It took far too long, but a report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war.
Let us take a trip down memory lane here and look at what the news organizations and the Clinton administration had to say about this very issue as far back as 1998.
I think it is appropriate here to start with the New York Times OWN articles.
The New York Times
November 5, 1998, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1093 words
HEADLINE: SAUDI IS INDICTED IN BOMB ATTACKS ON U.S. EMBASSIES
BYLINE: By BENJAMIN WEISER
BODY: A Federal grand jury in Manhattan returned a 238-count indictment yesterday charging the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden in the bombings of two United States Embassies in Africa in August and with conspiring to commit other acts of terrorism against Americans abroad.
Government officials immediately announced that they were offering two rewards of $5 million each for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Mr. bin Laden and another man charged yesterday, Muhammad Atef, who was described as Mr. bin Laden's chief military commander.
Mr. bin Laden is believed to be living in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist movement that rules that country.
Mr. Atef's whereabouts are unknown.
It is uncertain whether Mr. bin Laden will ever stand trial in the United States. But if he does, prosecutors said, he could face life in prison or the death penalty if he is convicted. Prosecutors also unsealed an earlier indictment, issued in June, that included similar but less detailed charges against Mr. bin Laden.
That indictment was returned before the embassy bombings and resulted from a two-year grand jury investigation of his activities in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, as well as reports that he had connections to a circle of Islamic militants in Brooklyn.
The new indictment, which supersedes the June action, accuses Mr. bin Laden of leading a vast terrorist conspiracy from 1989 to the present, in which he is said to have been working in concert with governments, including those of Sudan, Iraq and Iran, and terrorist groups to build weapons and attack American military installations. Excerpts, page A8.
But the indictment gives few details of Mr. bin Laden's alleged involvement in the embassy attacks. The indictment does not, for example, specify whether prosecutors have evidence that Mr. bin Laden gave direct orders to those who carried out the attacks.
Nothing in the document indicates why the original indictment was kept secret for months. But the secret charges were returned about the time that American officials were plotting a possible military attack into Afghanistan to arrest Mr. bin Laden.
Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney in Manhattan, said, "It's very common to have sealed indictments when you're trying to apprehend those who are indicted."
Both indictments offer new information about Mr. bin Laden's operations, including one deal he is said to have struck with Iraq to cooperate in the development of weapons in return for Mr. bin Laden's agreeing not to work against that country.
The thanks to Power Line we have a video of ABC's news coverage.
Moving right along.....
CNN, February 13, 1999 states that Saddam Hussein offers asylum to Bin Laden.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.
December, 1999,The Herald:(The article is copied in full atFree Republic, the original article is still archived at The Herald, but requires a subscription to be able to view it...found here)
The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, has been offered sanctuary in Iraq if his worldwide terrorist network succeeds in carrying out a campaign of high-profile attacks on the West over the next few weeks.
Intelligence sources say the Saudi dissident believed responsible for the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and a US military barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1998, is running out of options for a safe haven.
He is now thought to have overcome his initial rejection of Saddam Hussein, whom he regarded as an exploiter of the Islamic cause rather than a true believer, and is considering the offer of a bolt-hole from which he can continue to mastermind terrorism on a global scale.
A US counter-terrorist source said yesterday: "Our State Department issued a worldwide warning on December 11. We have solid information that many of the groups operating under bin Laden's patronage are planning 'spectaculars' to coincide with the period leading up to and through the millennium celebrations.
"They want to inflict maximum loss of life in return for publicity. Now we are also facing the prospect of an unholy alliance between bin Laden and Saddam. The implications are terrifying.
"We might be looking at the most wanted man on the FBI's target list gaining access to chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons courtesy of Iraq's clandestine research programmes."
These are simply a few of the massive amounts of examples of the news coverage before Bush ever took office, all linking Saddam and al-Qaeda.
Now lets take a look at what the Clinton administration had to say about the links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, back in the same time frame. (Hat Tip Flopping Aces)
The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same statements.
