longeyes
member
Toro uno, Toreador nada.
Spain pulling out...
- Thread starter Il Duce
- Start date
- Status
Depends on whether you belive Iraq had any ties to AlQ Riley. None have ever been shown and even Rumsfeld and the President have admitted there are none, but that was well after months of insinuating that there were to help market the Iraq war.
Obviously, I'm in the camp that thinks Saddam was not an imminent threat and we got snookered. I would have rather seen countrys with actual ties to AlQ and country's engaged in the proliferation of WMD to rogue states attacked instead of what you call the "traditional American leadership" positin of screwing up big time.
That's too bad that Spain lost 10 (actually I saw eleven, 7 of which were intel officers not soldiers) but 11 deaths and 1,300 troops is inconsequntial in the big picture.
I was glad to hear that we're starting a new offensive operation iin Afganistan but one wonders whether we would have already finished there and have done more damage to ALQ networks if resources hadn't been diverted to Iraq.
WilderBill
Member
I think, perhaps, that Spain should have built the Pyrines a little higher and/or used the Basques as a buffer zone.
No good comes from being so close to France.
I expected Spain's reaction would be to send lots more troops to Iraq.
There seems to be some question about whether there were Al Quaeda operatives in Iraq before the war, but it's pretty obvious they are there now.
Since we know where at least some of them are, that's where we should fight 'em.
No good comes from being so close to France.
I expected Spain's reaction would be to send lots more troops to Iraq.
There seems to be some question about whether there were Al Quaeda operatives in Iraq before the war, but it's pretty obvious they are there now.
Since we know where at least some of them are, that's where we should fight 'em.
Regarding links between al Qaeda and Iraq:
Pentagon Shadow Loses Some Mystique
Feith's Shops Did Not Usurp Intelligence Agencies on Iraq, Hill Probers Find
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A11
In February 2002, Christina Shelton, a career Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was combing through old intelligence on Iraq when she stumbled upon a small paragraph in a CIA report from the mid-1990s that stopped her.
It recounted a contact between some Iraqis and al Qaeda that she had not seen mentioned in current CIA analysis, according to three defense officials who work with her. She spent the next couple of months digging through 12 years of intelligence reports on Iraq and produced a briefing on alleged contacts Shelton felt had been overlooked or underplayed by the CIA.
Her boss, Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and the point man on Iraq, was so impressed that he set up a briefing for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was so impressed he asked her to brief CIA Director George J. Tenet in August 2002. By summer's end, Shelton had also briefed deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Shelton's analysis, and the White House briefings that resulted, are new details about a small group of Pentagon analysts whose work has cast a large shadow of suspicion and controversy as Congress investigates how the administration used intelligence before the Iraq war.
Congressional Democrats contend that two Pentagon shops -- the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group -- were established by Rumsfeld, Feith and other defense hawks expressly to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies. They argue that the offices supplied the administration with information, most of it discredited by the regular intelligence community, that President Bush, Cheney and others used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
But interviews with senior defense officials, White House and CIA officials, congressional sources and others yield a different portrait of the work done by the two Pentagon offices.
Neither the House nor Senate intelligence committees, for example, which have been investigating prewar intelligence for eight months, have found support for allegations that Pentagon analysts went out and collected their own intelligence, congressional officials from both parties say. Nor have investigators found that the Pentagon analysis about Iraq significantly shaped the case the administration made for going to war.
At the same time, the Pentagon operation was created, at least in part, to provide a more hard-line alternative to the official intelligence, according to interviews with current and former defense and intelligence officials. The two offices, overseen by Feith, concluded that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda were much more closely and conclusively linked than the intelligence community believed.
In this sense, the offices functioned as a pale version of the secret "Team B" analysis done by administration conservatives in the mid-1970s, who concluded the intelligence community was underplaying the Soviet military threat. Rumsfeld, in particular, has a history of skepticism about the intelligence community's analysis, including assessments of the former Soviet Union's military ability and of threats posed by ballistic missiles from North Korea and other countries.
Rumsfeld's known views -- and his insistence before the war that overthrowing Hussein was part of the war on terrorism -- only enhanced suspicion about the aims and role played by Feith's offices.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a member of the intelligence panel, charged that Feith's work "reportedly involved the review, analysis and promulgation of intelligence outside of the U.S. intelligence community."
Levin pressed Tenet on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Is it standard operating procedure for an intelligence analysis such as that to be presented at the NSC [National Security Council] and the office of the vice president without you being part of the presentation? Is that typical?"
"My experience is that people come in and may present those kinds of briefings on their views of intelligence," responded Tenet, who said he had not known about the briefings at the time. "But I have to tell you, senator, I'm the president's chief intelligence officer; I have the definitive view about these subjects. From my perspective, it is my view that prevails."
