Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Gatorade Frost · 06-09-2006, 06:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by docbungle

I don't view this as terribly important. It is symbolic, perhaps, but not in any meaningfull way. Symbolism is hyped up way too much in situations such as this. His death will change nothing. His followers will find someone else to fight for. The violence will not decline for any meaningfull period of time. Iraq will not be calmed. There will never be a functioning democratic society there. Not in the way the U.S would like there to be. The "terrorists" are killed and they kill us back. What makes anyone think the U.S. is going to be able to stop this?

Nothing. The hope is that eventually the Iraqis will be able to stop it on their own through their police system instead of America. Slow process, but that kind of thing takes time.

tecoyah · 06-10-2006, 04:33 AM

We have killed a major terrorist leader in Iraq. We will continue to kill major terrorist leaders in Iraq. Five years from now we will likelly be killing major terrorist leaders in Iraq. Perhaps in ten years we can turn over the killing of major terrorist leaders in Iraq....to the Iraqis.

Or....we may be killing Iraqis who are Major Terrorist leaders in Iraq. This killing while an important boost politically....borders on irrelevant in the actual "War on Terrorism", and in fact may simply end up a recruiting tool for the bad guys. In my opinion we are fighting a war that cannot be won with Bombs, but hey....what do I know.

Mojo_PeiPei · 06-10-2006, 10:00 AM

For the record all aid for the Russian-Afghan war was funded through the Pakistani ISI, America had no discretion as to how it was allotted. This is ofcourse due to the whole premise that the Mujahdeen movement would have been without merit it America "the Great Satan" had a direct hand in what was a conflict portrayed as an Islamic/Arab struggle.

Psycho Dad · 06-10-2006, 10:19 AM

Something that I wonder about is how the treatment of his body is viewed by the extremists or faithfully practicing Muslims even. From what I gather, there are certain ways that the body must be treated even including how long after death the burial should be. Is the autopsy something that is going to further fuel extremist hatred towards the US? Will moderate Muslims understand why the US is examining the remains so closely? Should the US even give two shits about any of these religious practices? Is this even anything to wonder about or is it the mainstream media’s influence on how I digest reports about things of this nature?

Dilbert1234567 · 06-10-2006, 10:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Look at the "face" released by our military, mike....freshly "bombed" and washed clean for the cameras with ivory soap. More sanitzed BS from our own version of Big Bro, IMO....

Or maybe he was so covered in dust, blood and other crud that they had to wash his face to ID him.

I’m not saying that the war is not being sanitized; I think it is, but some sanitization is needed.

Elphaba · 06-10-2006, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dilbert1234567

Or maybe he was so covered in dust, blood and other crud that they had to wash his face to ID him.

I’m not saying that the war is not being sanitized; I think it is, but some sanitization is needed.

The same thing was done with Saddam's sons. The washing wasn't necessary for the military to ID him, but it was needed for the public to be satisfied.

cyrnel · 06-10-2006, 01:05 PM

I was going to mention the Saddam family treatment.

It isn't easy to tell who's who with blood & grime everywhere. A mortician's makeup job would be my idea of sanitizing.

This guy would have been appropriate for a plywood casket propped outside the General Store.

host · 06-10-2006, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

For the record all aid for the Russian-Afghan war was funded through the Pakistani ISI, America had no discretion as to how it was allotted. This is ofcourse due to the whole premise that the Mujahdeen movement would have been without merit it America "the Great Satan" had a direct hand in what was a conflict portrayed as an Islamic/Arab struggle.

Bodyhammer86. the statement above is a nice intro to this 1998 Mainstream media report:

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1
or....
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=1
Bin Laden comes home to roost
His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story
By Michael Moran
MSNBC
NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998 — At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow....

........As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation......

..........HINDSIGHT OR TUNNEL VISION
It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden’s connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein’s monster like this.

It is also worth acknowledging that it is easier now to oppose the CIA’s Afghan adventures than it was when Hatch and company made them in the mid-1980s. After all, in 1998 we now know that far larger elements than Afghanistan were corroding the communist party’s grip on power in Moscow.
Even Hatch can’t be blamed completely. The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its “mission,” had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual “Soviet Military Power” report right up to 1990.
Given that context, a decision was made to provide America’s potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.
That decision is coming home to roost.

To dismiss the possibility that 9/11 was the "Pearl Harbor" that PNAC said would be necessary to implement it's agenda, and that Zarqawi was entirely, or almost entirely, an American "creation" that debuted in Powell's Feb. 5, 2003, is difficult, and probably not in my best interest to do.

Quote:

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/oneill.php?articleid=9119

Quote:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04277/388966.stm
Violent radical's influence grows beyond Mideast

Sunday, October 03, 2004
By Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post

.....Zarqawi was barely known outside Jordan until a year and a half ago, when Secretary of State Colin Powell identified him as a bin Laden "collaborator and associate." In a speech to the United Nations, Powell cited Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad as evidence that Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, had struck an alliance with al-Qaida, a claim that became a major part of the Bush administration's argument for going to war........

.....There is no mention of Zarqawi in the online archives of BBC News for 2001 or 2002. Yet after Powell’s speech Zarqawi started to become a talking point. He was mentioned in 23 articles in the Guardian in 2003, and in 50 articles published by BBC News in 2003. The turning point from being a "barely known" to becoming a notorious figure came courtesy of Bush and Powell.....

I can't tell when the government is telling me the truth. How can you, how is it that some of you show no doubt?

Isn't it curious, that, when they couldn't "catch" Zarqawi, he was reduced by the same folks who bring you this "bombing Op"....to a clownish, incompetent stooge? Which is it? Stooge or death of a bogey man signifigant enough to turn the tide of war?

Quote:

http://www.mnf-iraq.com/Transcripts/060504.htm
IRAQ OPERATIONAL UPDATE BRIEFING BRIEFER: MAJOR GENERAL RICK LYNCH, SPOKESMAN, MULTINATIONAL FORCE IRAQ LOCATION: COMBINED PRESS INFORMATION CENTER, BAGHDAD, IRAQ TIME: 8:00 A.M. EDT DATE: THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2006

.....Next clip, please. Okay, that's still the first one. The next clip, please.

Okay, there. You saw this on the Internet, him firing this machine gun, apparently at no targets, out in the middle of the desert. He's very proud of the fact that he can operate this machine gun, and he proclaims that, and all of his close associates there are very proud of what Zarqawi does.

This piece you don't see, as he walks away, he's wearing his black uniform and his New Balance tennis shoes as he moves this white pickup truck. And his close associates around him, his trusted advisors, do things like grab the hot barrel of the machine gun and burn themselves. Makes you wonder.

Next slide, please -- next clip.

Here's Zarqawi, the ultimate warrior, trying to shoot his machine gun. It's supposed to be automatic fire. He's shooting single shots. One of the times something's wrong with his machine gun. He looks down, can't figure it out, calls his friend to come block -- unblock the stoppage and get the weapon firing again.

So what you saw on the Internet was what he wanted the world to see -- look at me, I'm a capable leader of a capable organization, and we are indeed declaring war against democracy inside of Iraq, and we're going to establish an Islamic caliphate. What he didn't show you were the clips that I showed, wearing New Balance sneakers with his uniform, surrounded by supposedly competent subordinates who grab the hot barrel of a just-fired machine gun; have a warrior leader, Zarqawi, who doesn't understand how to operate his weapon system and has to rely on his subordinates to clear a weapon stoppage. It makes you wonder.

So study the enemy, capabilities, vulnerabilities and intentions. Zarqawi and al Qaeda, these are their intentions: establish an Islamic caliphate, remove the coalition forces and the Shi'a population from the region, and destabilize the apostate government.

Yeah, General Lynch, it does "make you wonder". I wonder how some of the folks who post here know what to embrace, or dispute, and how much of what they embrace is more about how they "feel" than about what the facts vs. the contradictions and later exposure of outright lies by their government officials should affect opinion.

Remember the "mobile bio weapons trailers"? They were described by Powell at the UN, in the same presentation where he rolled out the al Zarqawi / Al Qaeda connection.

