Thanks to GW, Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Remember how this "war" started. When 19 people highjacked planes and caused the deaths of Americans in NY, DC and PA.

Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind of the scheme. The counrty for one of the few times in history was unified.

It was decided to go into the Afghanistan and find Bin Laden. I'm sad to report that the US still has not found Bin Laden, the man responsible for one of the largest atrocities ever on US soil (That's saying a lot because plenty of atrocities happened on US soil)

Instead GW uses 9/11 to avenge a personal grudge against the man who tried to kill his father. This would be icing on the cake if this man had something to do with 9/11 but there is no evidence linking Saddam with 9/11.

We all know this so let me focus on why "The Base" is in Iraq.

We know that Saddam and BL were not friends. In fact that opposite. The man that is now the leader of Al Qaeda was an ememy of Bin Laden. So how in the hell did we get to this point of Al Queda being in Iraq.

Because GW' while making his "Darth Vader" attempt at using the force (I'm a big Star Wars fan) made everything that the Muslims and Arabs we're saying about the US and Britain look TRUE.

Instead of people being concerned with justice and world security, the US and Britain is seen as a great occupier and as nothing more than imperalist that are trying to change their society culture and religion.

Faced with these "facts" and a percieved common enemy, Al Qaeda saw an oppotunity to cash in on the hatred of the west generated by the war in the hearts and minds of young Iraq people and people from neighboring nations.

While Bin Laden should be the focal point of this "war on terror" he is now an afterthought. Al Qaeda is in places it has never been and now instead of a rash of people running to join the US Armed Forces, parents and schools are refusing to let recruiters in.

Dr. Howard Dean was right, we are no safer with Saddam in custody than we were when he was free.

Are you serious?

And you actually claim to be an educated person?

Two words for the uneducated ACLU lawyer wannabe:

Salman Pak

....and if you even think of going to your librul mediamatters....they claim Zarkawi isn't even tied to Al Qaeda...AT ALL....and "debunk" the notion that Salman Pak was a terrorist training site....by quoting a *ahem* New Yorker piece by an anti-war journalist that uses conflicting claims by Iraqi military and intelligence defectors including Sabah Khodada who ran the facility for 6 months (Saddam was training terrorists at Salman Pak) .....and an ex-US CIA station chief (Saddam was training ANTI-terrorist groups before 1991...you know...all those terrorist events in Iraq....ONE airliner had been hijacked and downed by an Iranian in 1986), but the site could've been used for terrorist training afterwards (by his own words). Like THEY EVER got close enough to know what was going on there. According to Khodada, the site trained Iraqi goverment forces AND non-Iraq terrorists in different parts.....the terrorists receiving training from Iraqi government officials and non-Iraqis to perform assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism.

....and YOU claim to be an educated person? Awaiting your irrelevant one-liners and ad hominems....

http://mediamatters.org/items/200409240011 http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/terrorists/abu-musab-al-zarqawi/

Thing is Marge we really dont know anything about him.

"rotten.com"

Pretty impeccable source there Ummy. Looks like you won again.

Now go off to Demented eUnuchs and claim another victory.

That's not a "debunking" like the librul mediamatters portrays it to be. Just because AZ set up a camp away from other AQ camps (there WERE more than one AQ camp) means nada. Would YOU set up one large AQ camp or smaller ones, knowing that America had lobbed cruise-missiles at your camps in the past and more than likely would do so again? They've got nothing but questions and blinders.....they WANT AZ to have nothing to do with AQ and theyr'e grasping at straws to try to show it.

As for rotten.com.....did yuou even read the piece? Did you see that part where Zarkawi fought with AQ against the USSR? We may not know everything about the man.....but he's tied to AQ all the way back to the inception of AQ in 1988.

Pretty impeccable source there Ummy.

That site is awesome.

BTW in case you really arejust that clueless it doesnt matter if he is officially AQ or not(he is a terrorist AQ or not).

What matters is if he was working with Bin Laden at the time of 9/11 or if he was working with Saddam.

Shit man you and your ilk really are that in need of clue.

