"Bush campaign ads using team"

[Thecla]

If you are waiting for the video showing OBL and Saddam discussing how to best use Iraq's WMD stockpile on terror campaigns then you are right -- this evidence and intelligence is flimsy.

Yup, I'll be waiting a long time, especially since Iraq had no stockpiles of WMDs.

As for the point; a connection between Iraq and OBL -- I'll be looking for the video evidence sufficient to convince you. Even then, I think you would still believe it to be forged. This court case is interesting in its linkages, IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA - 9/11 Victims versus OBL, Al Queda, Taliban, Afghanistan and Iraq

Care to offer any substantiation of the many "reported" "facts" here (nearly all of them unsupported or contradicted by the 9/11 commission report)? What is your estimate of the BS% of the following "Statement of Facts"?

23.            On information and belief, Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the hijackers also received material support and assistance from Iraq, by and through its officials, agents, and/or employees, to carry out terrorist attacks on the United States, including the September 11, 2001 attacks.

26.            Between April 25 and May 1, 1998, two of Bin Laden’s senior military commanders, Muhammad Abu-Islam and Abdallah Qassim, reportedly visited Baghdad for discussions with Saddam Hussein’s son -- Qusay Hussein -- the “czar” of Iraqi intelligence matters.  Qusay Hussein’s participation in the meetings highlights the importance of the talks in both symbolic and practical terms.  As a direct result of these meetings, Iraq reportedly made commitments to provide training, intelligence, clandestine Saudi border crossings, and weapons and explosives to support Al Qaeda.

27.            By mid-June, 1998, operatives of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda reportedly were at the al-Nasiriyah training camp in Iraq receiving instruction and training from Iraqi intelligence and military officials on reconnaissance and targeting American facilities and installations for terrorist attacks.  Another group of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda operatives from Saudi Arabia reportedly were trained by intelligence officials in Iraq to smuggle weapons and explosives into Saudi Arabia, and, upon returning to Saudi Arabia, successfully smuggled weapons and explosives into that country.  A third group of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda operatives reportedly received a month of sophisticated guerrilla operations training from Iraqi intelligence officials later in the Summer of 1998.

28.            Bin Laden reportedly sought to strengthen and reinforce the support he and Al Qaeda  received from Iraq.  In mid-July 1998, Bin Laden reportedly sent Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian co-founder of Al Qaeda, to Iraq to meet with senior Iraqi officials, including Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan.  The reported purpose of this meeting was to discuss and plan a joint strategy for a terrorist campaign against the United States.  Iraqi officials reportedly pledged Iraq’s full support and cooperation on the condition that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda not incite the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic organization, against the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.  Zawahiri reportedly toured a potential site for a new headquarters for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda near al-Fallujah in Iraq and observed training by Iraqi intelligence officials of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda operatives at al-Nasiriyah.  In recognition of Bin Laden’s and Al Qaeda’s leadership role in the terrorist war against the United States, Iraqi officials allowed Zawahiri to assume formal command over the al-Nasiriyah training camp in the name of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.


29.            By mid-November 1998, Saddam Hussein reportedly came to the conclusion (with the advice and prompting of his son and intelligence chief, Qusay), that a campaign of terrorist attacks against the United States, under the banner of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, was the most effective means of deflecting U.S. attempts to topple his regime.

30.            Shortly thereafter, Iraqi intelligence officials reportedly met with Bin Laden in Afghanistan.  Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and Iraq reportedly agreed to join efforts in a detailed, coordinated plan for a protracted terrorist war against the United States.  Iraq also reportedly agreed to provide Bin Laden and Al Qaeda with the assistance of an expert in chemical weapons, and Bin Laden reportedly agreed to hunt down Iraqi opposition leaders who cooperated with the United States against Hussein.  In furtherance of this agreement, Bin Laden reportedly dispatched four hundred of Al Qaeda’s “Afghan” Arabs to Iraq to fight Kurds.

31.           Following a four day air strike by the United States in December 1998, Iraqi trade minister Muhammad Mahdi Salah reportedly stated that he expected terrorist activities against the United States to increase as a result of the bombing of Iraq.  The Arabic language daily newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi first raised the issue of cooperation between Iraq, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in a late December 1998 editorial, which predicted that “President Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to a four day air strike, will look for support in taking revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating with Saudi oppositionist Osama bin-Laden, whom the United States considers to be the most wanted person in the world.”  The editorial noted that this type of cooperation was very likely considering that “bin-Laden was planning moving to Iraq before the recent strike.”


32.           Following the December 1998 air strikes, Saddam Hussein reportedly dispatched Faruq al-Hijazi to Kandahar, Afghanistan in order to meet with Bin Laden.  Hijazi, the former deputy chief of Iraqi intelligence, had first met Bin Laden in 1994.  During his visit to Kandahar, Hijazi reportedly offered expanded cooperation and assistance to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, as well as a re-extension of the offer of shelter and hospitality Iraq previously extended to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.  Bin Laden reportedly agreed in principle to give Iraq assistance in a revenge campaign against the United States, but suggested further study and coordination before committing to a specific course of action or agreeing to a particular terrorist strike. 

33.            To demonstrate Iraq’s commitment to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, Hijazi reportedly presented Bin Laden with a pack of blank, official Yemeni passports, supplied to Iraqi intelligence from their Yemeni contacts.  Hijazi’s visit to Kandahar was reportedly followed by a contingent of Iraqi military intelligence officials who provided additional training and instruction to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan.  These Iraqi officials reportedly included members of “Unit 999,” a group of elite, Iraqi intelligence officials who provided advanced sabotage and infiltration training and instruction for Al Qaeda operatives. 

