Iraqi Colonel: WMD Could've Been Launched in 45 Minutes

[igloo]

Originally posted by marksimons

WMD is a shit term.

with regards to nuclear weapons in Iraq.

THEY DIDN'T EVER HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. EVER!

let's just clear that one up.

with regards to chemical weapons, yeah, they probably did have some at the time, but bear stuff like this in mind.

they used them against the kurds, and against the iranians.

however, I believe when they made these attacks they had satellite data from the US to help them, because, at this time saddam was one of 'our' despots.

the amount of knowledge shown by people on this subject, both sides of the debate is starting to scare me...

one historical annecdote which might be telling is that apparently washington gave the nod to saddam to invade kuiwiat, not overtly, but as these things are done in diplomatic circles.

go on, hit him, *hits him*, right you bastard you hit him, get him!

you see...

Saddam was once given lists of communist dissident types by the CIA, wonder what happend to them!

iraq was armed by the west, just like many other despots.

remember, Bush Sr encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, and then promptly left them pissing in the wind.

this helped fill some of the mass graves which people have cited as 'evidence' that this war/occupation/theft/liberation/triumph of democracy is justified.

It is amazing the babble that spews from your ass...and the amount of knowledge, or lack thereof, that you possess is scary...

You do not know shit.....stop pretending to...but keep getting your "information" from your "sources"...they are really serving you well

And nice job avoiding the question I asked you....

you are a jerkoff

[seximofo2k]

Originally posted by igloo

What did WHO have to lose by using them...

No idea what this is referring to

[pattbateman]

think about this one smart asses. how much has saddam hussein hurt our country and the bush administration by not using them??? he new if he used them he would of looked like an idiot and been destroyed in the process either way. and another thing, think about if we would of attacked afganastan 5 years ago before the terrorists came to our country the flew into the trade centers what would the world say then???and what would we have prevented??? we will not be able to survive in this world cause guess what not everyone in this world is a liberal asshole. the majority of them would love to have our army and guess what? if anyone comes close to our military capabilities which can happen (democrat in office) they will have no reason not to try and take our land. and why not could you blame them we live in the most perfect located country on the globe. fuck i would do the same thing they would to in order to make a better life, why do you think they hate us so much they are jealous of our power our prosperaty and our freedom and i would like to keep it that way!

[pattbateman]

one more thing i would wish all you hippy assholes would stop doing drugs and take a step into reality. we live in a different world. the same guy that you are tryin to stick up for would have no problem blowing your fuckin head off without hesitation. its everyone for themselves peace CANNOT and WILLNOT happen, shit, i would love to be optimistic about it but i have to be realistic people want us dead for whatever reason and right no there is nothing we can do to fix it if there is i would love to know?????

[mr mahs]

^^^^^This guy's alright...

[igloo]

Originally posted by mr mahs

^^^^^This guy's alright...

I like his fire

[bigpoppanils]

Originally posted by pattbateman

one more thing i would wish all you hippy assholes would stop doing drugs and take a step into reality. we live in a different world. the same guy that you are tryin to stick up for would have no problem blowing your fuckin head off without hesitation.

first off, i dont do drugs.

secons, i dont recall myself, nor anyone on this board, sticking up for Iraq's or the Taliban's actions

[bigpoppanils]

Originally posted by pattbateman

and another thing, think about if we would of attacked afganastan 5 years ago before the terrorists came to our country the flew into the trade centers what would the world say then???and what would we have prevented???

i have no problem with pre-emptive invasions as long as the evidence is there to support claims of threats.

the main reason I was against this war was that i doubted the threat that Iraq was argued to have against the National Security of the US. I feel that it was a waste to send our troops to a nation that posted much less of a threat instead of a nation that poses a much bigger risk to national security, like North Korea, Syria, and Iran.

[kramadas]

Originally posted by pattbateman

think about this one smart asses. how much has saddam hussein hurt our country and the bush administration by not using them??? he new if he used them he would of looked like an idiot and been destroyed in the process either way. and another thing, think about if we would of attacked afganastan 5 years ago before the terrorists came to our country the flew into the trade centers what would the world say then???and what would we have prevented??? we will not be able to survive in this world cause guess what not everyone in this world is a liberal asshole. the majority of them would love to have our army and guess what? if anyone comes close to our military capabilities which can happen (democrat in office) they will have no reason not to try and take our land. and why not could you blame them we live in the most perfect located country on the globe. fuck i would do the same thing they would to in order to make a better life, why do you think they hate us so much they are jealous of our power our prosperaty and our freedom and i would like to keep it that way!