Come on...you can do a better ad hominem than that. Actually, since there's ZERO evidence that Zarkawi had anything to do with 9-11 OR an operational relationships with Saddam....nice red herring. Undisputed facts thus far are that he was running AQ operations in Afghanistan during the actions of the U.S. against the Taliban (maybe not ALL actions, but that was his task...to run operations in Afghanistan)....got wounded during the actions in Afghanistan......sought medical treatment in Iraq and has been in Iraq ever since.

What matters is if he was working with Bin Laden at the time of 9/11 or if he was working with Saddam.

What a genius! Yep, that makes all the difference in the world. If this murderous maniac was only working for Saddam then he should be ignored. Only Bin Laden's killers matter, right?

Don't breed, you've polluted the gene pool enough.

"Thanks to GW, Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Remember how this "war" started. When 19 people highjacked planes and caused the deaths of Americans in NY, DC and PA."

Exactly. Let look at this.

If AL Qaeda wasn't there in Iraq prior, than the Iraq War, besdies eliminating Hussein as a terorirst threat, was pure genius! Think about it, an Al Qaeda magnet, and not only that, instead of civilians being targeted, we have our US miltiary, the best trained in the world, taking them out. This is absolute brilliance.

Of course, there is proof that Al Qaeda was in Iraq prior to the invasion.

Two words 911 Commission report....CONCLUSION...SADDAM HAD NO TIES TO AL QAEDA..nuff said..

hey Napolean,

ever read the commission?

it's contrary to your assertion..

go to Barnes and Noble, spend $9.95 +tax, and read it.

Well I have read it and I also read this report by the washington post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

Do you know something that I don't know? Unless you are going to give the lame Zarqarwi argument about how he was in Iraq during some time in his life. Hey guess what...Al Qaeda has been found in Florida and Ohio...should we bomb those states too???

I've posted 3 parts of a continuing series that covers Saddam's connection to terrorism and al-qaeda....there is lots of links

http://floppingaces.blogspot.com/2005/05/connection.html

http://floppingaces.blogspot.com/2005/05/connection-part-ii.html

http://floppingaces.blogspot.com/2005/05/connection-part-iii.html

You misread me RR. Probably intentionally, I wasnt making some sort of dichotomy.

Curt

I hate to break it to you but those are web blogs which have as much credibility as a Rumsfield talking about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

some would argue that blogs are more reputable than say, MSM, like Washington Post perhaps?

Epoch writes:

some would argue that blogs are more reputable than say, MSM, like Washington Post perhaps?

That is utterly laughable. Yes, your right, blogs which have no way of checking their credibility and have no associated agenda behind them are REALLY credible...Rolls eyes and looks for someone that knows the difference between reviewed and peer reviewed.....

Napoleon,

let's us look back on a few stories from the past year. We have the Rather-gate memo scandal, and the Newsweek Koran desecration as two big stories that the MSM organization either faked a story, or refused to corroborate it.

If we go back further, we can examine Jayson Blair, who literally made up stories for the Old gray Lady.

Want to talk about credibility some more?

some would argue that blogs are more reputable than say, MSM, like Washington Post perhaps?

Most Blogs do nothing but link to and comment on stories from regular media sources like the Washington Post.

Ok I guess it is my turn to quote the "truth" from some blogs. Information I got from blogs:

The earth is 6000 years old. 9-11 didn't really happen. The Oklahoma city bombing was done by Al Qaeda.

Wow, and we really know how much truth are in those statements. Yes, there are news reports that have been proven to be false, but the fact is that no system is perfect and eventually someone will make a mistake. However, I would rather get my news from a professional news media person who makes a mistake and corrects it, than some guy on the internet with an agenda who thinks he is always right. Getting your news from blogs is like getting an unbiased report from Rush Limbaugh.

Aaron, this is one of the lamer threads i've seen on here. Not many people dispute that there were al-Qaeda in the north before the war, and there may have even been in the south, but there was never any evidence that the Iraqi government and al-qaeda were working together, and there were many reasons to believe they were NOT working together.

The quote you referrence is talking about the group "al-qaeda in iraq" which was formed in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion. I assume you're a smart guy, kind of puzzling that you'd post something so ingnorant.

Bloggers who claim to be more reliable, accurate and truthful than the MSM are like a high school kid who hits .450 and claims to be better than major league hitters.

Tom.....ever heard of Salman Pak....you know...the GOVERNMENT training facility 15 miles south of Baghdad that was training terrorists in assassinations, airplane and bus and train hijacking...kidnapping, etc.......according to the man that RAN the facility and other military and intelligence defectors?