Say....has anybody even wondered if this Zarqawi corpse has a leg missing, or not? Wasn't treatment of his leg, the reason that he was in Baghdad in 2002 for medical treatment. That was the story that our government fed us to link Saddam to Al Qaeda. Do any of these questions even matter, in a "breaking news" environment, like this one?

Quote:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/zarq10.html
Iraqi says troops beat man resembling al-Zarqawi
June 10, 2006

BY PATRICK QUINN ASSOCIATED PRESS

....The man, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

When asked about the man's allegations, military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said he would check. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon said Saturday he was unaware of the claim.

The Iraqi, identified as Mohammed Ahmed, claimed that residents put the man in an ambulance before U.S. forces arrived. The American military team then pulled the man from the ambulance and beat him, Ahmed said. He gave a similar account to The Washington Post.....

If it matters more to you that your expectations are "met" by government disclosures, than if the disclosures are actually true, what does this show you about your own POV...might it actually be that the result is your own, personal "Blowback", as a consequence of too much patriotic feeling, and not enough curiosity?

Elphaba · 06-10-2006, 02:46 PM

Both WaPo and NYT are reporting the above claim. Don't y'all hate it when the story changes?

Quote:

"He was still alive. We put him in the ambulance, but when the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose," Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead.

NYT article hosted by TO

docbungle · 06-10-2006, 03:31 PM

host,

for someone questioning eveyone's viewpoints, what about yours? you latch on to every single piece of dissenting information you can find, regardless of its source or validity. your "story" has not been proven by any means, and you assail others for believing a story that has much more evidence going for it. if it has a remote chance of making the us gov or pres. bush look bad, you're all for it. you come into every arguement from the same doorway, with the same slant, regardless of topic.

without a bit of objectivity, how can you expect to be taken seriously?

host · 06-10-2006, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by docbungle

host,

for someone questioning eveyone's viewpoints, what about yours? you latch on to every single piece of dissenting information you can find, regardless of its source or validity. your "story" has not been proven by any means, and you assail others for believing a story that has much more evidence going for it. if it has a remote chance of making the us gov or pres. bush look bad, you're all for it. you come into every arguement from the same doorway, with the same slant, regardless of topic.

without a bit of objectivity, how can you expect to be taken seriously?

docbungle, I didn't make the Bush administrations record or reputation, they did.

I've got plenty of company....and frankly, I don't understand why you "raise the bar" so high as to what news reports I should post....how much of what Bush and Cheney have told us in their official statments, turned out to be "proven"? My statements and the links that I've posted on this forum are much more closer to the truth than the crap that has come out of their mouths, especially concerning issues of war and their efforts to uphold the protections specified to protect the rights of the people in the Consitution.
I think that your criticism of me is misplaced. Shooting the messenger is a poor substitute for challenging and questioning everything that our "leaders" disclose to us. Their record for truth telling and avoiding making deliberately misleading statements, sucks. How should I react to what they've done and what they've said. I'm concerned that I've not been nearly critical or questioning, enough, given their breach of trust in matters as serious as war and the handling of intelligence and classified information.

Have a look:

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10000960/
AP poll: Most Americans say Bush not honest
Administration under scrutiny for justifications for Iraq war, CIA leak case

Updated: 5:36 a.m. ET Nov 11, 2005

WASHINGTON - Most Americans say they aren’t impressed by the ethics and honesty of the Bush administration, already under scrutiny for its justifications for an unpopular war in Iraq and its role in the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity.

Almost six in 10 — 57 percent — said they do not think the Bush administration has high ethical standards and the same portion says President Bush is not honest, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Just over four in 10 say the administration has high ethical standards and that Bush is honest. Whites, Southerners and evangelicals were most likely to believe Bush is honest.....

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904

Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? * 263382 responses
Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
87%
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
4.4%
No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
7.3%
I don't know.
1.8%

Quote:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/10846/

Quote:

Professor Cordesman has formerly served as national security assistant to Senator John McCain of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and as civilian assistant to the deputy secretary of defense.
(I recommend a quick read of <a href="http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_experts/task,view/id,3/">his entire bio</a>

Cordesman: Report to Congress on Iraq War Borders on 'Deception'

Interviewee: Anthony H. Cordesman
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

June 7, 2006

Anthony H. CordesmanAnthony H. Cordesman, a leading military and intelligence analyst of the Iraq war, says that the Defense Department's latest report to Congress on the status of the Iraq war borders on "deception" by painting an overly upbeat picture. He has written that the report is worthy of an "F."

"You cannot have a climate where you lose this much time without seeing the situation deteriorate," says Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "We need to assess these risks, and we need to assess them honestly if we are going to organize the kind of U.S. effort that has the highest possibility of preventing civil conflict" and defeating the insurgency, Cordesman says.

You've been quite critical of the latest quarterly report by the Defense Department to Congress on the situation in Iraq. Why so?

We are seeing a pattern in which we have never had realistic reporting to Congress. But this quarterly report has really failed to address the issues in ways which border on deception.

Can you summarize your criticism?

I think everybody needs to understand we are talking about a sixty-page document. Parts of it deal with the president's strategy, and there is some useful material mixed in with problems that range from sloppy editing to massive omissions and conceptual failures.

But essentially, you can break down its failures into four parts. The first is political. The report argues that there is political success because there have been elections, and the Iraqis have finally been able to agree on a government. It does not address any of the political problems with any realism, it does not talk about the fact that the elections showed that Iraq was polarized along ethnic or sectarian lines, or seriously address the risk of a major civil war.

The second is economic. The report provides an analysis of the economy that does not track with other U.S. estimates. It makes no sense in basic econometric terms, provides a misleading picture of "success" in a country with 20 to 40 percent unemployment, and does not address any of the massive problems in the U.S. aid effort and the U.S. use of Iraqi funds. It essentially talks about an economy in Iraq which does not exist.

The third is analysis of the threat. There are some useful aspects of the analysis, dealing with trends in the insurgency. But the report so badly downplays the growing risk of sectarian and ethnic conflict that it produces a totally misleading picture of the threat, and this is compounded by a use of poll data which it does not explain or validate. It uses cherry-picked polling results, some of which contradict each other in terms of other tables or text.

Finally, there is the analysis of progress in developing Iraqi forces. The report does provide some useful data on Iraqi force development, and there has been progress. But the report exaggerates this progress. It does not provide any picture of the level of continued U.S. support necessary to bring this program to success. Finally, at a time when the militias, the police, and the various protection services have reached a crisis point, and where there is truly a major question of whether Iraq is moving toward civil war, the report dodges around all of the problems and simply does not give either Congress or the American people anything approaching a realistic picture.

You say this whole report gets an overall grade of "F." You and I have had several interviews over the last several years, and I have never heard you so negative about anything the government has done. What has gotten you so upset?

There is a lot of very good government reporting in terms of individual speeches, testimony, and reports, if you look at the statements of the ambassadors and senior U.S. commanders in the field. If you look at some of the reporting that comes out in detail from the commands, there often is a very clear picture of what is happening and a lot of insight, as well as critiques and reservations. But this is supposed to be the summary report to Congress. It is supposed to prepare Congress for what we need to do to implement the president's strategy.

It is not supposed to be an exercise in cheerleading. It is not supposed to be something that simply provides a status report without indicating how well the United States is doing or what it has to do in the future. What we are talking about is not the overall war in Iraq; we are talking about one report. You have referred to the summary comments I have made on it, and that is a perfectly accurate statement of the summary. But I think it is important to note that this is a fifteen-page critique. It is not a critique of our policy in the war. It is a fifteen-page critique, which says this reporting omits critical issues, is incompetent, makes basic errors in definition, and hides the nature of poll data, which is systematically misused. I think if you compare this paper against the critique on a line-by-line basis, the grade "F" is not something given casually........

Nimetic · 06-11-2006, 05:20 AM

For myself, I don't like this bomb-suspects-from-the-sky business. As I mentioned on another forum - if this is allowed under the new Iraqi constitution, that's a problem.

I'm also wondering how many places they bombed until they got the right one?

host · 06-12-2006, 03:15 AM

Why does former CBS News foreign correspondent, Tom Fenton, "hate" America?

