Talk:Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations/Archive 8

message: On 21 September 2001, President Bush received a classified Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), indicating the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attacks. Furthermore, there was scant evidence of any collaborative relationship between the Iraqi leader and al-Qaeda.   This was also the conclusion of various U.S. government agencies that investigated the issue, including the CIA, DIA, FBI, and NSA. The Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq also reviewed the intelligence community's conclusions and found that they were justifiable.  
Most of the evidence regarding a possible relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda does not relate to the attacks of 9/11.  However, some disputed evidence does exist tying one of the 9/11 attackers to Iraqi intelligence.  In addition, Dr. Laurie Mylroie has published two books on the subject and supplied expert testimony in a U.S. District Court which convinced the judge that Iraq played a role in the 9/11 attacks.
====Atta in Prague====
In the days following 9/11, a picture was published of Mohamed Atta, one of the leaders of the attacks.  Officials of the Czech Republic immediately identified Atta as the man who met Ahmad Samir al-Ani, the consull at the Iraqi Embassy, at a café in Prague.  This story was immediately disputed.  As it stands today, certain Czech officials still believe Atta is the man who met al-Ani and was deported from the country.   But U.S. officials doubt the accuracy of the story. 
In the final analysis, the 9/11 Commission Report makes this statement (Page 229): "These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001. He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias, but this would be an exception to his practice of using his true name while traveling (as he did in January and would in July when he took his next overseas trip)." 
====Foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks?====
On July 21, 2001, the state-run Iraqi newspaper Al-Nasiriya published an opinion piece written by Naeem Abd Muhalhal. This piece praised Osama bin Laden and includes the following, which James Woolsey has interpreted (in testimony before Judge Baer) as a "vague" foreshadowing of the 9/11 attacks: bin Laden "continues to smile and still thinks seriously, 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 opinion piece also reads that “Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting.” On the floor of the Senate, Senator Ernest Hollings interpreted this as foreknowledge, saying: “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.” Senator Hollings read the opinion piece into the U.S. Congressional Record. 
====Dr. Laurie Mylroie====
In 2000, Dr. Laurie Mylroie published a book titled “Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America.”  The book developed the thesis that Saddam Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.  Mylroie claims the 1991 Gulf War never ended for Saddam.   Shortly after 9/11, Mylroie issued a revised version of the book with a foreward by former Director of the CIA James Woolsey.  The book is said to have had a strong influence on certain members of the Bush Administration. 
Mylroie wrote a second book titled “Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror.”  Mylroie’s thesis is that officials at CIA and the U.S. State Department systematically discredited vital intelligence about the threat from Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.  The book documents the “massive intelligence failures” that led to 9/11.  
The mastermind of the 1993 bombing was Ramzi Yousef.  The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.  The official view of the Intelligence Community is that.Mohammed is the uncle of Yousef.  Mylroie rejects that concept and identifies both men as agents of the Iraqi Intelligence Service traveling under false passports.  While Mylroie investigations have persuaded several terrorism experts, she has not persuaded the Intelligence Community to modify its view.   The debate between the two camps has been heated. .
==== U.S. District Court finds Saddam and Osama jointly responsible for 9/11====
Dr. Mylroie and James Woolsey provided expert testimony in a case brought to U.S. District Court of Judge Harold Baer.  The plaintiffs were the family of victims of the 9/11 attacks that sued Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden for the wrongful death of their family members.  Judge Baer ruled in part that the plaintiffs had "shown, albeit barely ... that Iraq provided material support to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda." 
Please make any comments you wish in the article using the method CSTAR described above. RonCram 19:23, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Was Saddam involved in 9/11?