Guess what - nobody's attacking this country because they want to take over it...they're attacking it because, as usual, we have to go poking our noses in the world's business. It would be scary if your grasp of politics is as good as your grasp of the English language.

Let's see - where was Islamic terrorism purposefully directed against US interests pre -1970's.

And tell me again, how does Saddam tie into 9/11?

I don't care that you right -wing warmongers want to pre-emptively strike Iraq, Afghanistan, etc because they could pose security threats, but I'm sick and tired of you trying to justify their anger toward the US as "jealousy because of our perfect lifestyles and superior culture". That shit makes me sick - the fact is, we are cleaning up the mess we created.

You're right, not everyone in this world is a liberal asshole - because if that were the case, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now.

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by raver_mania

And tell me again, how does Saddam tie into 9/11?

Please read clueless one....

Osama's Best Friend

From the November 3, 2003 issue: The further connections between al Qaeda and Saddam.

by Stephen F. Hayes

11/03/2003, Volume 009, Issue 08

IN A LITTLE-NOTICED DECISION in a New York courtroom on September 25, 2003, a man described as Osama bin Laden's "best friend" got some good news. U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts ruled that Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim could not be sentenced to life in prison.

Salim--who was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989 and who was for years one of bin Laden's most trusted confidants--had been captured in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States for prosecution related to his role in the grand conspiracy that resulted in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The bombings killed 224 people and injured more than 5,000.

But the proceedings in September had little to do with those attacks. Salim was answering for a simpler crime. On November 1, 2000, he squirted hot sauce in the face of Louis Pepe, a guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. Salim had sharpened one end of a plastic comb into a makeshift dagger that, after stunning Pepe with the fiery liquid, he thrust nearly three inches into the guard's eye socket. Pepe survived, barely, but today lives with severe brain damage and, obviously, without sight in that eye. Prosecutors tried to argue that Salim's attack was part of a larger plot that amounted to an act of terrorism. The judge was dubious. Salim will likely serve between 17 and 21 years in prison for the attack. And he may yet be tried for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings.

So who is Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim? He served al Qaeda in a wide variety of roles. He was a financier. He was a religious leader. He was a technology wizard. Most important, perhaps, was Salim's work as an emissary and a weapons procurer. Those last two responsibilities are the ones that most interest U.S. intelligence officials.

Salim, you see, is also known as Abu Hajer al Iraqi ("the Iraqi"). According to Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, two Clinton administration National Security Council appointees who wrote "The Sacred Age of Terror," Abu Hajer oversaw al Qaeda's efforts to produce and obtain weapons of mass destruction. Not coincidentally, say Bush administration officials familiar with intelligence reporting on Abu Hajer, he was one of the few deputies bin Laden trusted to maintain his relationship with Saddam Hussein throughout much of the 1990s.

Without naming him, CIA director George Tenet discussed intelligence on Abu Hajer in a letter to Senator Bob Graham dated October 7, 2002. "We have solid reporting of senior level contact between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information exists that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. . . . We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities." U.S. officials now believe that Abu Hajer al Iraqi helped bin Laden negotiate a nonaggression pact with Saddam in 1993.

Some of the intelligence on Abu Hajer al Iraqi's role in WMD procurement came from the trial of four other al Qaeda members who planned the embassy bombings. A former al Qaeda member testifying for the prosecution, Jamal Ahmed al Fadl, told the court how he met Abu Hajer and bin Laden in 1989, and that he accompanied Abu Hajer in 1993 and 1994 on trips to Khartoum, Sudan, where the Iraqi native took him to a facility used to produce chemical weapons. It was al Fadl who labeled Abu Hajer the "best friend" of bin Laden.

