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http://news. yahoo.com/ news?tmpl= story&cid= 514&u=/ap/ 20060908/ ap_on_go_ co/iraq_report_ 31
Senate: Saddam saw al-Qaida as threat
By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 8, 4:48 PM ET
Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a
possible ally, a Senate report says, contradicting
assertions President Bush has used to build support for the
war in Iraq. The report also newly faults intelligence
gathering in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.
Released Friday, the report discloses for the first time an
October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's
government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a
blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or
his associates.
As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, Bush said people
should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein"
with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and
"who had relations with Zarqawi."
Democrats contended that the administration continues to use
faulty intelligence, including assertions of a link between
Saddam's government and the recently killed al-Zarqawi, to
justify the war in Iraq.
They also said, in remarks attached to Friday's Senate
Intelligence Committee document, that former CIA Director
George Tenet had modified his position on the terrorist link
at the request of administration policymakers.
Republicans said the document, which compares prewar
intelligence with post-invasion findings on Iraq's weapons
and on terrorist groups, broke little new ground. And they
said Democrats were distorting it for political purposes.
A previous report in 2004 made clear the intelligence
agencies' "massive failures," said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a
member of the committee. "Yet to make a giant leap in logic
to claim that the Bush administration intentionally misled
the nation or manipulated intelligence is simply not warranted."
White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report was
"nothing new."
A second part of the report concluded that false information
from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led
by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key U.S.
intelligence assessments on Iraq.
It said U.S. intelligence agents put out numerous red flags
about the reliability of INC sources but the intelligence
community made a "serious error" and used one source who
concocted a story that Iraq was building mobile biological
weapons laboratories.
The report also said that in 2002 the National Security
Council directed that funding for the INC should continue
"despite warnings from both the CIA, which terminated its
relationship with the INC in December 1996, and the DIA
(Defense Intelligence Agency), that the INC was penetrated
by hostile intelligence services, including the Iranians."
According to the report, postwar findings indicate that
Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic
extremists as a threat to his regime."
It said al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May until late
November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that
Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and
capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a
relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."
In June 2004, Bush defended Vice President Dick Cheney's
assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with
al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to
al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president said.
The report concludes that postwar findings do not support a
2002 intelligence report that Iraq was reconstituting its
nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or had ever
developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare
agents.
"The report is a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney
administration' s unrelenting, misleading and deceptive
attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein
was linked with al-Qaida," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio,
voting record), D-Mich., a member of the committee.
Levin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top
Democrat on the panel, said Tenet told the committee last
July that in 2002 he had complied with an administration
request "to say something about not being inconsistent with
what the president had said" about the Saddam-terrorist link.
They said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Bush gave a
speech speaking of such a link, the CIA had sent a
declassified letter to the committee saying it would be an
"extreme step" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in
attacking the United States.
They said Tenet acknowledged to the committee that
subsequently issuing a statement that there was no
inconsistency between the president's speech and the CIA
viewpoint was "the wrong thing to do."
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the mistakes of
prewar intelligence have long been known and "the additional
views of the committee's Democrats are little more than a
rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for
over three years."
The panel report is Phase II of an analysis of prewar
intelligence on Iraq. The first phase, issued in July 2004,
focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of Iraq's
weapons program.
The second phase had been delayed as Republicans and
Democrats fought over what information should be
declassified and how far the committee should delve into the
question of whether policymakers may have manipulated
intelligence to make the case for war.
Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he planned to ask
for an investigation into the amount of information
remaining classified. He said, "I am particularly concerned
it appears that information may have been classified to
shield individuals from accountability. "
Of course he wud have!!!
Saddam was a Pan Arabist.Al-Quaida is a wahabbi fundamentalist organisation.Saddam's govt has also beeen a sole secular republican govt in gulf and he did not opress women as US's allies saudi arabia and other gulf countries.Except in religious belief Saddam is almost like Stalin, a wrong person to have absolute power without a strong and reasonable opposition which led to his downfall.
It is possible to build gigantic factories according to a ready-made Western pattern by bureaucratic command – although, to be sure, at triple the normal cost. But the farther you go, the more the economy runs into the problem of quality, which slips out of the hands of a bureaucracy like a shadow. The Soviet products are as though branded with the gray label of indifference. Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative – conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery.