Maybe it has something to do with American's "knowing what they Know", despite the "facts". Walter Pincus of the WaPo is one of the most earnest and reliable, political news reporters of our era, and he sez:

Quote:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...ushzarq10.html
Saturday, June 10, 2006 - Page updated at 12:56 AM

Al-Zarqawi served role in U.S. strategy in Iraq

By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — From the moment President Bush introduced him to the American people in October 2002, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi served a crucial purpose for the administration, providing a tangible focus for its insistence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was linked to the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

After the invasion that toppled Saddam, and the rise of the insurgency against occupying U.S. forces, al-Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was cited as proof that the uprising was fomented by al-Qaida-backed foreign fighters.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described al-Zarqawi as "the leading terrorist in Iraq and one of three senior al-Qaida leaders worldwide."

In addition to his prominent role in the Iraqi insurgency, al-Zarqawi was always a useful source of propaganda for the administration. Magnification of his role and of the threat he posed grew to the point that some senior intelligence officers believed it was counterproductive.....

........At times, the conflicting messages seemed to overlap. In April, a top U.S. military official cited al-Zarqawi's failure to disrupt elections for a new Iraqi government as "a tactical admission" of defeat. Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida, said 18th Airborne Corps commander Lt. Gen. John Vines, "no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism."

That same month, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told a Baghdad news briefing that more than 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq were carried out by terrorist forces recruited and trained by al-Zarqawi.

Trading insults

Even as they were locked in genuine confrontation on the battlefield, al-Zarqawi and the United States engaged in public, tit-for-tat insults.

On April 25, al-Zarqawi brazenly showed his face for the first time in a video posted on the Internet. In a lengthy diatribe, he accused Bush of lying to Americans about U.S. military victories in Iraq. U.S. forces, he predicted, "will go out of Iraq humiliated, defeated." The video showed al-Zarqawi strutting across a desert landscape, wielding an automatic weapon.

Ten days later, the United States counterattacked. In Baghdad, Lynch displayed what he said were outtakes from the al-Zarqawi video, captured during a raid on an al-Qaida safe house in the city.

"Here's Zarqawi, the ultimate warrior," he said, "trying to shoot his machine gun." The gun apparently jammed, and al-Zarqawi was seen motioning to a masked compatriot to help him. The great "warrior leader," <b?Lynch mocked, "doesn't understand how to operate his weapon system."

But the U.S. psychological operation appeared to backfire, according to one military study of how it played in the Arab and U.S. media. While some media outlets found al-Zarqawi ludicrous, most wondered why he was so hard to capture or kill if he was so incompetent.......

.........In a speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush outlined the "grave threat" Saddam posed to the United States. Citing "high-level contacts" between Iraq and al-Qaida "that go back a decade," he said that "some al-Qaida leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al-Qaida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."

Bush never mentioned al-Zarqawi's name, but Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, described him as the head of a "deadly terrorist network" tied to al-Qaida and harbored by Saddam.

The United States placed a $25 million bounty on his head, promised to whomever could provide intelligence leading to his capture or death. In recent weeks, a proposal surfaced within the U.S. military to decrease the reward. An announcement that he had been downgraded in importance, proponents suggested, might draw an insulted al-Zarqawi out into the open.

The State Department disagreed, and members of Congress suggested that the reward be doubled.

The Washington Post article, excerpted above, was published on June 10. Please click on the link and read the entire text, then read it again. Then read the posts on this thread. I'm no Walter Pincus, not by a long shot. But I'll go to my grave, trying to be someone as far from Tom Fenton's description of an American who is fed that "which fits what they already know" , as I possibly can be.......

How about you? You've made a special effort, you're reading a thread on a politics forum. Make the extra effort and take the extra time to never accept what the government tells you, just because it seems to fit what you think that you know. Unless you question everything, you'll just be a repository for what they've told you, and you'll be able to repeat it all like a parrot, but you'll only "know" what the government wants you to "know".

Quote:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cus...onDate&n=28315 : Reader Reviews....

Bad News : The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All (Hardcover)
by Tom Fenton

<a href="http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Broadcast_Media/News_Gap_BN.html">from Page 20:</a>

......Americans are too broadly underinformed to digest nuggets of information that seem to contradict what they know of the world. Yet whose fault is that, and whose responsibility is it to correct? Instead, news channels prefer to feed Americans a constant stream of simplified information, all of which fits what they already know. That way they don't have to devote more air time or newsprint space to explanations or further investigations..........

So which American do you think that you more closely resemble, the one who Tom Fenton describes on page 20 in his book, or are you more like Ray McGovern, who had this "in person exchange" with Rumsfeld, last month:

Quote:

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/n...n/14503836.htm
Posted on Fri, May. 05, 2006

Pointed queries stall talk
A war opponent who interrupted Rumsfeld's speech accused him of lying on Iraq. Associated Press

.........McGovern: This is America.

Rumsfeld: You're getting plenty of play, sir.

McGovern: I'd just like an honest answer.

Rumsfeld: I'm giving it to you.

McGovern: Well we're talking about lies and your allegation there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

Rumsfeld: Zarqawi [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the al-Qaeda in Iraq] was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.

McGovern: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That's also...

Rumsfeld: He was also in Baghdad.

McGovern: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital.

Come on, these people aren't idiots. They know the story.........

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9831216/site/newsweek/
Fabricated Links?
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Oct. 26, 2005 - A secret draft CIA report raises new questions about a principal argument used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq: the claim that Saddam Hussein was "harboring" notorious terror leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi prior to the American invasion...............

........No evidence has been found showing senior Iraqi officials were even aware of his presence, according to two counterterrorism analysts familiar with the classified CIA study who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

An intelligence official told NEWSWEEK that the current draft says that "most evidence suggests Saddam Hussein did not provide Zarqawi safe haven before the war. It also recognizes that there are still unanswered questions and gaps in knowledge about the relationship.".........

...........The new report is only the latest chink in the armor of the alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Last year, the September 11 Commission found there was no "collaborative" relationship between the Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden; one high-level Al Qaeda commander—who had been cited by Powell as testifying to talks about chemical- and biological-warfare training—later recanted his claims. But the Pentagon and Cheney's office have been reluctant to abandon the case........

In response to a segment in an earlier post, on page #1 on this thread:

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

....As to what I believe or disbelieve in the information the US military "discloses" as you so put it, really doesnt matter, you see being that I retired from the US Marine Corps with over 20 years I know what they release and do not release.
And as much as you think you have the "right" to know what they are doing all the time, you do not so get over it. They will tell you what they want when they want.
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=14

The above probably is an accurate description of the attitude held by the Pentagon, and by the White House, too....but dammit....I'm not in the military and, neither are you, anymore, reconmike. Is it even "American" to quietly accept a situation like you described? A "right" has to be exercised, now and again, and maybe the response from the government will come in the form of tear gas, or a nightstick over the head, or even a rifle butt in the teeth, but if we don't bother to question them, and to speak our mind, then what did the soldiers who gave their lives at Iwo, or at Bastogne, fight and die to protect?

samcol · 06-12-2006, 07:47 AM

Is it unfair to use the words 'Al Qaida in Iraq" and 'Pentagon' interchangably, especially after the 'Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi' article on the first page? How can we be sure that this new internet posting proclaiming the new leader of al qaida in Iraq is anything other than more BS from the Pentagon?

Quote:

Militant Chosen to Succeed al-Zarqawi

CAIRO, Egypt Jun 12, 2006 (AP)— Al-Qaida in Iraq said in a Web statement posted Monday that a militant named Abu Hamza al-Muhajer was the group's new leader. Al-Muhajer succeeds Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed Wednesday by a U.S. airstrike on his hideout northeast of Baghdad, Iraq.

The purported successor was not immediately known. The name al-Muhajer, Arabic for "immigrant," suggested he was not Iraqi.

"Al-Qaida in Iraq's council has agreed on Sheik Abu Hamza al-Muhajer to be the successor for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the leadership of the organization," said a statement signed by the group on an Islamic militant Web forum where it often posts messages.

It said al-Muhajer was "a beloved brother with jihadi (holy war) experience and a strong footing in knowledge."

The authenticity of the statement could not be independently confirmed.

