Jump to content

Iraq, and the things the press isn't telling you


Guest
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 126
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Hey, why are you guys always calling CNN the Comunist News Network. Yesterday Bush had a big thing on the Iraq war. A speech. No major network broadcast it at prime time. Maybe its just me but I think hearing what a president who, so far, in my oppinion isnt doing the greatest of job, has to say. The only two networks I know of to broadcast the speech live were CNN and Fox News Network. I assume you call CNN Comunist News Network because it doesn't support your political view. It's to liberal or whatever. Im thinking that you might be wrong now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

quote:

Originally posted by Cadrian Almondo:

Hey, why are you guys always calling CNN the Comunist News Network. Yesterday Bush had a big thing on the Iraq war. A speech. No major network broadcast it at prime time. Maybe its just me but I think hearing what a president who, so far, in my oppinion isnt doing the greatest of job, has to say. The only two networks I know of to broadcast the speech live were CNN and Fox News Network. I assume you call CNN Comunist News Network because it doesn't support your political view. It's to liberal or whatever. Im thinking that you might be wrong now.

Nope

Communist New's Network came from me when I first came to this board, as far as I know I was the one who introduced this board to those three words

I call them that cause they NEVER tell the truth, they're alway's twisting the story's and CREATING the news. I'm an intern for Fox and the one thing my boss has told me is this

"NEVER, create the news. In the short run it'll bring people, in the long run, however, it'll kill you"

And CNN is lossing it's subcribers, while FOX is gaining in subcribers.

If you take offense to it then just ignore it. However until CNN start's showing some creditable evidence that they've changed, which they hadn't, I'll continue to call 'Communist New's Network' cause that's what they, they support the enemy and everything else. There Anti - American, and don't take my word for it just read some of the stuff they say.

Edit: for the record, CNN didn't show the speech live. FOX new's is the only station that showed it LIVE (there's a difference between LIVE and RECORDED)

[ 05-25-2004, 06:38 PM: Message edited by: Kalshion ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CNN used to be called the Clinton News Network for several reasons: 1) their favorable treatment of Clinton, 2) Rick Kaplan (CNN President) was an FOB and Clinton operative.

Now, calling them the Communist News Network is probably due to CNN: 1) suppressing bad news in Cuba in order to maintain the only western news bureau in the country, 2) suppressing bad news in Iraq in order to maintain the only western news bureau in the country, 3) recognizing that their new business model emphasizes their overseas reporting more than their domestic reporting, especially when getting beaten by FNC in the ratings.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From the Wall Street Journal: Saddam's Files - New evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda

quote:

Thursday, May 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

One thing we've learned about Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein is that the former dictator was a diligent record keeper. Coalition forces have found--literally--millions of documents. These papers are still being sorted, translated and absorbed, but they are already turning up new facts about Saddam's links to terrorism.

We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix. But John Ashcroft's press conference yesterday reminds us that the terror threat remains, and it seems especially irresponsible for journalists not to be open to new evidence. If the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn't it have also missed Saddam's terror links?

One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.

It is possible that the Ahmed Hikmat Shakir listed on the Fedayeen rosters is a different man from the Iraqi of the same name with the proven al Qaeda connections. His identity awaits confirmation by al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody or perhaps by other captured documents. But our sources tell us there is no questioning the authenticity of the three Fedayeen rosters. The chain of control is impeccable. The documents were captured by the U.S. military and have been in U.S. hands ever since.

As others have reported, at the time of the summit Shakir was working at the Kuala Lumpur airport, having obtained the job through an Iraqi intelligence agent at the Iraqi embassy. The four-day al Qaeda meeting was attended by Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi, who were at the controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Also on hand were Ramzi bin al Shibh, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant and mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Shakir left Malaysia on January 13, four days after the summit concluded.

That's not the only connection between Shakir and al Qaeda. The Iraqi next turned up in Qatar, where he was arrested on September 17, 2001, six days after the attacks in the U.S. A search of his pockets and apartment uncovered such information as the phone numbers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers' safe houses and contacts. Also found was information pertaining to a 1995 al Qaeda plot to blow up a dozen commercial airliners over the Pacific.

After a brief detention, our friends the Qataris inexplicably released Shakir, and on October 21 he flew to Amman, Jordan. The Jordanians promptly arrested him, but under pressure from the Iraqis (and Amnesty International, which questioned his detention) and with the acquiescence of the CIA, they let him go after three months. He was last seen heading home to Baghdad.

