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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

"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.....

looded = loaded

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