Screaming Penguin

I don't think anyone doubts that there are or were Al Qaeda, Hezbolah, IJD or any of a million other groups in Iraq for the US military engagement. In a large part, they were drawn there in the same way they were drawn from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan to Afghanistan once the war started there. That still has no bearing on this complete load of crap: MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that? VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection. MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection? VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization. We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven. Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact [cooper: Actually, this was debunked a couple of weeks ago. The Prague meeting has since been redacted by the Czech intelligence group and the CIA]. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

I don't understand the relevance of these connections. It seems to me that every muslim nation has ties of some sort to Al Queda. Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Indonesia, maybe Malasia, Iraq. Hell they all do. We can't just bomb and invade all of the countries can we? Are they just pissed off with us because of Israel? And why are we one of only 4 nations voting against the resolution against Israel building a wall through the middle of Palestine? That can't be helping anything...

but wouldn't you build the wall on the border instead of many miles into Palestinian territory, in come cases forming circles around cities? I think the rest of the world is looking at this as a land grab.

One thing I am having a big problem with re: the Iraq-Al Qaeda links and a lot of these other conversation is what is getting painted as a "link". For instance, one of the second tied Al Qaeda people went to Bahgdad in 94 -- for open heart surgery. It seems a lot of this would be akin to saying "Germany supports terrorism because 10 of the 19 hijackers were there for 5 years." I was going to comment on the Israeli thing, but the fact is both sides of that conflict make me ill at this point in time.