The issue arose again this month after the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States reported there was no "collaborative relationship" between the old Iraqi regime and bin Laden.
Democrats have cited the staff report to accuse Mr. Bush of making inaccurate statements about a linkage. Commission members, including a Democrat and two Republicans, quickly came to the administration's defense by saying there had been such contacts.
In fact, during President Clinton's eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton's defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.
Mr. Bush cited the linkage, in part, to justify invading Iraq and ousting Saddam. He said he could not take the risk of Iraq's weapons falling into bin Laden's hands.
The other pronouncement is contained in a Justice Department indictment on Nov. 4, 1998, charging bin Laden with murder in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
The indictment disclosed a close relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, which included specialists on chemical weapons and all types of bombs, including truck bombs, a favorite weapon of terrorists.
The 1998 indictment said: "Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."
From the Telegraph back in 1996:
SADDAM Hussein has a stock of anthrax, botulin and other agents of germ warfare that could be released with deadly effect in any major city in Britain or the United States, experts warned this week.
Whatever the assurances of the British and US governments, there is a danger that there could be a high price to pay for the West's arm's-length cruise missile war against the Ba'athist regime in Baghdad.
"You could spray biological agents from crop dusters, you could even drive around Washington with the stuff coming out of the exhaust of a car and it would kill tens of thousands of people," said Dr Laurie Mylroie, a former lecturer at the US Naval War College and now a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia.
The full extent of Iraq's germ warfare capability was revealed after the defection of Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamil, in August 1995. He had been the head of Iraq's "unconventional weapons" programme. Iraq has since defied the United Nations Special Commission by refusing to hand over any of its biological weapons.
The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, has warned that Saddam Hussein has enough anthrax to "kill every man, woman and child in the world". But up to now the administration of Bill Clinton has played down the possibility that Saddam would ever use germ warfare in terrorist attacks against targets on US soil.
The loudest cries of alarm have been coming from outside the government. A small but growing group of experts in Washington has begun to suspect that Iraq could be the real force behind the wave of terrorist attacks that has traumatised America in the 1990s. The experts also warn there is a real danger that Saddam could escalate to biological terrorism.
According to Dr Mylroie, the attempt to blow up the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on February 26, 1993 - which killed six people, but could have claimed thousands of lives if the truck bomb had been parked in the intended spot - was an act of Iraqi state-sponsored terrorism conducted by proxies.
After studying the telephone records and document archive from the trial, she has concluded that the mastermind said to be behind the bombing, a shadowy figure called Ramsi Yousef, was working for Iraqi intelligence.
The Justice Department did not address this issue in the official investigation. It concluded that the bombing was the work of Islamic fundamentalists loyal to a blind Egyptian cleric. Jim Fox, then head of the New York FBI office, suspected Iraqi involvement but says that the Washington headquarters refused to look at the evidence.
Increasingly, the question being asked in Washington every time a bomb goes off is which of the pariah states is guilty - Iran or Iraq?
Ramsi Yousef was recently convicted for plotting to blow up 12 US jumbo jets in a single day in the Far East. He now faces life in prison in the US. But it is still unclear whether he was a loner or a paid agent.
The reason I show you this last article is because I want you to remember the name Ramsi Yousef, the man was working with Iraqi intelligence and entered the US with an Iraq passport..
Which brings us to are report by Newsmax.com.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Account Links 9/11 to '93 WTC Attack .
For the first time ever, U.S. investigators have established a definitive link between the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the man who plotted its destruction on Sept. 11, 2001 – a development that adds circumstantial evidence to claims that Iraq played a role in the worst attack ever on U.S. soil.
According to a report Sunday by the Associated Press, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "told his interrogators he had worked in 1994 and 1995 in the Philippines with Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah on the foiled Bojinka plot to blow up 12 Western airliners simultaneously in Asia."
Yousef, of course, was the man who plotted and executed the failed 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport the year before and whose partner in the plot, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was granted sanctuary by Saddam Hussein after the attack. Yasin is still at large.
