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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
When only Berkeley is doing it, perhaps the problem isn't the rest of the country. ....
.....I think what people like you fail to realize is that highly educated, self aware, independently thinking people like me, just do not agree with you . You have no monopoly on truth or reason.
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Ustwo, below is a timeline of news reports and quotes in chronological order. The question is, what would a reasonable person believe, after reading them?
I just did the following, and considering the information contained in the timeline, if it is all accurate, and I have no reason to believe that it isn't...please point me to contrary info of the same or similar standing, what I did is reasonable. Can the same be said for the last sentence in your post?
I just sent this email to ABC News:
Quote:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/BrianRoss/page?id=3247430
Considering ABC news reporting of August 20, 2002
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=130169
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130169&page=1
Bush Calls Off Attack on Poison Gas Lab
Calls Off Operation to Take Out Al Qaeda-Sponsored Poison Gas Lab
By John McWethy
W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 20 (2002)
President Bush called off a planned covert raid into northern Iraq late last week that was aimed at a small group of al Qaeda
operatives who U.S. intelligence officials believed were experimenting with poison gas and deadly toxins, according to administration officials....
and your reporter, Martha Raddatz's September 15, 2006 questioning of president Bush,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060915-2.html
Sept. 15, 2006
......MARTHA: Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda.
A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And yet a month ago, you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that?
Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?
BUSH: The point I was making to Ken Herman’s question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror,
and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq
. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan.
I never said there was an operational relationship.....
<h3>why hasn't ABC news gone to the lengths of "filling in the gaps", as I have in this forum post displayed here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...85#post2361885
Martha Raddatz has unusual access to the president during a series of lengthy interviews she is currently doing with him, it has been reported. </h3>
In view of the information displayed at my link, would it not be appropriate for her to ask the president why, in view of the loss of life in Iraq of both Americans and Iraqis, and the decision to invade that country predicated on the statements, before and after, of both the president and vice president Cheney, and the damage their statements and Colin Powell's February, 2003 presentation to the UN have done to their own credibility and to the credibility of the US among the community of nations, it would not be appropriate to demand that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney immediately resign from office?
Thank you,
Real Name
tel# xxx-xxx-xxxx
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Quote:
http://www.cpa-iraq.org/bios/zarqawi_bio.html
(Near the top of the page..)
....Long before the Iraq war, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was aware of a poisons and explosives training center in
northeastern Iraq that the al-Zarqawi network was running....
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Quote:
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=130169
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130169&page=1
Bush Calls Off Attack on Poison Gas Lab
Calls Off Operation to Take Out Al Qaeda-Sponsored Poison Gas Lab
By John McWethy
W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 20 (2002)
President Bush called off a planned covert raid into northern Iraq late last week that was aimed at a small group of al Qaeda
operatives who U.S. intelligence officials believed were experimenting with poison gas and deadly toxins, according to
administration officials....
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20020928.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 28, 2002
Radio Address by the President to the Nation
.....The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given.
The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq..
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0021007-8.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
October 7, 2002
President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat
.....Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one 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. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.
Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.....
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030128-19.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 28, 2003
President Delivers "State of the Union"
.....With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region. And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that
Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.
Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.........
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
U.S. Effort to Link Terrorists To Iraq Focuses on Jordanian
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
February 5, 2003; Page A17
Abu Musab Zarqawi, a 36-year-old, Jordanian-born Palestinian terrorist, has become the focus of the Bush administration's
allegations of a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
....U.S. intelligence officials have said up to now that they had no direct evidence that Zarqawi met with Iraqi leaders, but last
October when that question was raised, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that it was "unrealistic" to assume that
Iraqi authorities did not know of Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad....
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030205-1.html
For Immediate Release
February 5, 2003
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council
.... My friends, the information I have presented to you about these terrible weapons and about Iraq's continued flaunting of its
obligations under Security Council Resolution 1441 links to a subject I now want to spend a little bit of time on. And that has to
do with terrorism.....
....Iraq today harbors a deadly
terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he
oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition
ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is
located in northeastern Iraq.
