leonarde

Partial post:Ever the gracious interlocutor.

For the record:

1) I understood myself not to be HARPING on anything.

2) I made available a timeline for those who were trying to follow
the sequence of events.

3) That you find the link "shitty" I don't really care.

4) My criticism of you was an implicit one (and was verified by your remark noted by me in 3)) : you essentially don't care about the very thing you claimed you cared about: time. So your reason as to why the document doesn't count? Let's see:
"Don't you get it? The alleged SINGLE MEETING was FIVE YEARS ago "
Then there was THIS beaut:
""When" is a very important issue."

But have a timeline linked so that OTHER PEOPLE can try to make sense of what al Qaeda was doing "FIVE YEARS AGO", what Bin Laden was doing "8 to 10 years ago" and suddenly such a link/timeline is "shitty". Go figure.

Cheers!

Answerer

Five years ago, 1998, Osama was already a well-known and hated terrorist leader in the world community. So, the meeting did prove Iraqlis connection with terrorism.

Koyaanisqatsi

Source on those two claims? Sorry to interrupt...

Un hunh. Now, would you care to go back and read my first post? Probably not, so I'll re-post the relevant section:

In other words, the CONSENSUS of virtually ALL WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES since before, during and after Bush was inaugurated was: propaganda, deliberatley created and purposefully leaked to the press in order to sway world public opinion.

Irony. Dripping. Fetid.

That "one measely document (ie the forged one)" was about Iraq's nuclear WMD capabilities, presented to Congress in order to falsly justify instigating a war.

Do you understand the gravity of such actions? Do you consider those actions to be "no big deal" or "hey, that's just the way things are, so fuck it, right," because those are the only responses I can possibly imagine going through your head when you read the import of these facts.

Our intelligence community forged documents regarding the nuclear capability of Iraq for the express purpose of insitgating a war.

In case you didn't know, such actions are not just heinous, but criminal. Literally.

And as for Senator Rockefeller, let's reiterate what it is he said in a letter to Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI:

Do you understand the weight of such an official interchange between the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the director of the FBI?

Any clue at all about what a serious allegation that is?

An allegation that was proved correct, by the way?

Koyaanisqatsi

ignore (double post)

George Oilwell

Iraqi "intelligence documents" likely planted

Proxima Centauri

Whatever the situation over proof of a link to Al Qaida or lack or it, I hope the Iraqi people will benefit from being rid of that sadistic dictator, Saddam.

Farren

And with a dodge to the left and a dodge to the right...

I said. Youre right. My calculation was off. I said it once. I said it twice. I also said. It does not affect the point made if you move the timeline back 10 years.

As for your link being "shitty". The period under discussion, a number of YEARS, is glossed over in two short paragraphs, the rest of the reference is dedicated to Osamas later career. The links I have provided you show the link between Osama and the CIA during this period. The link you posted does not disprove or even address this allegation, it simply mentions additional stuff.

I posted a whole lot of additional corroboration of my argument. You have not yet responded. I would say "harping" is a pretty accurate appraisal since the bulk of your argument seems to be "you got one thing wrong! everything you say is invalid!".

Come, leonarde, defend your position.

leonarde

Since Koy expressed interest in sources on what I was saying about French and German intelligence on Iraq's WMD programs being broadly congruent with that of the CIA and British intelligence I offer:Above from:
https://mail.lsit.ucsb.edu/pipermail...ry/002174.html

The "BND" is the German intelligence agency and the report in question came out in February 2002 (ie a year BEFORE the US/UK
moved into Iraq). As the above states, German expectations in Feb of 2002 were: Iraq will have "the bomb" in 3 years. A full year goes by: then there is US/UK action.

Oh and from the lead paragraph of the above:So for two consecutive years the BND reported to its government that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program and was within 3 or 4 years of completion. The report covered chemical and biological weapons too but in the interests of brevity we can
omit that.