Hussein's Role
Feith, who worked on the NSC staff in the Reagan administration, is a well-known conservative voice on Israel policy who once urged the Israeli prime minister to repudiate the Oslo peace accords. His views are a source of tension between him and foreign policy officials at the State Department and elsewhere who advocate concessions be made by Palestinians and Israel to achieve a peace settlement.
No sooner had Bush announced that the United States was at war on terrorism than it became Feith's job to come up with a strategy for executing such a war.
"We said to ourselves, 'We are at war with an international terrorist network that includes organizations, state supporters and nonstate supporters. What does that mean to be at war with a network?' " Feith said in an interview.
But Feith felt he needed to bring on help in the Pentagon for another reason, too, said four other senior current and former Pentagon civilians: the belief that the CIA and other intelligence agencies dangerously undervalued threats to U.S. interests.
"The strategic thinking was the Middle East is going down the tubes. It's getting worse, not better," said one former senior Pentagon official who worked closely with Feith's offices. "I don't think we thought there was objective evidence that could be got from CIA, DIA, INR," he added, referring to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's main intelligence office, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Feith's office worked not only on "how to fight Saddam Hussein but also how to fight the NSC, the State Department and the intelligence community," which were not convinced of Hussein's involvement in terrorism, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Feith set up the first of his two shops, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, to "study al Qaeda worldwide suppliers, chokepoints, vulnerabilities and recommend strategies for rendering terrorist networks ineffective," according to a January 2002 document sent to DIA.
The group never grew larger than two people, said Feith and William J. Luti, who was director of the Office of Special Plans and deputy undersecretary of defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.
The evaluation group's largest project was what one participant called a "sociometric diagram" of links between terrorist organizations and their supporters around the world, mostly focused on al Qaeda, the Islamic Resistance Movement (or Hamas), Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. It was meant to challenge the "conventional wisdom," said one senior defense official, that terrorist groups did not work together.
It looked "like a college term paper," said one senior Pentagon official who saw the analysis. It was hundreds of connecting lines and dots footnoted with binders filled with signals intelligence, human source reporting and even thirdhand intelligence accounts of personal meetings between terrorists.
One of its key and most controversial findings was that there was a connection between secular states and fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.
If anything, the analysis reinforced the view of top Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul N. Wolfowitz and Feith, that Hussein's Iraq had worrisome contacts with al Qaeda over the last decade that could only be expected to grow.
The evaluation group's other job was to read through the huge, daily stream of intelligence reporting on terrorism and "highlight things of interest to Feith," said one official involved in the process. "We were looking for connections" between terrorist groups.
From time to time, senior defense officials called bits of intelligence to the attention of the White House, they said.
Feith said the worldwide threat study itself never left the Pentagon. It helped inform the military strategy on the war on terrorism, but it was only one small input into that process, he said.
Mainly, the work of the evaluation group, Luti said, "went into the corporate memory."
'Very Helpful'
In the summer of 2002, Shelton, who had been working virtually on her own, was joined by Christopher Carney, a naval reservist and associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Together they completed their study on the links between al Qaeda and Iraq.
"It was interesting enough that I brought it to Secretary Rumsfeld because Secretary Rumsfeld is well known for being a particularly intelligent reader of intelligence," Feith said.
Rumsfeld told Feith, " 'Call George and tell him we have something for him to see,' " Feith said. On Aug. 15, 2002, a delegation from Pentagon was buzzed through the guard station at CIA headquarters for the Tenet meeting. Shelton and Carney were the briefers; Feith and DIA Director Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby accompanied them.
"The feedback that I got from George right after the briefing was, 'That was very helpful, thank you,' " Feith said.
CIA officials who sat in the briefing were nonplussed. The briefing was all "inductive analysis," according to one participant's notes from the meeting. The data pointed to "complicity and support," nothing more. "Much of it, we had discounted already," said another participant.
Tenet, according to agency officials, never incorporated any of the particulars from the briefing into his subsequent briefings to Congress. He asked some CIA analysts to get together with Shelton for further discussions.
Feith also arranged for Shelton to brief deputy national security adviser Hadley and Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
"Her work did not change [Hadley's] thinking because his source for intelligence information are the products produced by the CIA," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Nor did the briefing's content reach national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney or Bush, according to McCormack and Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems. (In November 2003, a written version of her PowerPoint briefing, a version submitted to the intelligence committees investigating prewar intelligence, was published in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.) The briefing openly challenged the prevailing CIA view that a religion-based terrorist, Osama bin Laden, would not seek to work with a secular state such as Iraq. "They were the ones who were intellectually unwilling to rethink this issue," one defense official said. "But they were not willing to shoot it down, either."
