Al-Zarqawi and the conspiracy

Fake Fake Fake.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/29/1038386299712.html

Kendra, you're going to try to use whacko Ariana Huffington's blog to support a point? Please say it isn't so -- you'd be better off resorting to Michael Moore.


You're forgetting the fact that the Saudis are already producing as much oil as they possibly can, and that China is one of their largest customers -- this isn't just about the U.S.


So you're saying that Iraq's 11 million barrels of oil/year are more than a drop in the bucket on the world market (68 million per day) or to the U.S. market (56 mill.bbl/yr from Saudi Arabia, 46 million/yr from Canada, 53 million/yr from Mexico)? I don't think I'm following your attempt at logic.


I can read maps.


He may be, but the best intelligence services in the world are convinced that he's made several videos in the last couple of years. One book I read which claimed to have spoken with Pakistani tribesmen said that he's holed up in the rugged mountain ranges along the Pakistani-Afghan border -- the kind of place so hostile and ungovernable even Pakistani army units don't go there.


Whoever said he did? Not I, and nobody else that I've read in this thread. Do you see another conspiracy among those who disagree with you?

Did it ever occur to anyone that the real consipiracy here is to drive up oil prices for two reasons:

1. To make people so tired of high prices that they are finally motivated to move to ethanol/electric powered vehicles

2. Give the oil companies such a huge surplus of cash that they can afford to rapidly revamp their refineries/gas stations to ethanol/electric fueling stations?

What? It could happen!

-Kiamat Dusk

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy for those two things to at least partly become true. Market forces can alter the consumers' choice of product -- the last time we saw spikes in gasoline prices, this country moved from the older inefficient carbureted V8s to more fuel-efficient smaller engines and lighter cars. Somewhere along the line we got lazy and forgot the '73 oil embargo, so SUVs have grown in popularity.

The technology for alternate fuels has been around, but costs have prevented them from being a competitive choice until now. If gas is going for $5 and up, then yes, alternate fuels are a more viable engineering choice.

Hey! You stop thwarting my sarcasm with your reasoned responses, capitalist!

-Kiamat Dusk

You can defame the source all you like. It's just an editorial that points to an article in Washington Monthly which reveals:

" NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself -- but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

"Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn't do it," said Michael O'Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

This NBC report was later confirmed by the Wall Street Journal and Australian journalists who got on-the-record comments from the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit.

So, while it's no doubt good news that Zarqawi is no more, it's worth remembering that Bush wasn't willing to hit this known al-Qaeda terrorist in a known location based on air-tight intelligence before the war even began."







Right --it's about preventing Iraqi Oil being produced and sold in ero dollars.




Clearly you aren't. Iraq, as Cheney himself mentions, is capable of being the 2nd largest oil procucing nation on Earth. The fact that it's pumping a measley 11m barrels is MY point.




President Mushariff says he's dead.




You were claiming I did.

Hold on again, Kendra. I thought the claim was that there WERE NO AL QAEDA terrorists in Iraq? So, al Zarqawi (who was one of the key figures in the Ansar al-Islam terror group) was in Iraq, running terror training camps, before our invasion of Iraq. Things that make you go "hmm".


So we were supposed to invade Iraq before 2003 just to get Zarqawi? Okie doke. Let us not forget, of course, that President Clinton had several opportunities to acquire Mr. bin Laden before 9/11 as well -- but he passed them up, too. Sometimes it's not the easy decision you and I may believe it is. You and I don't have the same information, after all.


That's a far cry from your claims that this was nothing more than an opportunistic move for political purposes. I will also quibble with your "air-tight intelligence" phrase -- you've been condemnatory of that same "air-tight intelligence" that told us Saddam had WMD. But you want us to have bombed this guy before the invasion based on the same kind of info? Wow again.

Ever notice, I say "wow" a lot when I discuss these things with you?


Never mind that the drain on our own budget to support this war can be resolved once and for all when Iraq is self-sufficient (part of which will be fully producing their own oil on the world market). The billions we're spending on force deployments and civil assistance to Iraq makes the oil issue look like peanuts.

as I've repeated several times only to fall on deaf ears. I didn't say that Zarqawi wasn't Al-Q --I said he wasn't a mastermind. sheeeeeeeesh




The Clinton thing has been so debunked it's not even amusing anymore.