One of the mysteries of postwar Iraq is why the Bush Administration and our $40-billion-a-year intelligence services haven't devoted more resources to probing the links between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. In his new book, "The Connection," Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard puts together all of the many strands of intriguing evidence that the two did do business together. There's no single "smoking gun," but there sure is a lot of smoke.

The reason to care goes beyond the prewar justification for toppling Saddam and relates directly to our current security. U.S. officials believe that American civilian Nicholas Berg was beheaded in Iraq recently by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, who is closely linked to al Qaeda and was given high-level medical treatment and sanctuary by Saddam's government. The Baathists killing U.S. soldiers are clearly working with al Qaeda now; Saddam's files might show us how they linked up in the first place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please don't believe all of these deceptive comments. the bush administration WANTS you to believe that there is a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It simply does not exist. This was their lame basis for going to war with Iraq and now that it's back-fired on them they are looking for a way out. Please do not give up your right to think for yourself just because Fox Network does not want you to do that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

quote:

Originally posted by El Che:

Please don't believe all of these deceptive comments. the bush administration WANTS you to believe that there is a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It simply does not exist. This was their lame basis for going to war with Iraq and now that it's back-fired on them they are looking for a way out. Please do not give up your right to think for yourself just because Fox Network does not want you to do that.

Sorry El Che,

It DOES exist, HAS existed, and now, it NO longer exists, because we took out Saddam.

THe link has always existed, we just haven't found the concrete proof, but it is there, and when the smiking gun is found, you will STILL say that the evidence does not exist, just as you will continue to say that the WMD's don't exist, even though a Mortar full of Sarin gas was almost used as a roadside bomb, cyanide salts have been found in a terrorist stronghold, and Jordan was almost attacked with chemical weapons that most certainly came from Iraqi stockpiles.

So, the link to Al Quaeda DOES exist, and the WMD's DO exist.

Whoops....

tap those heels together, and keep repeating your mantra, but guess what, that mantra is WRONG.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

quote:

The Baathists killing U.S. soldiers are clearly working with al Qaeda now; Saddam's files might show us how they linked up in the first place.

duh...maybe it has something to do with the fact, that we have used them both for target practice, for more than 12 years now.....duh.....just maybe

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From The Sound of Silence: Iraq's WMDs Found: (lots of links in the source)

quote:

May 28, 2004

by Joe Mariani

After spending more than a year attacking the Bush administration daily for their supposed failure to produce the WMDs that everyone -- including the United Nations, as well as most leading Democrats -- believed Saddam had hidden, the Left has suddenly gone strangely silent on the subject. The "mainstream" media has been tiptoeing around the discovery of a 155-mm mortar shell containing Sarin gas in Iraq, the contents of which have been confirmed. The shell was used as part of an improvised explosive device (IED) on a road near the Baghdad International Airport, and exploded as it was being disarmed.

The shell contained three liters of Sarin -- nearly a gallon. It was a type of shell designed to mix chemical components during flight, which was why the explosion didn't kill anyone (though two soldiers were treated for exposure). Three liters of Sarin is enough, if the components are mixed properly, to realistically kill hundreds, and potentially thousands. A concentration of 100 milligrams of Sarin per cubic meter of air is enough to constitute a lethal dose for half the people breathing it within one minute.

This type of chemical warfare shell had never been declared by Iraq -- it was not even known that Iraq had ever made them. The 1999 UNSCOM report on Iraq reported that thirty binary/Sarin shells were known to exist, and stated that all had been accounted for. According to UNSCOM, "Iraq developed a crude type of binary munition, whereby the final mixing of the two precursors to the agent was done inside the munition just before delivery." Someone actually had to physically pour the components of the Sarin (or other type of G-series nerve agent) into the shells before they could be fired. At least, that's how the ones we knew about worked.

So, a previously-unknown type of artillery shell is found in Iraq, containing an actual, verifiable chemical weapon. This is front page news, right? Should we expect apologies from formerly doubting Liberals? Newspapers filled with retractions from prominent Democrats? Conciliatory visits to President Bush from Jaques Chirac and Gerhardt Schroeder? Not so fast. Remember: it's an election year. Liberals, Democrats, terrorists and appeasers all want President Bush to lose the election so everyone can get back to business as usual. Terrorists want to get back to their implacable war against Western civilisation, and the others want to get back to trying to placate them. The media, as long as we let them get away with it, will only run stories that attack President Bush and undermine support for him. In fact, Liberals already have their spin on this Sarin find ready to go. The vast majority of them -- when you can get them to admit that the Sarin and the shell are real -- argue that it doesn't matter for one of four "reasons."

