Joobo the King of Wisdom

Senate Downies Say "No Saddam-al Qaeda Link," Despite Evidence to the Contrary

The Downies in the US Senate and US House are doing their best to make it look like President Bush lied to get us into war in Iraq. No WMD? Of course not, despite evidence to the contrary. No Saddam terrorism? Of course not, despite evidence to the contrary.

Now, of course, the Downies need to knock down another part of the reason we went to war: that Saddam has links to al-Qaeda. After all, didn't the 9/11 Commission cover these links specifically, one by one?

That doesn't matter to the treasonous Downies...they need to make it look like President Bush made the whole thing up.

And the American media whores ate this non-story up.

First, the story, following by proof the Downies ignored showing those links between Saddam and bin Laden.

U.S. Senate Intelligence report finds no Saddam-al-Qaida link

WASHINGTON — Saddam Hussein rejected overtures from al-Qaida and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime, a reverse portrait of an Iraq allied with Osama bin Laden painted by the Bush White House, a Senate panel has found.

The administration’s version was based in part on intelligence that White House officials knew was flawed, according to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing newly declassified documents released by the panel.

The report, released Friday, discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward” al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, President Bush said people should “imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein” with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and “who had relations with Zarqawi.”

Democrats singled out CIA Director George Tenet, saying that during a private meeting in July Tenet told the panel that the White House pressured him and that he agreed to back up the administration’s case for war despite his own agents’ doubts about the intelligence it was based on.

“Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to ’say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said,”’ Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters Friday.

Tenet also told the committee that complying had been “the wrong thing to do,” according to Levin.

How interesting - NOW Tenet says that he was pressured to back the war, when all along he told President Bush that the WMD evidence was a "slam dunk."

Of course, Tenet was named DCI by Bill Clinton, which means he was part of a giant Liars' Club.

So, what was the proof that Saddam was working through many back doors with bin Laden and al-Qaeda? Just follow the stories in the media, which tend to forget all of this when it comes during their "We hate George W. Bush" rallies.

Let's see what that leftwing rag The Guardian of London was saying in 1999:

The Western nightmare: Saddam and Bin Laden versus the world

It must have been a bitterly cold and uncomfortable journey. In the last days of December, a group of Iraqi officials crossed the Hindu Kush border from Pakistan to Afghanistan on their way to keep an appointment deep in the remote eastern mountains.
At the head of the group was a man by the name of Farouk Hijazi, President Saddam Hussein's new ambassador to Turkey and one of Iraq's most senior intelligence officers. He had been sent on one of the most important assignments of his career - to recruit Osama bin Laden.

Thus the world's most notorious pariah state, armed with its half-built hoard of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, tried to embrace the planet's most prolific terrorist. It was the stuff of the West's millennial nightmares, but United States intelligence officials are positive that the meeting took place, although they admit that they have no idea what happened.

This was not the first time that President Saddam had offered Mr Bin Laden a partnership. At least one approach is believed to have been made during the Saudi dissident's sojourn in Sudan from 1990 to 1996. On that occasion, the guerrilla leader turned the emissaries away, out of a pious man's contempt for President Saddam's secular Ba'athist regime.

But this time round Mr Bin Laden's options have been rapidly diminishing. His hosts, the hardline Taliban militia which rules Afghanistan under Islamic auspices, have vowed publicly to stand by him. But they are at the same time discussing with his worst enemies - the Saudi monarchy and the American government - his eventual departure from Afghan soil.

No comment from Carl "I am a Fucking Liar" Levin on this piece of news.

But, hold on - Levin even ignored his (former) comrade, US Senator Fritz Hollings, who in 2002 noted that in July 2001 an Iraqi newspaper mentioned that bin Laden was about to hit the US with a wave of terrorism. Remember that Iraqi newspapers in those days were all mouthpieces for the Saddam Hussein regime.

So, how did they know this ahead of time? Carl Levin can't say, because he is busy lying.

