Iraq And Al Qaeda - No Links You Say?

[KrustyKidd]

=nova_satori,Sep 17 2003, 11:07

Sorta. Blair is the key to uniteing the EU into something resembeling factions that actually work with each other. The EU is so disunited, even the people that live in EU member countries think that it will take 50-80 years before they catch the US. Blair is the key to making that time much shorter.

Never heard that before. Point me in the right direction here Nova please.

[nova_satori]

Argh. I have to go find the time/Newsweek and a number of websites. Its been a few months since i've read the articles.

However, on a another forum,

Lots of people from around the world. From Iranians to New Zealanders

I spoke with a polish, Germans, swedish, Brits, italians, the over all concense is that Blair is needed, and the EU is nowhere near what they intend to be.

Warning: There are many flame wars on that site. One charcater, who i shared a "interesting" relationship, named mike_murphy, is willing to start a multithread, death to _____, flame war on a joke phase, "Your mom."

And they didn't even ban him. Many people there four vulgar words for every civil word. Proceed at your own risk.

[KrustyKidd]

I took a quick peek, looks interesting and I'll examine it later, thanks. I still want to know where the Blair/EU conpiracy comes in though.

[nova_satori]

conpiracy? Is that the right word?

I was more thinking consotrium

[Craig Read]

Yes a conspiracy. According to left liberal babbling idiots, security, 9-11, protecting western political and economic interests is all bad.

Better to just apologise, wonder why they don't love us, and ignore reality.

[Mr Farrius]

Responding to the title of this thread, it is interesting to note that Craig Read, and Vice President Cheney are just some of the very few people who believe there is a link to Iraq and Al Qaeda. It's also interesting that even Bush himself denied such allegations and corrected Cheney after the Vice President made such ridiculous assertions with no evidence whatsoever. Ouch, to be corrected by Bush. Come on, the CIA, the FBI... ran down literally thousands of links and found nothing. Well nobody should be surprised; one of the administrations favorite acts are to distort intelligence.

[Locke]

Okay, so there is no real link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Who didn't know that? The reason the US went after Iraq in the first place is so they can vent some of the American rage after 9-11. They didn't go after Al Qaeda because they were so incompentant that they couldn't even find some of them. They then lied about the WMD's so they can channel the anger of the people somewhere. And now, they can't find Sadaam, so they are turning toward Libria. Smart of the US to get 2 birds in one stone. Stupid because they didn't do it quietly.

[Craig Read]

Okay, so there is no real link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Who didn't know that? The reason the US went after Iraq in the first place is so they can vent some of the American rage after 9-11. They didn't go after Al Qaeda because they were so incompentant that they couldn't even find some of them. They then lied about the WMD's so they can channel the anger of the people somewhere. And now, they can't find Sadaam, so they are turning toward Libria. Smart of the US to get 2 birds in one stone. Stupid because they didn't do it quietly.

And now, they can't find Sadaam, so they are turning toward Libria. Smart of the US to get 2 birds in one stone. Stupid because they didn't do it quietly.

Locke i listed a long list of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda with sources.

Do you bother to read the posts ?

And who is Libria ? Is this another liberal fantasy state ? Like Mexifornia ?

[Craig Read]

Well nothing makes me happier than Liberals who are proven wrong - which is not hard - it only takes time if one has some common sense.

The Liberals and their mental contortionist supporters always maintained that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 or Al Qaeda. This post provides evidence to the contrary and today 12-15-03 - the Iraqi National Council released evidence that Hussein and 9-11 were directly linked.

From the Daily Telegraph:

Hussein and 9-11

Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

So Libs how do you want your crow - how about raw ??

Terrorist groups as Bush rightly said in his axil of evil speech, are funded, abetted and resourced by nation states. Maybe Canada and the EUnuchs can join the adult nation states and get involved in fighting terror - on a level commensurate with their economic and population size. 1900 men in Kabul herding goats does not constitute much of a war effort. Yes Libs, the war in Iraq IS ABOUT 9-11.

Welcome to reality.

[SirRiff]

i get bored of pointing out ignorance but....

they have had time to make him crack, there was no meeting. this was reported just 2 days ago, citing real intelligence officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/internat...ope/13INQU.html

A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter.

Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the United States in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations.

any continueing denial of this is stupidity at its best....the US admin never cited this in public because they know it was some rumour started by thier PR machine.

sirriff

[Craig Read]

Hey genius, you are really pathetic and a liar. You lie on 2 counts:

1. The article you provide discussed the meeting in Prague between Iraqi and Al Qaeda agents and does not address the link I provided which confirms meetings between Iraq and AQ IN IRAQ.