By THE NEW YORK TIMES December 30, 2001

Diplomacy and Politics
A Growing Effort Against bin Laden

As Mr. Clinton prepared his re-election bid in 1996, the administration made several crucial decisions. Recognizing the growing significance of Mr. bin Laden, the C.I.A. created a virtual station, code-named Alex, to track his activities around the world.

In the Middle East, American diplomats pressed the hard-line Islamic regime of Sudan to expel Mr. bin Laden, even if that pushed him back into Afghanistan.

To build support for this effort among Middle Eastern governments, the State Department circulated a dossier that accused Mr. bin Laden of financing radical Islamic causes around the world.

The document implicated him in several attacks on Americans, including the 1992 bombing of a hotel in Aden, Yemen, where American troops had stayed on their way to Somalia. It also said Mr. bin Laden's associates had trained the Somalis who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu in 1993.

Sudanese officials met with their C.I.A. and State Department counterparts and signaled that they might turn Mr. bin Laden over to another country. Saudi Arabia and Egypt were possibilities.

State Department and C.I.A. officials urged both Egypt and Saudi Arabia to accept him, according to former Clinton officials. "But both were afraid of the domestic reaction and refused," one recalled.

Critics of the administration's effort said this was an early missed opportunity to destroy Al Qaeda. Mr. Clinton himself would have had to lean hard on the Saudi and Egyptian governments. The White House believed no amount of pressure would change the outcome, and Mr. Clinton risked spending valuable capital on a losing cause. "We were not about to have the president make a call and be told no," one official explained.

Sudan obliquely hinted that it might turn Mr. bin Laden over to the United States, a former official said. But the Justice Department reviewed the case and concluded in the spring of 1996 that it did not have enough evidence to charge him with the attacks on American troops in Yemen and Somalia.





Nope. I would have wanted him captured and brought to trial.




Yes. It's annoying as all fuck, and shows a certain level of immaturity.





Bush dosn't want Iraq self-sufficient. He wants a perpetual War on "Terrorism" and control of the flow of oil out of Iraq. Bush doesn't care what he costs the Taxpayers --as long as his friends and him get their cut.

He was a leader, and that part has been very well-established. "Mastermind" is your term, not mine. You don't get to define the terms of the debate like that.


Disregarding your unlinked NY Times quote for a moment (aside from being a very slanted source you don't note whether it was an op-ed piece or more of the Times' "factual" crap), the 9/11 Commission itself gave much credence to the fact that Clinton let bin Laden go.

You can make all the excuses for Clinton that you want, that's fine -- but know that the same excuses apply to us missing our chances to get Zarqawi today. Debunk one, you debunk both of them. You can't just have this all your way.


Please note which of us has started the personal insults. It wasn't me.


Your opinion and 50 cents might get you a cup of coffee in a bad section of town, but that's about it.

Say, was that one of Jayson Blaire's pulitzer winning pieces?

-Kiamat Dusk

Mastermind is Bush's term. Not mine. Being "a leader" is a far cry from being "Osama's right hand man".

In fact Al-Q wanted to stop Zarqawi as they thought he was hurting their cause. That's from Presidential sock-puppet Tony Snow himself.




By all means disregard my quoted article. NYT is not a liberal source either. Ask Judith Miller who played footise with Scooter while beating the drums for war.

Also the 2 situations are different. There was no clear evidence against Bin Laden at that time. Zarqawi on the other hand was actively buildig chem labs.



I make no excuses for Clinton. He was a Hawk, and in the pocket of the Military Industrial Complex. Only thing I'll say good about Clinton is he wasn't an incompetant Fascist.




yeah --like the constant use of "wow" isn't meant as an insult. Grow a pair and fess up. You're as bad as I am.



at least it's an informed opinion.

If this is true, then we missed a chance to get Zarqawi. It also means that there were weapons of mass destruction in production and links to al-Qaida before the war.

If this is false then there never was an opportunity to capture him at that time.

I have not heard any evidence that the US has found weapons of mass destruction production facilities in Iraq, or did I miss that report?