Willravel · 06-12-2006, 08:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samcol

Is it unfair to use the words 'Al Qaida in Iraq" and 'Pentagon' interchangably, especially after the 'Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi' article on the first page? How can we be sure that this new internet posting proclaiming the new leader of al qaida in Iraq is anything other than more BS from the Pentagon?

That's just it: we don't know. Al-Muhajer may not even exist. Al-Muhajer could be a short order cook who once was in the same area code as an al Qaeda member. The fact of the matter is that there is no more reason to trust these reports...which means we either wait for another terrorist attack or for absolutely nothing to happen by a ficticious terrorist. It's all a sick game. al-Zarqawi was a nobody until the Pentagon (or was it the DoD? I can't keep it all straight) alledged that he was the missing link between Iraq and the al Qaeda.

host · 06-12-2006, 10:22 AM

I don't know....so how can you know??? Time Magazine reports yesterday that a small Delta Force team of U.S. soldiers was close enough to determine that Zarqawi did not leave the house before they called in an airstrike. Today, Gen. Caldwell says that U.S. troops did not arrive until 28 minutes after the air strike, just 24 minutes before Zarqawi died.

The U.S. Army tells us that Zarqawi died of lung injuries, alleged "proof" that he was not "beaten to death", but is it "proof" that he was not beaten?

Quote:

http://www.mnf-iraq.com/zarqawi/060612-autopsy.htm
Zarqawi Autopsy Brief

.....Al-Zarqawi, Jones said, died from closed space primary blast injuries. These injuries included rupturing of the eardrums along with hemorrhaging in the lungs. Bruises, abrasions and lacerations were also found on the head, body and extremities with a fractured leg.......

Quote:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...webzarq12.html
Military says al-Zarqawi lived 52 minutes after strike
By Kim Gamel

The Associated Press

....Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, said U.S. forces arrived about 28 minutes after a fighter jet bombed al-Zarqawi's hideout outside Baqouba. Medics secured al-Zarqawi's airway but his breathing was shallow and labored, and he expelled blood from his mouth.

"It was very evident he had extremely massive internal injuries," Caldwell said.

Al-Zarqawi died 24 minutes after coalition forces arrived, he said......

Quote:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...202929,00.html
How They Killed Him

Posted Sunday, Jun 11, 2006

....Fewer than half a dozen members of a U.S. reconnaissance and surveillance team from Delta Force hid in a grove of date and palm trees, watching the building. After years of hunting, they finally had the prey in their sights.

But almost as soon as they took up position, the commandos feared they were about to lose him. A special-operations source tells TIME that the surveillance team was worried that there wasn't enough time to assemble a ground assault force to raid the house and capture al-Zarqawi; the commandos at the site lacked sufficient manpower and weaponry to attack on their own. As dusk neared, the team fretted al-Zarqawi might slip away if they waited too long. A knowledgeable Pentagon official says the Delta team "saw one group come into the house and one group exit." Al-Zarqawi was not in the departing group, but the commandos were afraid he might be in the next one. The recon unit's leader radioed his superiors to request an air strike.....

Lebell · 06-12-2006, 07:36 PM

What can one say, except "Good Job"?

There will of course be another one, but if the Palestinians continue to self implode and Israel finishes its wall or *gasp* if they pull their collective heads out and actually negotiate peace with Israel, then we'll finally start on the road to a lasting peace.

ubertuber · 06-12-2006, 07:48 PM

Host,

Honestly, I'm not sure if it makes any difference to me whether he was beaten to death or bombed to death. I mean, they dropped the bomb on the house specifically because HE was there - so whether the killing was close range or by pushing a button, it almost amounts to an assassination... It seems to me that this matters more than the exact mechanism of his demise (if it matters at all). Really, I see this as a non-issue.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a person that thinks the US has license to kill, imprison, and torture anyone we want, but I am rather apathetic about whether troops beat Zarqawi before he died, or even if they killed him by beating him. After all, they dropped a bomb on him, and that was intended to kill him. And for the record, whether Zarqawi was incompetent or not, and whether his mayhem was a construction of the DoD or not doesn't matter to me either. He was someone who either killed innocents well or poorly, and for that I think he was fair game.

I guess I'd just rather see us pursue questions that are a little more meaningful...

smooth · 06-13-2006, 03:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I don't know....so how can you know??? Time Magazine reports yesterday that a small Delta Force team of U.S. soldiers was close enough to determine that Zarqawi did not leave the house before they called in an airstrike. Today, Gen. Caldwell says that U.S. troops did not arrive until 28 minutes after the air strike, just 24 minutes before Zarqawi died.

The U.S. Army tells us that Zarqawi died of lung injuries, alleged "proof" that he was not "beaten to death", but is it "proof" that he was not beaten?

The only reasonable way I can interpret your quotes, save concluding they are outright contradictions (which isn't out of the realm of possibility, but the following is an alternate reading), is to understand that the second reference is to a small group of team members that the speaker did not include in his operatational definition of "coalition forces."

it's entirely reasonable, I think, to understand that there are "coalition forces" as an entity seperate or over and above smaller units (e.g., Delta Force, or whathaveyou) that may or may not be contained within that signifier when the person thinking about "coalition forces" is speaking.

Psycho Dad · 06-13-2006, 03:44 AM

Be they special forces or new privates out of basic training, I'd think the first Americans on the scene would realize "dead men tell no tales" and not beat the shit out of him. For the most part, our Marines and sodliers are better trained that what the media leads us to think.

stevo · 06-13-2006, 07:17 AM

Quote:

"He was still alive. We put him in the ambulance, but when the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose," Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead.

Good. I can only hope. And he still got off lightly. his head should have been sawed off slowly. leaving the spine and arteries intact then plucked one by one all while being pissed on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nimetic

I'm also wondering how many places they bombed until they got the right one?

Just one.

host · 06-13-2006, 08:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ubertuber

Host,

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a person that thinks the US has license to kill, imprison, and torture anyone we want, but I am rather apathetic about whether troops beat Zarqawi before he died, or even if they killed him by beating him..... .....He was someone who either killed innocents well or poorly, and for that I think he was fair game.

I guess I'd just rather see us pursue questions that are a little more meaningful...

ubertuber, If I was confident that the government had given us enough information to make realistic determinations about Zarqawi, or about anything else related to Iraq, or the unrelated "war on terr-urrrr", I would not react to this "news" the only way, under the circumstances, that I find myself reacting. I'm taking this tale in, as I would a "cartoon". I don't know what to believe, and I don't know how anyone else knows, either....not with this "history:

Quote:

http://www.counterpunch.org/weiher04182006.html
April 18 , 2006
Who is That Masked Man?
The Zarqawi Gambit, Revisited
By GREG WEIHER

.....

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...040900890.html
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi
Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To Iraq's Stability

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006; Page A01

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program............

......Filkins, reached by e-mail, said that he was not told at the time that there was a psychological operations campaign aimed at Zarqawi, but said he assumed that the military was releasing the letter "because it had decided it was in its best interest to have it publicized." No special conditions were placed upon him in being briefed on its contents, he said. He said he was skeptical about the document's authenticity then, and remains so now, and so at the time tried to confirm its authenticity with officials outside the U.S. military.

To make an elementary initial point, let me ask the obvious question. If he was skeptical of the authenticity of the letter, why did he go with the story? Why did his editors go with the story?

Nothing of this skepticism appears in the story itself. There are no references to any sources other than U.S. government officials, even though there is no shortage of experts familiar with Zarqawi’s career. At no point does Filkins say that he is skeptical about the authenticity of the letter.

I quote from my CounterPunch article of February 26:

“Note the lack of any confirmation of the authenticity of this letter/CD from experts or authorities aside from ‘U.S. officials.’ Note the failure to consult third-party intelligence experts, authorities on Al Qaeda, authorities on wars of national liberation. Note the failure to provide any background on the validity of claims that Zarkawi actually could have written such a letter, is still in Iraq, or collaborated with Saddam Hussein. There is one disclaimer, two lines in a three-page piece: ‘Yet other interpretations may be possible, including that it was written by some other insurgent, but one who exaggerated his involvement.’ . . . In a follow-up story (‘Al Qaeda rebuffs Iraqi Terror Group,’ 02/21/04) the administration’s version of the facts is entirely unquestioned.”