Unmentioned by the AP, Mohammed's account of meetings with Yousef has been corroborated by Yousef's Bojinka partner, Abdul Hakim Murad. After his capture in 1995, Murad told the FBI that he and Yousef were contacted by Mohammed repeatedly during their time in the Philippines. Murad's FBI 302 witness statements detailing the contacts are reprinted in the new book "1000 Years for Revenge," by investigative reporter Peter Lance.
Another intriguing detail unmentioned by the AP: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is Ramzi Yousef's uncle.
Now take a look at who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is again:
Formerly a Pakistani-Kuwaiti member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, according to the 9/11 Commission Report he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks." He is also thought to have had a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, and the murder of Daniel Pearl. He was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 by the Pakistani ISI, possibly in a joint action with agents of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, and has been in U.S. custody since that time.
Blood ties between Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.......nope...no connection there...blood doesn't count!!!!!
Back to the "claims" by New York Times today:
It took far too long, but a report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
One has to wonder about a country that seems to have developed collective amnesia.
Now the excerpts I am going to show is from a speech that was given by John Kerry, on November 9, 1997 on the senate floor..... I show because the idiot seems to forget his own words about Saddam Hussein. (This is not about a Saddam-al-Qaeda link, this is simply about the dangers Saddam Hussein posed to the world at large)
Now, during the past 2 weeks, Saddam again has raised his obstinately uncooperative profile. We all know of his announcement that he will no longer permit United States citizens to participate in the U.N. inspection team searching Iraq for violations of the U.N. requirement that Iraq not build or store weapons of mass destruction. And he has made good on his announcement. The UNSCOM inspection team, that is, the United Nations Special Commission team, has been refused access to its inspection targets throughout the week and once again today because it has Americans as team members. While it is not certain, it is not unreasonable to assume that Saddam's action may have been precipitated by the fear that the U.N. inspectors were getting uncomfortably close to discovering some caches of reprehensible weapons of mass destruction, or facilities to manufacture them, that many have long feared he is doing everything in his power to build, hide, and hoard.
[...]
We should all be encouraged by the reactions of many of our allies, who are evincing the same objections to Iraq's course that are prevalent here in the United States. There is an inescapable reality that, after all of the effort of recent years, Saddam Hussein remains the international outlaw he was when he invaded Kuwait. For most of a decade he has set himself outside international law, and he has sought to avoid the efforts of the international community to insist that his nation comport itself with reasonable standards of behavior and, specifically, not equip itself with implements of mass destruction which it has shown the willingness to use in previous conflicts.
Plainly and simply, Saddam Hussein cannot be permitted to get away with his antics, or with this latest excuse for avoidance of international responsibility.
[...]
We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation. If he remains obdurate, I believe that the United Nations must take, and should authorize immediately, whatever steps are necessary to force him to relent--and that the United States should support and participate in those steps.
The suspended reconnaissance flights should be resumed beginning tomorrow, and it is my understanding they will be. Should Saddam be so foolish as to take any action intended to endanger those aircraft or interrupt their mission, then we should, and I am confident we will, be prepared to take the necessary actions to either eliminate that threat before it can be realized, or take actions of retribution.
When it meets tomorrow to receive the negotiators' report and to determine its future course of action, it is vital that the Security Council treat this situation as seriously as it warrants.
In my judgment, the Security Council should authorize a strong U.N. military response that will materially damage, if not totally destroy, as much as possible of the suspected infrastructure for developing and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, as well as key military command and control nodes. Saddam Hussein should pay a grave price, in a currency that he understands and values, for his unacceptable behavior.
This should not be a strike consisting only of a handful of cruise missiles hitting isolated targets primarily of presumed symbolic value. But how long this military action might continue and how it may escalate should Saddam remain intransigent and how extensive would be its reach are for the Security Council and our allies to know and for Saddam Hussein ultimately to find out.
Of course, Mr. President, the greatest care must be taken to reduce collateral damage to the maximum extent possible, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein cynically and cold-heartedly has made that a difficult challenge by ringing most high-value military targets with civilians.