A Reuters story from the same time period about the same report:
Above from:
http://www.lifegoeson.net/InTruth/iraqnuke.htm

Here's a story about Colin Powell's reaction in 2001 to the FIRST
of the German reports mentioned above:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...26/52231.shtml

One of the reasons, alas, that German intelligence is(now was) so well-informed on these Iraqi WMD programs was the continued participation by German companies in supplying relevant materials for such weapons. So from a story by the Asia
Times:
Above from:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EB05Ak02.html

Of course, Germany is (was) not alone in supplying militarily-applicable technology to Iraq: both the "hawk" countries and the "dove" countries in the recent war did more than a little of that:
http://www.iraqwatch.org/bulletins/vol2iss1jan03.htm

I'll try to find some French intelligence reports.

Cheers!

leonarde

I will indeed try to re-locate the French intelligence reports but I
would like to point out something: one could make a case (as Koy
has via what Seymour Hersh has written) that the intelligence reports are the result of political planning (ie forgeries and the like), but what would explain a country like Germany (ie a "dove" on confronting Iraq) having its intelligence agency put out reports over at least 2 years prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom
saying that there is a near-term danger of Iraq producing
nukes, chemical and biological weapons??? In this case (and in the case of France) what the intelligence agency/cies is/are saying works AGAINST an accomodationist line.

Cheers!

slept2long

From the above link:

"There is scarcely any new information in the report published this week by
the German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), on Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. An almost identical report was published by the BND precisely a war ago."

The difference between the two reports lies not in the content, but in the timing. It is almost certain that the debriefings top BND officials gave to
senior journalists in Germany were intended, among other things, to prepare German and European public opinion for a possible American offensive against Iraq"

Good link Leonarde it's a war old! Does that mean '91?

From above link:

Based on information it has gathered, the German BND has drawn the following conclusions, according to reports in the Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine newspapers:

+ NUCLEAR WEAPONS: There is evidence that Iraq has resumed its nuclear program and may be capable of producing an atomic bomb in three years. Work has been observed at the Al Qaim site, believed to be the center of Baghdad's nuclear program.

+ MISSILES: Iraq is currently developing its Al Samoud and Ababil 100/Al Fatah (news - web sites) short-range rockets, which can deliver a 300 kg payload 95 miles. Medium-range rockets capable of carrying a warhead 3,000 km (1,900 miles) could be built by 2005 -- putting Europe within reach. Iraq is also believed to be capable of manufacturing solid rocket fuel.

A New Delhi-based company, which is on a German government blacklist because of its alleged role in proliferation, has acted as a buyer on Iraq's behalf. Deliveries have been made via Malaysia and Dubai, the BND says.

+ CHEMICAL WEAPONS: Since the end of U.N. weapons inspections, the number of Iraqi sites involved in chemicals production has increased from 20 to 80. Of that total, the BND believes a quarter to be involved in making weapons.

+ BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS: Widespread procurement activity has been observed abroad and production of biological weapons could be resumed at short notice. The BND does not rule out the possibility that production may already have begun.

And the inspector found how much of this a year ago? The missles that were a little to strong? None of this panned out and it's based on old data.
That report is OLD. He's looking at stuff more than ten years old!
After reading that I'd like to see the report. Still alot of the claims made have nothing backing them up and thus ring hollow. All this talk of we know this and that because Germany sold this and that but there is proof of nothing.

From the above link:
"
In February 2001, the BND compiled a further report and intelligence chief August Hanning told Spiegel magazine that, "Since the end of the UN inspections [December 1998], we have determined a jump in procurement efforts by Iraq," adding that Saddam was rebuilding destroyed weapons facilities "partly based on the German industrial standard".

Maybe they made a new report after all. And a jump in procurement efforts is not a jump in acquisitions.

And how much of it was destroyed and what remains? We don't know do we? We could have got it all we could have got barely anything. But we've seen missles that are to big around and travel to far and that's it. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence to you is it.