There is nothing surprising about finding out that, once more, the Bush administration played fast and loose with the truth as it pertains to matters Iraqi. After all, as the Zarqawi gambit is being exposed, we are also finding out that Bush prattled on about mobile weapons labs for more than a year after a secret CIA report dismissed the vehicles in question as the biggest sand toilets in the world.

It is just as important to note, however, that these feats of mendacity could not have been achieved without the willing, if not eager, complicity of the American establishment media. Eventually, the Times was criticized pretty severely in the pages of Editor and Publisher, and The Columbia Journalism Review for its slipshod journalistic practices. In his mea sorta culpa in May, 2004, the Times public editor, Daniel Okrent, put his finger on the essence of the problem:

“There is nothing more toxic to responsible journalism than an anonymous source . . . a newspaper has an obligation to convince readers why it believes the sources it does not identify are telling the truth. That automatic editor defense, ‘We’re not confirming what he says, we’re just reporting it,’ may apply to the statements of people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it’s worse than no defense. It’s a license granted to liars.”

In this context, it is relevant to note that the Times has yet to own up to its role in helping the liars in the Bush Administration to pull off the Zarqawi gambit.

With the above "history", as context...(How can we know where we are, if we don't know where we've been?) and the following denials, disclaimers, and revisions, how can a rational mind represent that any "conclusions" are even possible ?

Quote:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...iewed-homepage
Questions Remain About Zarqawi's Final Minutes
The U.S. denies accounts saying that the terrorist was beaten by American troops before he died, but confirms that a child was among the dead.
By Louise Roug, Times Staff Writer
June 11, 2006

.....In a briefing with reporters, Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a U.S. military spokesman, said that two doctors had been brought to Iraq to conduct an autopsy to determine the exact cause of Zarqawi's death. Results from the examination will be made public within days, Caldwell said.

He also confirmed that a girl between 5 and 7 years old had died in the bombing. Two unidentified women and one man were also killed in addition to Zarqawi and his spiritual advisor, Sheik Abdel Rashid Rahman, Caldwell said. U.S. officials at first had said that Zarqawi and at least five others had died, including a woman and a child, but then changed to say that seven people had died, none of them children.

The military has revised several other details of the bombing and its aftermath.

Caldwell said that early reports after a military operation can sometimes include hazy or contradictory information.

"There is no intention on anybody's behalf to engage in deception, manipulation or evasion," he said.

After first reporting that Zarqawi was dead when U.S. troops arrived, U.S. officials also now agree with Iraqis who said that the leader of the terrorist organization died at the site in the presence of U.S. troops.....

If I allowed myself to be "sucked in", I could react with wonderment over the fact that all possible efforts weren't undertaken to attempt to apprehend "Al Qaeda's #1" in Iraq, "alive"...for the wealth of intelligence that interrogating him might bring. I could react to the bombing death of a small child as "collateral damage", etc.

Instead, my sensibilities are still smarting from earlier disclosures that the NY Times reporter Judy Miller planted false WMD stories that were handed to her By Ahmed Chalabi, probably directed by PNAC. I recall the false certainty with which the Bush administration embellished the false "mobile biological weapons trailers" story, and the "Op" about the Zarqawi propaganda campaign that was fed to NY Times', Dexter Filkins, via selective leaks. That "Op" included a fake Zarqawi "letter".

I note that some folks here believe that the NY Times is "liberal", even after all of the disclosures that it's reporters and editors have been so "incurious" when it came time to publish what should have been suspected as blatant propaganda. I note that so many who post here, have their "minds made up", and I have to wonder....and post....over and over....how they can do that.
What do they "pick out", that they know to be "true"? Last week, the Haditha atrocities story and a deteriorating stock market dominated the news.

The....as if a switch was thrown, the government was able to shift attention, almost instantaneously...to the story that it wanted us to focus on....the still changing story of our military's "success" in "bombing" the bogey man that was created by our government's own propaganda.

The "timing" of the new "our military get's it's evil-doer" story, was just as convenient. a few days ago, as this scenario was, 2 years ago:

Quote:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in614063.shtml
Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed
60 Minutes II Has Exclusive Report On Alleged Mistreatment

April 28, 2004
(CBS) Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners.

But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now.....

.......It was American soldiers serving as military police at Abu Ghraib who took these pictures. The investigation started when one soldier got them from a friend, and gave them to his commanders. 60 Minutes II has a dozen of these pictures, and there are many more – pictures that show Americans, men and women in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners....

....and then....as now...almost as if he was paid to take the stage on cue, just 12 days after the Abu Ghraib controversy was reported, this convenient, and I'm sure....(I'm not....but too many of you are..) "story" came along..the "bogeyman, Zarqawi", to deflect attention away from U.S. war crimes du jour:

Quote:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/i...eheading_x.htm
Posted 5/11/2004 12:57 PM Updated 5/12/2004 11:30 AM
Video shows beheading of American captive
By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY

A gruesome videotape posted on an Islamic militant Web site Tuesday showed the beheading of an American contractor who had been looking for work in Iraq — a bloody scene that appears to mark the first violent response to U.S. abuse of Iraqi captives at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.......

..........Despite claims from his family, the young American who was decapitated on a videotape posted by an al-Qaeda-linked Web site was never under U.S. custody, coalition spokesman Dan Senor said Wednesday...........

.........In a grainy execution video eerily similar to one in 2002 that showed al-Qaeda operatives executing a Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan, Berg was shown sitting in an orange jumpsuit in front of five armed, hooded men.

Berg's body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday...

If the folks who really should read this post, have even gotten this far into it, I'm sure many of them are shaking their heads and muttering, ooohhhh...that "host", why does he hate American soooo much? My question is...why do you believe that our government's executive branch has so much, coincidental, fortuituous luck? Their christian god must have been smiling down on them when he gave them "Zarqawi"....a co-operative and unimginably "evil" adversary, who made attention on Abu Ghraib, "Vaporize" when he was incompetent enough to conveniently, personally behead Nick Berg, video tape the crime, and then post it online for the world to see, just at the right time to rehabilitate the reputation of our government. If I can convince even one of you to be more curious....more skeptical....if it's even possible!

docbungle · 06-13-2006, 08:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Their christian god must have been smiling down on them when he gave them "Zarqawi"....a co-operative and unimginably "evil" adversary, who made attention on Abu Ghraib, "Vaporize" when he was incompetent enough to conveniently, personally behead Nick Berg, video tape the crime, and then post it online for the world to see, just at the right time to rehabilitate the reputation of our government. If I can convince even one of you to be more curious....more skeptical....if it's even possible!

Yeah.

God did it for the GOP.

And Zarqawi was "invented" to deflect attention from Abu Ghraib.

And Nick Berg...I don't even know what you're trying to say there. Are you implying Zarqawi was too competent to be bombed to death, because he was succesfull at beheadings and showing them on the internet? You said incompetent, but the entire sentence doesn't make any sense. You had to have mistyped something in there somewhere.

At least you are admitting "Z" is dead now? Or at least more than likely dead?

Marvelous Marv · 06-13-2006, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I don't know....so how can you know??? Time Magazine reports yesterday that a small Delta Force team of U.S. soldiers was close enough to determine that Zarqawi did not leave the house before they called in an airstrike. Today, Gen. Caldwell says that U.S. troops did not arrive until 28 minutes after the air strike, just 24 minutes before Zarqawi died.

The U.S. Army tells us that Zarqawi died of lung injuries, alleged "proof" that he was not "beaten to death", but is it "proof" that he was not beaten?

Although you have listed an impressive array of non-sequiturs regarding the entire event, and truthout.org is blowing their usual amount of hot air, this request to prove a negative is the icing on the cake.

Pray tell what "alleged proof" WOULD satisfy you? That a beating DIDN'T happen, I mean?

(Sigh)-- Just remembered that pointing out logical fallacies is a "personal attack."

host · 06-14-2006, 03:07 AM

docbungle, Powell, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld raised Zarqawi in stature to the point that they announced that he was "worth" a $25 million bounty.