Read my posting and the link.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

This has NOTHING to do with the meeting in Prague that the NY Times is discussing in its report on 12-13-03.

2. The documents I posted on, came to light on 12-14 and 12-15-03 from the Iraqi congress, not on 12-13-03 from the NY Times. How can the NY Times report on 12-13 facts that were displayed 1 and 2 days later ? The NY Times is a wonderful rag that told us untold lies about how the war was lost, the peace was lost, that Iraq was a quagmire and that the UNO was needed.

Read the link i posted - if the words are not too big to understand.

Even the Toronto Star admits the links through its own reporter having seen and studied the Papers:

Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization and Saddam Hussein's regime shared direct contact as early as 1998, according to top-secret Iraqi intelligence documents obtained by the Star.

The documents, discovered yesterday in the bombed-out headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's most feared intelligence service, amount to the first hard evidence of a link long suspected by the United States but dismissed as fiction by many Western leaders.

The handwritten file, three pages in all, relates to the arrival of a secret envoy sent by bin Laden to Iraq in March, 1998, apparently to establish a clandestine relationship with the Iraqi regime.   ......The letter describes the envoy as "a trusted confidant (of bin Laden) and known by them (Al Qaeda)."

It continues: "According to the above we suggest permission to call the Khartoum station (the Iraqi intelligence station in Sudan) to facilitate the travel arrangements for the abovementioned person to Iraq. And that our body carry all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden."

According to notes at the bottom of the page the letter was then passed on through another director within the Mukhabarat to the deputy director general of the intelligence services.

The other two pages of the file, dated Feb. 23 and March 24, relate to correspondence between different agencies within the Mukhabarat over preparation and approval for Iraq to cover the costs of the bin Laden envoy's stay at the Mansur hotel.

Each is countersigned by a number of codenamed Iraqi officials. One is addressed to "M4/7" and signed by "MD1/3." The three pages were found bound with a staple.

T.Star Iraq-Al Qaeda

Being a nescient leftist should not prevent one from at least having the common sense to accept documents forwarded by the Iraqi's themselves on the links with Al Qaeda - which we have stated have existed since 9-11. Various sources in this post have been used and trust me the NY Times is NOT a reliable news source given that it has been untruthful on so many topics from Icebergs melting in Alaska to the 75000 artifacts supposedly looted from Iraqi museums.

Your ignorance is boundless and you are intentionally misrepresenting information and you should be kicked off this site.

[Galahad]

Hey genius, you are really pathetic and a liar.

Your ignorance is boundless and you are intentionally misrepresenting information and you should be kicked off this site.

Who's that?? I NEED NAMES!!!

[SirRiff]

The article you provide discussed the meeting in Prague between Iraqi and Al Qaeda agents and does not address the link I provided which confirms meetings between Iraq and AQ IN IRAQ.

Read my posting and the link.

so you are saying that they have this iraqi intelligence officer in custody, they have been interrogating him for months, he has denied the prague thing, and they just forgot to ask about iraq meetings?

do you really think this would be the story if they had confirmed an iraqi meeting?

of course not, the proof is that you dont hear a peep from Bush & Co. about saddam being involved in 9-11 anymore, nor do you hear about WMD anymore, just that saddam was a bad guy.

if there is all this proof why hasnt bush presented it when americans are desperate for support? they are trying to get loans forgiven, they are trying to get international troops, they are trying to generate some PR, yet you think they are just sitting on some proof of an iraq-911 link?

basically what you are saying is that you have this proof, yet nobody in the US government has ever said a word about it in public, despite the horrible light the US is seen in throughout the world.

man if you think that, you are delusional and need special help. tell them you know a secret that nobody else knows...

The documents I posted on, came to light on 12-14 and 12-15-03 from the Iraqi congress, not on 12-13-03 from the NY Times. How can the NY Times report on 12-13 facts that were displayed 1 and 2 days later ? The NY Times is a wonderful rag that told us untold lies about how the war was lost, the peace was lost, that Iraq was a quagmire and that the UNO was needed.

so some handwritten documents that stupidly inplicate saddam with an international terrorism operation, were found years after the attack, by the american appointed iraqi national congress (who only care about thier own power as everyone knows). already the prague visit is proven wrong, but somehow atta secretly got into iraq, and instead of alqueda training, he went to saddam and abu nidel. all the while of course the american investigors think he spent his time in florida, and of course no american agency claims to have even circumstancial proof that this happened.

yes. this is certainly an airtight case craig. you should be come a detective. you have beaten the FBI, CIA, and NSA because they have yet to claim this is even remotely possible. wow. good job. you are a regular columbo.

basically every part of this story is suspect, from the source, to its timeline, to the lack of american governments interest, to the stupidy of documenting international terrorism.

do you really think they found a handwritten note that links saddam to 9-11 yet all this massive stockpiles of WMDs are elusive?

only a complete idiot would take this as credible in any way. the prague story was repeated by top american officials even after it was proven wrong. this is just as useless.

