and I meant to say what has me laughing about some of what I seen w/ all this war stuff is, if everyone seen this man was doing all this sick stuff we had the priviledge to see on TV, such as torture, masacre etc. bla bla bla and apparently everyone in high chairs knew about it and allowed this man to carry on? what does that show about us for sitting back as human being allowing that crap to go on for so long, the problems we have are not political nor economical they are "humanical" hehe

Doreen, I suppose its best to leave each country handle its own problems...but when it became apparent that Saddam had ties with Bin Laden, then we took it personal.

We have problems here, so, we wouldn't want some one on the outside to take upon themselves to 'fix' our problems.

But if you think we should be righting every wrong, then I believe some other thread here about another country in deep trouble as well. Perhaps we should ride in and help them as well.

blah blah blah blah.. aren't yall tired of this conversation already?

Xerraire: What ties did Saddam have with Bin Laden? The gov't would love to proclaim that if it had evidence of that and certainly doesn't mind that many people think it's an established fact. But even the Bush administration hasn't claimed that; it has only said that Saddam in future could assist Al Queda and this was a preemptive action to prevent that. The terrorist training camp found in the north which got a lot of press was IIRC in Kurdish territory and was supported by Iran. The one in central Iraq I don't believe has been tied to Al Queda unless you have information that I haven't seen in the press.

Bin Laden had no use for Saddam as a bad Muslim and the head of a secular gov't but of course used the Iraq issue to try to rally support against the US. And Saddam of course wasn't above borrowing from the Bin Laden rhetoric book to try to garner support in the Arab world. And so apparently recruits from other Arab nations have been found in Iraq. But as for direct ties in terms of Saddam supporting Al Queda I don't recall anyone, including the Bush administration and the CIA, claiming or establishing that. That Saddam supported terrorists in Palestine was already well known, no doubt to make his name in the Arab world, although Iran and Syria were the main supporters of those groups.

queezendorf, feel free to ignore this thread just as I do many others. For example, I don't post in the marathon thread asking if people there aren't yet tired of the conversation since obviously they are not.

Economically, Iraq wasn't that bad off. Politically, on the other hand, if you weren't in, you were out. It wasn't their oil, it was Saddam's. He decided who was well-fed. With the second largest oil reserves in the world, poverty would pretty much have to be malicious intent. I think Iraq's problem was more of a lack of an economy...

Even with the much-maligned 1% of Americans owning the majority of the wealth, no money is being withheld from anyone here. It flows freely. If you don't like those pockets in which it accumulates, then by all means try really hard to reduce the amount you send there. It is very possible to reduce the amount of money you send to that 1%. You might not like the extra trouble you have to go to, though, and you shouldn't forget how many people that 1% employ...

As i said, when consumers stop spending money, take notice. When they gut interest rates *and* people still aren't spending money, worry. All I hear is talk, frankly. Economic weather. 'Consumer confidence' is like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the more you scare people the more scared they'll be.

and don´t forget to check your emails as soon as you run out of money. plenty of of mails offering you fast cash and new credit cards.
someone needs to do better programming here, not much sense sending this crap to a .de address.

Colin Powell said that Iraq has offered Al Qaeda a "safe haven" in northeast Iraq, and that there is also a poison production site there.

Captured Iraqi soldiers have told British interrogators that members of al-Qaeda are in the town of Az Zubayr co-ordinating grenade and gun attacks on coalition positions.

A U.S.-led assault on a compound controlled by an Iraqi-based extremist Islamic group has turned up a list of names of suspected militants living in the United States, linking the group to al-Qaida.

Evidence has been found in the Kurdish-controlled regions of northern Iraq that the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam was working on three types of chlorine gas and ricin and has ties to Al Qaeda.

Officials said that between 75 and 150 Al Qaeda members have been captured or killed in northern Iraq in recent days.

I don't know, I think there are a few ties, and likely more to come out.

somehow this does not fit.

why should those Ansar al-Islam group try to produce Chlorine when they have good relations with Saddam who should have production sites for much more poisonous chemical weapons?

i guess small terrorist groups like to have material around that explain how to produce chemical weapons. actually nothing really special, that material can all be found on the internet. like teenagers with copies of the Anarchist Cookbook or the Poor Mans James Bond. makes them feel cool i guess.

somehow this does not fit.

why should those Ansar al-Islam group try to produce Chlorine when they have good relations with Saddam who should have production sites for much more poisonous chemical weapons?

i guess small terrorist groups like to have material around that explain how to produce chemical weapons. actually nothing really special, that material can all be found on the internet. like teenagers with copies of the Anarchist Cookbook or the Poor Mans James Bond. makes them feel cool i guess.

X: Yes, that camp in the northeast is the one I mentioned. It's in Iraq but it doesn't mean that Saddam necessarily supported them. Just as the Kurdish territory is in Iraq but was not all under Saddam's control and direction. They're Islamic radicals supported by Iran, where many of them zipped back to when they came under attack. And the war is with Saddam, not Iran at this point. They may well have ties with Al Queda and that wouldn't be surprising. That's not the same as saying that Iraq (the gov't) and Saddam had ties and was supporting Al Queda and that's why the US wanted to take him out. Saddam did not have much interest in fostering radical religious zealots on his home turf that wanted to set up an Islamic state since that would pose a threat to his power.