Do you find it believable, that Zarqawi, in the midst of the escalating negative publicity disclosing and condemning Abu Ghraib abuse and degradation of Iraqi prisoners, chose to personally behead Nick Berg, on video, then obligingly post the video file on a website for download by the media, claim credit for doing so, but wear a mask during the videotaping that entirely covered his head?
The timing of the beheading, which immediatley shifted focus of negative publicity away from the Bush admin., and the U.S. military, and turned all of it onto Zarqawi, personally, was what I meant by my "incompetent" reference.
None of it is very believable. It's just too convenient, and it is such a "poor" strategic decision by an adversary portrayed by our leaders as "cunning" enough to be worthy of a $25 million bounty, it makes the "story" that Zarqawi, the terrorist, "mastermind", conveniently "stepped in", at the most opportune moment for our leaders, to display his own "personal" brutality, and thus, justify and redeem our leaders for invading and occupying Iraq, and relegated Abu Ghraib from a human rights "scandal", to a minor transgression,
moved suddenly to the back page of most newspapers.

Here is some illuminating news reporting about Zarqawi, in chronological order:

Quote:

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=1
Rumsfeld says enemies fleeing through Iran, Iraq
Escape routes for terrorists
Story last updated at 8:57 p.m. on Friday, June 21, 2002
By John J. Lumpkin
Associated Press

.......Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters Friday, accused Iran's government of helping terrorists fleeing the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
''Iran had served as a haven for some terrorists leaving Afghanistan,'' he said. ''It is also true it has permitted the transit of terrorists, and the supporters of terrorists, through Iran.''
Some of those allowed to stay in Iran include an al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused of helping plot a bombing at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman aimed at killing Americans and Israeli tourists during millennial celebrations, a U.S. official has said.
In 1999, Jordanian authorities broke up that hotel bombing plot. Zarqawi, who has used the alias Ahmad Fadeel al-Khalayleh, went from Afghanistan to Iran not long after the U.S. war in Afghanistan began last October, and he later left, U.S. officials have said. His current whereabouts are unclear..........

Quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...807286,00.html
White House 'exaggerating Iraqi threat'

Bush's televised address attacked by US intelligence

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday October 9, 2002
The Guardian

.....Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's line, the Guardian has learned. In response, some are complying, some are resisting and some are choosing to remain silent.

"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence..........

..........There is already considerable scepticism among US intelligence officials about Mr Bush's claims of links between Iraq and al-Qaida. In his speech on Monday, Mr Bush referred to a "very senior al-Qaida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year".

An intelligence source said the man the president was referring to was Abu Musab Zarqawi, who was arrested in Jordan in 2001 for his part in the "millennium plot" to bomb tourist sites there. He was subsequently released and eventually made his way to Iraq in search of treatment. However, intercepted telephone calls did not mention any cooperation with the Iraqi government.

There is also profound scepticism among US intelligence experts about the president's claim that "Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases".

Bob Baer, a former CIA agent who tracked al-Qaida's rise, said that there were contacts between Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi government in Sudan in the early 1990s and in 1998: "But there is no evidence that a strategic partnership came out of it. I'm unaware of any evidence of Saddam pursuing terrorism against the United States." .......

Quote:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...04/wirq04.xml/
Spies force retreat on 'al-Qa'eda link'
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent, and David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 04/02/2003) (Comment by "host", date= Feb. 4, 2003....)

Colin Powell, the United States secretary of state, yesterday appeared to pull back from claims that he would show the United Nations a link between al-Qa'eda and Iraq, amid anger among Washington's spies over the way intelligence was being distorted to prove the link existed.

.........He faces a tough task made far tougher by President George W Bush's promise in his State of the Union address last week that Mr Powell would prove a link between al-Qa'eda and Iraq that, intelligence officials say, does not exist.

The intelligence shows that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leading member of al-Qa'eda, was treated in hospital in Baghdad last spring but provides absolutely no evidence of any contacts with Iraqi officials.

It also shows that some members of a small Kurdish Islamic fundamentalist group, Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small area inside northern Iraq, were trained by al-Qa'eda. But this also shows no credible evidence of contacts with the Iraqi regime.

It is the attempt by both the White House and the Pentagon to make a clear and definite link between al-Zarqawi, Ansar al-Islam and Saddam Hussein that has infuriated many within the United States intelligence community.

"The intelligence is practically non-existent," one exasperated American intelligence source said. Most of the intelligence being used to support the idea of a link between al-Qa'eda and Saddam Hussein comes from Kurdish groups who are the bitter enemies of Ansar al-Islam, he said..............

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067876/
Distorted Intelligence?
Secret German records cast doubt on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Plus, why Qatar is footing the legal bills for an ‘enemy combatant’
Web Exclusive
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 12:15 p.m. ET June 9, 2006

June 25, 2003

THE VOLUMINOUS GERMAN records, obtained by NEWSWEEK, seem to undercut highly touted administration claims that Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, a hardened Jordanian terrorist who once received medical treatment in Baghdad, was a key player in Al Qaeda.

In fact, the secret German records—compiled during interrogations with a captured Zarqawi associate—suggest that the shadowy Zarqawi headed his own terrorist group, called Al Tawhid, with its own goals and may even have been a jealous rival of Al Qaeda.

The captured associate, Shadi Abdallah, who is now on trial in Germany, told his interrogators last year that Zarqawi’s Al Tawid organization was one of several Islamist groups that acted “in opposition” to bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. At one point, Abdallah described how Zarqawi even vetoed the idea of splitting charity funds collected in Germany between Al Tawhid and Al Qaeda.

While the internal machinations between Al Tawhid and Al Qaeda may seem obscure, they cut to the heart of one of the most politically sensitive issues in Washington at the moment: whether the Bush White House exaggerated and distorted U.S. intelligence to justify the war on Iraq.

Much of the debate revolves around claims that Saddam had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons—stockpiles that so far have not been found. But an equally fierce debate has been taking place behind the scenes about the handling of sketchy, and at times, contradictory evidence relating to Saddam’s supposed connections with Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi was at the center of those claims. In a Cincinnati speech delivered Oct. 7, on the eve of a congressional vote authorizing him to wage war on Iraq, President Bush asserted that “Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.” His chief example was that “one very senior Al Qaeda leader” had “received medical treatment in Baghdad”—an obvious reference to Zarqawi, who had his leg amputated there in 2002.

Zarqawi received even more prominence in secretary of State Colin Powell’s Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations Security Council. In that address, Powell described Zarqawi as “an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.” During his stay in Baghdad, Powell claimed that “nearly two dozen…al Qaeda affiliates” converged on the Iraqi capital and “established a base of operations there.”

But the German interrogations of Shadi Abdallah present a more complex and somewhat different picture of Zarqawi’s role in international terrorism.......

..........While a member of bin Laden’s entourage, Abdallah says he had numerous conversations with Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni resident in Hamburg who later played a key role in the September 11 hijacking conspiracy.

But after “only about two weeks” as a bin Laden bodyguard, Abdallah told German investigators, he became disenchanted with bin Laden’s hard-line ideology, which he found distasteful because of bin Laden’s insistence that the Koran allowed the killing of women children and old people.

Abdallah said he made his way from bin Laden’s hideout to Zarqawi’s Al Tawhid training camp near Herat. There, he was informed that Al Tawhid’s mission was explicitly to “fight the Jordanian regime and to overthrow the government of Jordan” as well as the “annihilation of Jews all over the world.”

...............At the time of Abdallah’s arrest by German authorities last spring, Zarqawi apparently was still running the group out of Iran; and the only Iraqi connection with Al Qaeda was access to phony Iraqi documents, Abdallah told authorities.

Several U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports that were used to craft Powell’s Feb. 5 presentation to the Security Council told NEWSWEEK they were aware all along of the German information about Zarqawi. But the officials insist the CIA firmly stands behind what Powell said about Zarqawi’s purported links to Al Qaeda. Even the German evidence, they said, indicates that there were some associations and links between the two organizations.

Despite the inflammatory language of Powell’s U.N. presentation, Bush Administration officials also have acknowledged that their information about Zarqawi’s stay in Baghdad is sketchy at best. According to U.S. officials, Zarqawi entered Iraq around May of last year to have an amputation performed on his leg, which was injured while he was fleeing American forces in Afghanistan. According to some reports, one reason that he might have gone to Baghdad for the operation was that the Iranian government, in one of its sporadic crackdowns on Al Qaeda, had expelled him.