Your ignorance is boundless and you are intentionally misrepresenting information and you should be kicked off this site.

ahh i knew you would redeem yourself. representing yourself like the true intellectual you are, taking as fact heresay from The Daily Telegraph which even the US governemnt wont touch. then of course, those of us who point out its completely worthless are misrepresenting information and should be kicked off.

i think you pretty much destroy your own argument here. with your mindless belief of the unproven you call into question everything you claim as truth.

did you call bush yet? i am sure he would be pleased to know some canadian found the proof that the entire US gov has been looking for....and it was right there on the internet...

sirriff

[Morgan]

Craig said:

trust me the NY Times is NOT a reliable news source given that it has been untruthful on so many topics from Icebergs melting in Alaska to the 75000 artifacts supposedly looted from Iraqi museums.

I agree with your observation about the failings of the Old Grey Lady. The NYT used to be great until the new owner took over and pledged his allegiance to left wing thinking, truth be damned, investigative journalism a mere memory of NYT's glory days.

This observation is apropos to Sir Riff's NYT post about the Prague connection...NYT re-cycles an old "controversy"insinuating that they've got the final lowdown on it.

So stupid. But then again, I guess there are some people like Sir Riff who'll believe it.

Sir Riff...errr...the Czech UN envoy stands by the Czech's version since 2001 and the Czech's have Visa#'s to prove it. For whatever reason, the FBI/CIA are currently not ready to play up this meeting.Czech officials are not backing down.

Prague Re-Visited, Nov.19/03 Slate, Edward J.Epstein

In Washington, the FBI moved to quiet the Prague connection by telling journalists that it had car rentals and records that put Atta in Virginia Beach, Va., and Florida close to, if not during, the period when he was supposed to be in Prague . The New York Times, citing information provided by "federal law enforcement officials," reported that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 2, 2001, and by April 11, "Atta was back in Florida, renting a car." Newsweek reported that, "the FBI pointed out Atta was traveling at the time [in early April 2001] between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va.," adding, "The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts."

And intelligence expert James Bamford, after quoting FBI Director Robert Mueller as saying that the FBI "ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on," reported in USA Today, "The records revealed that Atta was in Virginia Beach during the time he supposedly met the Iraqi in Prague." 

All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license. His international license was at his father's home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April). Nor were there other records in the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time.

Kmonicek, the deputy foreign minister, had found a paper trail of passport records showing that Atta had applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic on May 26, 2000 in Bonn, Germany. Atta must have had business there, since he could have transited through the Czech Republic on Czech Air without a visa.  Atta's business appeared to be extremely time sensitive and specific to May 30. When Atta learned in Hamburg that his Czech visa would not be ready until May 31, he nevertheless flew on May 30 to the Prague International Airport, where he would not be allowed to go beyond the transit lounge.

Although a large part of this area is surveiled by cameras, he managed to spend all but a few minutes out of their range. After some six hours, he then caught a flight back to Hamburg. From this visaless round trip, Czech intelligence inferred that Atta had a meeting on May 30 that could not wait, even a day—and that whoever arranged it was probably familiar with the transit lounge's surveillance. Finally, the BIS determined that the Prague connection was not limited to a single appointment since Atta returned to Prague by bus on June 2 (now with visa BONN200005260024), and, after a brief wait in the bus station, disappeared for nearly 20 hours before catching a flight to the United States. 

UN Czech envoy confirms Prague meeting

The Czech envoy to the UN has confirmed that an Iraqi agent met with suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, in the latest rebuke to widespread U.S. media reports dismissing the Prague encounter as a fabrication. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross announced last fall that Atta and Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a second consul at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague, had conversed at least once, in April 2001. Gross would not rule out other encounters.

The controversial meeting became known as "the Prague connection" and was mentioned frequently as a possible pretext for renewed hostilities between the United States and Iraq. Al-Ani was expelled from the Czech Republic April 22, 2001 -- less than a month after the conversation -- for "engaging in activities beyond his diplomatic duties," a phrase usually reserved for allegations of spying or terrorist-related activities.

Kmonicek, the Czech Republic's UN envoy since October, is the most senior government official to openly confirm the encounter since unnamed U.S. intelligence officials began challenging it in anonymous comments reported last month by Newsweek magazine, The Washington Post and The New York Times. "At the time [of the meeting] I was in Prague," he said. "It's not like they [the Czech government] sent me a cable saying, 'Say this because you are our ambassador.' It's not like that. I was the person who had to [expel] al-Ani." One senior Czech official familiar with details of the Atta/al-Ani matter and who requested anonymity speculated that the media reports dismissing the meeting were the result of a "guided leak."

