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10 Years of Translated Bin Laden Messages Leaked
DragonFire1024 lets us know that Wikileaks has obtained 10 years of messages and interviews by Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. The documents were translated and the messages and interviews were authenticated by the US CIA. "The nearly three hundred page, 'official use only' packet from 2004, translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a division of the CIA, includes interviews with bin Laden from various news agencies and also includes messages he sent directly to the US from the periods of 1994 to 2004. One message includes bin Laden's denial of having anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania."
Anyone who stores local copies of these on their own computer and then get arrested/checked at customs can expect to be answering some very unpleasant questions.
No really, western security services are getting far too paranoid.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
"One message includes bin Laden's denial of having anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania."
I don't understand, I was told he is directly responsible for everything that is wrong with the world!
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
I remember Bin Laden denying the attacks. I even remember quite a few people holding up the defense that Bin Laden couldn't have done it because "Muslim is a religion of peace". (Not that the two really go hand in hand, but it was the reaction of the time.) What is interesting here is something I missed when I heard the reports back in 2001. The key reason why Bin Laden denied his involvement:
Bin Laden had a pretty cushy safe-haven there. He figured as long as he didn't piss off the Taliban leaders, they'd give him safe haven. And he figured the U.S. would not attack a sovereign nation. Which may have been true under Clinton, but he probably miscalculated how much the political climate was going to change once those towers fell.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...for mentioning "his denial" in the summary, you just turned this into a damn forum for "truthers." You know, the people who are do deluded, they thing that Purdue University and Popular Mechanics are part of the "vast right wing conspiracy." Seriously, I've read some of their ideas on the boards. They'll literally go A->B->C->D->E->F->G and be like "and that proves Purdue University's study is faked by the gov't."
Are you really surprised?
This is the administration that, when told that there *were* no wmds, essentially said "Fuck it, they're HIDING them!"
I wish someone had just assassinated that fucker...
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Wow, if the source is credible that's pretty damning.
Erm, the "source" in this case is a known terrorist who issued a fatwa in the 1990s calling for Muslims around the world to kill Americans every chance they get. How "credible" can he be? Seriously, there is nothing new here. Bin Laden gave interview well into late 2001 claiming that he didn't do it. (And he probably didn't "do it" in any direct sense, since we know KSM was the main planner who put the operation together). But he has since given speeches praising the "magnificent 19" (what he calls the hijackers) and clearly taking credit for being their inspiration. Whether or not he had any direct hand in it, he was the leader of the organization responsible, and he had been calling (over and against other jihadi leaders) for attacks on the United States (the "far enemy") for quite some time. This message was not "too sensitive to release" -- it differed little from other messages he was giving at the time.
I don't see anything particularly damning there. Bad men do bad things, then pretend they didn't in an attempt to avoid the consequences. Why is that surprising?
As I mentioned in my post, that comment does more to explain his denial than it does to provide evidence of his innocence. And don't forget that he later claimed the attacks as his own. After his cushy little safe haven was broken up, of course.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Is it *really* that hard to believe there are bad people in positions of power, even in the United States?
not that Bin Laden would ever lie... nor would Bush.. They're both angels!
Just because one's lying doesn't mean the other is telling the truth.
People invested in conspiracy theories that put the US government behind 9/11 will point out that there is no proof directly tying him to the attacks, that the FBI hasn't updated its file to include 9/11 as one of the crimes he is "wanted" for, etc. They'll say that the above video is faked, mistranslated, misinterpreted. And none of it matters -- OBL was the leader of the al Qaeda organization, he has openly called for Muslims to kill Americans going back to 1996, given interviews praising terrorist attacks and claiming that the Quran's proscriptions against killing innocents don't apply when dealing with the American's for various reasons. He led jihadists to broaden the fight against their local governments to a fight against the US and Israel, and transformed a significant part of the jihadist movement along those lines. The obsession with finding OBL's fingerprints on 9/11 begs the question of what we do know -- which is that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned the attacks and that they were carried out by Muslim extremists. Saying that we can't prove that OBL attacked the WTC does not mean that Dick Cheney did.
why?
