"Jihad Bomb Kills 20 in Dodge City!"

[Detector]

The only connection, in my mind, between 911 and Iraq is that 911 opened Americas eyes to the terrorist problem and what can happen if allowed to fester. Iraq was simply the next infection in need of cleaning.

I won't go as far as to say Iraq had nothing to do with 911 because for all we know the hijackers may have trained in Iraq. But there is no doubt Iraq is/was helping to create people capable of more 911's.

[lurker]

It's a little more involved than a simple event:

CIA Director George Tenet, on October 7, 2002, wrote a letter to Congress, which asserted:

• Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
  
• We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade.
  
• Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
  
• Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
  
• We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
  
• Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.

Tenet has never backed away from these assessments, reaffirming them in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee as recently as March 9, 2004.

Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has provided faulty information to Congress? That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did not cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."

Andrew C. McCarthy in the National Review

[Detector]

No if you remember correctly we first went into Iraq because they supposedly had weapons of mass destructions and would not comply with the agreement made after the first gulf war. Then when it was shown they had apparently complied (finally), after the invasion, there came a series of reasons du jour.

Even if Iraq had WMD, they had no vehicle system capable of delivering said weapons to the USA whereas N. Korea has the weapons, and could very well have a delivery system. But that threat requires an international effort. Why, maybe because N. Korea shoots back and they don;t have a large oil reserve perhaps?

No I'd say you've been reading the spin again. If you read the transcript for Bushes speech you'll see this is not the case, only the spin made to make it look bad.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0021007-8.html

In fact there was chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, and VX nerve gas found. The spin called it too small of quantities to be a serious threat. They also found long range missiles capable of striking Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations which they were not supposed to have. A direct violation of 1991. These missiles were setup to carry chemical payloads.

If you watched the news at all you would have seen the chemical agent canisters and the missiles. Then you would also know what you're posting is inaccurate. If they had "complied" we sure wouldn't have found what we found right?

[Outofdodge]

Originally Posted by Detector

In fact there was chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, and VX nerve gas found. The spin called it too small of quantities to be a serious threat. They also found long range missiles capable of striking Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations which they were not supposed to have. A direct violation of 1991. These missiles were setup to carry chemical payloads.

If you watched the news at all you would have seen the chemical agent canisters and the missiles. Then you would also know what you're posting is inaccurate. If they had "complied" we sure wouldn't have found what we found right?

I think

1. You need to learn what a long range missle is. And while you're at it, refresh yourself with a globe and see that Turkey and Saudia Arabia border Iraq. In theory I could lob a WMD with a sling shot into a neighboring state while standing on the other side of the border. Whereas between the United States and Iraq there are these large things called oceans.
2. You need to read the white house's own report on the stash of WMD that was found.
3. You need to read a little better news source and learn to differeniate fact from fiction, they didn't find anything. Still haven't.
4. Go reread some Bush stuff leading up to the election. His reasons changed.

Might be beating a dead horse but this might get fun.

[Detector]

1. Long range medium range. The point was they were missiles in direct violation of the 1991 treaty. Any thing capable of over 93 miles is a violation <-- The point.

2. I think you'll find the key word is "stock pile." WMD's were found. Chemical weapons are WMD's. What it did conclude is that no "stock piles" of WMD's were found.

Need some links to make it easy?


UNMOVIC inspectors have discovered chemical weapons in Iraq.
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/12/05/40413.html



A cache of 12 Al Samoud missiles was found south of Bayji at LD7154 and LD7644 on 21 July 2003 at 1700 hrs.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/samoud.htm

Polish troops discover four French missiles in Iraq
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1099272003

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/sandplanes.asp

UN inspectors: Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtri...reaking_1.html

Here is an intertesting take on what has been found.

Saddam's WMD have been found
New evidence unveils chemical, biological, nuclear, ballistic arms
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=38213

New evidence out of Iraq suggests the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction is having better success than is being reported.


Key assertions by the intelligence community widely judged in the media and by critics of President Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all.

But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found.
In virtually every case -- chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles -- the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors.


When former weapons inspector Kay reported to Congress in January that the United States had found "no stockpiles" of forbidden weapons in Iraq, his conclusions made front-page news. But when he detailed what the ISG had found in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last October, few took notice.

Among Kay's revelations, which officials tell Insight have been amplified in subsequent inspections in recent weeks:

• A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?
• "Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist. "We thought it was a big deal," a senior administration official said. "But it has been written off [by the press] as a sort of 'starter set.'"
• New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.
• A line of unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, or drones, "not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] beyond the permissible limit."
• "Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the U.N."
• "Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] -- well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1,000-kilometer range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara [Turkey], Cairo [Egypt] and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]."