[Craig Read]

Morgan, sure and other sources back up the Czech's claim. Riff is just such a bunch of Raff. The articles i quoted clearly stated that Atta and other AQ envoys were in Baghdad weeks before 9-11.

An obvious connection between Hussein and 9-11. As well on this post there are numerous other sources and facts highlighting what the Toronto Star calls the close relationship between Iraq and AQ dating back to at least 1998.

Even ABC a liberal news outlet on par with the faineant NY Times admitted the links , and even one of their reporters had first had evidence of such links;

S U L I Y A M A N I A, Iraq, Sept. 27 — In a prison in the part of Northern Iraq controlled by Kurds, I sat down with three men who claim to have first-hand knowledge of links between Osama bin Laden's organization and Iraq.....The United States and the Kurdish government believe Ansar al-Islam is directly linked to al Qaeda, and is part of a larger relationship between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization.

According to this prisoner, there are about 500 to 600 men in the group, whose goals and methods were similar to the Taliban and al Qaeda. They want to institute a fundamentalist Islamic society and eventually control the entire region. According to him, al Qaeda is in fact, closely linked to Ansar al-Islam.

"Al Qaeda is a main finance source for al Ansar," he said, "because al Qaeda now doesn't have a particular base and is scattered. They only can provide financing to al Ansar. Definitely they have the same principles and goals which the Taliban and al Qaeda have. Because [Ansar al-Islam] is in the early stage and they are small in size, they are not able to act against America as effectively as al Qaeda and Taliban did. But nevertheless, they don't hesitate to act against America. They do it, for example, they are trying to assassinate American journalists or kidnap them. Particularly those who come to Kurdistan.....................He says he and a partner were given $16 million to go to the Gulf and buy some large ships, equip them with 500 kilos of high-explosive, and set sail under Iranian flags. The crews would slip away in motorboats after being replaced with men willing to commit suicide, who would then enter Kuwaiti waters, according to Shihab Ali, and ram the ships into American tankers or military vessels.

"The only reason this didn't happen is because you were captured?" I asked him as my mind filled with the mental image of the extent of death and damage such an attack might have caused.

"Yes, if I hadn't been arrested, I would have done it."

.."

During the war itself on April 8 Tuesday the US forces wiped out a unit of Al Ansar in northern Iraq. AA and AQ are coequal terrorist organisations and AA funds AQ operations:

Halabja - US forces have wiped out an alleged al-Qaeda-linked group in northern Iraq with help from their Kurdish allies - but also their Iranian foes who have sealed off the Islamist militants' only exit.

US special forces set out on Tuesday from this town in Iraqi Kurdistan with Kurdish fighters to track down militants of the Ansar al-Islam group who might have survived the bombing and the onslaught on their stronghold.

The US forces kept mum on the location of their hunting ground, but a Kurdish official said it was a mountainous region on the border with Iran because "they have nowhere else to go" after the Islamic Republic "closed its border."

All the villages along the wide road leading to the Iranian pass have been "cleaned up," he said.

US missiles demolished blockhouses previously used by Ansar al-Islam ("Supporters of Islam"), to keep Kurdish forces at bay.

Caves that could be used as hideouts were inspected and emptied, and Ansar's headquarters were painted with the colours of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the group that administers this part of northern Iraq captured from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army after the 1991 Gulf War.

Ansar al-Islam in turn captured a few dozen square kilometres, in September 2001, establishing an Islamist stronghold within the Kurdish enclave.

and even more poignantly:

American forces and Kurds have said they had found confirmation of the connection between Ansar and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network, including propaganda material and passports.

In their campaign to topple Sadddam, the United States had used Ansar's presence in Iraq to charge the Iraqi president was supporting terrorism, although the Islamists were not deployed in areas under his control.

Ansar's appearance coincided with the September 11 attacks on the United States. It established rigid Islamic rules in the area under its control, and launched a fierce campaign against the PUK, carrying out bloody incursions and attacks on Kurdish territory.

Kurdish estimates of Ansar's losses from the US-Kurdish onslaught at between 150 and 300 dead.

Hussein harbored, funded, sourced, aided and abetted AQ and other terrorist groups in Iraq and in the Middle East. He was a threat that had to be obliterated.

But let's not allow facts to trump the 'US is Stupid' card shall we.

Liberals strike me as incredibly ignorant at times. When presented with facts, they say it does not matter. When proven wrong they don't apologise they just move on. When events go against their statements, they don't demur nor change, they just move on.

