Blog Control to Major Tom.

Fahrenheit 9/11

I finally got around to watching Fahrenheit 9/11. Clearly one should take it with a grain of salt, but, wow, if even half of what the movie exposes is true, then its pretty amazing what George W. and his good ol' boys have gotten away with.

I started to try to summarize the factual evidence in the movie, but found Fahrenheit 9/11 Facts page, which summarizes all the main points.

I guess I didn't really take away anything I didn't really know, except I didn't realize the extent to which George Jr. & Sr. are involved with the Saudi's. Can you believe they have so much invested in each other that they actually started a War on Iraq, even though they had no weapons of mass destruction, had never made a threat against the United States, nor had even killed any U.S. Citizen, and its been shown the there has been no link between Saddam and Al Queda.

Money makes you do crazy things.

(2004-09-26 10:33:07.0) Comments [4] // Permalink

Comments:

The most amazing thing is that the whole war started because of WMD, yet when none were found the reason kept changing. Really why are we in Iraq? I'm damned sure its not because of WMD or because Sadam was a bad man. Sure he killed lots of people, but hey so do a lot of dictators in South Africa, yet we never go after them! Why? Money of course...

Posted by Azeem Jiva on September 26, 2004 at 12:01 PM PDT #

There are several problem surrounding the "no links to Iraq" claim. Perhaps the most troubling is the contradictory expectation by some that the current administration act on unclear information to prevent the attacks on 9/11, but then blaming the same administration for taking action on information about Iraq. The other troubling piece is that the "no links to Iraq" claim are taken a bit out of context. Most of the reports claiming such were taken from a single paragraph in the commission's report. The actual wording was "But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship" (page 66 of the report). Note it explicitly mentions numerous contacts between the two. What they were unable to confirm was whether these connections specifically led to involvement in the 9/11 attack. This is quite a bit different than what the some of the media would have you believe.

But as with most things in life, it's never that simple. Outside of the report, you have one of the 9/11 commission affirming a "cooperative relationship" between al Qaeda and Iraq:

"Fellow [9/11] commissioner John Lehman followed this on the same program [meet the press] stating, "There's really very little difference between what our staff found, what the administration is saying today and what the Clinton administration said. The Clinton administration portrayed the relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam's intelligence services as one of cooperating in weapons development. There's abundant evidence of that.... It confirms the cooperative relationship, which were the words of the Clinton administration, between al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence.""

You also have the 1998 indictment of bin Laden, part of which says:

"Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."

So it seems to me that this whole "no links" subject comes up, that the sound bite version just isn't accurate. There was a long history of a documented relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it seems reasonable to plan on the intelligence community having more information than what's been released to the public.

The links below present a different view of the subject. You may find them interesting from that perspective.

Matt

References:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/28jul20041140/www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/fullreport.pdf
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_15.pdf
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200407230835.asp
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pfeiffer200406230907.asp
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200406170840.asp

Posted by Matt Warner on September 26, 2004 at 02:55 PM PDT #

It doesn't change the fact that George W. lied to us about the reason for going into Iraq.

But since you mention Al Qaeda, if the current administration was really interested in crushing Al Qaeda, wouldn't they have sent more troops to Afghanistan to find Osama Bin Laden? Recent reports that I have read say there's only about 18,000 troops in Afghanistan. Compare that to Iraq which has 130,000 troops occupying the country.

You tell me, is George W. really interested in capturing Osama and squashing Al Qaeda, or is he really interested in protecting he and his father's interests.

Posted by watt on September 26, 2004 at 04:23 PM PDT #

Speaking of "F9/11", check out the reactions of a woman blogger in Baghdad on seeing it. (I blogged about it here.)

Posted by Geoff Arnold on September 26, 2004 at 08:13 PM PDT #

26 Sep 2004