-Trotsky
Marx & Engels ! Lenin ! Trotsky
"Republic" is a bit of a stretch, isn't it..?
If they had faith in me and my motives, they wouldn't need a union
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz
No. Iraq was a republic.
Edit: Actually it still is
March at the head of the ideas of your century and those ideas will follow and sustain you. March behind them and they will drag you along. March against them and they will overthrow you.
Napoleon III
Some people STILL think Sadamm had something to do with 9/11.
It seems obvious, but a lot of people are oblivious.
I know it WAS but STILL? In what way?
It still has a constitution and it lacks a monarch. Ergo it is a republic. Whether it survives is of course a different matter.
March at the head of the ideas of your century and those ideas will follow and sustain you. March behind them and they will drag you along. March against them and they will overthrow you.
Napoleon III
It's called a republic. It was called a republic in the past. What else do you want? What else is there to define a republic?
It's not like having a republic is something nice, it's all capitalism... The same thing goes for democracy too actually.
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
Was the republic in Spain in the 30's, capitalist?
Democracy is "all capitalism"?
If they had faith in me and my motives, they wouldn't need a union
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz
But there's a civil war occuring. How can that be a republic? I'm not saying you're WRONG, I'm just trying to understand.
Just because Iraq was or is called a republic, doesn't mean it's true. After all, I live in the UNITED States of America but that united doesn't really mean much.
I think we're getting confused on the idea of a republic.
Here's the definition:
a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.
Now, from what I understand, Sadamm allowed people to vote, ONLY if they voted for him. Would YOU define that as a republic?
And from what I understand, now there's essentially civil war & sectarian battle. People are allowed to vote but really ONLY a U.S. approved leader will get in. Would YOU define THAT as a republic?
As I said, because it is called a republic. This is simply enough, because 'republic' is a really meaningless term.
ExactlyBeing called a republic doesn't mean anything.
Yeah, this is what writes in the label, and in every case it is meaninless. Rome was a republic, and their Senate was made out of the nobility.
Yeah, why not? Voting doesn't mean anything anyway.
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
Oh absolutely. It wasn't only capitalist but it was also monarchist.
Well yes, this is the hearth of everything isn't it?
Okay, I'll try to describe this briefly: first of all democracy is a very authoritarian, bureocratic and hierarchic system. The only gig which enables cappies to present it as something desirable is that it allows 'people' to change the main staff in some period of time, yet this is in fact really meaningless: whoever gets elected has to do what the material conditions requires them to do: doing the best thing for capital. Making real changes with democracy is impossible, the system is not designed for that. Real changes happen when workers act for their interests and for themselves and electing a different group of staff to the office is highly irrelevant to workers struggle. A small elite party can't change anything, classes do.
Secondly, if we go to the roots of te word democracy, it means peoples power. People is a more material equivilant of nation, and it includes both the workers and the capitalists however the so called 'national' interests are always interests of the higher classes. So democracy unites different classes by saying "you are all equall at the ballot box", another thing preventing workers acting as a class.
Bordiga had a nice piece on democracy, if you are interested:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/wo...c-principle.htm
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
Well one of the defining traits of a republic, really the defining trait, is a lack of monarch. In Spain the King fled in 1931 thus opening the door for the Republic. That's not to say that there wasn't monarchist support or feeling in the country of course.
March at the head of the ideas of your century and those ideas will follow and sustain you. March behind them and they will drag you along. March against them and they will overthrow you.
Napoleon III
Saddam was as an asshole but it was a lot better in Iraq during his reign all the islamist extremist were afraid of him and i doubt that his was building and i quote George W Nucear Weapons and Weapons of mass distraction
Well, I don't know if Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction when the US attacked, but he did use chemicals during the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq was a horrible place to live when Saddam was in power, it is a horrible place to live now and it will be a horrible place to live when the US troops leave
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
The only "weapons of mass destruction" that they found were the remnants from the chemical weapons that we supplied him with during the Iran-Iraq War.
Which were in the process of being dismantled...
Which makes perfect sense.
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
It comes back to the old joke:
How did the Americans know that Sadaam had weapons of mass destruction?
Because they had the reciepts.
Devrim