When WMD is found - and it will be found - the Liberal left will state that the war was illegal because the UN did not authorise it. They will ignore their claims that lack of WMD made the war 'unworthy'.

Try telling 24 million Iraqi's now liberated for the first time in their lives, that the war was 'unworthy'.

Where are the parades in downtown Toronto extolling the virtues of the liberation and the destruction of a dictator - thanks to Anglo-Saxon [sans Canada] power.

Canada is becoming another failed EU post modern state.

Liberals and post modern academics - they epitomise cowardice and mental lethargy.

[SirRiff]

newsweek looks at this "proof" and cites it as false.

only a moron would believe this worthless paper as proof of anything. basically all the flaws that i addressed out of just common sense are signs of forgery. desperate people believe desperate things.

http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3741646&p1=0

A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show  that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in  the summer of  2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents.

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The new document, supposedly written by the chief of the Iraqi intelligence service, was trumpeted by the Sunday Telegraph of London earlier this week in a front-page story that broke hours before the dramatic capture of Saddam Hussein. TERRORIST BEHIND SEPTEMBER 11 STRIKE WAS TRAINED BY SADDAM, ran the headline on the story written by Con Coughlin, a Telegraph correspondent and the author of the book "Saddam: The Secret Life."

Coughlin's account was picked up by newspapers around the world and was cited the next day by New York Times columnist William Safire. But U.S. officials and a leading Iraqi document expert tell NEWSWEEK that the document is most likely a forgery—part of a thriving new trade in dubious Iraqi documents that has cropped up in the wake of the collapse of Saddam's regime.

"It's a lucrative business," says Hassan Mneimneh, codirector of an Iraqi exile research group reviewing millions of captured Iraqi government documents. "There's an active document trade taking place … You have fraudulent documents that are being fabricated and sold" for hundreds of dollars a piece.

Mneimneh said he hadn't seen the Telegraph document that purports to place Atta in Baghdad. But he, along with senior U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence officials, said the claims of an Atta trip to Iraq in the months before the September 11 attacks were highly implausible—and contradicted by a wealth of information that has been collected about Atta's movements during the period he was plotting the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Telegraph story was apparently written with a political purpose: to bolster Bush administration claims of a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime. The paper described a "handwritten memo" that was supposedly sent to Saddam Hussein by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, chief of Iraqi intelligence at the time. It describes a three-day "work program" that Atta had undertaken in Baghdad under the tutelage of notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, who lived in the Iraqi capital until his death under suspicious circumstances in  August 2002.

"Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian national, came with Abu Ammer [who is unidentified] and we hosted him in Abu Nidal's house at Al-Dora under our direct supervision," the document states. "We arranged a work program for him for three days with a team dedicated to working with him ... He displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy."

The document, which according to Coughlin was supplied by Iraq's interim government, doesn't say exactly when Atta was supposed to have actually flown to Baghdad. But the memo is dated July 1, 2001, and Coughlin himself places the trip as the summer of 2001.

The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta's movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. Those records show Atta crisscrossing the United States during this period—making only one overseas trip, an 11-day visit to Spain that didn't begin until six days after the date of the Iraqi memo.

One FBI document, labeled "Law Enforcement Sensitive," states that during the summer of 2001, Atta "conducted extensive travel" that included visits in Florida, Boston, New York, New Jersey and Las Vegas. Indeed, this and other FBI documents show that during the last few days in June—when the presumed Iraq trip would appear to have occurred—almost all of Atta's movements are accounted for: On June 27, 2001, Atta flew from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to Boston. On the morning of June 28, he traveled from Boston to San Francisco (flying first class) where he switched planes and landed in Las Vegas that afternoon at 2:41 p.m. That afternoon, he rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo rental-car office, set up an account at an Internet café called the Cyber Zone and checked into the EconoLodge motel on Las Vegas Boulevard, a cheap motel in a neighborhood of seedy strip joints that is located barely two blocks from the local FBI office.

The FBI records show Atta logged onto his Cyber Zone Internet account five times over the next two days and then checked out of the EconoLodge at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of July 1. He then returned his rental car and boarded a flight to Denver at 5:59 a.m., landing in Boston later that day. A week later, on July 7, Atta boarded a flight from Boston to Zurich—the first leg on his trip to Spain. He returned to the United States on July 19, 2001.

  Much about Atta's movements is still unknown—and most likely will remain so. FBI officials believe, for example, that Atta flew to Las Vegas as part of a series of trips he took that summer to test security at U.S. airports in preparation for the September 11 attacks. But it is just a theory. The visit to Spain is believed to have been for a meeting with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the planners of the September 11 attacks, who also was in Spain during the same time.