You don't think Peak oil, the fact that the US Dollar is an oil backed currency and the profit, and power that will give to those who control it is enough reason?
You need to take a long hard look at the kind of people running America... And i don't mean the puppet figurehead who is in place.
Deleted
Osama wasn't behind 9/11. Saddam Hussein was! I know because Mister Cheney told me.
Another interpretation is that al-quaeda, "the base" was just a very small group before 9/11 that had no big international contacts. The US administration pointing finger at them helped them gain the stature they have today. The true responsibles of the 9/11 decided then to be part of al-quaeda, like many smaller terrorist group, just because Bin Laden was seen as the archetype of the anti-american terrorist.
From all that I read, it looks like al-quaeda is more of a stand-alone complex than a hierarchically organized group. I think most al-quaeda groups begin as independent entities, make a terrorist attack, claim responsability, get labeled by the CIA as "al quaeda linked group", get contacted or contact al-quaeda. (you can invert the last two steps)
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
"Who thinks it's perfectly okay to murder people because of the country they were born in."
Take a look at our soldiers and contractors and, hell, our government, and the treatment of Iraqis over in the sandbox. What right do we have to treat them like that?
It's incredibly naive to think that bin Laden is the only one who thinks that way.
And this is coming from a Staff Sergeant who has seen action over there.
Look how old that is, and, jesus, at least read the link added at the bottom which clarifies that:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/911_conspiracy_theory_1.html
Seriously...
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"Saddam had no WMD's"
It's funny, and hypocritical in the extreme how everybody keeps claiming that.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is doubting even in the slightest that Saddam did this :
http://pukmedia.com/kurdish/images/stories/news_small/m4.2008/halabja%20kolag.jpg
The halabja campaign ... a series of rocket-based poisonous gas attacks comitted by the Iraqi government (the fire order was given by the very son of Saddam) against it's own citizens. Nobody doubts it happened. But for conspiracy theorists it's a really very very very inconvenient truth.
After all, using those weapons obviously proves Saddam had rockets that distributed poisonous gas upon impact. Obviously every single weapon that does this is classified as WMD. It's true that they were not found. Given that Saddam actually USED those weapons that does NOT bring the question "did Bush lie ?", it merely brings the question "where are these weapons now ?". Unless you actually believe Saddam would shoot every last of his best weapons at unarmed civilians.
Can we please bring some common sense into this ? If we know a guy shot some children, then gets arrested with powder on his hands, but without a gun, that does not mean the witnesses who saw him shoot lied. It merely means we're short a gun. That would be a VERY good reason to search the neighbourhood for said gun (especially if the next door neighbour is a Jew hating theocratic massacrer like the Iranian government).
I take it you've never been involved in a truly secret cell operation?
For all they know, Bin Laden or any one of his handlers were assets of the CIA and couldn't be trusted.
Yes, you heard me right -- do you really think it's in the best interest of the CIA to "catch Bin Laden"?
No, you need the figurehead alive in order to have an effective scapegoat.
Politicians get elected based on fear. Fear the terrorists to overshadow your more reasonable fears of big government and big corporations.
Erm, the "source" in this case is a known terrorist who issued a fatwa in the 1990s calling for Muslims around the world to kill Americans every chance they get. How "credible" can he be?
Nothing what you wrote means that he isn't a man of his word. Indeed organization that repeated cry wolf tend to become more and more irrelevant over time. You need credibility to instill fear. It may well be -- though maybe I'm not correct -- that al-Qaeda tends to be fairly straight up with its claims of responsibility.
To whom precisely are you referring? That statement could apply to quite a few people with power these days.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
This was commonly reported immediately after 9/11. It was back when any Osama tape was immediately broadcast and analyzed to death.