Senior U.S. officials acknowledged to NEWSWEEK within days of Powell’s speech that it was “unknown” whether Saddam’s government helped arrange Zarqawi’s hospital stay in Baghdad or whether Iraqi intelligence had any contacts with him while he was in Baghdad.

Since U.S. forces ousted Saddam two months ago, only one confirmed member of Zarqawi’s group has been captured by American troops in Iraq. Little if any other information has surfaced to illuminate Zarqawi’s Baghdad stay or the dealings between Saddam’s government and Zarqawi or other alleged Islamic terrorist operatives, including bin Laden. U.S. officials acknowledge that some top captured Al Qaeda leaders, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, have told U.S. interrogators bin Laden vetoed a long-term relationship with Saddam because he did not want to be in the Iraqi leader’s debt. .......

...........The German government evidence appears to demonstrate how the Zarqawi story told by Powell to the Security Council was partial at best and misleading at worst, in the sense that it took Zarqawi’s tenuous relationship to Al Qaeda and his mysterious visit to Baghdad and lifted them out of context to imply evidence of a closer collaboration between Iraq and bin Laden than the facts demonstrated.

Missing entirely from Powell’s speech was the qualifying and even contradictory information in the German files. Also missing was any reference to Zarqawi’s sojourn in Iran, which knowledgeable officials concede might be as significant, if not more important, than any visit he paid to Baghdad.

One intelligence source says that as the Bush Administration cranked up the government to prepare for war, intelligence agencies were ordered to produce two critical papers that could be published to justify an attack on Saddam. One paper related to Weapons of Mass destruction, the other to Saddam’s links to terrorism. Classified versions of both papers were written and the paper on WMD was eventually published by the Bush Administration as an official dossier. But an unclassified version of the paper on Saddam’s links to terrorism was never published because intelligence agencies could not reach final agreement on what exactly it should say.....

Quote:

Note: If you are interested...the rest of this article is focused on this man,
al-Marri, and there is more info on what became of him, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarallah_al-Marri
Jarallah al-Marri is a citizen of Qatar currently held in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.[1] Al Marri's detainee ID number is 334.

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

......... But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. 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,....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

The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons......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..... 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.

Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.

Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year an Al Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote, ``good,'' that Baghdad could be transited quickly.

We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain even today in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters, and they are involved in moving more than money and materiale.

Last year, two suspected Al Qaida operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia......From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond.

We, in the United States, all of us at the State Department, and the Agency for International Development--we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October.....The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder.

POWELL: ......Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates. Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi's activities in Baghdad. I described them earlier.

And now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice, and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large to come and go....

.....Zarqawi's terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia.
Colin Powell slide 41
Slide 41

According to detainee Abuwatia (ph), who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan.....

Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested.
Colin Powell slide 42
Slide 42

The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe. We know about this European network, and we know about its links to Zarqawi.....

......The 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.
Colin Powell slide 43
Slide 43

We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia and in Chechnya, Russia.....Members of Zarqawi's network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.

We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and Al Qaida. ........

.......... And the record of Saddam Hussein's cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999, and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel.

Al Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaida.

Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.

This senior Al Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of Al Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan.........

Read the news reports in the quote boxes or at the links above, docbungle, then read Powell's entire Feb., 2003 presentation to the "world", (that I confined and abbreviated above, to "Zarqawi references") at the UN. Note that Powell's key assistant of 16 years, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, later called Powell's speech that day, as I documented earlier in this thread, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/19/powell.un/">"the lowest point in my life".</a>

Then, please consider how interwined the Powell/Bush administration assertions about Zarqawi were with their argument that he was the "key" proof of a close ties and cooperation between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda. After Cheney's discredited assertions about Atta's Prague "meeting" with an Iraqi intelligenc official he denied what he was videotaped saying:

Quote:

http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/...404_flash3.htm
CHENEY: CLEAR LINKS BETWEEN SADDAM, AL-QAEDA; CALLS NY TIMES ARTICLE 'OUTRAGEOUS'
Thu Jun 17 2004 19:00:33 ET
...BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohammad Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, I never said that.

BORGER: OK.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Never said that. ......

......BORGER: Let me ask you what your response is to the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, who said upon looking at this 9/11 report that this administration, quote, "misled America."

Vice Pres. CHENEY: In what respect? I haven't seen that.

BORGER: In terms of the relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq......

Quote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3715396.stm
Tuesday, 5 October, 2004,
Rumsfeld questions Saddam-Bin Laden link

Rumsfeld's comments can be revealing
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cast doubt on whether there was ever a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

..........He also said that although most of al-Qaeda's senior leaders had sworn an oath to Osama Bin Laden, the man suspected to be the principal leader of the network in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had not.

Mr Zarqawi's reported presence in Baghdad before the war has been cited in the past by the US administration as evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. ........

Quote:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ15Ak02.html
Oct 15, 2004
THE ROVING EYE
Zarqawi - Bush's man for all seasons
By Pepe Escobar

.......Cheney also insisted that Zarqawi could not have had his leg treated in a Baghdad hospital without Saddam's Mukhabarat (secret service) knowing it. But the leg story is a mess. US intelligence thought that Zarqawi had lost a leg in Afghanistan in 2002. But then, last May, they concluded that he still had both legs. The Bush administration's "evidence" of an al-Qaeda-Saddam link via Zarqawi may be an intercepted phone call by Zarqawi from a Baghdad hospital in 2002, while his leg was being attended to. But then "Zarqawi" shows up in a video with both legs in the 2004 beheading of hostage Nick Berg.

The truth is more straightforward. Zarqawi had no connection either with bin Laden or with Saddam. Secular Saddam hosting an Islamic radical, of all people, at a time when the American campaign against the "axis of evil" had reached a fever-pitch is a ludicrous proposition. A newspaper editor in the Sunni triangle says Zarqawi may have gone on an underground trip to Baghdad to have his leg operated on before scurrying back to Kurdistan. And sources in Peshawar confirm to Asia Times Online that Zarqawi never took the all-significant bayat (oath of allegiance) and so never struck a formal alliance with bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership.........

Quote:

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report...t.pdf#page=487
http://demos.vivisimo.com/search?inp...iraq&x=40&y=12
75. Intelligence report, Iraq approach to Bin Ladin, Mar. 16, 1999. 76. CIA analytic report,“Ansar al-Islam:Al Qa’ida’s Ally in Northeastern Iraq,” CTC 2003-40011CX, Feb. 1, 2003. See also DIA analytic report,“Special Analysis: Iraq’s Inconclusive Ties to Al-Qaida,” July 31, 2002; CIA analytic report,“Old School Ties,” Mar. 10, 2003.We have seen other intelligence reports at the CIA about 1999 contacts.They are consistent with the conclusions we provide in the text, and their reliability is uncertain. Although there have been suggestions of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda regarding chemical weapons and explosives training, the most detailed information alleging such ties came from an al Qaeda operative who recanted much of his original information. Intelligence report, interrogation of al Qaeda operative, Feb. 14, 2004.Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any such ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. Intelligence reports, interrogations of KSM and Zubaydah, 2003....

There...docbungle ! Now, if you've skimmed through all of this, you pretty much end up "not knowing", as much as I "don't know". It's all there, in chronological order....and it ends in the month of Oct., with BBC quoting Rumsfeld saying that Zarqawi, "never took an oath" to Bin Laden, and the asiatimes.com report, just ten days later, says the same. Lastly, the 9-11 Commission report footnote, disputes Powell's "proof" that Zarqaqi's “Ansar al-Islam:Al Qa’ida’s Ally in Northeastern Iraq,” was anything other than, "uncertain".
If you've read Powell's entire Feb., 5, 2003 presentation to the UN, it might be "fun" to pick out two things that he used to try to build a coalition in the UN to invade Iraq, that have stood up to time and scrutiny....just two.