  While all of Atta's movements cannot be accounted for, enough is known to make it "highly unlikely" that the September 11 ringleader could have flown off to Baghdad for a three-day work program with Iraqi intelligence, a FBI official told NEWSWEEK. For similar reasons, the bureau has long since discounted claims by Czech intelligence—and widely promoted by some Iraq hawks in the Bush administration—that Atta had flown to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent around April 8, 2001.

  FBI records show Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi checking out of the Diplomat Inn in Virginia Beach, Va., and writing a check for cash for $8,000 for a SunTrust account in that city on April 4, 2001. For the rest of that week, Atta's cell phone was used to make repeated calls to Florida. On April 11, Atta rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Fla. While acknowledging that a few days are unaccounted for, the FBI has found no evidence that Atta departed the country overseas during this period, an official said.

Mneimneh, the Iraqi document expert, says that there are other reasons to discount the handwritten memo touted by the Telegraph. The document includes another sensational second item: how Iraqi intelligence, helped by a "small team from the Al Qaeda organization," arranged for a shipment from Niger to reach Iraq by way of Libya and Syria. Although the shipment is unspecified, the reference to Niger was immediately suggestive of Bush administration assertions earlier this year that Iraq sought to import yellowcake uranium from that African nation—claims that also have been widely discredited as being based on other forged documents that apparently came from the Niger Embassy in Rome.

Mneimneh says the wording of the document makes him highly suspicious: Iraqi intelligence officials were notoriously conservative and rarely—if ever—put incriminating information in writing. The reference to the Iraqi intelligence working with a "small team from the Al Qaeda organization" is "too explicit," he says.

  Ironically, even the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi, which has been vocal in claiming ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, was dismissive of the new Telegraph story. "The memo is clearly nonsense," an INC  spokesman told NEWSWEEK.

Contacted by Newsweek, The Sunday Telegraph's Con Coughlin acknowledged that he could not prove the authenticity of the document. He said that while he got the memo about Mohammed Atta and Baghdad from a "senior" member of the Iraqi Governing Council who insisted it was "genuine," he and his newspaper had "no way of verifying it. It's our job as journalists to air these things and see what happens," he said.

[Morgan]

SirRiff,

You are the perfect example of desperate people believing desperate things.

If you read the Newsweek article instead of just the headline, you would have learned the following:

a) the only thing whose"credibility"is being questioned is the memo obtained by the Telegraph's journalist, Con Coughlin. The Bush Admin. is not involved whatsoever.

the authors of the Newsweek "expose" have not have seen or read the document in Coughlin's possession

c) President Bush has never linked Saddam Hussein to 9/11. In fact, in September of this year, Bush went on record as saying that there was no proof of any complicity between 9/11 terrorists and Saddam when rumours in that regard popped up.

d) Furthermore, it's the Bush Admin.officials and an exiled Iraqi ally that inform the Newsweek reporters that they think the document obtained by Coughlin is likely a forgery, though they have not seen the document either:

U.S. officials and a leading Iraqi document expert tell NEWSWEEK that the document is most likely a forgery

e) It's the Bush Admin's law enforcement and intelligence officials who assert, as they have with the Praque connection, that it's highly unlikely that Atta visited Iraq, though there are several dates in the period when they can't account for Atta's movements.

Much about Atta's movements is still unknown—and most likely will remain so.

f) the Newseek reporters' transparent bias becomes obvious near the beginning of their article when they leap to the unsupported and pejorative conclusion that:

The Telegraph story was apparently written with a political purpose: to bolster Bush administration claims of a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime.

Only a "moron" would believe what these 2 left wing media foot soldiers would say.

Get a clue, Riff. The Bush Administration is clearly trying to dissuade anyone of seeing a link between Saddam and 9/11 whenever that issue comes up. The only reason that comes to my mind is that that Bush and Congress fear there would be a violent backlash against ME immigrants living in America.

President Bush is a big supporter of the mantra that Middle Easterners are peaceful people; that it's Muslim fanatical extremists and it's a psycho Arab leader who are the anomalies. But if it were confirmed that Saddam and the 9/11 terrorists had a broad network of ME immigrant supporters from "within" the nation, all hell might break out.

That's the only reason I can come up with to explain the automatic knee jerk responses from Admin. officials to consistently shoot down Saddam and 9/11 theories.

Fyi, it looks like the $750,000 found on Saddam will reveal some potentially embaressing facts. Evidently the bills were brand new US Treasury issued bills with their wrappers still on. These bills will be traceable to the purchaser's identity. Very interesting story. Still developing...

[Craig Read]

Morgan i agree with the thrust of your post but disagree on the Iraq-AQ connection. There are plenty of links and this post details them.