Thankyou for saying that. So often when these things are "revealed" I'm just left sitting, "Didn't we know that at the time?!" (Or is everyone else's memory working fine and I'm just mad &/or psychic.
As far as Bin Laden's denial of involvement ... it is not beyond possibilty that a bunch of Islamic terrorists could organise themselves to carry something that 9/11 out, even without Bin Laden's involvement. It would seem to be more self-serving for him to have claimed rather than disavowed it. His actions were (I'm not conviced he lives) usually marked by any fear of American retaliation whatsoever. I'm pursuaded that, on the balance of probabilities, Bin Laden really was surprised by the attack.
'Al Qaida' presents the administration with a convenient brand name. It's easy to talk about a single entity and make the folks in voter land understand what you're talking about, just like it was easier in the 60s and 70s to talk about "the Mafia," instead of confusing people with the reality of multiple (not all Italian) crime families, gangs, etc etc. Secondly it sounds better to say "we are fighting Al Qaida," instead of "we are fighting Muslims," or even "Muslim fundamentalists."
That being said, this isn't a case of some draconian regime of censorship imposed by a tyrranical government. It's just a bit of marketing folks. And if you seriously want to inform yourself and go beyond the 'Al Qaida' label, this is information has been out there, security failures notwithstanding.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
"Unless you actually believe Saddam would shoot every last of his best weapons at unarmed civilians."
Or that he dismantled them. As he has said to other people, even in private. Why are you erecting a strawman ? The timing is all that's important here. Yes, Saddam used awful weapons on his own people. But that wasn't the question. The question was: did he still have them later on, and the answer to that, it seems now, is: no. Therefore, did Bush lie ? We don't know, but it looks like it an awful lot.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
ROCKETS that distribute large doses of chlorine upon impact ARE WMD's.
And yes if your chemistry teacher were to make a rocket like that, that would be a WMD.
...there was some other agenda for the war in Iraq, that we are unlikely to find out for a long time if ever.
I don't think that the agenda is even in question: it's what is euphemistically called "Energy Security". Anyone who thinks otherwise is paying too much attention to what the British government says.
The counter-argument that oil supply is now less secure than before is beside the point - the intention was to put Iraqi oil in friendly hands, the actual result merely proves the incompetence of the people who were in charge.
Exactly how does that differ from the USA's modus operandi? They assassinate democratically elected leaders and bomb innocents civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries prior to that.
To correct it even more: Bin Laden wasn't even a figurehead or a source of inspiration until the US made him one. He was the source of funding, and incidently the only person tying a several terrorist groups together because they were all smooching off him.
The US loves its conspiracies and the killing of JFK is perhaps the granddaddy of them all.
What is intresting to see is not the theories themselves but how simplistic and wishful they are. You get the idea that conspiracy theorists are people who desperately want to life in an organized world where at least SOMEONE is in charge. Look around, check all the conspiracy theories and they ALL lead to the same conclusion. SOMEONE somewhere is in charge. That makes the world a lot easier to deal with. If you like the world as it is, then X will keep it that way. If you don't like the world as it is, all you got to is topple X. Easy.
With JFK you got several theories who could have done the killing, all shadowy groups that are claimed to control far more then they are supposed to. If only you could expose them freedom of the people could be restored.
Yet the intresting thing is what the conspiracy theorists neatly ignore, because they don't want to hear this, but is far more damning. That several groups had seperate plans to assasinate the president of the united states. For certain groups like members of the FBI this in itself is treason enough. They never actually need to put the plan in motion, even discussing it should be enough to earn them some serious time at a secret location.
But the conspiracy theorists don't want to hear that the world ain't run by anyone and that bad things happen just because one group/person went beyond talking, that makes the world far to chaotic and random.
There were people planning to kill JFK, conspiracy theorists are right, they just didn't carry it out, but for a lot of them the planning alone should still be a crime in itself.
