Atta Boy
As Nick Gillespie pointed out in the June issue, it's awful dang hard to figure out just what the hell's going on in Iraq & in the War on Terror. From Chalabi to WMDs to Zarqawi to Tora Bora to Nick Berg to Oil-for-food to Prince Bandar to the 20th hijacker to John Negroponte ? the head spins trying to sort out who did (or is doing) what to whom, let alone what we should do next. With that preamble, here's a pretty thorough case against the Mohammed Atta/Prague story, with an invitation by author G.A. Cerny to correct or refute as necessary.
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Atta had an urban planning degree.
The hawks now have all they need for the long-awaited War On joe.
War On joe
They’re declaring war on coffee?!?!?!
“Plan Colombia” all makes sense now 🙂
“The hawks now have all they need for the long-awaited War On joe.”
FINALLY!
thoreau, The Weekly Standard’s three part series on Juan Valdez’s burro torture centers will begin next week.
The doves will never consider any evidence that Saddam conspired with Al Qaeda, because that would make their assertion that the war in Iraq was wrong and unnecessary clearly incorrect.
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406010821.asp
Andrew expounds a lot further on connections between the 9/11 hijackers and Iraq.
Matthew-
The case for some of the contacts looks pretty strong, based on what I read in that article. But if it’s really as strong as it looks, why hasn’t the Bush administration played it up?
I don’t believe everything that comes out of a politician’s mouth, but if a politician refrains from making a point that would bolster his case and make his plans more popular with the public, I have to conclude that the point is so dubious and unsupported that not even a politician will stoop to making it.
Can you think of some other reason why the President might not be eager to trumpt this information?
btw, I want to state unequivocally that if I see evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime was involved in 9/11 my opinion of the invasion of Iraq will instantly change.
But the Bush administration has not deigned to put forward such evidence. And since the Bush administration’s standards of evidence seem pretty low, I have to conclude that there must really be nothing.
Thoreau,
I suspect he feels burned by his intel on the WMD issue and doesn’t want to get burned again. Of course, that intel was only incorrect in detail, Saddam did have dangerous WMD programs, we have found stockpiles of precursors, at least 2 WMD devices, and there is evidence that much of the WMD may have been relocated to Syria.
OTOH, perhaps they are sitting on some stuff now to be released in the September – October timeframe. OBL’s bones wouldn’t surprise me a bit, for example, nor would a live OBL (keeping that sort of capture a secret can be a tremendous boon for penetrating an organization).
Based on what we know for sure about Saddam, it is clear that he was reckless and willing to work with terrorists against American interests.
Those who want to are free to quibble over whether the Iraqi regime was involved with Al Qaeda. There’s a much more basic issue here: The Iraqi regime was going to topple eventually, and it’s better that it was done under our watch than by the hand of religious fanatics.
Saddam Hussein may or may not have aided Al Qaeda terrorists, but it’s obvious that he wasn’t their ideal tyrant. If religious fanatics had gotten their hands on the resources of Iraq we’d have been in even more danger than we’re in right now. Our President had the right idea by going to Iraq to build a secular and free nation in the heart of terrorist country. We have a long road ahead of us in this war against Islamo-fanatics, but Iraq was an important first step.
Thoreau,
You gonna buy the Hayes book that came out today?
I ordered it from Amazon today.
I won’t bother responding to Raymond. He became strangely silent a couple weeks ago when somebody in another thread asked if he would be willing to serve in the armed forces to advance the ambitious agenda that he outlined.
In response to your post I searched for the Hayes book on Amazon.com, and apparently 15 reviews have been written already, most of them arguing with each other. I’ll probably look for it in a bookstore and browse it before making a buying decision. I tend not to buy a book if all of its Amazon reviews are 1 or 5 stars. However, I have been known to browse such books and then write my own review, making a point of giving it 3 stars on a scale of 5.
Thoreau,
15 reviews written by folks who haven’t read it, probably! I think there were 8 when I bought the book earlier, none of whom had read it yet.
Here’s my new theory on why we didn’t emphasize Al Qaeda links.
We didn’t and don’t want to spook the Saudis, and we have the smoking gun with their fingerprints all over it. We want them to think we are “buddies” but actually we know elements in the top of the regime paid off and worked with Al Qaeda.
