LInks with terrorist activities - of course TL. Links with AQ though are as tenuous and disinteresting as are the links between Rumsfeld and Osama back in the days of the Iran War. As JD said - links can be the fact that they both could post on IW - is that damning evidence - nope. Is there any damning evidence as to the facts of Saddam sposoring and protecting and contributing to OBL - nope (leastways not yet ;) )..

Only on the issue of the attacks on 9/11 there is evidence of support and protecting on other issues. The AQ puke that went to a Bagdad Hospital for medical help(I forgot his name, but at my age you can't recall every Tom, Dick or Harry ) ;) Which is what the 9/11 Commission really said in their report.

Still disinteresting JD. Like i said - if you go back far enough you find Rummy talkin to OBL too. I say "so what" to the both of them.

Really, the desire to tie OBL to Saddam only stems to the desire of some to convince others that greater justification exoisted for the war. Who really cares? We went to war - the intel was poor on the WOMD - we freed some Iraqi's - we stopped a madman and sent a message to anyone who takes that path. Probably that last has been the greatest good in my view of the whole thing. If someone comes up with some hard core evidence that we harmed OBL and AQ and took out any ally and co-conspirator then I will cheer that as well. If that doesn't happen I won't miss it or feel the poorer that it wasn't true. If I see someone trying to stretch a long bow to hoodwink people to that misconception I will speak up and say twaddle.

Really, I give up on this topic - I have wasted enough time on it for now.

Davros, does the recent admission by the Russians change your thinking?

21, 2004
POLITICAL UPROAR
9/11 Panel Members Debate Qaeda-Iraq 'Tie'
By SUSAN JO KELLER

ASHINGTON, June 20 — Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, reiterated Sunday that the inquiry turned up no evidence that Iraq or its former leader, Saddam Hussein, had taken part "in any way in attacks on the United States."

But Mr. Kean said that conclusion, made public last week, did not put the commission at odds with the Bush administration's contention that links existed between the terrorist group Al Qaeda and Iraq.

In an interview on the ABC News program "This Week," Mr. Kean said, "All of us understand that when you begin to use words like `relationship' and `ties' and `connections' and `contacts,' everybody has a little different definition with regard to those statements."

Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview on Friday that "the evidence is overwhelming" of a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Asked if he had information that the commission did not have, he replied, "Probably."

Mr. Kean said Sunday that if such information exists, "we need it — and we need it pretty fast." The panel concluded its public hearings last week and will now turn to writing its final report, due in late July. Mr. Kean added that the administration had been cooperative in providing material that the commission had requested during its 18-month investigation.

Mr. Cheney's statements, and the broader question of whether the commission and the administration were at odds, came up repeatedly as commission members and others made the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows.

"I find it, frankly, shocking that the exaggerations of the administration before the war relative to that connection continue to this day," Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview on the CNN program "Late Edition."

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, appearing on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," said he had "no doubt that there was communications, meetings, connections" between terrorist groups including Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, though not necessarily in connection with Sept. 11. Asked if the administration should turn over the additional information that the vice president talked about, he said he saw "no reason why not."

Another Republican member of the commission, John Lehman, said Sunday that new information — not yet confirmed — suggested that a lieutenant colonel in Mr. Hussein's Fedayeen fighter force was a "very prominent member" of Al Qaeda.

"We are now in the process of getting this latest intelligence," he said in an interview on the NBC News program "Meet the Press."

Mr. Lehman also predicted that the commission's final report would include unanimous recommendations for change in the intelligence services, which he said could not distinguish "between a bicycle crash and a train wreck."

"It is dysfunctional," he said. "It needs fundamental change, not just tweaking and moving the deck chairs or the organization boxes around."

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I think Senator Joe Leiberman (Democrat) Said it best...the reports in the NY Times and Washington Post were both Irresponsible and amateurish Journalism. They either purposely misrepresented the facts or did not actually read the Commissions Report and just published wishful thinking.

Just for the Record...according to the Good Senator (who actually HAS read the report) The Commission found quite a LOT of evidence that Saddam and Al-Queda had working relationships and that Saddam was doing some financing of terror. What the Panel could not find was evidence that Saddam participated in the 9/11 attacks....wich has nothing at all to do with the the issue. The War on Iraq is PART of the war on terror...not the WHOLE war on terror....one step at a time folks, please if another nation wants to spearhead attacks on other Terror Financiers Im pretty Sure that the US will Support you in the UN Security Council....Just a thought [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>

[ 06-21-2004, 11:01 AM: Message edited by: MagiK ]