In a way it like a Murder She Wrote episode, where to find out the killer she tells everyone she has the evidence and will be at location Y. The person to then show up to kill her, is the killer. Well not always, SOMETIMES it is a person seeking to protect the real killer. This is what causes all the weirdness around JFK, various groups who had been thinking/hinting that JFK should be killed trying to cover up that they might have been involved. Had someone they knew taken their words to heart? The cover-up happened even when there was nothing to cover up.
The same, in a far more complex mess goes for 9/11. If you look at it, you can hope that someone somewhere is in charge OR come to the sickening conclusion that it all was just a mess of people suggesting things, others listening, misreading, misjudging until you come down to a case where some people did something and others failed to stop them because nobody really is in charge and all the things that normally go right, suddenly went wrong all together. 9/11 if you like was an accident. The idea that there is one person at the top on either side who planned it all is wishfull thinking. Osama on side and Dick Cheny on the other NEVER wanted this to happen. Not 9/11 and NOT the war on terror. Oh Osama wanted an attack BUT not one that would end up with two muslim countries under american control and NO worldwide muslim uprising. Realize this, Osama got NO response from western muslims. There are MILLIONS living in the west, and that is where they stayed.
Dick Cheney and the likes on the other hand haven't gained anything either. High oil prices? So what? America doesn't prosper from that at all.
No, 9/11 was just one of those things that happened.
If you want to make sense of it, then Captain Blackadder said it best. 9/11 happened because it was to much of an effort NOT to have a war.
Nobody planned it, just nobody worked hard enough to stop it. And that includes US the people who voted for the people to incompetent to create world peace.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here is the big issue with this factoid.
Halabja, March 16, 1988
Kuwait invasion / Persian Gulf War August 1990
Iraq War, March 20, 2003
I think once we already go to war with someone, then end that war, and then wait a decade, we cant consider anything that happened before that "evidence". After `91 anything would be fair game, but it looks like Saddam actually kept his nose pretty clean, He probably figured it was all he had to do to keep his position, and that bush wouldn't dare invade without a good reason. Little did he know how unstable our leaders were eh?
The claims the bush administration fabricated involved vials of anthrax and large amounts of yellow cake uranium and weapons grade aluminum with long range missiles that present a clear an imminent threat to America's national security. I don't remember the "For the people who died 15 years ago!" rational for war.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
No, the goal should have been to prevent terrorism. Hint: they don't do it because "they hate freedom".
After Iraq, if the US asks to inspect anyone people will just say that the US is not to be trusted on weapons inspections. Dictators will be able to claim that the US is sending in spies, not working towards disarmament. With Russia going nuts, and Pakistan on the brink, the US has lost the credibility it needs to diffuse international conflicts.
"Do not enforce your values on them and they will not try to enforce their values on you."
Call me a cynic, I can live with it, but everyone stand on their head who believes this.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
I don't think that anyone's disputing that he once had some rockets. However he didn't seem to have any when we invaded. The justification for war was that Saddam apparently possessed WMDs at that time and was preparing to use them. In that context, the fact that Saddam didn't in fact seem to posses any such weapons casts doubts on both the integrity or the competence of those who took us into the war.
You mean he was saving some to use against a greater threat? Like invading foreign troops, maybe?
On the other hands, rockets aren't guns. You shoot a rocket, you don't have it any more. What you're suggesting (to use your analogy) is launching an operation that could engulf half a city in riots, purely on the suspicion that there may be some more bullets somewhere around the place.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
"Why not write something useful"
In this conversation? OK.
Don't worry about OBL. Worry about the Russian bombers in Venezuela. Worry about the possible share market crash when Wall Street opens. Worry about Pakistan allying with Russia if you cross its border once again. Worry about the unidentified sub seen in Japanese waters.
Then, at the end of all that, don't worry about it because there is nothing you can do about it. Be happy, love one another, and believe in yourself.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a feeling there will be more and more information and mis-information of this kind as the Presidential election comes closer.
