I would be very interested in anything that Mylroie provided that is false?
It's less that she says lots of stuff that's false than that she interprets ambiguous things tendentiously, makes huge argumentative leaps without real cause, and ignores lots of stuff that points in different directions.
For example, she came up with her argument that Ramzi Yousef was the key Iraqi agent in the bombing well before he was arrested. He was later captured, tried here, and convicted, and no significant ties to the Iraqi government were ever demonstrated. Instead, abundant evidence emerged about freelance terrorist networks of Islamic extremists. Instead of changing her mind, however, Mylroie just stuck to her guns and basically refused to acknowledge that all this could have happened without major direction from Baghdad.
Now I'm not saying that there was no Iraqi role in the '93 WTC bombing, or that there was no Iraqi role in these recent attacks. It is certainly possible that some kind of help was provided by Iraq somewhere along the line in either or even both cases; we just don't know, and may never know, the entire story. But almost no serious analysts familiar with all the evidence believe the '93 bombing was "state-sponsored terror" as that phrase is commonly understood, i.e. an operation ordered, organized, and executed by operatives (de jure or de facto) of a foreign power. This is in contrast to the Lockerbie bombing, which most serious analysts familiar with all the evidence do believe was state-sponsored, by Libya. (Other groups or countries may have had some role in that one too, but the Libyan role was paramount.)
Wouldn't it also be as prudent to take anything from our own CIA with the same skepticism?
yes and no. To some extent of course you're right, although official statements from them, at least these days, are more credible than most believe. But I wasn't referring to stuff they hand out or declare publicly; I was talking about the personal opinions of insiders there whose knowledge and judgment I trust. Now of course that and $2.50 will get you a mocha latte. I'm not suggesting that anonymous posters on internet message boards, however clever and witty, are in general a highly credible source of information. (If they were, my *&%#@! portfolio would look better.) But then, IMNSHO, neither is Laurie Mylroie....
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