OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship

[kat]

Case Closed From the November 24, 2003 issue: The U.S. government's secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden


I guess this was origionally linked to off of Drudge's site and now is being mirrored on various sites around the internet.
I haven't really made my mind up about it.
Has anyone else seen it appear on any other news sites?
seen any argument(s) against it?
thoughts?

 

[Zero]

LMAO!


Drudge is a liar, and a promoter of liars. He himself hasd claimed that he is not responsible for the accuracy of the stuff on his website.
Bin Laden is a militant Muslim, Saddam Hussein is a secularist. While they may have called a 'time-out' in hostilities, they didn't have a relationship.

 

[kat]

Originally posted by Zero
LMAO!


Drudge is a liar, and a promoter of liars. He himself hasd claimed that he is not responsible for the accuracy of the stuff on his website.
Bin Laden is a militant Muslim, Saddam Hussein is a secularist. While they may have called a 'time-out' in hostilities, they didn't have a relationship.

Just because Drudge places a link on his site to an article you automaticly disregard it? Did you even bother to read it? Are there specific points you would like to argue? Or is this the level of 'intelligent' dialogue you're going to leave it at?

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by kat
Just because Drudge places a link on his site to an article you automaticly disregard it? Did you even bother to read it? Are there specific points you would like to argue? Or is this the level of 'intelligent' dialogue you're going to leave it at?

No , I automatically ignore your posts, except to point out how wrong you are. Haven't you been paying attention?
Serioously, I have been reading for the past 3 years on the subject. The consensus seems to be that Iraq was too secular for bin Laden, but some of the outlying areas could be used for training. Iraq probably had to come to some sort of covert 'cease-fire' with them, to avoid facing suicide bombings and the like, but, again, they were not allies.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Yeah right, that's some story, by the biggest liar in the Bush administration. See this Calpundit article and follow the link.

 

[RageSk8]

I was going to link to the same calpundit article as selfAdjoint. Despite this memo's worthlessness (as of now at least), I suspect FOX news is all over it.

 

[Zero]

Is this going to be like the multiple declarations that WMDs had been found, only to discover that the hyped reports were completely bogus?

 

[RageSk8]

DoD Statement on News Reports of al-Qaida and Iraq Connections

News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.

A letter was sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee on October 27, 2003 from Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in response to follow-up questions from his July 10 testimony. One of the questions posed by the committee asked the Department to provide the reports from the Intelligence Community to which he referred in his testimony before the Committee. These reports dealt with the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida.

The letter to the committee included a classified annex containing a list and description of the requested reports, so that the Committee could obtain the reports from the relevant members of the Intelligence Community.

The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the NSA, or, in one case, the DIA. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the Intelligence Community. The selection of the documents was made by DOD to respond to the Committee’s question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions.

Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal.

Here is the release: http://www.dod.mil/releases/2003/nr20031115-0642.html

Case closed indeed. Oh, and by the way, this memo contained "raw reports" : i.e. reports of leads which have not been analyzed for accuracy. More or less. Feith took all of the information gathered that seemed to support a link between Al Quaida and Iraq regardless of whether or not that information had been shown to be accurate or inaccurate. hahahahaha. Here is a link on why "raw reports" are almost always poor information sources: http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?031027on_onlineonly01 - My job here is done.

 

[Zero]

Ha, once again, the right-wing is foiled by reality!LOL

This is also the sort of problem that is being discussed in the thread about intelligence...the 'stovepiping of raw intelligence to higher-ups, without having been confirmed, is a problem that continues to plague this administration.

 

[Zero]

The reason they get away with this is because many people who read those sorts of sites live in an information vacuum. The corrections for things like this are never published by right-wing sources...in fact, many right-wing sources have the annoting habit of repeating lies for years, even after having been repeatedly and publicly corrected time after time.

 

[Zero]

Well, the Weekly Standard has had 2 days to correct their false report. I wouldn't hold my breath, though. The right-wing depends on people not following up on their nonsense. There is no right-wing watchdog group, no source within the right-wing media that checks back on false or shoddy reporting. If it supports the agenda, it is 'true', and the believers eat it up.