Same goes for Iran.
We have smoking guns with Saudi and Iranian fingerprints all over them (much of Al Q’s leadership is supposed to be sheltering in Iran today) but we don’t want to invade. Probably much clearer links than even with Iraq.
Iran we are hoping for an uprising, and probably are trying to work on something. Perhaps eventually a “Northern Alliance” solution.
Saudi is the tough nut to crack. I have no idea what the administration’s strategy is going to be there. Obviously a US invasion there would be an unmitigated PR disaster WRT 1 billion muslims. Saudi is a case of unmatched palace intrigue, alliances formed and abandoned, deals done in the dark of the night, and always the masses threatening to revolt, probably in an islamist direction.
I should add that my theory about “smoking guns” refers to what CIC / NCS has on Saudi / Iran. Certainly those on the outside have some very strong indications of Saudi and Iranian malfeasance WRT Al Qaeda, but I suspect the inner circle of the Administration has even more proof.
This is where the overall strategic decisions of the WOT become interesting. What to do, what to do.
This is supposed to make killing thousands of Iraqi civilians, sacrificing hundreds of U.S. servicemen and throwing American prestige away all okay?
It’s astounding that Powell didn’t present this damning evidence in addition to the photographs of WMD labs he showed the Security Council.
Find a verifiable reference to someone in the Administration or someone in the military citing Atta’s meeting with Iraqi intelligence as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda; otherwise, this is just another Area 51 story.
P.S. **Bait Warning** You haven’t yet mentioned the special operations camp, where Saddam Hussein trained Al Qaeda operatives to hijack planes using a real 707, but you want to, don’t you? **End Bait Warning**
Ken,
I would think that the prestige of those who got millions of dollars in blood oil contracts from Saddam under the table and in violation of UN sanctions would be thrown away. Perhaps in Europe corrupt politicians making money from the misery of third-world masses trodden under foot of vile tyrants is all in a day’s work, but in America we despise that sort of thing.
Funny, seems to me that on September 11, over 3000 Americans lost their lives due to our tepid and insufficient response to terrorism under Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton. If a nuclear device detonated in NYC or DC, we could count on many tens of thousands dead, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions. In addition, the entire global economy would collapse, killing millions more in poor parts of the world. What’s your solution to the problem of islamic terror + nuclear devices? A suitably humble America showing more “understanding” towards the Iranian, Saudi, Syrian and North Korean regimes?
Lastly, your calculation of the harm done to Iraq is missing the alternative of an Iraq under Saddam, then under Uday Hussein for the next 50 years versus an Iraq with economic, social, and political liberty. If you were serious you would admit the costs of the previous status quo in Iraq, but you are not serious, only throwing out Howard Dean campaign rhetoric.
Come to the table with some serious suggestions of what was to be done about Iraq and the Middle East, and we’ll talk.
Here are a lot of links about one of the names mentioned in the article.
Your suggestion that the Bush Administration has a comprehensive plan for the Middle East ignores the fact the Administration’s plan in Iraq has been a fiasco up until now. I haven’t seen any indication that the Administration has even recognized that their policy has failed; like you, I think they’re going to stick with it in spite of it all. But at least you seem to recognize that there’s a problem; do you really think the solution is more of the same?
So what’s should the plan be? First, we’re going to have to stop the bleeding. If the incompetent boobs who directed this travesty won’t recognize that their strategy has failed, then we need to throw them out of power and give their jobs to someone else. We can start from there. If democracy and freedom ever come to Iraq, I suspect it’ll be in conjunction with a truly international force which requires that the United States be led by someone other than Bush.
P.S. Vote for Kerry? Me? Pardon me for laughing, but I have a hard time imagining myself voting for a Democrat.
“If you have evidence that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz advocated torture, rape, and murder, put it up.”
I didn’t use the word “advocated” I used the word “facilitated”. The links I have showing this are ones you’ve probably seen before; I believe they’ve all been posted by the moderator’s of this site; most of them are a reaction to The New Yorker story.
From The New Yorker:
“The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld?s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of ?lite combat units, and hurt America?s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon?s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld?s long-standing desire to wrest control of America?s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.”