As for the other fighters, during the lead up to the war Iraq publicly recruited and encouraged Arabs from other nations to go to Iraq to oppose the coalition. Those are the Arabs the Iraqi's call "the foreigners" when they rat them out to coalition troops. Apparently the US is still catching busloads of them coming across the border from Syria. That some of them may be Al Queda and AQ sypathizers is not surprising as Bin Laden for his own purposes (attacking the US and getting more recruits for AQ) also encouraged fighters to go to Iraq. But again, that's not the same as saying that previously Saddam was in cahoots with Al Queda and that's why the US attacked him. The US has repeatedly said that this was a preemptive action, to prevent such potential future support. The Administration did not say that Saddam had actively supported Al Queda in the past. The head of the CIA was quesioned in Congressional hearings and he said there was no evidence of that. So far anyway what connections to AQ have been found in Iraq do not tie Saddam to Bin Laden in the manner you suggest.

There has been ample evidence for years, however, that our friends the Saudis have indeed provided direct significant material support to Al Queda, yet so far we haven't seen the Administration talk about regime change in SA. Although no doubt the Saudis have been given something to think about after recent events.

Info from Human Rights Watch on Ansar al-Islam. The "safe haven" that Powell was speaking of in NE Iraq was an Ansar camp in a Kurdish controlled area. http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/ansarbk020503.htm

Again, this in itself doesn't look like a smoking gun connecting Saddam and his regime to Al Qaeda.

Doreen, I suppose its best to leave each country handle its own problems...but when it became apparent that Saddam had ties with Bin Laden, then we took it personal.
by Xerraire - 4/13/2003 3:28:07 PM

Xerraire all I know is it's a good thing I ain't God so I don't have to have all the answers or judge anyone... hehe!

who knows it just seems that since we apparently knew the stuff was going on, and since we apparently "did" eventually go in and actually do something about it, why did we wait so long for the mess to get out of control??? when at the first sign of trouble someone should have said "Ummm Houston I think we have a problem here" and then jump on the problem? cuz I think if you see some maniac torturing ppl and preforming mass masacres and is having such big head trips he needs statues every freaking where you look to see him??? something was terribly wrong there? it was common sense this should have been handled when he crossed the first or second line of not being a stable man w/ power and started taking innocent ppl's lives...

lots of lives would have been spared and maybe this would not have happened, anyways, I heard they got some POW's back
(those poor ppl that lost their loved ones are probably celebrating w/ them) just so sad this whole thing but oh well...

For me the Al queda/Iraq thing was not good enough. Now the Iraq and it main man Saddam hatered and ability to carey out the hatered the same way Al Queda diud is what was good enough.

Saddam possed many danger and future dangers in the mist of post war sactions and the world watching.


***
No matter how poor anyone here in America is, woith out quettion they have a better chance to get out of it than people; billions of people, around the world. Anyone who can come up with a story or a fact about health care or hunger in the US need to understand that other countries can't come close to the care given in the US. Look carefully as to how people live in these countries.

Waiting 2 days at a hospital? how about no hospital? How about hospital 50 miles away? How about a hospital with no good equiptment, medicaine or doctors and nusres?

***
The US wants oil? I can come up with a better conspiracy that that (an have in previous posts). If it is not totally about saving American lives or freeing the Iraq population... who really think it is just about that?... then the bigger reason is stabibility, world economy, US friendly nations, and a new market, not for oil, but for labor, trade or other matertials, bases for other targets, a new Iraq economy can produce a ripple ecffect on world economies for the better by adding to technology bought sold made, material bouhght sold made...etc...


Oil??? hhuuph. a smart business man has to see more than oil. Especailly when oil runs out 40 or 50 years from now. What then? Sand?

Think about the economics of the whole thing.. you will see its not about oil.

sig
Saddam seemed quite able to know everything that was going on, and nothing that didn't have his blessing could happen there, he was quite able to eliminate anything or anyone he wanted to.

I see plenty there for concern.

For one thing, the day we pulled out from Gulf War number 1, I thought to myself, this isn't over, he will retaliate. Being a leader of a nation, Saddam can't hide like BinLaden can, so he needed someone to do the dirty work.
It fits.

I'm just popping in to say hello to Doreen and China

This stuff about Iraq and Osama being linked, America's economy is fine, health care is there if you just took it instead of buying a new car... etc. The percentage of the population that would be terribly offended by this nonsense is growing rapidly. If all goes as planned you will be among them soon enough.

I don't buy the ridiculous story that the State Department gives for the 9/11 attack but chances are you've never even heard it. It was never broadcast in our national media because the story that precipitated it was also never broadcast. America was going to war against the Taliban in October 2001. This is known in the rest of the world because the story was told by Brittish, French, Indian, German, etc. newspapers. The official USA response is that Osama did a "pre-emptive" attack against the US because Mullah Omar was told of the US's intentions by someone in the ISI (Pakistan's CIA).