A. The shell is old, from before the 1991 Gulf War, so it's not what we were looking for.

Since the cease-fire that suspended the Gulf War depended on Saddam's handing over to the UN "[a]ll chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities", this shell is precisely what we were looking for, especially if it predates 1991. This shell and others like it is why the UN passed 17 resolutions demanding that Saddam disarm. No matter how old it was, it was still lethal. There is no statute of limitations on weapons of mass destruction.

B. There is only one shell, not a stockpile, so it doesn't mean anything.

This one shell contained enough WMD material to potentially kill as many people as died on 9/11, all by itself. Is it logical to assume that this is the only one in existence -- or just wishful thinking? The fact is that we still don't know how much Sarin Iraq actually produced. "At first, Iraq told UNSCOM that it had produced an estimated 250 tons of tabun and 812 tons of sarin. In 1995, Iraq changed its estimates and reported it had produced only 210 tons of tabun and 790 tons of sarin." (Yes, that's tons.) At the very least, it tells us that we haven't nearly finished looking for the WMDs that Saddam was supposed to surrender, and didn't. Besides... a shell containing mustard gas was also found. Well, maybe there were only two WMD shells in all of Iraq.

C. Just because Saddam had WMDs after all, it doesn't mean Bush didn't lie about them.

As ridiculous as it sounds, this appears to be the instinctive, defensive reaction of many Liberals to this news. They so badly need to believe that President Bush lied in order to legitimise their hatred of him that they're capable of this sort of twisted reasoning. The rationale seems to be that WMDs don't count if they aren't exactly where the CIA told us they were, as if they couldn't be moved.

D. The terrorists didn't even know it was a chemical shell.

Well, they do now. And they know where they found it, too.

We need to redouble our efforts to stop the terrorists and find Saddam's WMDs, before they're used to derail the new Iraqi government's formation. The media's refusal to give this news the coverage it deserves can only be due to a calculated attempt to reduce American support for our efforts in Iraq, including that of tracking down Saddam's banned weapons. The Left's deliberate silence on this subject for the purpose of influencing our election only helps our enemies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Here's a new one. According to this article, France was responsible for the forged Niger uranium documents so as to undermine the American and British claim for war and to protect their business interests in Iraq and Niger.

Italy blames France for Niger uranium claim

quote:

Italy blames France for Niger uranium claim

By Bruce Johnston in Brussels and Kim Willsher in Paris

(Filed: 05/09/2004)

A row has broken out between France and Italy over whose intelligence service is to blame for the Niger uranium controversy, which led to Britain and America claiming wrongly that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy material for nuclear bombs.

Italian diplomats say that France was behind forged documents which at first appeared to prove that Iraq was seeking "yellow-cake" uranium in Niger - evidence used by Britain and America to promote the case for last year's Gulf war.

They say that France's intelligence services used an Italian-born middle-man to circulate a mixture of genuine and bogus documents to "trap" the two leading proponents of war with Saddam into making unsupportable claims.

They have passed to The Sunday Telegraph a photograph which they claim shows the Italian go-between, sometimes known as "Giacomo" - who cannot be identified for legal reasons - meeting a senior French intelligence officer based in Brussels. "The French hoped that the bulk of the documents would be exposed as false, since many of them obviously were," an Italian official said.

"Their aim was to make the allies look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war."

According to an account given to The Sunday Telegraph, France was driven by "a cold desire to protect their privileged, dominant trading relationship with Saddam, which in the case of war would have been at risk".

The allegation, which has infuriated French officials, follows reports last month that "Giacomo" claimed to have been unwittingly used by Sismi, Italy's foreign intelligence service, to circulate the false documents.

The papers found their way to the CIA and to MI6, and in September 2002 Tony Blair accused Saddam of seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from an undisclosed African country - in fact, Niger. President George W Bush made a similar claim in his State of the Union address to Congress four months later, using information passed to him by MI6.

The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed doubts over the documents' authenticity, however, and in March 2003 declared them false.

The suggestion that Italy, driven by its government's support for America, had forged the documents to help to justify the war in Iraq, has caused a furore and has now led to the revelation of new information about "Giacomo".