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact
From Newsweek:
“But a NEWSWEEK investigation shows that, as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America’s top military lawyers?and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation?methods that the Red Cross concluded were “tantamount to torture.””
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/
From Meet the Press:
Russert: Senator Biden, as I mentioned to Secretary Powell, New Yorker magazine has an article today talking about Operation Copper Green, which suggests that this coercion was instructed by the highest levels of the Pentagon. The Pentagon is denying that. Newsweek reports, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo back in 2002 suggesting that the Geneva Accords’ strict limitations had become somewhat obsolete and rendered quaint. How high up do you believe this scandal may go?
Biden: I don’t know. It’s much higher than these young guards. Look, there’s obviously, at a minimum, a policy of a studied ambiguity here, Tim. There is plausible deniabilities built in everywhere here. There’s sort of the morphing of the rules of treatment. We can treat al-Qaeda this way and we can’t treat prisoners captured this way, but where do insurgents fit, etc.? This is a dangerous slope.
And, look, we’re talking about democracy in the Middle East. The single most essential element of democracy is accountability. There is no accountability so far. It cannot be just those people in that prison. It doesn’t seem rational, based on my experience. And another piece of this is, where is this notion of the for the good of the country? Where’s the nobility of this administration, somebody, coming forward and saying more than, “I take responsibility but I have–but there are no consequences here”?
I mean, look, it’s not merely whether or not they were involved, it’s whether or not they should have known and didn’t do anything. But, again, accountability. The rest of the world, as John is saying, is looking for who is responsible. Are we different than other nations?
Russert: Senator McCain, you’re a military man, highly decorated. Do you think it’s plausible that National Guardsmen and Reservists would undertake this kind of activity without being instructed?
McCain: I don’t think so. I think that there’s real questions about this “shift in responsibility” where military intelligence people were given authority over the Guards. There are so many questions that need to be answered. And I agree with Joe in this respect. We need to take this as far up as it goes and we need to do it quickly and I am convinced that the sooner we do that, the sooner the United States of America can begin to reassert its rightful place in the world as a leading advocate for democracy and human rights. And we are signatories to certain protocols as well as adherence to the Geneva Convention which should apply in Iraq.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4992558/
So, anyway, I’m not the only one who thinks that whoever is responsible for this policy should be held responsible for its consequences. That a policy specificaly set up to circumvent Geneva Conventions would result in human rights abuses is no suprise to me. I most certainly will not back down from my claim that Rumsfeld and company “facilitated” torture, rape and murder.
I would also suggest that, regardless of what they learned by means of these barbaric practices, it wasn’t worth it, and that’s yet another example of Administration incompetence.
There was an intellegence census of al Qaeda cells
world wide, pre 9/11. I can’t remember who put it together, perhaps the CIA. Anyway, of all the cells worldwide, that icluded 80 in the US, there were zero in Iraq.
Of course the argument that this alledged “contact” could possibly justify a war is a very steep climb anyway.
What’s most astonishing is how the McCarthy piece almost refutes Cerny point-by-point, then Cerny reverts back to this idea that the entire argument is the Prague meeting, which is what McCarthy was refuting in the first place.
What’s most astonishing is how the McCarthy piece almost refutes Cerny point-by-point, then Cerny reverts back to this idea that the entire argument is the Prague meeting, which is what McCarthy was refuting in the first place.
Ken,
If Iraq is a “fiasco” what standards do you use to judge every other land warfare + invasion operation our country has ever conducted?
I don’t find Sy Hersh a credible reporter. He has an agenda to push, an axe to grind, and puts an incredible conspiracy theory spin on some very basic decisions that were made because of the nature of a war against terrorists and insurgents.
For those who haven’t read, McCarthy’s CV is interesting — a prosecutor of Al Qaeda terrorists during the Clinton administration.
“If Iraq is a “fiasco” what standards do you use to judge every other land warfare + invasion operation our country has ever conducted?
The causes given for invading Iraq were bogus. Invading Iraq has not made more safe from WMD, but it has made us less safe in regards to terrorism. The Administration has trashed our relationhsip with the rest of the world. The Administration has facilitated the worst human rights violations since the Internment Camps of World War II. America is now faced with the prospect of either shouldering the burden of rebuilding a nation or people who hate us, or abandoning Iraq entirely to fight a civil war and emerge as a legitimate terrorist threat to the United States.