So with anything this time of year, I'll take it with a grain of salt and speculation.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Dick Cheney and the likes on the other hand haven't gained anything either.
Four more years?
Patriot act to control the peasants?
High oil prices? So what? America doesn't prosper from that at all.
Some rich fat Americans in Texas probably had to be sedated cause all that excitement over a 4$ a gallon price was bad for them.
9/11 happened because it was to much of an effort NOT to have a war.
Wait...wha... WHAT?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I guess it's impolite to mention at this point that we've just spent 5 years killing the exact same people we're demonising Saddam Hussein for killing, isn't it?
I guess it's really impolite to mention that killing people in a country that hadn't attacked us, hadn't the means to attack us at the moment, and had no plans to attack us in the future makes us murderers.
It's been a long time.
What does the Arrafat thing matter? The Palestinian territories don't have any oil.
What's funny is people think that because they are tolerant, they can convince everyone else to be. People have their values all screwed up...
Talk about intolerance... which societies are more tolerant of gays? Which society is more tolerant of interracial and interfaith marriages?
Yes, a lot of so-called "Christians" will frown upon homosexual relationships... but very few will throw you in jail for it. They will frown upon someone deciding to leave and join another church, but they won't execute you for it. I simply don't understand why we in the west are continuously asked to be tolerant while others get away with honor killings and complete intolerance of others.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
+1
If I read bin laden correctly, his main goal is to replace the corrupt, dictatorial, apostate regimes in the islamic world with a single religious state, the caliphate. He hates us cause we support those govt; he doesnt really care about our western freedom and life style all that much
Bush say that bin laden hates us cause of our freedom.
what is amusing is that bin laden is loosing the war he started - we are more involved, with more corrupt regimes then before 9/11; at the same time bush is loosing his war, as we have less freedom.
I finally understand the curse part of the (supposed) chinese saying, may you live in interesting times.
No, that would be a chemical weapon, not a WMD.
I guess that means it's really Cheney's fault, not really Bush.
It seems to me, that Bush is more of an innocent idiot. Cheney however, knows what the fuck he's trying to do.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It is precisely because of the fact that he called Muslims to a Jihad against the Americans that I tend to believe this statement. Mind you, Bin Laden doesn't say he didn't want to do this, he plainly states he was not allowed to carry this out by his Taliban hosts. Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of Islamic clerics who adhere to strict morals and a relatively exhausting honor system. In many ways it reminds me of the Purists, the Calvinists and certain Roman Catholic factions we've had throughout history.
Just because someone has a different religion than yours and just because someone's honor system makes them want to wage holy war against what you stand for it does not render everything they say null and void. I would be much more worried about certain other parties that seem to wantonly install, sponsor, demonize and then eradicate all manner of regimes across the world to further their (financial) self interest or because they misguidedly think their right cause is furthered by those actions. Because the former group is predictable if you know their morals and their honor system while the latter group is totally unpredictable and hence dangerous as hell.
I don't "know" who the main planner of the 9/11 operation is, and probably no one ever really will, nor is it interesting. All I know is that the USSR, the USA and the world at large are partially responsible for the situation in Afghanistan after the Russian withdrawal, and we "corrected" that fuck up by invading that country and bombing it some more while we're at it. In the mean time half of Iraq is dead and/or injured and I'm sitting here wondering who the terrorists are, because I'm quite sure the crunch of army boots on gravel, the roar of jet engines and the crackle and static of radio transmissions between soldiers strike terror into the hearts of Afghan and Iraqi civilians by now.
Here in Israel I see a lot of this. The other party in the conflict is not "credible" because they've issued Fatwahs and called for Jihad. In the mean time, most of the people you talk to feel that this is their country because the Torah claims they once lived here and the death toll on the Islamic side outstrips the death toll on the Israeli side at least ten to one. Religious War, anyone? If I were living in an Arabic town here that doesn't get decent schools or even a closed sewage system from the federal government because the "municipality doesn't receive enough taxes", I'd bloody well declare a bit of a war too. And if it takes religion for people to join it.... You get the point.