message: Dr. Mylroie and James Woolsey provided expert testimony in a case brought to U.S. District Court of Judge Harold Baer.  The plaintiffs were the family of victims of the 9/11 attacks that sued Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden for the wrongful death of their family members.  Judge Baer ruled in part that the plaintiffs had "shown, albeit barely ... that Iraq provided material support to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda." 
Please make any comments you wish in the article using the method CSTAR described above. RonCram 19:23, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  U.S. District Court finds Saddam and Osama jointly responsible for 9/11

message: I don't see evidence that NRO changed it's position.  Looking at the NRO acrhives for 2005 I could not find the article from November 2005 you mentioned, but I did find this from June 2005 from Andy McCarthy.  Here are some excerpts:
:It's that the administration has not done a good enough job of probing and underscoring the nexus between the Saddam regime and al Qaeda. It is absolutely appropriate, it is vital, for him to stress that connection. This is still the war on terror, and Iraq, where the terrorists are still arrayed against us, remains a big part of that equation.
:On that score, nobody should worry about anything the Times or David Gergen or Senator Reid has to say about all this until they have some straight answers on questions like these. What does the “nothing whatsoever” crowd have to say about:
:* Ahmed Hikmat Shakir — the Iraqi Intelligence operative who facilitated a 9/11 hijacker into Malaysia and was in attendance at the Kuala Lampur meeting with two of the hijackers, and other conspirators, at what is roundly acknowledged to be the initial 9/11 planning session in January 2000? Who was arrested after the 9/11 attacks in possession of contact information for several known terrorists? Who managed to make his way out of Jordanian custody over our objections after the 9/11 attacks because of special pleading by Saddam’s regime?
:* Saddam's intelligence agency's efforts to recruit jihadists to bomb Radio Free Europe in Prague in the late 1990's?
:* Mohammed Atta's unexplained visits to Prague in 2000, and his alleged visit there in April 2001 which — notwithstanding the 9/11 Commission's dismissal of it (based on interviewing exactly zero relevant witnesses) — the Czechs have not retracted?
Whether any of this is true or not is a seperate issue. My contention here is that the I don't think it is accurate to claim that the NRO is a new entry the list of subscribers to the minority view. I really think it was already on the list. The only thing that I see one can accurately claim is that these critics claim that these documents undermine the majority position.--CSTAR 23:20, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just a note - the alleged Atta visit to Prague in 2000 turned out to be a different person with that same name.  He stopped there another time on his way somewhere (Spain I think), but the 2000 visit that was so controversial turned out to be the wrong Atta (the link is in the timeline under the Atta/Prague section).  As for the Czechs, the claim that they have not "retracted" the claim is misleading -- they did pull the claim, then backtracked on that, and then when an interviewer asked about it in 2005 they threw it back at the CIA in disgust.  It was a huge embarrassment in Czechoslovakia for the politicians perceived as responsible for that information being leaked.  There is nobody in Czechoslovakia who can be shown to still stand by that alleged meeting.  Ron believes someone does, but the person he is talking about is the same one who threw it back at the CIA in 2005 (it's the Opinion Journal article cited in that section).  To say the Czechs have not retracted the claim is completely misleading, since nobody appears to still believe it, and all the evidence appears to go against it, except for a single notoriously unreliable witness.  I'm not sure where the claim on the 9/11 Commission interviewing "exactly zero" witnesses is relevant at all; their conclusions are based on the conclusions of intelligence organizations who investigated as well as the Czechs.  I don't think they saw it as their job to interview witnesses, and I'm not sure how someone finds relevant witnesses to something that appears not to have happened.--csloat 02:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: CSTAR, you may be right.  Andy McCarthy evidently has held to the minority view.  I am still not convinced Byron York held the minority view.  The Cliff May link I mentioned can be found here.   After looking at that link, it appears the title of the link is tongue in cheek.  It links to a Drudge Report that mentions al Qaeda cell is trying to kill the judge of Saddam's trial. After actually reading the story, it appears Cliff May held to the minority view also. RonCram 00:29, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reply to Ron Cram 

message: One of the criticisms Sloat put forward for the rewrite was that it did not contain any information on the charge the Bush Administration had "cherry-picked" the intelligence.  Sloat is correct that the charge should be included in the article.  I have added a paragraph with a link to a Washington Post story featuring Paul R. Pillar.RonCram 00:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit on "cherry-picked" intelligence