Colin Powell slide 39
Slide 39
POWELL: You see a picture of this camp.
The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a
pinch--image a pinch of salt--less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by
circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure. It is fatal.
Colin Powell slide 40
Slide 40
Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled
Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of
Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered Al Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaida from Afghanistan, some of its members
accepted this safe haven. They remain their today.....
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Quote:
http://web.archive.org/web/200304012...?bid=3&pid=371
Capital Games By David Corn
Powell's One Good Reason To Bomb Iraq--UPDATED
02/06/2003 @ 12:12am
.....But here's the first question that struck me after Powell's presentation:
why hasn't the United States bombed the so-called Zarqawi camp shown in the slide? The administration obviously knows where it is, and Powell spoke of it in the present tense.
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030206-17.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 6, 2003
President Bush: "World Can Rise to This Moment"
.... One of the greatest dangers we face is that weapons of mass destruction might be passed to terrorists, who would not hesitate to use those weapons. Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.
We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. The network runs a poison and explosive training center in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. The head of this network traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment and stayed for months. Nearly two dozen associates joined him there and have been operating in Baghdad for more than eight months.
The same terrorist network operating out of Iraq is responsible for the murder, the recent murder, of an American citizen, an American diplomat, Laurence Foley. ......
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Quote:
http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=8&gl=us
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The, Feb 7, 2003 by GREG MILLER
SHOWDOWN ON IRAQ
Why not hit terrorist camp?
Lawmakers question lack of military action
By GREG MILLER Los Angeles Times
Friday, February 7, 2003
Washington -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent a significant part of his presentation to the United Nations this week
describing a terrorist camp in northern Iraq where al-Qaida affiliates are said to be training to carry out attacks with
explosives and poisons.
<h3>"Why have we not taken it out?" Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) asked Powell during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "Why
have we let it sit there if it's such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?"
Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session.
"I can assure you that it is a place that has been very much in our minds. And we have been tracing individuals who have gone in
there and come out of there," Powell said.
Absent an explanation from the White House, some officials suggested the administration had refrained from striking the compound
in part to preserve a key piece of its case against Iraq.
"This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified. </h3>
But neither Powell nor other administration officials answered the question: What is the United States doing about it?....
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Quote:
http://drezner.blogspot.com/2003_03_...r_archive.html
March 12, 2003
Posted by Daniel
IRAQ, AL QAEDA, AND A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR THE SECURITY COUNCIL: This <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/%3Cbr%20/%3Ehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12762-2003Mar11?language=printer">Washington Post story</a> provides some excellent detail on the precise link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The first few grafs:
"Most of the estimated 100 Arab extremists reported to have found a haven in this rocky corner of northern Iraq began arriving early last year, a few weeks after losing their camps in Afghanistan under the Taliban....
....Since then...Colin L. Powell and other Bush administration officials have highlighted the foreign fighters' presence in the Ansar enclave in an effort to link Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization and the government of President Saddam Hussein, which controls Iraq south of the Kurdish-administered zone but has little influence here. Citing interrogations of Ansar members who were taken prisoner, Kurdish political officials confirm that the group sent a steady stream of trainees to the camps that al Qaeda operated in Afghanistan until U.S. forces ended Taliban rule there at the end of 2001."
Now, this piece makes two things clear. First, contrary to many skeptics' assertions, there is an Al Qaeda presence in Iraq. Second, it's also clear that Saddam Hussein has little to do with this presence. At worst, Hussein's policy on Al Qaeda might be characterized as benign neglect -- he's not helping them but he doesn't mind them being in parts of Iraq he can't control. There might be other reasons to support regime change in Iraq, but the Al Qaeda connection is a weak reed.
<h3>However, there's military action short of regime change.</h3> At a minimum, the Post story would seem to justify an offensive to knock out Ansar al-Islam and retake the Halabja Valley. This leads to an intriguing question....
.....Given the obvious link between achieving this objective and the war on terror, and given the assertions by France and others that credible evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda would justify use of force, would the Security Council be willing to approve U.S. military action in this area?