If you (us Western nations) beat a dog (most of the rest of the world) long enough, it will bite.
Mazaltov! We've reached that stage.
That's not mass destruction. That's just destruction. Most of the poison gas Iraq has was given to it by... US! We used to be big friends with Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld shook his hand. I have the picture. 1970s. WMDs are nukes and such. Duh.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
***Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is doubting even in the slightest that Saddam did this :***
Not so actually. Do a little research and you will find that the attack at Halabja was originally blamed on the US's enemy d'jour -- Iran. It was not refocused on Iraq until America's great and noble ally Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, an action that caused him to morph into "The Beast of Baghdad".
Most people who have looked at the issue are pretty sure that Saddam Hussein was responsible, but it is by no means the open and shut case that you present.
***
"Saddam had no WMD's"
It's funny, and hypocritical in the extreme how everybody keeps claiming that.***
Get a grip man. The fact that Iraq had WMDs in the early 1990s does not prove that it had them in 2003. In fact, it said it did not. International inspectors with pretty much unrestricted access to Iraqi facilities found none. And US investigators after the invasion found only a handful of chemical tipped artillery rounds of an obsolete type that Iraqi sources with no particular reason to lie said had been collected and destroyed prior to the 1991 Gulf War. If you've ever served in the military or worked for a large company, it'll be pretty clear to you how a few old artillery shells could have survived.
In point of fact, had Iraq had WMDs, it would surely have used them against US troops in 2003 -- probably with devastating affect.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Men's News Daily? World Net Daily? Buh?
From your Washington Post link:
From your Fox News link:
Hmmm. Way to support your own argument there.
So yeah, sure, he had some rotting leftovers, but not the massive "set to attack the US" stockpiles they beat their drums about leading up to our 2003 invasion. Yeah, not everything got dismantled. But, was that malice or incompetence? Looking back at that Washington post article:
Sounds like malice to me. Oh wait, no, that's incompetence.
Program Intellivision!
We shouldn't, and more importantly we shouldn't be changing our rules to bend to the will of others...
If you want to go and live in an islamic country, you will be expected to follow the existing rules, you will be expected not to eat pork etc... You don't see people from the west migrating to islamic countries and demanding the right to eat pork, expected to learn the language or anything else that islam forbids...
Why then should people come to western countries and demand exceptions to the law just for them, like their own religious holidays (in addition to existing holiday allowances), the right to wear a turban instead of a motorcycle helmet etc...
Western countries bend over backwards to accommodate immigrants, most other countries do not...
In my opinion, if you choose to move to another country you should know what that entails and what laws and customs are already in place there... And if you are not willing to obey those laws, respect if not follow the customs, and learn the local language then you have no business going there.
If you want to live in a country with customs laws and language like your home country, then why not stay there? If they way they do things is so great, don't leave... And if you want to move somewhere else because you think that country is better, ask yourself WHY that country is better, could it have something to do with the culture? If you change their culture to match the country you came from, then you will end up right back where you started.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
I think you are being every misleading when you say WMD's were found in Iraq. You're trying to give the false impression that there were WMD's that were still a threat. Basically all that were found were refuse from previous stockpiles NOT a current WMD program. If the agent is no longer active, is it a WMD?
The weapons inspectors were UN, not US
Which Saddam did anyway.
The "credibility" needed to defuse international conflicts is enough military force to make both parties take notice. We don't (and never did) have that with Russia, at least not on their doorstep, as a number of Soviet-crushed revolutions during the cold war should demonstrate.
"interviews were authenticated by the US CIA" Don't you mean censored?