[Outofdodge]

Originally Posted by Detector

Saddam's WMD have been found
New evidence unveils chemical, biological, nuclear, ballistic arms
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=38213
[/list]

You know darn well that those are dubious sources and if stockpiles of weapons had been found the Bush camp would have been parading all over the place as justification for their folly.

Come on, I know who you are and you're more on the ball than that

[Highwayman]

The following are obvious from slanted right-wing sources that I’m sure will be denounced by the folks here as pawns of the Bush administration. Or not;

In June 2004, Bill Clinton Said President Bush Had The Responsibility To Make Sure Iraq's Chemical And Biological Weapons Did Not Get In The Hands Of Terrorists. "After 9/11, let's be fair here, if you had been President, you'd think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you're sitting there as President, you're reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I've got to do that. That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for. So I thought the President had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, 'Look, guys, after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process.' When you're the President, and your country has just been through what we had, you want everything to be accounted for." (Bill Clinton, "His Side of The Story," Time, 6/28/04)

• Sen. Clinton (D-NY): "[Saddam] Has Also Given Aid, Comfort, And Sanctuary To Terrorists, Including Al-Qaida Members, Though There Is Apparently No Evidence Of His Involvement In The Terrible Events Of September 11, 2001. This Much Is Undisputed." (Sen. Hillary Clinton, Congressional Record, 10/10/02, p. S10288)
  
• In 1999, The Clinton Administration Issued A Report That Said Iraq Was Supporting Terrorists. "[T]he Patterns of Global Terrorism report listed Iran, Libya, Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and Syria and exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden as terrorist sponsors. The seven countries were on the same list last year. Secretary of State Dr Madeleine Albright said: 'Governments on the list that would like to see their names removed know exactly what they must do: stop planning, financing and supporting terrorist acts and stop sheltering or interfering with the apprehension and prosecution of those who commit them.'" ("No Reprieve For Nations Of Terror," The [Perth, Australia] Sunday Times, 5/2/99)
  
• The 9/11 Commission: "There Is Evidence That Around This Time [1997] Bin Ladin Sent Out A Number Of Feelers To The Iraqi Regime, Offering Some Cooperation." ("Final Report Of The National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States," The 9/11 Commission Report, 7/22/04)
  
• The 9/11 Commission: "In March 1998, After Bin Ladin's Public Fatwa Against The United States, Two Al Qaeda Members Reportedly Went To Iraq To Meet With Iraqi Intelligence." ("Final Report Of The National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States," The 9/11 Commission Report, 7/22/04)

Just Google PDB Iraq WMD and hit “I’m feeling lucky”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0051115-1.html

I want folks to ask themselves if they find sources like this one below fair, balanced and believable;

http://progressivedailybeacon.com/mo...&ARCHIVAL=TRUE

[Detector]

You know darn well that those are dubious sources and if stockpiles of weapons had been found the Bush camp would have been parading all over the place as justification for their folly.

You're right OoD. The key word again is "Stockpiles." WMD's were found stockpiles were not. Thats really my point. That and the fact that even if there were stockpiles finding them would be simply luck. Just like the 30-40 jets that were uncovered by accident. If they can, and did, hide 30-40 jets in the sand one can only speculate how much WMD's are lying buried as well.

In 1991 they(inspectors) knew for a fact what illegal weapons Iraq had. The problem is they also know how many were actually destroyed which was far less than what they had. Those missing weapons have to be somewhere. They know they are there they just don't know where.

Archaeologist can spend decades looking for an entire city buried in the sand and still may never find it. They know it's there, they're experts at finding such buried cities and even with a good idea where to look may never find it. The Iraqi desert is a big place. It is literally like finding a needle in a haystack. Point is they know that needle exists so the haystack need to be treated as if that needle does exists.

[Highwayman]

Originally Posted by Detector

....The Iraqi desert is a big place. It is literally like finding a needle in a haystack.....

Throw in the three reported places the Lebanese are claiming in Syria and it gets even bigger.

[lurker]

Originally Posted by lurker

Not counting deadly terrorist attacks such as the USS Cole, the Lockerbe Scotland plane crash, the first World Trade Center bombing and a whole host of other attacks leading to 9/11: the number of deadly terrorist worldwide attacks after 9/11 reached 5652 Now 5681today.

Just last week:
Weekly Jihad Report
(8/13 - 8/19)

Jihad Attacks: 43

Dead: 184

Critically Injured: 352

Weekly Jihad Report
(8/19 - 8/26)

Jihad Attacks: 37

Dead Bodies: 133

Critically Injured: 401

Political Hay
No Terrorism To See Here
By Philip Klein
Published 8/25/2006 12:08:36 AM

Critics of President Bush's conduct in the War on Terror get testy when they are accused of not taking the threat of terrorism seriously, but with increasing prominence, they are making their true feelings known.

Quite simply, they don't think terrorism is a big deal.