The Sunday Telegraph has been told that the man has a criminal record for extortion and fraud, but draws a monthly salary of Ôé¼4,000 (┬ú2,715) from the DGSE - the French equivalent of MI6 - for which he is said to have worked for the past five years.

He had an expense account and received bonuses in return for carrying out orders allegedly given him by the head of the French services' operations in Belgium.

"Giacomo" could not be reached for comment on the claims last week at either his home in Formello, a suburb on the northern edge of Rome, or at his second home in Luxembourg.

He is said to be wanted for questioning over the Niger affair by Italian investigating magistrates, and is believed to be in the United States.

He is said to have received an 18-month prison sentence in 1985 for threatening violence against a bank manager in an extortion attempt. More recently he was apparently reported by Carabinieri for using stationery forged to appear to be from the Italian prime minister's office. He is said to have previously worked for Italian military intelligence, but was "kicked out" for running up debts with illegal loan sharks.

"Giacomo" was allegedly first engaged by the French secret service to investigate genuine fears of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He collected a dossier of documents - some real, some forged by a diplomat - by offering large sums of money to Niger officials.

American intelligence officials were further misled over Saddam's supposed attempt to buy uranium when France - which effectively controls mining in Niger - told Washington that it had reason to believe that Iraq was trying to do so. "Only later did Paris inform Washington that its belief had been based on the same documents that had tricked the Americans and the British," an Italian diplomat said.

"This was la grande trappola [the big trap]. The Americans were now convinced by the French that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium. They thought the French must be right, since not even a gram of uranium in Niger could be shifted without their knowledge."

British officials still say that the claim about Iraqi uranium purchases rested on a second source, not just the now-discredited documents. Intelligence officials from some other Western countries now believe, however, that the second source was also France - part of a "sinister trap" for Mr Blair.

French intelligence was asked by The Sunday Telegraph for a public comment on the allegations against it, but has yet to give one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem I have with this is that France would have been taking a big chance by providing evidence to support a war they did not want us to fight.

It might seem a bit more conceivable if after the US and Britain accepted the evidence, France had come out and showed how bogus it was. They didn't as far as I know. They pretty much said they don't support the war, period.

Why would they go through all the trouble of manufacturing the document and never raise doubts about it before we went to war? Kind of self-defeating. You'd have to believe their intent was to make us look like fools after the fact, which negates the whole concept of using the information to discredit the war and prevent it from happening in order to protect their interests.

Besides, one would hope that in matters of such importance, our intelligence community would have done all in their power to validate the information. Surely we knew of Frances ties with Saddam well before we decided to go to Iraq, and that alone should have cast doubts on any information they provided.

In any event maybe France did do this, but we fell for it and two wrongs don't make a right.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

quote:

Why would they go through all the trouble of manufacturing the document and never raise doubts about it before we went to war? Kind of self-defeating.

You'd have to search here and elsewhere for the clues that I previously posted, because I don't feel like doing that now, but the gist of one line of reasoning is that the French motivation was not so much about the United States and Iraq, but was really about the European Union and who would dominate.

The alternative thinking is that France was motivated to prevent Britain (and Tony Blair) from exerting deciding influence over the direction of the EU. Apparently, there were several competing views about how the EU should develop. The French were in one camp, and the English were in another. The French actions over Iraq were ultimately driven by their long-term desire to compete with Britian over who will dominate the EU.

That isn't to say that, secondarily, there weren't economic interests in Iraq and the UN at stake. But the long-term strategy was around Blair and the EU, not Bush.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, indeed, France sees itself as the leader of the EU and Britain, being stronger militarily and economically is actually the most likely to win that position.

France is doing and will do whatever it can to make sure that when everything shakes out, it is the unopposed leader of the EU.

The grand scheme of Hitler, of a unified Europe under his control failed, but 60 years later, France and Germany are doing it together without firing a shot.

They believe that they are the leaders of this new Union and no one is going to get in their way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

France is a bunch of cowards with the white flag

The moment someone interven's and threaten's them they'll give up there position to the person who threatened them, so I wouldn't be counting on them much..

And just think, I'm half french to..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 8 months later...

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Schacher:

Has anybody seen this recent Powerpoint slideshow from Iraq?


Most of it is to make people dead, and illegal in most countries?

YA THINK?

Damn, and these people actually believe that these nujobs were not a danger?

Oh, and yeah, that Iraq did NOT have WMD's?

COME ON?!!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share


×
×
  • Create New...