I don't know what to "believe" as to whether Zarqawi actually existed as described by our leaders, whether he is/was "al-Qaida", whether he is alive or dead, whether he was beaten before he died, whether a "child" was killed in the house where he was allegedly bombed, or whether he even mattered, beyond being the subject of a long and contradictory, US government propaganda "Op". I do know that nobody else, outside of a small group close to our leaders and their trusted senior military and intelligence officers, know either. This is just another little exercise, brought to you by that "Bush hatin",
"America hatin" liber-ull, "host", intended to challenge you to think about what you really "can know" reliably, based on what actually is spewed out of this U.S. administration...or at least, what you have to ignore, in order to disagree with what I've tried to persuade you to examine.......

Seaver · 06-14-2006, 06:19 AM

Host are you trying to move this to paranoia?

stevo · 06-14-2006, 07:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Host are you trying to move this to paranoia?

Half the threads in politics are paranoia. sorry.

host · 06-14-2006, 10:00 AM

Seaver, stevo.....

I won't settle for participating in a political forum where discussion degrades to a level where everyone regurgitates the opinions shaped entirely by the government's prevailing message, just because that version is repeated the most by our leaders.....I want a "balanced" view, even it causes me to be less
"sure" of what I "know". WTF is the sense of being "sure" of things that probably aren't true?

I'm trying to "raise the bar", by highlighting the "contradictions" in the news reporting that reaches us, versus what most of us "think" that we "know", and the results are an "eye opener", in their implications.

So too.....are both of your responses......

Seaver · 06-14-2006, 03:41 PM

Quote:

I won't settle for participating in a political forum where discussion degrades to a level where everyone regurgitates the opinions shaped entirely by the government's prevailing message, just because that version is repeated the most by our leaders.....I want a "balanced" view, even it causes me to be less
"sure" of what I "know". WTF is the sense of being "sure" of things that probably aren't true?

I'm trying to "raise the bar", by highlighting the "contradictions" in the news reporting that reaches us, versus what most of us "think" that we "know", and the results are an "eye opener", in their implications.

So too.....are both of your responses......

Host you dont want a "balanced view", dont even attempt to claim it. If it were balanced you wouldnt search for everything "good" that happens is a conspiracy, and everything "bad" is actually because of government action, and the blaming of the people who did do it is an attempt to fool us.

I wont settle for a conversation where theories are thrown out with little more evidence than stock prices or the fact that Bush's polls go up after Americans died on 9/11. I wont settle for conspiracy theories of voter fraud because your candidate lost, based on machines that weren't even used in the conflicted states. I wont settle for your conspiracy posts in politics where they lead to no discussion. You try to give us "eye openers" where it only leads to people giving a chuckle and ignoring your post.

Willravel · 06-14-2006, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Host you dont want a "balanced view", dont even attempt to claim it.

Seaver, if something in here belongs in Paranoia, it will be moved to Paranoia. I'm not a mod, and neither are you or host. If you don't agree with something, then say so and explain why. I remember this old story about Einstien. He had come up with one of his brilliant theories, and germans scientists started a smear campaign against him saying that he was insane and a jewish sympathizer, etc...so Einstien simply responded, (paraphrased) "All you need to prove me wrong is one fact." My point? If you want to argue against someone, just present your argument. IMHO.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Talking Politics or Religion is like playing Rochambo (sp?), nothing is accomplished other than ending up with two really hurt and pissed off people.

Interesting point.

06-10-2006, 04:33 AM	#42 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	We have killed a major terrorist leader in Iraq. We will continue to kill major terrorist leaders in Iraq. Five years from now we will likelly be killing major terrorist leaders in Iraq. Perhaps in ten years we can turn over the killing of major terrorist leaders in Iraq....to the Iraqis. Or....we may be killing Iraqis who are Major Terrorist leaders in Iraq. This killing while an important boost politically....borders on irrelevant in the actual "War on Terrorism", and in fact may simply end up a recruiting tool for the bad guys. In my opinion we are fighting a war that cannot be won with Bombs, but hey....what do I know. __________________ Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

06-10-2006, 10:00 AM	#43 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	For the record all aid for the Russian-Afghan war was funded through the Pakistani ISI, America had no discretion as to how it was allotted. This is ofcourse due to the whole premise that the Mujahdeen movement would have been without merit it America "the Great Satan" had a direct hand in what was a conflict portrayed as an Islamic/Arab struggle. __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

06-10-2006, 10:19 AM	#44 (permalink)
Psycho Dad Mulletproof Location: Some nucking fut house.	Something that I wonder about is how the treatment of his body is viewed by the extremists or faithfully practicing Muslims even. From what I gather, there are certain ways that the body must be treated even including how long after death the burial should be. Is the autopsy something that is going to further fuel extremist hatred towards the US? Will moderate Muslims understand why the US is examining the remains so closely? Should the US even give two shits about any of these religious practices? Is this even anything to wonder about or is it the mainstream media’s influence on how I digest reports about things of this nature? __________________ Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

06-10-2006, 01:05 PM	#47 (permalink)
cyrnel Adequate Location: In my angry-dome.	I was going to mention the Saddam family treatment. It isn't easy to tell who's who with blood & grime everywhere. A mortician's makeup job would be my idea of sanitizing. This guy would have been appropriate for a plywood casket propped outside the General Store. __________________ There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

06-10-2006, 03:31 PM	#50 (permalink)
docbungle It's all downhill from here Location: Denver	host, for someone questioning eveyone's viewpoints, what about yours? you latch on to every single piece of dissenting information you can find, regardless of its source or validity. your "story" has not been proven by any means, and you assail others for believing a story that has much more evidence going for it. if it has a remote chance of making the us gov or pres. bush look bad, you're all for it. you come into every arguement from the same doorway, with the same slant, regardless of topic. without a bit of objectivity, how can you expect to be taken seriously? __________________ Bad Luck City

06-11-2006, 05:20 AM	#52 (permalink)
Nimetic Junkie Location: Melbourne, Australia	For myself, I don't like this bomb-suspects-from-the-sky business. As I mentioned on another forum - if this is allowed under the new Iraqi constitution, that's a problem. I'm also wondering how many places they bombed until they got the right one?

06-12-2006, 07:36 PM	#57 (permalink)
Lebell Cracking the Whip Location: Sexymama's arms...	What can one say, except "Good Job"? There will of course be another one, but if the Palestinians continue to self implode and Israel finishes its wall or gasp if they pull their collective heads out and actually negotiate peace with Israel, then we'll finally start on the road to a lasting peace. __________________ "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis The ONLY sponsors we have are YOU! Please Donate!

06-12-2006, 07:48 PM	#58 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	Host, Honestly, I'm not sure if it makes any difference to me whether he was beaten to death or bombed to death. I mean, they dropped the bomb on the house specifically because HE was there - so whether the killing was close range or by pushing a button, it almost amounts to an assassination... It seems to me that this matters more than the exact mechanism of his demise (if it matters at all). Really, I see this as a non-issue. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a person that thinks the US has license to kill, imprison, and torture anyone we want, but I am rather apathetic about whether troops beat Zarqawi before he died, or even if they killed him by beating him. After all, they dropped a bomb on him, and that was intended to kill him. And for the record, whether Zarqawi was incompetent or not, and whether his mayhem was a construction of the DoD or not doesn't matter to me either. He was someone who either killed innocents well or poorly, and for that I think he was fair game. I guess I'd just rather see us pursue questions that are a little more meaningful... __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

06-13-2006, 03:44 AM	#60 (permalink)
Psycho Dad Mulletproof Location: Some nucking fut house.	Be they special forces or new privates out of basic training, I'd think the first Americans on the scene would realize "dead men tell no tales" and not beat the shit out of him. For the most part, our Marines and sodliers are better trained that what the media leads us to think. __________________ Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

06-14-2006, 06:19 AM	#66 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	Host are you trying to move this to paranoia?

06-14-2006, 10:00 AM	#68 (permalink)
host Banned	Seaver, stevo..... I won't settle for participating in a political forum where discussion degrades to a level where everyone regurgitates the opinions shaped entirely by the government's prevailing message, just because that version is repeated the most by our leaders.....I want a "balanced" view, even it causes me to be less "sure" of what I "know". WTF is the sense of being "sure" of things that probably aren't true? I'm trying to "raise the bar", by highlighting the "contradictions" in the news reporting that reaches us, versus what most of us "think" that we "know", and the results are an "eye opener", in their implications. So too.....are both of your responses......