34.            In addition to the al-Nasiriyah training camp, by January 1999, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda operatives also were reportedly being trained by Iraqi intelligence and military officers at training camps on the outskirts of Baghdad.

35.           Following the Hijazi meetings, Qusay Hussein reportedly dispatched representatives to follow-up with Bin Laden and obtain his firm commitment to exact revenge against the United States for the December 1998 bombing campaign.  Iraq reportedly offered Bin Laden and Al Qaeda an open-ended commitment to joint operations against the United States and its “moderate” Arab allies in exchange for an absolute guarantee that Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and their allies would not attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. 


36.            Israeli sources reportedly claim that, for the past two years, Iraqi intelligence officers have been shuttling back and forth between Baghdad and Afghanistan.  According to the Israelis, one of these Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured last October by Pakistani officials near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

37.            In January 1999, Iraq reportedly began reorganizing and mobilizing intelligence front operations throughout Europe in support of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

38.            According to Czech intelligence sources, Mohammad Atta, the operational ringleader of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, met in June 2000 with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a consul and second secretary at the Iraqi embassy in Prague.  Al-Ani is one of Iraqi’s most highly decorated intelligence officers, a special forces veteran, and a senior leader of Iraq’s “M-8” special operations branch.  Other reports indicate that Al-Ani may have met with another hijacker, Khalid Almihdar. 

39.            Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross has confirmed that Atta met with al-Ani in early April 2001 in Prague.  Atta also reportedly met with the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and the former Iraqi deputy intelligence director, Farouk al-Hijazi, in Prague sometime in early April 2001.

40.            Czech intelligence sources further report that Atta and al-Ani embraced upon meeting at Prague’s Ruzyne airport, and that Atta may have visited the Czech capitol on four other occasions.

41.            Czech intelligence sources also reported that al-Ani had been under surveillance because he had been observed apparently surveying the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headquarters in Prague.  Czech authorities believed the site had been selected for attack by terrorists.  Later in 2001, al-Ani was expelled from the Czech Republic for espionage activities.


42.            Reports of additional intelligence ties between Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and Iraq continue to mount.  The CIA reportedly believes Iraq provided falsified passports for the nineteen hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  Further, senior U.S. intelligence sources have revealed that, in the Spring of 2001, Marwan al-Shehri and Ziad Jarrah -- two of Atta’s closest associates and members of the Al Qaeda “cell” in the Federal Republic of Germany -- met with known Iraqi intelligence agents outside the United States.

43.            Italian security sources have reported that Iraq made use of its embassy in Rome to foster and cultivate Iraq’s partnership with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.  Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, a general in the Iraqi secret service, and, from 1982 to 1990, a member of Iraq’s “M-A” special operations branch charged with developing links with Islamist militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the states of the Persian Gulf, was stationed in Rome as an “instructor” for Iraqi diplomats.  Al-Mamouri reportedly met with Mohammed Atta in Rome, Hamburg, and Prague.  Al-Mamouri has not been seen in Rome since July 2001, shortly after he last met with Atta.

44.            Recent Iraqi defectors provide additional details of Iraq’s support for international terrorism throughout the 1990s.  The Public Broadcasting Service documentary program entitled “Frontline” interviewed former Iraqi intelligence and army officers with first-hand accounts of highly secret installations run by an international terrorist known to Iraqi staffers only as “the Ghost.”  “The Ghost” is reported to be Abdel Hussein, the chief trainer at a training camp inside Iraq, which includes the fuselage of a Boeing 707 jetliner that is used to practice hijacking scenarios.  U.N. inspectors independently confirmed the existence of this particular training camp inside Iraq. 

45.            The Iraqi defector known as “Saddam’s Bomb-maker,” Dr. Khidhir Hamza, who served as Iraq’s Director of Nuclear Weaponization, analyzes Iraqi’s sponsorship of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda as follows:


What I think is there is somehow a change in the level of the type of operation Bin Laden has been carrying [out]. What we are looking at initially is more or less just attempts to blow some buildings, just normal use of explosives for a terrorist. What we have in the September 11 operation, [is a] tightly controlled, very sophisticated operation; the type an Iraqi intelligence agency, well versed in the technology [could pull off]. ... So my thinking is a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan is not the guy who will do an operation of this caliber. It has to have in combination with it a guy with the sophistication and know-how on how to carry these things.


. . . Iraq [also] has a history of training terrorists, harboring them, and taking good care of them, by the way. A terrorist is well cared for with Saddam. So he has a good reputation in that type of community, if you like.


46.            Several leading authorities on Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, and Al Qaeda concur on the likelihood of Iraq’s sponsorship and coordination of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  The former head of Israel’s Mossad secret service, Rafi Eitan, and former CIA Director James Woolsey, share the view that Iraq, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda conspired in the attacks.  Their views also are shared by Laurie Mylroie, an academic and Iraqi affairs expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C..  Mylroie cites the role of Iraqi operatives in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center to support her claim that the September 11, 2001 attacks are a matter of unfinished business for Iraq, which considers itself to be at war with the United States.


On information and belief, Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the hijackers also received material support and assistance from Iraq, by and through its officials, agents, and/or employees, to carry out terrorist attacks on the United States, including the September 11, 2001 attacks