The Treasury Department, as it examines al Qaeda's financial network, has come across the name Abu Hajer al Iraqi on numerous occasions. Published reports claim that he shared a bank account in Hamburg, Germany, with a man thought to have provided financing to three of the September 11 hijackers. His name has also been found on documents obtained by U.S. officials investigating Islamic charities and phony businesses believed to be al Qaeda front groups.

The more authorities learn about the Iraqi al Qaeda leader, the more questions they have. Perhaps the first one they would ask, were Abu Hajer the kind of prisoner willing to talk rather than the kind of prisoner who gouges out his captors' eyes, is this: Who is Ahmad Hikmat Shakir? And the second: Why were your name and contact information found in his apartment shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001?

Shakir is another native Iraqi. And he, too, has worked closely with numerous high-ranking al Qaeda terrorists, including two of the chief 9/11 hijackers. But despite being detained twice in the months after 9/11, Shakir is not in custody.

In August 1999, according to a classified CIA report, Shakir was offered a job as "a facilitator" at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as this magazine has reported before. A facilitator, or greeter, is someone who escorts VIPs through customs and immigration control checkpoints. At some point that fall, Shakir began working for Malaysian Airlines. If Malaysian Airlines issued his paychecks, it did not control his schedule. For instructions on when to report to work and when to take a day off, Shakir looked to the Iraqi Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. That made some sense. A contact at the Iraqi Embassy had gotten Shakir his airport job in the first place.

That Iraqi contact told Shakir to report to work on January 5, 2000. He did. There are pictures to prove it. On that day, Shakir facilitated for Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi. But then, after helping the men through the airport, he got into the waiting car with them and sped off to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel. U.S. intelligence officials don't know whether Shakir joined the two in their ensuing activities. They do know that airport facilitators don't typically leave with terrorists.

Al Midhar and al Hamzi were in Malaysia for an important meeting, an al Qaeda gathering U.S. officials now believe was one of the key planning sessions for both the USS Cole bombing and the September 11 attacks. Two of the masterminds of those plots--Tawfiz al Atash and Ramzi bin al Shibh, respectively--were present. The meeting ended on January 8, 2000. Shakir reported to work at the airport on January 9 and January 10. He never showed up again.

Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi flew from Bangkok, Thailand, to Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. On September 11, 2001, the two men were at the controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it plunged into the outer ring of the Pentagon.

Six days after the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir was detained in Doha, Qatar, where he had resurfaced as an employee of the Qatari government's Ministry of Religious Development. Authorities searched Shakir and his apartment and were stunned by what they found: The Iraqi had contact information for Islamic radicals involved in many of the most devastating terrorist attacks of the past decade. These contacts included:

* Musab Yasin and Ibrahim Suleiman from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. At the time of that attack, Yasin lived in New Jersey with his brother, Abdul Rahman Yasin. Abdul Rahman Yasin, who badly burned his leg while mixing the chemicals for the World Trade Center bomb, was interviewed by the FBI and, in a costly mistake, released. After it realized its error, the FBI placed him on the list of "Most Wanted" terrorists. But they were too late. Abdul Rahman Yasin had fled the United States for Iraq, where U.S. intelligence officials believe he remains today. Ibrahim Suleiman was a Kuwaiti native whose fingerprints were found on the bombmaking manuals authorities determined were used in planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

* Zahid Sheikh Mohammed, brother of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the September 11 mastermind. Zahid Sheikh Mohammed and his brother are both believed to have planned "Operation Bojinka," the 1995 al Qaeda plot to explode simultaneously 12 airplanes over the Pacific Ocean. U.S. intelligence officials believe that aborted plot may have morphed into the September 11 attacks.

* Ammar al Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. According to a report in Time magazine, al Baluchi provided $120,000 to Mohammed Atta and his fellow hijackers. Intelligence officials believe al Baluchi may have had a role in planning the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.

* And, of course, Abu Hajer al Iraqi, the prison-guard gouger, who is suspected of involvement in several of these attacks as well as the 1998 embassy bombings. (The telephone number Shakir had for Abu Hajer was actually a number for Taba Investments, a well-known al Qaeda front.)