Think about it... we were already moving our invasion force in place before 9/11. We were going to overthrow the regime in Afganistan and replace it with an American friendly government of our own choosing, 4 weeks from when we were attacked. When was the Bush administration planning to sell the US and world public on this idea?

9/11 could have been prevented, that much is even admitted by the congressional committee investigating it. Colleen Rawley, the FBI whistleblower that was on the cover of Time magazine said their investigation into the terror cells that DID the 9/11 attack was sabatoged by the heads of the FBI and the CIA. She said they could have prevented the attack if George Tenet, Robert Muller and the head of the FBI ant-terror division hadn't intentionaly sabatoged the investigation. 9/11, which has brought us the Patriot Act, unending war against an undetermined number of countries and near bankruptcy of the economy, was referred to as America's new Pearl Harbor. Bush's Neo-Con think tank planners wrote in their blueprint for the administration "America needs a New Pearl Harbor".

The enormous amount of false evidence used in the 9/11 attack "explanation" as well as the push to invade Iraq, the shameless brandishing of forged documents in the world forums, has angered and embarrassed even the Bush administration's own intelligence agencies.

I don't buy it.

I've been reading everything I could find in the world press and American press since the day 9/11 happened. I don't think anyone who is aware of the whole story (as much as is available) can say any more than there are only two possibilities:
1. 9/11 was "allowed" to happen because it furthered the Bush agenda
2. 9/11 was planned and executed BY the Bush administration.

If this sort of reasoning sounds impossible to you then you haven't been paying attention.

World War III is well under way. The twists and turns it takes could go a number of ways, including the worst. Just remember as more freedoms are removed to make you "safe" and more aggression and unilateralism makes America an even greater target of terror attacks and even more empowered to pre-empitively overthrow soveriegn countries, it's being brought to you by the Bush administration, not by any necessity... but by plan.

Hello David
and me has no idea why I ended up here in a History/War/Political themed type thread? I originally thought hmm maybe I will go piss of Baker w/ some off topic stuff but got sucked up into this war somehow by catching it on TV and was trying to understand what was actually going on but hello back to you David
and hello China!

X: I rather doubt Saddam had complete control over the automonous Kurdish controlled areas, so named because after the 1991 Gulf War the Kurds have had their own set up and are not governed by Baghdad. That is, those areas have not been under Saddam's control since the Gulf War. Those areas also have had US air power to assist the Kurds in keeping their independence from Baghdad. So the presence of Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish controlled areas near the Iranian border does not in itself make a strong case for Saddam being tied to Al Qaeda. Not even the US gov't claims that as I have mentioned before.

David, I think perhaps in your enthusiasm to make your point you rather greatly overstate what Coleen Rowley actually said. I recall her testimony to Congress and the memo she wrote, etc. I don't recall her mentioning George Tenet having any involvement. It was authorization to search a suspect's computer (in August 2001 IIRC) that was denied by her FBI superiors. When they looked at it after Sept 11 the info there would not necessarily immediately blown open the whole case as you seem to think. Even Rowley doesn't say that had it gone otherwise that the events of Sept 11 would have been prevented altogether.

"If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning,
I'd hammer in the evening,
all over this land....

And then I'd nuke everybody.....

hmmm.. I was paying attention, aybe not enough, but I never came to the conclution that this was planned by the Bush administration.

Really, such a plan has so many loop holes you would have to be a fool to inact it. I usually do not call people names, but you would have to be a fool to try a stunt.

It will have so many uncontolable outcomes, may in which could end in the 'fools' demise.


Funny, but I heard many theroes like this, and some have evedince that does not work to well with each other. First it is Americas fault cause of the forien policies, then Isreal did it to get Americ to get rid of Islam, now this one where Bush said "ok lets kill thoughsand of people so we can have a peral harbour"

I do agree that some on the Bush team wanted something Pearl Habourish was needed to get people to follow there aganda, but that doesn't mean they allowed it to happen.

Yes sept 11 could have been avoided and who know how many sept 11's was avaoied. All around the world airplanes have expeirecnce hijacking, tell me why the US air lines did not have sucurity doors, no terroist training, hi-jacking training, no air marshal at all, and bag checking security being paid Mc Donalds wages.

Arragance and Bureaucracy (and maybe greed) looks like a more target as to why it happened then a conspiricy.

OPEN YOUR EYE"S!!!!



Why do people say that? It really is a looded statement and lend to believe that the other side has no grounds for seeing it the way they do and are in a sence branded stupid for not 'opening thiere eyes'

I hopefully will never say that, I think all oppinions are valued, and come from some sort of source that should be addressed.


Open your eyes indeed...

looded = loaded

Don't lood me up with your rhetoric, Joe....

I reallt have to use spell check on my posts...

reallt = really

SHEESH!!