Pentagon cancels release of controversial Iraq report

[quote="Charlie Z"]shucks, I love you guys.



ROFL!!!






To get back "on topic", Devil, I don't know why this pentagon report is important. "Al-Qaida" didn't exist in Iraq until 2005 (2 years after we deposed Saddam) and it's well documented here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hus ... d_al-Qaeda. Not even Israeli intelligence supports the claim that Al-Qaida existed in Iraq, and they had a lot to gain from the invasion.

If your point is that the administration trumped up Iraqi "Al-Qaida" as invasion justification? Obviously.

No...it is merely their (Bush) [color=#0000FF]current excuse for staying there.[/color]

Charlie Z wrote:
spc: You're right, we're in this box. But, 'tedious' is about as polite as I can water down criticism of half-formed arguments. Tighten up your facts and you'll be more convincing.

This documents the composition of the Iraqi "insurgents" here into 7 groups, all of whom have become militant since we knocked out Saddam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_insu ... Insurgency

I'm quoting the actual Pentagon report:
Maybe you don't believe the report?

"The agent reports (Extract 25) that The Army of Muhammad is working with Osama bin Laden. …
A later memorandum from the same collection to the Director of the IIS reports that the Army of Muhammad is endeavoring to receive assistance [from Iraq] to implement its objectives, and that the local IIS station has been told to deal with them in accordance with priorities previously established. The IIS agent goes on to inform the Director that “this organization is an offshoot of bin Laden, but that their objectives are similar but with different names that can be a way of camouflaging the organization.”

line from page 42: "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."

I am going to assume all the groups mentioned in this report want Americans DEAD.
http://a.abcnews.com/images/pdf/Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf
Pretty tight, not as tight as the evidence against OJ I guess, but it still didn't matter did it.

Pathetic.

If this is the Pentagon study you quote -- shelved because it "found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network" -- it was for good reason. It refutes Conservative American thought and values of fairness, reason and justice. It's written for a mob.

Here's a summary of what your doc states, with actual text following (pg 41):

- In the 90s, Saddam considered terror strikes at Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and US (surprise!)
- He talked to terror groups that also wanted to strike these enemies.
- Some of the groups he talked to also talked to Al-Qaida.
- All groups recruited terrorists in the same area.
- Even though these terror groups did NOT work together, appearances to the US are that they do.

So, it's no wonder they spiked the report. "...Indirect cooperation with movements" is an interesting turn of phrase.
Basically, it's weasel wording to say that even though Saddam didn't have any control or contact with groups like bin Laden's, they all had similar aims. Clear ENGLISH would say that Saddam and bin Laden had a common enemy, but little else in common. (Even with this lowest of measures, no event of "indirect cooperation" with al Qaida is reported.)

To paraphrase Bill Buckley, "Proven: Al-Qaida did not exist in Iraq before the Invasion!"

- Charlie

Saddam Hussein was demonstrably willing to use terrorism to achieve his goals. Using this tactical method was a strategic choice of Saddam's, often requiring direct and indirect cooperation with movements, organizations, and individuals
possessing, in some cases, diametrically opposed long-term goals.

An example of indirect cooperation is the movement led by Osama bin Laden. During the 1990s, both Saddam and bin Laden wanted the West, particularly the United States, out of Muslim lands (or in the view of Saddam, the "Arab nation"). Both wanted to create a single powerful state that would take its place as a global superpower. But the similarities ended there: bin Laden wanted-and still wants to restore the Islamic caliphate while Saddam, despite his later Islamic rhetoric, dreamed more narrowly of being the secular ruler of a united Arab nation. These competing visions made any significant long-term compromise between them highly unlikely. After all, to the fundamentalist leadership of al Qaeda, Saddam represented the worst kind of "apostate" regime-a secular police state well practiced in suppressing internal challenges. In pursuit of their own separate but surprisingly "parallel" visions, Saddam and bin Laden often found a common enemy in the United States.

The Saddam regime was very concerned about the internal threat posed by various Islamist movements. Crackdowns, arrests, and monitoring of Islamic radical movements were common in Iraq. However, Saddam's security organizations and bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims, at least for the short tenn. Considerable operational overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the regional groups involved in terrorism. Saddam provided training and motivation to revolutionary pan-Arab nationalists in the region. Osama bin Laden provided training and motivation for violent revolutionary Islamists in the region. They were recruiting within the same demographic, spouting much the same rhetoric, and promoting a common historical narrative that promised a return to a glorious past. That these movements (panArab and pan-Islamic) had many similarities and strategic parallels does not mean they saw themselves in that light. Nevertheless, these similarities created more than just the appearance of cooperation. Common interests, even without common cause, increased the aggregate terror threat.

[quote="Charlie Z"]shucks, I love you guys.

(Since we're discussing our backgrounds, I worked on the 2 Reagan presidential campaigns and for Buchanan in '92.

I somehow missed the fact that you worked for Pat Buchanan in 92..........I couldn't let you go without asking if you've heard the pat Buchanon joke about his father?




It goes like this: "Did you know that Pat Buchanan's father was killed in a Nazi concentration camp in WWII?"









Response: "Yeah, he fell out of a guard tower!"




Couldn't resist!