Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (18140)	5/10/2006 9:12:07 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 540794

I hope that the administration, and the people responsible for looking at the documents (people of both parties, I would expect) are working on these documents. "Contacts" are not all that startling. Considering Saddam's intelligence and paranoia, I would imagine him to have his fingers in may pies, but whether there is a pie that justifies going to war with Iraq is another question. The Saudis, as you know, had quite intimate contacts with AQ, including financial contacts- clearly contact alone does not justify a war. I doubt a smoking gun will be found at this point, but it's always possible. I leave open that possibility, but see no reason why the military or the Bush administration would be trying to cover over this particular information, and I imagine "liberals" (is this a word that stands proxy for all democrats?) are asking the right questions in the intelligence circles- but I also imagine there's really nothing hard and fast- so what are they supposed to do? Leap to conclusions and present them to the American people? We already lept, which is why we're at war when we shouldn't be. I'd prefer them to be slow and steady and careful this time around, and it looks like they are being very careful indeed.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (18140)	5/10/2006 9:41:34 AM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540794

I personally read thousands of reports related to Al Qai'da in Iraq leadership who were former IIS or Special Repbulican Guard members. Does al Qaeda (however spelt) have an official membership? If not, what do you mean by Al Qai'da in Iraq in this context? How can you say that particular people 'were leading AQ'. If you mean that former IIS or RG personnel were active leading the resistance/terrorist/insurgence movement, well, no surprise and no news. But this does not make them AQ. The only genuine AQ name I've heard in Iraq is Zarqarwi; and he wasn't active until after Saddam was removed, and I thought he worked mainly with foreign jihadists. Or are you saying that there were many IIS and RG personnel moonlighting in Afghanistan/Pakistan for the Taliban and its allies? That was (& is) the only AQ base where they really had numbers. Oh, and these: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/27/walq27.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/27/ixnewstop.html ... Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service This would be another of the wonderful Telegraph stories. You may not choose to remember, but they splashed documents linking Galloway with Saddam & corrupt oil payments. Documents again 'found' by Telegraph reporters, in bombed-out Iraqi ministries, at the same time. They lost their libel case very, very heavily - the documents were adjudged irrelevant and unsubstantiated. That's probably the reason the best reference you quote is a 3-year-old newspaper report... why the Bush administration isn't producing this information in a concise manner for the American people to understand. Dancing on pinheads aside, it is not up to us who opposed the war to disprove a negative (no links). You're claiming solid AQ links as though it justifies/d the invasion. Prove the positive if you can. With all the documents found, the Wh and DoD have released nothing confirming links. As ele says, given how prominent a plank of the Rumsfeld/Cheney case this was prewar, if they had found anything substantive and substantiated it we can fairly assume it would be shouted out.