As the Security Council confronts this, I believe it is important for it to keep prominently in mind the main objective we all should have, which is maintaining an effective, thorough, competent inspection process that will locate and unveil any covert prohibited weapons activity underway in Iraq. If an inspection process acceptable to the United States and the rest of the Security Council can be rapidly reinstituted, it might be possible to vitiate military action.
Should the resolve of our allies wane to pursue this matter until an acceptable inspection process has been reinstituted--which I hope will not occur and which I am pleased to say at this moment does not seem to have even begun--the United States must not lose its resolve to take action. But I think there is strong reason to believe that the multilateral resolve will persist.
Read the WHOLE speech John Kerry gave because it is a great example of what was believed before Bush ever took office, as well as the intelligence that was handed down to Bush from the Clinton administration.
I am not blaming Clinton for anything here. I am pointing out that Bush inherited a problem, just as Clinton did, as well as intelligence, that showed the connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Back to the al-Qaeda-Saddam connection:
Osama bin Laden was in contact with Iraqi government agents from his base in Afghanistan in the days leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
Officials also told The Washington Times there are indications bin Laden, the leading suspect in the deadly attacks, is preparing to flee Afghanistan and set up operations in the African nation of Somalia.
Bin Laden's contacts with the Iraqi government were detected before the attacks, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"This is the basis for signs of state sponsorship," said one official.
Above I showed an article that mentioned Laurie Mylroie: She has a doctorate in political science from Harvard University and was employed in the school's Government Department. She was an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and advisor on Iraq to Bill Clinton in his 1992 campaign for President.
When Dr. Laurie Mylroie appeared before the 9/11 Commission and released her newest book, "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror" in July of last year, there was scarcely a mention of it by the mass media. Dr. Myrloie's work offers the opposite position of Dick Clarke. A former insider of the Clinton Administration, Mylroie holds that the prior Democratic administration dropped the ball in focusing on loose terrorist networks rather than state actors, and Iraq in particularly, in combatting terror against America. She believes that President George Bush and his Administration acted heroically in targetting Iraq in disregard of myopic policy recommendations by entrenched, career-minded government bureaucrats like Dick Clarke. But such a pro-Bush profile has made Laurie Mylroie and her views anathema for mass media coverage. Yet, at least in the interest of balanced reporting, you'd think Mylroie's perspective would now deserve some media attention since Richard Clarke, the man of the hour, clearly fingers her influence on the Bush Administration as the cause of mistaken policy decisions to target Iraq in the War On Terror.
Further more we have the Iraqi publication Al-Nasiriya: July 21, 2001: (Notice the date is before the 9/11 attacks)
"In this man's heart (Osama bin Laden) you'll find an insistence,Frank Sinatra sang New York, New York.
a strange determination that he will reach one day the tunnels of the White House
and will bomb it with everything that is in it.....with the seriousness of the Bedouin
of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House....the revolutionary bin Laden is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting.
That the man....will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs." (Source.)
We also have the former director of intelligence, R. James Woolsey:
R. JAMES WOOLSEY is a partner at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C. He served as director of central intelligence from February 1993 to January 1995.
In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, attention has focused on terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden. And he may well be responsible. But intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks--whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others--were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.
Read the rest....
My point in showing you Woolseys assertions is not to prove any link, but as with Dr. Laurie Mylroie, these are former members of CLINTON'S administration and information provided by them that was inherited by the Bush administration.
Visit this page and scroll down to further examples of a number of reports from the MSM prior to 9/11.
This page also connects the dots for you with more examples of the type of relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Bottomline here is the New York Times article from today neglects to mention the previous intelligence, news articles (quite a few of which came from their very own paper) and information from the Clinton administration that was handed down to President Bush.
It seems we in America have collectively bad memories and the dinosaur media uses this to try to rewrite history.
More found here.
Tracked back by:
Special Movie Night: Democrat Memory Lapse Edition from Thinkin'bout Stuff...
Media/Dems Continue to Mislead on Pre-War Intellig from Amy Proctor: Bottom Line Up Front...
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