Even ABC a liberal news outlet on par with the faineant NY Times admitted the links , and even one of their reporters had first had evidence of such links;

S U L I Y A M A N I A, Iraq, Sept. 27 — In a prison in the part of Northern Iraq controlled by Kurds, I sat down with three men who claim to have first-hand knowledge of links between Osama bin Laden's organization and Iraq.....The United States and the Kurdish government believe Ansar al-Islam is directly linked to al Qaeda, and is part of a larger relationship between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization.

...

"Al Qaeda is a main finance source for al Ansar," he said, "because al Qaeda now doesn't have a particular base and is scattered. They only can provide financing to al Ansar. Definitely they have the same principles and goals which the Taliban and al Qaeda have. Because [Ansar al-Islam] is in the early stage and they are small in size, they are not able to act against America as effectively as al Qaeda and Taliban did. But nevertheless, they don't hesitate to act against America. They do it, for example, they are trying to assassinate American journalists or kidnap them. Particularly those who come to Kurdistan.....................He says he and a partner were given $16 million to go to the Gulf and buy some large ships, equip them with 500 kilos of high-explosive, and set sail under Iranian flags. The crews would slip away in motorboats after being replaced with men willing to commit suicide, who would then enter Kuwaiti waters, according to Shihab Ali, and ram the ships into American tankers or military vessels.

"The only reason this didn't happen is because you were captured?" I asked him as my mind filled with the mental image of the extent of death and damage such an attack might have caused.

"Yes, if I hadn't been arrested, I would have done it."

During the war itself on April 8 Tuesday the US forces wiped out a unit of Al Ansar in northern Iraq. AA and AQ are coequal terrorist organisations and AA funds AQ operations:

Halabja - US forces have wiped out an alleged al-Qaeda-linked group in northern Iraq with help from their Kurdish allies - but also their Iranian foes who have sealed off the Islamist militants' only exit.

US special forces set out on Tuesday from this town in Iraqi Kurdistan with Kurdish fighters to track down militants of the Ansar al-Islam group who might have survived the bombing and the onslaught on their stronghold.

The US forces kept mum on the location of their hunting ground, but a Kurdish official said it was a mountainous region on the border with Iran because "they have nowhere else to go" after the Islamic Republic "closed its border."

All the villages along the wide road leading to the Iranian pass have been "cleaned up," he said.

US missiles demolished blockhouses previously used by Ansar al-Islam ("Supporters of Islam"), to keep Kurdish forces at bay.

Caves that could be used as hideouts were inspected and emptied, and Ansar's headquarters were painted with the colours of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the group that administers this part of northern Iraq captured from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army after the 1991 Gulf War.

Ansar al-Islam in turn captured a few dozen square kilometres, in September 2001, establishing an Islamist stronghold within the Kurdish enclave.

and even more poignantly:

American forces and Kurds have said they had found confirmation of the connection between Ansar and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network, including propaganda material and passports.

In their campaign to topple Sadddam, the United States had used Ansar's presence in Iraq to charge the Iraqi president was supporting terrorism, although the Islamists were not deployed in areas under his control.

Ansar's appearance coincided with the September 11 attacks on the United States. It established rigid Islamic rules in the area under its control, and launched a fierce campaign against the PUK, carrying out bloody incursions and attacks on Kurdish territory.

Kurdish estimates of Ansar's losses from the US-Kurdish onslaught at between 150 and 300 dead.

There was uncovered as well training camps with manuals discovered near the Iranian border - which harbored AQ fighters.

Atta did visit Baghdad 3 weeks before 9-11.

The Americans are not denying these links and are using them to good purpose within the US media to justify this needed war.

[SirRiff]

morgan,

half the stuff you are talking about is wacky

a) what i posted was not aimed at bush or anybody, so i dont know how you got that. i simply pointed out the document is an obvious fake by anybody in the real world. in fact what i said was

only a moron would believe this worthless paper as proof of anything. basically all the flaws that i addressed out of just common sense are signs of forgery. desperate people believe desperate things.

all you had to do is read it

reading the actual document serves no purpose if its fake .once again if you read the actually article it says..

