And it’s through the UN.
interesting
“Interesting?”
Not really.
No actually, not at all.
Hell, the Senate report found more tangible. less-tenuous “links” between AQ and Iraq, and felt compelled to dismiss those as well as simply no evidence of operational cooperation. FOX spins, Bushkies wanting us to talk about anything except the war, Fitzmas, or Harriet Miers want you to buy.
So did you read the article?
“IHC had links both to Saddam Hussein’s old sanctions-busting networks, and to a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr., known among other things for his ties to a figure designated by the U.N. itself as a financier of Al Qaeda”
So, a “mysterious” private company allegedly had links to companies which had links to Sadaam, while simultaneously having links to a businessman who had “ties” to an unnamed financier of Al Qaeda.
In short, even if all these links are true, Saddam had five degrees of separation from Al Qaeda. You ever buy gas? Congratulations! You’re only two degrees of seperation from Al Qaeda!
Somebody call Kevin Bacon!
And the mysteries keep adding up!
Here’s IHC’s web page:
http://www.ihcservices.com/contact.htm
They’re so mysterious, they list their address, phone, fax, list of products and email contact info! This crazy fly by night organization is so mysterious, they were even founded in 1944. Laying low for over 60 years!
Do you think Fox has google?
I think the article buried the lede. They really don’t know much about this company, who owns it or how it does its business even if they know some interesting things about it.
That said, the story does have specifics that sound credible and can be easily checked. However, I tend to think this is more about a shady company that did work for shady people than about Saddam and Bin Ladin hanging out on a veranda and doing business. That’s how FOX wants to spin this but there isn’t much by way of any indication of how or if that happened here. This sounds like a pretty huge, worldwide, company with tendrils into all kinds of stuff. The giveaway on the spin, of course, is the end of the story where they ponder, breathlessly, who the mysterious owner is. Well, given this story who do you think FOX wants us to think it is?
Some people just want to Believe so much.
Some woeful Fox news investigation has found that some guy who once owned a company that did business with the UN’s oil for food program also had a company that did business with some guy who was known for working with a group, some members of which are believed to have become members of Al Qaeda also. This obviously proves a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda :roll:.
Every time I am forced to read a Fox news article I am reminded of their paucity of journalistic standards.
Just one example of many in that article where the journalists shovel their own opinion into the reader’s mouth with their own devious adverbs and adjectives.
“In June of this year, as the procurement scandal broke, and shortly after IHC was sold, the U.N. quietly suspended IHC from its list of approved vendors.”
Quietly suspended? This obviously suggests skullduggery, but the company could have been dropped for any number of reasons.
Fox News is the official Republican news service.
Though “the Feith memo” was largely ignored because of the name on the office door at OSP, there is an awful lot of startling raw intelligence in it.
It’s an impressive catalog of CIA/NSA/DIA reports of Iraq/Qaeda operational cooperation throughout the Nineties – the great bulk of it gathered under the Clinton administration. And while the memo certainly represents OSP cherry-picking the “most supportive” intel, it’s not an easy mass of reporting to dismiss.
Your call…but it’s worth mentioning that many of these reports (including the Kuala Lumpur “facilitation”) later appeared almost verbatim in the 9/11 Commission’s final report.
Did this cooperation happen before or after Clinton’s 1993 attack on the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service? Richard Clark seems to think that after this event, which at the time he considered an insufficient response, Iraq got out of the terrorism business.
It’s also bullshit lies, just like the forged Italian memo about yellowcake. You guys are in serious lucy/football territory.
Newsflash: you can find someone saying literally anything you want in a unvetted intelligence report.
As difficult to dismiss as all the mass of reporting that told us there were WMDs in Iraq.
What the Weekly Standard doesn’t mention is who the sources were. Was it really someone who knew, or was it Ahmed Chalabi, the Iranians or one of many other groups with an agenda to push?
As I understand it the deeply religous Al-Quaeda had actually tried to assasinate Saddam, who was as secular as he could be (less so after the first Iraq War). It’s going to take a little more evidence than a paltry 5 degrees of seperation to convince me to even look at what appears to be transparent spin – coming from known liars.
And besides, if we were really after Al-Quaeda, we’d have actually pursued them vigorously in places where we know they have connections.
So let’s see, you admit that it’s cherry picked – namely, selectively taken out of context to present a picture that reinforces someone’s a priori position – yet you think it’s hard to dismiss?
Dude, you’ve got to lay off the neocon Kool-Aid. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the war about the war is over. You’ve lost.
-Tom
Didn’t somebody already link to the debunking stories when they all first came out?
Edit: I linked to the wrong page but it also has some interesting back and forth that’s a bit out of date. I’d intended to link to the initial rebuttal.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3540586/
Still, you can see Hayes getting the last word in on the Slate article before Shafer seemingly lost interest. To illustrate how out of date that is Hayes is still claiming at that point that the Czechs are “standing behind” reports of Atta in Prague. That’s ancient history now along with those few claims he can buttress against Isikoff’s examination in Newsweek (the MSNBC article).
i know steve from college. he has a cousin who played a part on homicide: life on the street. which is produced by barry levinson. who directed kevin bacon in some movie. so basically, kevin bacon is just as linked with rimbo as al queda is with iraq.
sooooo want to post a pic of cmdr. adama with a “it hasn’t begun yet” caption.
I take it back, I guess it is an easy mass of reporting to dismiss.
New evidence from South Park, CO links Hussein to Satan! Classified fatass sources say they are homosexual lovers. Furthermore, Satan claims that Mormonism is the one true faith, leading some unnamed government officials to suspect that Mormans may be Beelzebub’s fifth column in the war against America Jesus.
Now that’s a mass of reporting that’s not easy to dismiss!
-Tom
why didnt you us americans didnt elect Putin for president:
He said if he would make war on iraq and search for WMD. He would find them. :wink: