So about that old bet . . .

[billvon 3,131]

Hey Rhino, remember that old bet we had?

--------------------------
billvon, Mar 10 2003
Tell ya what Rhino. If, after the war, Bush does not produce any substantial further evidence linking Saddam to Bin Laden, you contribute $100 to Veterans for Peace. If he does produce further evidence I'll contribute $100 to the charity of your choice. Deal? If you're confident, it's a slam dunk.

-------------------------
rhino, Mar 10 2003
Deal Bill.....

---------------------------

Since then:
--------------------------
No Evidence Connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda, 9/11 Panel Says

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; 1:32 PM

There is "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, according to a new staff report released this morning by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
--------------------------

Bush: No Proof of Saddam Role in 9-11
By Terence Hunt
The Associated Press

Wednesday 17 September 2003

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, disputing an impression that critics say the administration tried to foster to justify the war against Iraq.
----------------------------

To contribute that $100, click on this link:
https://www.donate.net/donationselector/basket.asp?dept_id=590&shopper_id=212496

[Ron 10]

Quote

Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. It was forwarded to the intelligence panel last month in response to bipartisan questions put to him by the Committee’s top Republican and Democratic members, Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, respectively. The memo’s contents reflected years of reporting compiled by U.S. intelligence agencies from various sources.

According to Hayes, fifty individual items (which he infers must be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, since the bulk of materials seized from Iraqi files have yet to be analyzed) establish that Saddam Hussein collaborated extensively with bin Laden and his ilk in, for example, the following ways:

• Top Iraqi intelligence officials and other trusted representatives of Saddam Hussein met repeatedly with bin Laden and his subordinates. Since Saddam personally insisted that the relationship between the two be kept secret, the contents of their conversations have apparently not yet been discovered. It is a safe bet, though, that operational cooperation was among the topics discussed.

• According to the memo, U.S. intelligence received reports that Iraq provided safe havens, money, weapons and fraudulent Iraqi and Syrian passports to al Qaeda. It also provided training in the manufacture and use of sophisticated explosives. In that connection, bin Laden reportedly specifically requested that “[Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed,] Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives maker – especially skilled in making car bombs – remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.”

• A Malaysia-based Iraqi national, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, reportedly secured a job at the airport in Kuala Lumpur thanks to help from Iraq’s embassy in Malasia. He subsequently facilitated the movement of two of the September 11 hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi, through passport control and customs en route to an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. The memo notes that “One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole.”

• “Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for [Chemical and Biological Weapons] CBW-related training beginning in December 2000. Iraqi intelligence was ‘encouraged’ after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training.”

• The memo indicates that there were as many as four meetings between the alleged mastermind of the September 11th hijackings, Mohamed Atta, and the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani. “During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service [IIS] finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.”

In short, thanks to a much-maligned Pentagon effort to perform an independent review of existing intelligence on Iraq — undertaken at Secretary Feith’s initiative — it is simply not possible any longer to claim that there is “no evidence” of links between Saddam and al Qaeda. It behooves most especially those who have access to the full classified memo, like Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, to stop misleading the public on this point for transparently partisan purposes.

The Feith memo should be helpful in one other way, as well. It underscores the validity of the “drain the swamps” strategy President Bush has been pursuing from day one in the war on terror — and the unsuitability to be Commander-in-Chief of those, like General Wesley Clark, who disagree, as he derisively put it Sunday, that “these old states are central to the problem of terrorism.”

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[Vallerina 2]

Gee...I wonder what sparked this thread?

There's a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning

[pajarito 0]

Saying that Saddam had no part in 9-11 specifically is different from saying that he had no links with Al-Qaeda or Bin Ladin. You're substantiating articles are referencing 9-11. Your bet was concerning a link between Saddam and the terrorist organization.