By that standard, I consider the invasion of Iraq a fiasco.
I don’t find Sy Hersh a credible reporter. He has an agenda to push, an axe to grind, and puts an incredible conspiracy theory spin on some very basic decisions that were made because of the nature of a war against terrorists and insurgents.
If you post a link to a reporter referencing an Administration official or someone in the military citing the Atta/Prauge meeting as evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, I promise not to reply with a post containing an attack on the motives of the reporter.
‘If Iraq is a “fiasco” what standards do you use to judge every other land warfare + invasion operation our country has ever conducted?’
The Second Gulf War is unlike every other land warfare + invasion this nation has carried out, but one. Every other such action had as its primary goals to reduce or eliminate the war making capabilities of a foreign military, and drive that military out of a certain territory. This operation, on the other hand, featured those two only as partial objectives, in order to achieve ends that are political, not military, in nature. There have been two wars fought by this nation that have sought primarily to alter the political situation in a country that did not pose a military threat to us or to other countries: Vietnam and Iraq.
Measuring Vietnam by the standards of “land warfare + invasion,” it was a roaring success.
Thoreau:
I agree with Matthew’s later explanation, the concerns about implicating other countries, and indeed it?s been much-offered by analysts for months now. The administration doesn?t have to be defended on this decision ? here?s where some hard-hitting questions would be appropriate about our continued deference to the Saudis, as evidenced by the attempt to push Adnan Pachachi as interim president (he?s their guy).
But a more basic problem with your question, it seems to me, is that the administration already listed most of these links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?s Iraq more than a year ago. Self-identified ?experts? in the media dismissed it because, of course, secular Saddam couldn?t possibly have played footsie with the Islamists. Idiotic.
Also, to harp on the links now would appear defensive, and for good or ill the administration doesn?t like to look defensive even if it has a reason to be. Call it misplaced machismo.
I think they should be making an affirmative case, but the administration?s failure to do so does not necessarily mean that the case can?t be made, or that others can?t make it themselves.
Ken,
Your argument about trying “another administration” as a way to deal with the middle east is simply missing the point. It’s not which administration is in office. It’s what the administration in office is going to do about middle eastern terror. Bush has a plan — threaten the state sponsors of terror in the middle east in the short term, foster liberalization in the long term, draining the swamp. If Kerry has a strategy, I’d love to hear it.
As for the smoking gun implicating the Saudis and Iran, I’m not referring to 9/11 being planned directly to their leadership, but rather direct, operational links to Al Qaeda by elements in the Saudi royal family and the Iranian leadership. Providing money and resources to terrorists who attack the US is reason enough to take you out, but we aren’t prepared to take them out at this time.
Rick, you don’t need “cells” of Al Qaeda in a country like Iraq — cells are deployed to attack a target country, not a friend. Having cells in Iraq pre 9/11 would have been a waste of resources given the lack of air links to Iraq, the lack of freedom of movement, etc.
Ken,
If you have evidence that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz advocated torture, rape, and murder, put it up. What happened with those soldiers in Abu Ghraib was wrong and terrible, but unfortunately goes on during every war and in every prison system. You get a percentage of folks who go into that job because they are sadists, and a lot of folks who will go along with the bad apples in that situation.
Ken,
One more response:
If you didn’t hear the other justifications for invading Iraq (humanitarian — get them out from under a heinous crime family, promotion of liberty in the region, links to terror) before the invasion, you weren’t paying attention. It’s true the media gave the WMD angle much bigger play, probably because it seemed more immediately frightening.
You’re also not paying attention to the fact that sanctions were crumbling. So saying that sanctions were keeping Saddam in a box are simply wrong.
Finally, if you concluded that Saddam’s WMD programs were not a threat, it’s clear you haven’t read the findings of the Kay report. Kay specifically noted that the situation was more dangerous than we thought before the war. You’re also ignoring the fact that two WMD devices have already been used against our troops, fortunately failing both times due to improper use in one case and deterioration of the contents in the other. You’re also ignoring the attempted attack in Jordan — very likely using large quantities of Iraqi WMD.
The Administration has facilitated the worst human rights violations since the Internment Camps of World War II.