[So you think this would be an acceptable substitute to a whole-scale invasion?--ed. No, I still support an invasion. But securing Security Council support for this phase of operations might be an good stop-gap proposal].
This would be an excellent test of where exactly the French and Germans stand. Is their opposition to Iraq based on a blind determination to counter U.S. power, or is there some nuance to their stance?....
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060320-7.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 20, 2006
THE PRESIDENT:..We also did say that Zarqawi, the man who is now wreaking havoc and killing innocent life, was in Iraq. .....but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America....
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 21, 2006
Press Conference by the President
White House Conference Center Briefing Room
......Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?
THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which
you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would --who had relations with Zarqawi.....
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Quote:
http://www.senate.gov/~levin/newsroo....cfm?id=262690
News from Senator Carl Levin of Michigan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 8, 2006
The President says Saddam had a relationship with Zarqawi.
The Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA concluded in 2005 that “the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.”
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
September 10, 2006
.....Q Then why in the lead-up to the war was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al Qaeda -- whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11; separate and apart from that is the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern, a relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al Qaeda......
........we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02......
.........Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda......
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060912-2.html
Office of the Press Secretary
September 12, 2006
Press Briefing by Tony Snow
...Q Well, one more, Tony, just one more. Do you believe -- does the President still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to Zarqawi or al Qaeda before the invasion?
MR. SNOW: The President has never said that there was a direct, operational relationship between the two, and this is important. Zarqawi was in Iraq.
Q There was a link --
MR. SNOW: Well, and there was a relationship -- there was a relationship in this sense: Zarqawi was in Iraq; al Qaeda members were in Iraq; they were operating, and in some cases, operating freely from Iraq. .. No. There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship. They were in the country, and I think you understand that the Iraqis knew they were there. That's the relationship.
Q Saddam Hussein knew they were there; that's it for the relationship?
MR. SNOW: That's pretty much it.
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060915-2.html
Sept. 15, 2006
......MARTHA: Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda.
A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And yet a month ago, you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that?
Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?
BUSH: The point I was making to Ken Herman’s question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror,
and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq
. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan.
I never said there was an operational relationship.....
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...061019-10.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
October 19, 2006
Satellite Interview of the Vice President by WSBT-TV, South Bend, Indiana
2nd Congressional District -
Representative Chris Chocola
........Q Are you saying that you believe fighting in Iraq has prevented terrorist attacks on American soil? And if so, why, since there has not been a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq established?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact of the matter is there are connections. Mr. Zarqawi, who was the lead terrorist in Iraq for three years, fled there after we went into Afghanistan. He was there before we ever went into Iraq. The sectarian violence that we see now, in part, has been stimulated by the fact of al Qaeda attacks intended to try to create conflict between Shia and Sunni......
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0070405-3.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
April 5, 2007
Interview of the Vice President by Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show
Via Telephone
1:07 P.M. EDT
Q It's always a great privilege to have the Vice President, Dick Cheney, with us. Mr. Vice President, welcome once again to our program.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, Rush. It's good to be back on......
.....Q It may not just be Iraq. Yesterday I read that Ike Skelton, who chairs -- I forget the name of the committee -- in the next defense appropriations bill for fiscal '08 is going to actually remove the phrase "global war on terror," because they don't think it's applicable. They want to refer to conflicts as individual skirmishes. But they're going to try to rid the defense appropriation bill -- and, thus, official government language -- of that term. Does that give you any indication of their motivation or what they think of the current plight in which the country finds itself?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure -- well, it's just flawed thinking. I like Ike Skelton; I worked closely with Ike when I was Secretary of Defense. He's Chairman of the Armed Services Committee now. Ike is a good man. He's just dead wrong about this, though. Think about -- just to give you one example, Rush, remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated -- after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq....
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/wo...3qaeda.html?hp
July 13, 2007
Bush Distorts Qaeda Links,
Critics Assert click to hide
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JIM RUTENBERG
BAGHDAD, July 12 — In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”
It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.
But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership...
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Last edited by host; 12-13-2007 at 12:15 PM..
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