Despite this wealth of information, the Qataris released Shakir, the Iraqi airport facilitator, shortly after they detained him. He wasn't free for long. On October 21, 2001, Shakir flew from Doha to Amman, Jordan, where he was scheduled to transfer to a flight to Baghdad. He was arrested by Jordanian intelligence and held for three months without charge. CIA officials who questioned him concluded that Shakir was well-trained in counter-interrogation techniques. (One administration official points out that Shakir's counter-interrogation training appears to have been much more sophisticated than that of al Qaeda detainees being held at Guantanamo, a detail that, if true, may indicate that his instruction came from a government intelligence service.)

Not long after Shakir was detained, the Iraqi government began pressuring Jordanian intelligence for his release. Why exactly Shakir was discharged is unclear. In the period after the September 11 attacks, the Jordanian government was highly cooperative. It seems unlikely that they would release Shakir against the wishes of the U.S. government, especially at a time when the Bush administration was intensifying its rhetoric on Iraq. Nonetheless, Shakir was released on January 28, 2002, one day before President Bush focused world attention on Iraq as part of the "Axis of Evil" in his State of the Union address. U.S. intelligence officials believe Shakir quickly returned to Baghdad.

The evidence on Shakir, circumstantial at this point, seems to suggest a long relationship with senior al Qaeda operatives. What is less clear is Shakir's relationship--if any--to the deposed Iraqi regime. Many aspects of his story could be explained as mere coincidence. But three details make the most sense if one assumes the involvement of Iraqi intelligence: (1) the fact that an Iraqi embassy employee got him his airport job and controlled his schedule, (2) his extensive training in counter-interrogation, and (3) the fact that the Iraqi government was eager--by some accounts desperate--to get him out of Jordanian custody and back to Iraq.

There remain exponentially more questions than answers concerning Saddam Hussein's relationship to al Qaeda. Among them, it is a mere matter of detail to know why a native Iraqi, thanks to a contact in the Iraqi embassy, was in a position to escort two September 11 hijackers to a critical planning meeting, or why he possessed contact information for Osama bin Laden's "best friend." But the overarching fact--that Saddam and al Qaeda had a relationship--can no longer be seriously disputed

[kramadas]

link?

haha, after reading that article I really would be interested to see where this article came from.

So, wait a second, you're saying your commander in chief, Bush, lied to the public again, when he said Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11???

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by raver_mania

link?

haha, after reading that article I really would be interested to see where this article came from.

So, wait a second, you're saying your commander in chief, Bush, lied to the public again, when he said Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11???

Here you go....

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/296fmttq.asp

[bigpoppanils]

Originally posted by raver_mania

So, wait a second, you're saying your commander in chief, Bush, lied to the public again, when he said Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11???

HE'S DISSENTING! HOW DARE HE!

I SAY WE DEPORT HIM TO FRANCE!

[igloo]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

i have no problem with pre-emptive invasions as long as the evidence is there to support claims of threats.

the main reason I was against this war was that i doubted the threat that Iraq was argued to have against the National Security of the US. I feel that it was a waste to send our troops to a nation that posted much less of a threat instead of a nation that poses a much bigger risk to national security, like North Korea, Syria, and Iran.

So you would support military action against Iran, N Korea, and Syria?

[bigpoppanils]

Originally posted by igloo

So you would support military action against Iran, N Korea, and Syria?

i would have supported military action in these countries instead of Iraq.

would i support an invasion of one of those nations tomorrow? no. the US military is stretched far too thin. its impractical.

but if say a year or two down the line, if iraq has stabilized by then (i certainly hope it does) i will support an invasion.

i will also support bombing of nuclear facilities of those nations as a short term solution until our military is at full strength.

fyi: add saudi arabia to that list as well.

[igloo]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

i would have supported military action in these countries instead of Iraq.

would i support an invasion of one of those nations tomorrow? no. the US military is stretched far too thin. its impractical.

but if say a year or two down the line, if iraq has stabilized by then (i certainly hope it does) i will support an invasion.

fyi: add saudi arabia to that list as well.

Well, if you think Iraq is a mess, wait to you see what Iran and N Korea bring

BTW--I do think Iraq was a national security threat....and that goes beyond whether they had WMD or not....but that is another debate....

However, one thing you have to consider is the hope that the U.S. invasion of Iraq will lessen the probability of armed conflict in other spots....