In a recent American Prospect column, Matthew Yglesias wrote that the Bush administration has been "fostering a climate of panic and paranoia" and "blowing the risks of conventional terrorism all out of proportion..."

John Mueller, who has lately been making a career out of downplaying terrorism, has an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs entitled, "Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?" In it, he writes: "The massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that scarcely exists."

Reason's Ronald Bailey pointed out that people are more likely to die in a car accident, drowning, fire or by murder than in a terrorist attack. This lead him to conclude that "with risks this low there is no reason for us not to continue to live our lives as though terrorism doesn't matter -- because it doesn't really matter."

Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State University, made a similar argument in a 2004 article for Regulation, in which he wrote that since the late 1960s, the number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks is "about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reactions to peanuts." The statistic is slightly misleading because starting in the 1960s allowed Mueller to include many years of data during which time terrorism was not as widespread as it has been since the 1990s. So, for instance, between 1990 and 2003, 756 people were killed by lightning, according to the National Lightning Safety Institute. That's about one-fourth the number of people who died on Sept. 11.

But there's no reason to squabble over such details. The overarching point is true enough. There are a lot of potential causes of premature death, many of which have proved far more deadly to Americans than terrorism. However, it's also true that Americans have taken precautions against those other dangers -- precautions that may have at one time seemed drastic. When I was in elementary school, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were my lunchtime staple. For my niece, they are contraband, because like many other schools today, hers is peanut-free. Traffic accidents are still a major cause of death in America, but the death rate has declined considerably over the past several decades as a result of seat belts, air bags and drunk-driving laws. More recently, states have passed laws restricting cell phone use.

Even this analysis, however, gives too much credit to comparisons between terrorism and other causes of death. Murders and car accidents may kill more Americans than terrorism does, but those deaths occur across fifty states, for a litany of different reasons. Terrorism is primarily caused by Islamic fundamentalists from the Middle East who have declared war on modernity and are often financed or hosted by countries that are our avowed enemies. If an overwhelming majority of homicides in the U.S. were caused by a loose collection of gangs from California who shared similar ideological motives for killing Americans, the war on crime would be fought a lot differently. Traffic laws might change drastically if, say, 99 percent of accidents were caused by German automobiles with stick shifts.

Furthermore, terrorism is a different type of threat because in addition to the human carnage it leaves behind, it targets symbols of American power and prosperity (such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon). Were we to have a nonchalant attitude toward terrorism because it mathematically presents a lower fatality risk relative to other dangers, it would not only put us at risk for attacks worse than Sept. 11, but it would demonstrate weakness to current and potential adversaries. As the 9/11 Commission reported, Osama Bin Laden was inspired by the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia in 1993. How would our enemies and allies view America today were we to brush aside dastardly attacks on prominent symbols of our financial and military might?

Some may say that I am attacking a straw man by accusing others of wanting to brush aside terrorist attacks, but that is precisely what Mueller suggested in his Regulation article when he wrote, "a sensible policy approach to the problem might be to stress that any damage terrorists are able to accomplish likely can be absorbed, however grimly." In other words, when people are killed in a terrorist attack, just move on, because just as many people might drown in their bathtubs.

As scary as that attitude might sound today, that's precisely how we did treat terrorism prior to Sept. 11. In 1993, when 6 people were killed and 1,000 injured in the first World Trade Center attack, President Clinton warned Americans not to "overreact." His administration treated the attack as a simple criminal matter, ignoring crucial evidence that revealed grander ambitions among Islamists to attack America. Americans did have Bailey's terrorism "doesn't really matter" attitude throughout the 1990s, and as a result we ignored the threat of al Qaeda as it carried out attacks against American targets with increasing frequency, boldness and sophistication: Khobar Towers in 1996, U.S. Embassies in 1998, and the USS Cole in 2000.

Those who argue that the terrorist threat is being overblown also make the mistake of thinking that just because something hasn't happened in the past, it won't happen in the future. In his piece, Yglesias mocks the reaction to the recent British terror arrests, noting that "Precisely zero people have been killed in liquid explosive attacks." Well, through Sept. 10, 2001, precisely zero Americans were killed by hijacked airliners being flown into skyscrapers, but that provided little comfort to those whose lives were cut short the next morning.

The further we get from Sept. 11th, the more temptation there will be to become complacent in the face of the terrorist threat. In fact, this is precisely why terrorism presents such a unique danger and why it is much more effective at dividing our country than more conventional threats we have faced.

Since Sept. 11th, we have seen attacks at a Bali nightclub, on Egyptian resorts, on trains in Madrid and Mumbai, on London's public transportation systems as well as continued attacks on Israel. Even if you buy into the view that Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism, there is clearly a global war taking place.

Fortunately, terrorists have been unable to mount a successful attack on U.S. soil in almost five years, but that is more a testament to our increased awareness of the threat than a reason to return to the carefree attitude of the past.

Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.