HOMELAND SECURITY ACT OF 2002

Here is a news story from July 21, 2001, before 9/11 of last year, in the Iraqi news. The name of that particular newspaper is Al-Nasiriya. Quoting from it:

Bin Ladin has become a puzzle and a proof also, of the inability of the American federalism and the CIA to uncover the man and uncover his nest. The most advanced organizations of the world cannot find the man and continues to go in cycles in illusion and presuppositions.

It refers to an exercise called "How Do You Bomb the White House." They were planning it. Let me read this to all the colleagues here:

The phenomenon of Bin Ladin is a healthy phenomenon in the Arab spirit. It is a decision and a determination that the stolen Arab self has come to realize after it got bored with promises of its rulers; After it disgusted itself from their abomination and their corruption, the man had to carry the book of God . . . and write on some white paper "If you are unable to drive off the Marines from the Kaaba, I will do so." It seems that they will be going away because the revolutionary Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting.

In other words, the World Trade Towers. Here, over a year ahead of time in the open press in Iraq, they are writing that this man is planning not only to bomb the White House, but where they are already hurting, the World Trade Towers.

Comment from Levin? Not at this time.

Now, we have a note from Jane's Foreign Report, which reported just after the 9/11 attacks that Israeli intelligence was telling us that representatives of the Iraqi government were constantly traveling to Afghanistan to meet not with bin Laden but his number 2, Ayman al Zawahiri.

Levin's take? He was in the toilet.

Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view

The Iraqis, who for several years paid smaller groups to do their dirty work, were quick to discover the advantages of Al-Qaeda. The Israeli sources claim that for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Ayman Al Zawahiri. According to the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured last October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan. The Iraqis are also reported to have established strong ties with Imad Mughniyeh.

"We’ve only got scraps of information, not the full picture," admits one intelligence source, "but it was good enough for us to send a warning six weeks ago to our allies that an unprecedented massive terror attack was expected. One of our indications suggested that Imad Mughniyeh met with some of his dormant agents on secret trips to Germany. We believe that the operational brains behind the New-York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, who were probably financed and got some logistical support from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (SSO)."

[...]

Experts on Iraq and Saddam Hussein also believe that Iraq was the state behind the two terror masterminds. "In recent months, there was a change, and Iraq decided to get into the terror business. On July 7th, they tried for the first time to send a suicide bomber, trained in Baghdad, to blow up Tel Aviv airport (Foreign Report No. 2651)."

Our sources believe that it will be very difficult to get to the bottom of this unprecedented terror operation. However, they believe the chief of the Iraqi SSO is Qusai Hussein, the dictator’s son, and his organisation is the most likely to have been involved.

Hmmm...we know that Saddam was funding Palestinian terrorists with $25,000 checks - so how far did he need go to fund other forms of Islamic terror? Carl Levin can't tell you - because he will say anything to get his sick party elected to a majority.

But wait - didn't Levin allege that President Bush said that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks, even though he didn't? Because Levin was aiming at the wrong party...it was a group of 9/11 victims' families who sued Iraq, not al-Qaeda, for their role in the terrorist attacks.

Iraq? Is that possible?

You betcha.

11 September victims sue Iraq

Victims and relatives of victims of the 11 September tragedy are suing Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein for their alleged role in the attacks on the United States.

Two lawsuits are being filed by 1,400 plaintiffs in a Manhattan federal court to demand a total of more than $1,000bn from Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network and the former Taleban rulers in Afghanistan.

Jim Kreindler, one of the lawyers bringing the case, said that these would be the first actions to provide "evidence" of Iraq's alleged involvement in the attacks.

Damages are also being claimed from the estates of the hijackers who crashed the four airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

The lawsuits say that Iraq had sworn revenge for its defeat by America in the 1991 Gulf War.

"In order to avoid another confrontation with US military forces, Iraq contracted with or sponsored Islamic fundamentalists who were willing to commit terrorist acts on Iraq's behalf," they say.

Interesting, eh, Mr. Levin?

How about this...a story about how 9/11 conspirators were invited to take refuge...in Iraq! By the Iraqi Ambassador to Spain pre-invasion! The conspirator was a man - remember this one, Mr. Levin - who had been photographed at one of bin Laden's terrorist training camps!