"It is not because no one sees the truth that it becomes a mistake" (Mahatma Gandhi)
Saddam wasn't intentionally killing civilians as such, he was just killing villages with traitors, and the other people were just collateral damage.
It's no different than when we bombed a resturaunt because we thought Saddam may be inside, but he wasn't inside, though a bunch of civilians were. How are we any better -- because we're the "good guys"?
It's been a long time.
You can't prove any of this is the truth.
This phrase has much further implications.
How do you prove a negative, anyway ? I don't know how people that comes from a system where everyone is innocent until proven guilty can keep going over and over again that people has to prove Iraq had no WMDs. Or people at least barely scientifically minded.
Is it possible to prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, Iraq had NO WMDs ? No. Again, can't prove a negative. All this argument is, at best, pointless.
Was there enough proof to indicate Iraq had WMDs ? That is the point. If there was, it would be very easy for the Bush government to say: "Well, looks like they really didn't have any, but this is the data we had to work with. I'm sure most of you will come to the same conclusion we had".
The problem is that, even to date, the Bush government keeps insisting there were WMDs, but somehow keep failing to find them. And the supporters here and everywhere else keep insisting on that. I will say it again: people are not saying there was enough evidence of WMDs to make an honest mistake; they keep insisting there were WMDs.
With all this denial and cover-ups, I have to ask the same question: was there enough evidence to make an "honest mistake" ? Doesn't seems likely.
morcego
Because insults really help your cause.
In truth WMD is not defined as all, it's a mostly political term that was made popular by a news story from 1937 that described a bombing in spain as being done by weapons of mass destruction.
Since then various people have defined it however they liked and your definition is among them.
So yes you can claim that my kitchen is a WMD by your definition but sane people use the word for nukes.
This is no big deal. The "Foreign Broadcast Information Service" was a pre-Internet version of Google News, run by the CIA. It was a bunch of people listening to the public radio broadcasts of foreign countries. (Imagine listening to Radio Albania during the Cold War, taking notes, as a full time job.) Once in a while, something important might be mentioned. It wasn't secret, and transcripts were provided to the US press on request. It was a cheap way of finding out what other countries said they were doing.
Saddam Hussein was never near the top of my birthday greetings list, but let us not forget that the US was perfectly content to prop up his regime and sell him armaments when it suited them.
Actually there is nothing new here, Bin Laden credibly denied everything on Sept. 17, 2001 to CNN -- it simply went down the memory hole, since the MSM, has not mentioned his denial since. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.binladen.denial/ And let's never forget that Mullah Omar offered to turn over Bin Laden, all he asked was for the US to show him some evidence that Bin Laden was guilty. Bush told him to get lost -- and started bombing. Bush could have had Bin Laden. He did not want him. America can send cruise missiles to Afghanistan, but it couldn't send a fax?
If it's so bloody "mass" how is it that Saddam fought the Iranians for 8 years (using gas), until it ended in a stalemate? Real WMD, i.e. nukes, would have ended it in 20 minutes. You overreach.
There is no "moderate dead". It's a pretty binary thing.
Actually, you could probably say one of the only truly binary things in the world. After "am I dead?", which can be answered with a definitive yes or no(and if you can ask the question, I'm betting you're going to answer 'yes'), pretty much any non-abstract question you ask has to be answered with a degree of "In some cases it can be tough to say for sure".
That's probably why it's so difficult to be moderate about the war. The decision to kill people has a certain finality to it. In fact, the moderate decision is usually not to kill anyone at all. Just look at the muslim world; Who are the "moderate clerics"? The ones who are saying "Let's not destroy the Satan America".
It's been a long time.
It's no different than when we bombed a resturaunt because we thought Saddam may be inside, but he wasn't inside, though a bunch of civilians were. How are we any better -- because we're the "good guys"?
It's completely different. Saddam indiscriminately killed civilians with poison gas. That's barbaric. We indiscriminately killed civilians with high explosives. That's fair game.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne