Watch them not read the facts!!!! Watch!


Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda


March 13, 2008 2:44 PM

ABC News has requested and obtained a copy of the Pentagon study which shows Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda.

It's government report the White House didn't want you to read: yesterday the Pentagon canceled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's availability and didn't make the report available via email or online.

Based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion and thousands of hours of interrogations of former officials in Saddam's government now in US custody, the government report is the first official acknowledgment from the US military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to al Qaeda.

The Bush administration apparently didn't want the study to get any attention. The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website yesterday, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report was made available to those who asked for it, and was sent via overnight mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

Asked yesterday why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."

Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/rapidreport/2008/03/report-shows-no.html

Shoot, I doubletapped and posted the last one twice.

Just remember after WWII things were not rosey in Japan and Germany. However, unlike then you did not have an ever present media getting news and such to us in mere minutes, if not seconds, from when it happened. Most news of the reconstruction in both never got back to the states back then until days, weeks, months, years, or never at all.

As well, you said in your post a statement about signing an agreement on troop withdrawal. There are two issues with that. Iraq has stated they wanted a continued security detail, which would maintain some US presence there in some capacity, though much much more limited than the current state. Whatever that means to them I do not know.

mnhiker ......

thanks ..... by the way, you look great. why don't you run for president? bet you could win!

I am pondering the same. McCain has a young, beautiful rich wife and all the beer he can drink. I believe 99.9 per cent of men would say it is the perfect marriage.

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There are definite connections of Hussein and Al-Qaeda:

http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/oil_for_osama.htm

Oil for Osama

The United Nations’ Oil for Food program scandal continues to swell.

Recall that documents discovered after the liberation of Iraq revealed that the U.N.’s self-described flagship humanitarian program was wracked with bribery, kick-backs, smuggling, under the table deals and influence peddling. Among other revelations, evidence uncovered in Baghdad implicated long-time U.N. official Benon Sevan who was responsible for managing the program and reported directly to Secretary General Kofi Annan……………………….

However, the documents show that Saddam was able to thoroughly corrupt the program and use it to line his own pockets, fund purchases of illegal weapons, pay off officials in a variety of nations and organizations and stash hidden cash in banks around the world.

Saddam’s booty resulted largely from a kick-back scheme involving oil sales under the program. Iraq would sell oil to Oil for Food contractors at below-market prices. ………………..

Coverage of the scandal, led by journalist Claudia Rossett, has forced the U.N. to respond. Last month, Secretary Annan named former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to lead a U.N. investigation into the matter. ………………….

On May 2, Tim Russert questioned Secretary General Annan on Meet the Press about a letter from Sevan’s U.N. office to the Oil for Food contractor responsible for overseeing Saddam’s oil exports.

The day after Russert revealed the letter, Rossett and the Wall Street Journal reported that they had obtained another letter from Sevan’s office. It was addressed to a Swiss company named Cotecna, responsible for inspecting humanitarian goods shipped into Iraq under the Oil for Food program. Rossett reports that Cotecna employed Secretary Annan’s son for nearly three years before winning its Oil for Food contract. According to the Journal, the letter warns Cotecna that all "documents and all other data compiled or received by the Contractor … shall be treated as confidential and shall be delivered only to United Nations authorized officials."……………….

Even more disturbing than the U.N.’s shameful response and the complicity of supposed U.S. allies France and Russia in the scandal is the possibility that Oil for Food money funded AL QAEDA and other terrorist organizations.

Rossett, reporting in National Review, recently detailed two possible links between the proceeds from the Oil for Food program and organizations with known links to AL QUAEDA and she’s careful to leave open the possibility of many more as-yet undiscovered connections.

The first runs from an Oil for Food oil buyer through a front company in Liechtenstein to a bank in the Bahamas called Bank Al Taqwa. In November 2001, both the U.S. government and the U.N. publicly identified both the front company and Bank Al Taqwa as belonging to AL QAEDA, and revealed that both the company and the bank had definitive links to two known major AL QAEDA financiers.

The second ran through a now-defunct Swiss company called Delta Services, also an Oil for Food oil buyer. Delta Services was a subsidiary of a Saudi company which had close ties to the TALIBAN during the height AL QAEDA’s involvement in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

That Saddam viewed AL QAEDA’s interest to be parallel with his own — and sought to fund their efforts — is no great logical leap. We already know that he had previously funded terrorist organizations like HAMAS, and his contempt for the United States is clearly established. But the possibility that Saddam could have provided funding to AL QAEDA and other terrorists using proceeds of Oil for Food sales is incredibly disturbing.
Consider this: Osama bin Laden is believed to have funded AL QAEDA with about $300 million of family money. During its eight-year life, more than $111 billion flowed through the Oil for Food program. Bin Laden’s initial contribution constitutes a mere three tenths of one percent of the total program — a mere rounding error. If Saddam succeeded in routing only a few hundred million to AL QAEDA, he provided funding for sophisticated terrorist operations for decades to come.

It’s essential that the U.S. learn to what degree French and Russian opposition to its intervention in Iraq was motivated by Saddam’s payoffs. And it’s time for the U.N. to stop clamping down and start opening up.

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Oil-for-Food Programme
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Oil-for-Food Programme, established by the United Nations in 1995 (under UN Security Council Resolution 986)[1] and terminated in late 2003, was intended to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to rebuild its military.

The programme was introduced by United States President Bill Clinton's administration in 1995, as a response to arguments that ordinary Iraqi citizens were inordinately affected by the international economic sanctions aimed at the demilitarisation of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, imposed in the wake of the first Gulf War. The sanctions were discontinued on November 21, 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the humanitarian functions turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority.[1]
As the programme ended, there were revelations of corruption involving the funds…………………………..

Allegedly used to finance Al-Qaeda.

The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department and the Oil-for-Food Programme allegedly involved AL QAEDA finance operations. FOX News broke the story that Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian official in the UN Procurement Department, was involved; he later resigned and pled guilty to corruption charges. One link was to Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a man designated as a terrorist financier by the US and the UN. The UN has named Nasreddin as a man "belonging to or affiliated with AL QAEDA." Petra Navigation Group was a company that was on the blacklist of firms blocked from doing business with the U.S. for sanctions-busting activities designed to help Saddam's regime

Now, sit there and say that Al-Quada was never involved with Iraq, Saddam Hussein...

Yes, I omitted a lot of material. The links are provided if you want to read for yourself. I see no reason to put all of that in this post, as this post is intended to show DEFINITE connections with Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Right on!

Who watches/listens to Keith Oberman? I tried watching his cable show about a half dozen times, but all he does is cut up Bill O'Reilly from FOX. What is the deal there? Did O'Reilly steal Oberman's job or what?

I think they secretly get together for drinks after their shows.

Who buys?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Just my perception of others really. Ya the democrats don't seem to be doing a lot of anything right now, I'm kinda embarrassed to be a liberal.

i guess the people are paying big time to update iraq's oil drilling and pumping technology

not to mention the tax dollars bn spent as well

paying is an ongoing verb not past tents (for spetlling police)

The current president is feeding off the American belief that a rich American is worth 1000 poor Americans, and a poor American is worth more than 1000 lives from other countries. If the majority of Americans didn't believe this than Mr. Bush would have been impeached already.

President Ron Paul and VP Jim Webb....yeah im asking a bit much, but wouldn't that be cool?

I don't doubt his military valor at all, but what does that have to do with his ability to lead a country?
(honest question, not rhetorical)

I would rather be dead, damned and rotting in hell.

Lindyy

Even if that video exists it could be taken out of context. Not to mention it could be some renegade soldiers. Again I say that if we just wanted to run wild and kill people there would have been quicker and cheaper alternatives.

I think Lindy is secretly Nancy Pelosi!!

I agree whole hartedly...talk doesnt get one elected..rigging the elections gets one elected.. bet you dollar to donuts Republicans win the presidency and everyone is gonna be left scratching their heads like back with Gore/Bush.

Lindyy...!!! Kiss, kiss....