Thank you, Ken. That’s one fewer person here that deserves to be taken seriously, which is a real time-saver.
The latest post from Epstein… there is a lot of misinformation on the Prague meeting story and our Mr. Cerny appears to embrace the mainstream press’ dishonest account of it…
If I had that sentence to write over again, I might have written, “The Administration has facilitated some of America’s worst human rights violations since the Internment Camps of World War II.”
I didn’t consider My Lai, and, of course, in the context of the post I was replying to, I assumed people would understand I was talking about America’s human rights record rather than anyone else’s. Those were both mistakes on my part.
Or am I missing your point?
Is there nothing else about my post you can find wrong? I mean with the logic or fact ’cause I know the spelling’s pretty bad too. If all you could find wrong with my post is that tid bit, well, I guess great minds think alike. Have a nice day.
All that stuff about nuclear devices and European business and North Korea and tepid responses and Howard Dean rhetoric is really fascinating Matthew, but, back to the topic, all the reasons that the Bush Administration used to justify the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq turned out to be bogus. I’m not suggesting that the president was lying; all I know is that he was wrong. Perhaps the biggest blunder of this Administration was suggesting that the war in Iraq would help make us safe.
With no-fly and no-drive zones and the support of the UN, Iraq was no danger to us, but it’s an enormous danger to us now. If the transition to democracy doesn’t go as planned, it’s likely that there will be a civil war from which three quasi-states will emerge, a Kurdish state, already known to have an Al Qaeda influence, a terrorist state in the Sunni Triangle and a majority Shia state loosely affiliated with Iran. Thank you for protecting us from terror Mr. Preseident! Got any more bright ideas?
Am I glad Uday, Qsay and Saddam are all out of the picture? Of course I am. I bet the Iraqis are too; I know Sadr is. But it’s still unclear that what’s to come is going to be better than the Baathists were. Is life for the average Iraqi going to be better under the Sunni Militia, the Kurdish War with Turkey and a state loosely affiliated with the mullahs of Iran, better than it was under Saddam Hussein? I can only hope so.
I’ve gotta give you credit for being tenacious though Matthew. Most everyone else defending the Administration moved away from claiming that Saddam was a threat a long time ago and moved on. Now they’re claiming that it wasn’t about WMD or Al Qaeda, it was about Democracy. But not you Matthew; you’re gonna stick to your guns. Are we supposed to prove that Al Qaeda never had any contact with Iraq? That would be hard to prove.
So, while you’re waiting, here’s a suggestion; take it for what it’s worth. If you want to persuade other people that Al Qaeda was a threat, you’re gonna need more evidence than what’s referenced here in this Atta/Prauge story. Once again, find someone, somewhere in the Administration or the Armed Forces, who made a reference to this story as evidence of an Al Qaeda link to Iraq. If you do, people will listen, and I’ll listen too. Otherwise, you’re just talking about UFOs.
So, you think that the administration has a secret smoking gun that points to Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia as the architects of 9/11. But they can’t talk about it because it points to the Saudis.
Well, that would certainly explain why the administration can’t go public with the Saddam/Al Qaeda links.
But what would get 3 mutually antagonistic countries to collaborate with one another on a scheme that, if exposed, would provoke the wrath of the US? Sure, they all hate us. But what do they have to gain from collaborating with mistrusted enemies on a plan that has already led to the invasion of one of those countries?
OK, maybe they didn’t think we’d invade Iraq. But certainly they must have had a hunch that we’d invade Afghanistan at least. What does Iran have to gain from the US placing an army on its border?
Anyway, I’m just having a hard time seeing how this plausibly fits together.
“Come to the table with some serious suggestions of what was to be done about Iraq and the Middle East, and we’ll talk.”
Here’s one. Let’s withdraw our support for the current Administration. Maybe they’ll change course before it’s too late. Maybe they’ll hold Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz responsible for facilitating torture, rape and murder. Maybe the President will start holding his other advisors accountable, the ones who told him to go on this stupid adventure.
If he doesn’t, let’s continue to withold our support from this Administration. Let’s try another Administration. Who says we can’t bring democracy and freedom to Iraq with someone else in charge. Someone else might be able to repair our relationship with the rest of the world. That’s my suggestion. Let’s throw this incompetenet, blundering Administration out on its ass.