green flat. "Ricin is a toxic material which if ingested or inhaled can be fatal," they add. "Our primary concern is the safety of the public." Tony Blair (pictured below) says the discovery highlights the perils of weapons of mass destruction, adding: "The arrests which were made show this danger is present and real and with us now. Its potential is huge."
7 January 2003 Chemical weapons experts at Porton Down discover in more accurate tests that the initial positive result for ricin was false: there was no ricin in the flat. Porton Down is unable to say when it alerted the police or ministers to the error.
14 January 2003 Police raid flat in Crumpsall Lane, Manchester, seeking another terror suspect. They instead find Bourgass and alleged conspirator Khalid Alwerfeli. After a violent struggle, Bourgass murders DC Stephen Oake and wounds several other police officers.
6 February 2003 Colin Powell (pictured far right), US Secretary of State, tells UN Security Council of direct link between British "ricin plot" and alleged al-Qa'ida "poisons camp" in Iraq. He says al-Qa'ida commander Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "has sent at least nine North African extremists ... to Europe to conduct poison and explosives attacks ... The plot also targeted Britain ... When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British police officer was killed."
31 March 2003 US commanders in Iraq claim to have destroyed "poison factory", but no chemicals or laboratories found. General Richard Myers, US commander-in-chief, claims: "It is from this site that people were trained and poisons were developed which migrated to Europe. We think that's probably where the ricin found in London came from."
29 June 2004 Bourgass sentenced to life for murdering DC Oake after 11-week trial at the Old Bailey. Sentence kept secret because of impending trial for "ricin plot".
13 September 2004 After two months of legal argument in court, Old Bailey case begins against Bourgass, Mouloud Sihali, David Khalef, Sidali Feddag and Mustapha Taleb.
8 April 2005 After one of Britain's longest criminal trials and four weeks of deliberation, jury acquits Sihali, Khalef, Feddag and Taleb.
12 April 2005 Jury acquits Bourgass of the most serious charge - conspiracy to carry out a chemical attack - but finds him guilty of "conspiracy to commit a public nuisance by the use of poisons or explosives to cause disruption, fear or injury". Judge sentences him to 17 years. Government admits no ricin was found, only 20 castor beans, some cherry stones, apple pips and botched "nicotine poison" in a Nivea jar. Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald abandons trial - due to start tomorrow - of another four men accused of the conspiracy. Khalid Alwerfeli, Samir Asli, Mouloud Bouhrama and Kamel Merzoug formally declared innocent. Meguerba has yet to stand trial in Algeria and remains in custody.
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Last edited by host; 04-17-2005 at 10:51 PM..
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