Bloggers who claim to be more reliable, accurate and truthful than the MSM are like a high school kid who hits .450 and claims to be better than major league hitters.

Obviously, the difference between a high school kid's batting average and a major league hitters average is the pitcher.

But as far as 'blogs vs. MSM' go, they're both taking the same pitches, so the batting averages can be compared.

They're both covering the same news. The same Iraq, the same election, the same whatever. So the idea that one might claim to be more 'accurate' then another (accuracy is, after all, a very empirical and measurable concept) seems plausible to me.

Sarge,

I have heard of Salman Pak, but don't know much past what I've read on a couple of right-wing blogs. I've looked for a Philedelphia Inquirer article I've seen mentioned, but couldn't find it.

It's been mentioned that this camp is the missing link between al-qaeda and Iraq and Sept. 11, and that a judge's ruling in Manhattan confirms it, but I was unable to find any stories on that judge's ruling, and the blogs didn't explain what the actual ruling is.

Do you know anything about that?

Also, My issue has always been with how and when we went to war. I was not one of those who was against any war in Iraq.

As far as I've seen Salman Pak was not raised as a reason for the war. And even now, I can't find a al-qaeda/iraq connection at Salman Pak. I've seen people say it is a connecting point, but have not seen any hard evidence of that.

Right now, I have seen enough on Salman Pak to know what it's signifigance is.

If it was Iraq's terrorist training camp, that certainly would have bolstered Bush's case for the war. If it was a terrorist camp with al-qaeda affiliation, it would have bolstered it even futher, as would have a 9/11 connection.

Again, though, none of this was presented before the war, and not I see this Salman Pak tossed around as the "missing link," but not much hard evidence about what it exactly was.

Any additional info on it would be appreciatied.

Since when are we looking for al qaeda in Iraq anyway? Last I saw we didn't specifically go after just al qaeda, but islamist terrorism, including groups LIKE (but not called) al quaeda.

When I saw the topic of this post, I thought it was going to be about recent claims by King Hussein of Jordan and Iyad Allawi.

Jordan officials have as much as said Zarqawi was getting shelter in Iraq (from a death sentance in Jordan) long before the Iraq war. Yes, he was NOT a part of AQ then. But he did have his own terrorist 'group' that might as well have been AQ by a different name.

Jordan has so much as said they knew he was there, and knew where he was, but Iraq officials refused to apprehend him.

RIGHT THERE you have Iraq harboring islamist terrorists.

In addition to that, the security files of Saddam are still being examined, so who knows what will come of that. But Allawi claims that Saddam had several meetings with AQ's #2, and wanted to deal with AQ. (It was Bin Laden who didn't care much for Saddam, not vice-versa).

I don't think theres enough out yet to prove a link, but with more time there may well yet be. Oh, how I will laugh at Um Yeah if it turns out Saddam had deep connections.

Actually Tom...I'm not sure that there's a case that AQ was using Salman Pak....just that it was used by "unidentified terrorist groups" to conduct terrorist training.....according to a PBS interview with a former facility manager.....but he specifically said he didn't know if anyone in the terrorist groups being trained with the assistance of the government were AQ.....AND even if there WERE connections to AQ (as there were in other areas of Iraq)...THAT doesn't mean that these AQ thugs had any ties to 9-11....just between Saddam and terrorists. I don't think any reasonable person can deny that Saddam was funding terrorists....and allowing them to use areas of his country to train on.

I'm not trying to find any sort of missing link in the reasons to go to war or not.....just pointing that terrorists were training in Iraq under the wing of Saddam before we invaded.....and the current AQ leader had sought medical treatment and asylum in Iraq where he's been since being wounded in our actions in Afghanistan.

how I will laugh at Um Yeah if it turns out Saddam had deep connections.

Yeah just like had those WMDs and Aluminum Tubes, yeah thats the ticket.

That's called 2 red herrings in a single sentence. Good job.

Thanks, wish you could make at least one post worthy of praise.

Praise....yeah, that's what I'm looking for from illogical dinks like you. How about not turning everyh conversation you "join" into a stream of ad hominems and red herrings for a change? Don't think it's possible, but gotta strive for SOMEthing.