Links? Ties? What do you call this?

Spain links suspect in 9/11 plot to Baghdad

An alleged terrorist accused of helping the 11 September conspirators was invited to a party by the Iraqi ambassador to Spain under his al-Qaeda nom de guerre, according to documents seized by Spanish investigators.
Yusuf Galan, who was photographed being trained at a camp run by Osama bin Laden, is now in jail, awaiting trial in Madrid. The indictment against him, drawn up by investigating judge Baltasar Garzon, claims he was 'directly involved with the preparation and carrying out of the attacks ... by the suicide pilots on 11 September'.

Evidence of Galan's links with Iraqi government officials came to light only recently, as investigators pored through more than 40,000 pages of documents seized in raids at the homes of Galan and seven alleged co-conspirators. The Spanish authorities have supplied copies to lawyers in America, and this week the documents will form part of a dossier to be filed in a federal court in Washington, claiming damages of approximately $100 billion on behalf of more than 2,500 11 September victims.

The lawsuit lists Saddam's government in Iraq as one of its principal defendants, claiming it provided 'material support' to the al-Qaeda terrorists. Under US law, the victims' families do not have to prove active direction or involvement in the details of the 9/11 conspiracy by Iraq, only that Saddam's regime gave al-Qaeda more general assistance in the knowledge that it was planning to attack American targets.

And for those words about being "pressured" by the White House?

Although some Western intelligence officials have expressed scepticism about an al-Qaeda-Iraq link, in recent months George Tenet, the Director of the CIA, has made increasingly strong statements alleging such a connection. In Congressional testimony last month, he said that Iraq had co-operated with al-Qaeda for 10 years, and that it had trained al-Qaeda members in bombmaking and the use of chemical and biological weapons. In an apparent attempt to refute the sceptics, he said this information 'comes from reliable sources'.

Aw, shucks, Mr. Levin...that doesn't sound like pressure to us!

Finally, but not least, a devastating discovery of documents by Iraqi and US forces in Baghdad, which link Saddam to al Qaeda.

Carl Levin was unavailable for comment, as usual.

The proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden

Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime.

Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998.

The documents show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qa'eda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad.

The papers will be seized on by Washington as the first proof of what the United States has long alleged - that, despite denials by both sides, Saddam's regime had a close relationship with al-Qa'eda.

The Telegraph found the file on bin Laden inside a folder lying in the rubble of one of the rooms of the destroyed intelligence HQ. There are three pages, stapled together; two are on paper headed with the insignia and lettering of the Mukhabarat.

They show correspondence between Mukhabarat agencies over preparations for the visit of al-Qa'eda's envoy, who travelled to Iraq from Sudan, where bin Laden had been based until 1996. They disclose what Baghdad hopes to achieve from the meeting, which took place less than five months before bin Laden was placed at the top of America's most wanted list following the bombing of two US embassies in east Africa.

Perhaps aware of the sensitivities of the subject matter, Iraqi agents at some point clumsily attempted to mask out all references to bin Laden, using white correcting fluid. The dried fluid was removed to reveal the clearly legible name three times in the documents.

One paper is marked "Top Secret and Urgent". It is signed "MDA", a codename believed to be the director of one of the intelligence sections within the Mukhabarat, and dated February 19, 1998. It refers to the planned trip from Sudan by bin Laden's unnamed envoy and refers to the arrangements for his visit.

A letter with this document says the envoy is a trusted confidant of bin Laden. It adds: "According to the above, we suggest permission to call the Khartoum station [Iraq's intelligence office in Sudan] to facilitate the travel arrangements for the above-mentioned person to Iraq. And that our body carry all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden."

The letter refers to al-Qa'eda's leader as an opponent of the Saudi Arabian regime and says that the message to convey to him through the envoy "would relate to the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him."

With this report, Carl Levin and the other traitorous Downies have set down their marker: they wish to do more to protect terrorists and those who wish to destroy America than Americans themselves. And every American who pulls the voting lever to help elect Downies is telling the world that he or she does not care if al Qaeda comes for us - because that is what they are voting for.