A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show  that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in  the summer of  2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents.

so obviously, if US officials think its false, its contents are just lies anyways. isnt it obvious? it could say saddam piloted the planes on 9/11, doesnt matter, its obviously regarded as a fake by american officials. once again, if you read the article you would see the content of the lies are of no matter if its a fake.

c) actually bush has many times linked iraq and 9/11. many stupid americans have inferred this to believe that saddam was involved. poll after poll shows high numbers thinking that he was directly involved with 9/11. so its pretty obvious bush as tried to link 9/11 to iraq. even a child can see that. alot of his sidekicks have also made pretty vauge comments linking them. the fact that many americans believe the link shows bushs lies have worked. while maybe this year he said once saddam was not involved, for the last two years he has been linking 9/11 to iraq time and time again.

d) it doesnt matter who knows its false, its still false. its the same intelligence system who knew that nobody had proof of WMDs in iraq are the ones who think this document is a fake.

e) when you say there are periods that atta can not be accounted for, really what they say is

While all of Atta's movements cannot be accounted for, enough is known to make it "highly unlikely" that the September 11 ringleader could have flown off to Baghdad for a three-day work program with Iraqi intelligence, a FBI official told NEWSWEEK. For similar reasons, the bureau has long since discounted claims by Czech intelligence—and widely promoted by some Iraq hawks in the Bush administration—that Atta had flown to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent around April 8, 2001.

f) considering the newsweek guys has GOVERNMENT OFFICALS who are willing to dismiss the document as a likely forgery, its obvious the telegraph article must have been written for a reason to ignore all these suspicious aspects. the only reason that a capable person would claim as proof this document is if he was a preconceived idea.

in contrast, regardless of what newsweek thinks, the confirmation of real goverment officials makes any potenial bias a lame accusation. newsweek has the benefit of mostly disproving this article, thus its not unresonable to conclude this previous article must have ignored reality and been bad writing itself. there is no great bias in newsweek, they did thier job and got confirmation of real gov officials. after this, they make an opinion on how the telegraph got it so wrong. so its not a bias, its a conclusion, and a reasonable on, considering the information that has come to light. you cannot argu with the US gov even saying its likely a forgery.

Only a "moron" would believe what these 2 left wing media foot soldiers would say.

actually, i was more swayed by the goverment officials that newsweek cites as sources. what do you go by, how much you like the reporter? maybe you should read the article more carefully, the important part was the official sources cited, not the reporters themselves.

Get a clue, Riff. The Bush Administration is clearly trying to dissuade anyone of seeing a link between Saddam and 9/11 whenever that issue comes up.

uh no, they talked them both up to justify the war. believing anything else is just hiding your head in the sand.

Fyi, it looks like the $750,000 found on Saddam will reveal some potentially embaressing facts. Evidently the bills were brand new US Treasury issued bills with their wrappers still on. These bills will be traceable to the purchaser's identity. Very interesting story. Still developing...

wow internet speculation with a large amount of uninformed guessing...you should work for newsweek. unless osamas fingerprints are found on teh bills, its makes little different. its not like the saudi royal family/bushs best friends/terrorist funders could get a hold of hot printed US cash...there are lots of rich people in the ME who can take baths in new US bills

[KrustyKidd]

Uh Oh. Seems OBL is able to get a tape to us faster than the normal six month trip. Does this mean that he is a threat to western society again or that he has faster camels?

CLICK FOR CAMEL MAIL

The speaker, who referred to recent events - including the December capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

[KrustyKidd]

Don't know if this is news. It is to me.

A REGION INFLAMED: WEAPONS; For the Iraqis, a Missile Deal That Went Sour; Files Tell of Talks With North Korea

By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER (NYT) 1467 words

Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 11 , Column 1

ABSTRACT - Bush administration officials say computer files found in Iraq by international inspectors show Saddam Hussein's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea for two years before American invasion of Iraq; say they believe goal was to obtain full production line to manufacture, under Iraqi flag, North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around region; say negotiations were mostly conducted in Syria, apparently with knowledge of Syrian government; say Hussein discovered that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is less than fully reliable negotiating partner; say Hussein appears to have gotten nothing in return for his $10 million down payment; trail investigators have uncovered shows Iraqi officials traveled to Syria month before American invasion to demand that North Korea refund $1.9 million because it failed to meet deadlines for delivering its first shipment of goods; trail also shows that Syria was major arms-trading bazaar for Hussein government (M)

NOT MUCH MARKET FOR A TOY FACTORY I GUESS

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear KK,

Don't know if this is news. It is to me.

That is a loaded statement, to be sure. Some 'arms bazaars' do occur throught the world, regularly. One can buy almost anything, for arms manufacturers must display and sell their wares. This includes both M-16s and Exocet missiles. Even if the article were true, it doesn't mean that any laws were broken.

[KrustyKidd]

Sorry Lonius, slow day, thught it might be interesting. Saddam, North Korea, Weapons trading with Syria and all. ' North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around region.' A month before invasion while they were destroying weapons that were also capable of striking targets throughout the region. I dunno, something underhanded about it LOL.

Unless it meant that they were ' North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around region' providing they were within 150 KM. But it didn't say that so it was for that reason that I thought that it warrented a look.

Sorry.