Whatever the agency really thought of Shelton's analysis, on Oct. 7, 2002, CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin sent a letter to the Senate intelligence committee which, in a general sense, supported her conclusion: "We have solid evidence of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade," it said. ". . . Growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's link to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action."
A Nondescript Name
In August 2002, as the possibility of war with Iraq grew more likely, Luti's Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (NESA) was reorganized into the Office of Special Plans and NESA. Its job, according to Feith and Luti, was to propose strategies for the war on terrorism and Iraq.
It was given a nondescript name to purposefully hide the fact that, although the administration was publicly emphasizing diplomacy at the United Nations, the Pentagon was actively engaged in war planning and postwar planning.
The office staff never numbered more than 18, including reservists and people temporarily assigned. "There are stories that we had hundreds of people beavering away at this stuff," Feith said. ". . . They're just not true."
The office's job was to devise Pentagon policy recommendations for the larger interagency decision-making on every conceivable issue: troop deployment planning, coalition building, oil sector maintenance, war crimes prosecution, ministry organization, training an Iraqi police force, media strategy and "rewards, incentives and immunity" for former Baath Party supporters, according to a chart hanging in the special plans office, Room 1A939, several months ago.
The insular nature of Luti's office, and his outspoken personal conviction that the United States should remove Hussein, sparked rumors at the Pentagon that the office was collecting intelligence on its own, that it had hired its own intelligence agents. Even diehard Bush supporters, some of whom were critical of Feith's and Luti's management style, were repeating the rumors.
Yesterday, Rumsfeld addressed the controversy, saying critics of the Office of Special Plans had a "conspiratorial view of the world." Shelton's analysis, he emphasized, was shared with the CIA, and White House briefings were not unusual.
"We brief the president. We brief the vice president. We brief the [CIA director]. We brief the secretary of state. . . . That is not only not a bad thing, it's a good thing."
Pentagon Shadow Loses Some Mystique
Feith's Shops Did Not Usurp Intelligence Agencies on Iraq, Hill Probers Find
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A11
In February 2002, Christina Shelton, a career Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was combing through old intelligence on Iraq when she stumbled upon a small paragraph in a CIA report from the mid-1990s that stopped her.
It recounted a contact between some Iraqis and al Qaeda that she had not seen mentioned in current CIA analysis, according to three defense officials who work with her. She spent the next couple of months digging through 12 years of intelligence reports on Iraq and produced a briefing on alleged contacts Shelton felt had been overlooked or underplayed by the CIA.
Her boss, Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and the point man on Iraq, was so impressed that he set up a briefing for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was so impressed he asked her to brief CIA Director George J. Tenet in August 2002. By summer's end, Shelton had also briefed deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Shelton's analysis, and the White House briefings that resulted, are new details about a small group of Pentagon analysts whose work has cast a large shadow of suspicion and controversy as Congress investigates how the administration used intelligence before the Iraq war.
Congressional Democrats contend that two Pentagon shops -- the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group -- were established by Rumsfeld, Feith and other defense hawks expressly to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies. They argue that the offices supplied the administration with information, most of it discredited by the regular intelligence community, that President Bush, Cheney and others used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
But interviews with senior defense officials, White House and CIA officials, congressional sources and others yield a different portrait of the work done by the two Pentagon offices.
Neither the House nor Senate intelligence committees, for example, which have been investigating prewar intelligence for eight months, have found support for allegations that Pentagon analysts went out and collected their own intelligence, congressional officials from both parties say. Nor have investigators found that the Pentagon analysis about Iraq significantly shaped the case the administration made for going to war.
At the same time, the Pentagon operation was created, at least in part, to provide a more hard-line alternative to the official intelligence, according to interviews with current and former defense and intelligence officials. The two offices, overseen by Feith, concluded that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda were much more closely and conclusively linked than the intelligence community believed.
In this sense, the offices functioned as a pale version of the secret "Team B" analysis done by administration conservatives in the mid-1970s, who concluded the intelligence community was underplaying the Soviet military threat. Rumsfeld, in particular, has a history of skepticism about the intelligence community's analysis, including assessments of the former Soviet Union's military ability and of threats posed by ballistic missiles from North Korea and other countries.
Rumsfeld's known views -- and his insistence before the war that overthrowing Hussein was part of the war on terrorism -- only enhanced suspicion about the aims and role played by Feith's offices.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a member of the intelligence panel, charged that Feith's work "reportedly involved the review, analysis and promulgation of intelligence outside of the U.S. intelligence community."
Levin pressed Tenet on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Is it standard operating procedure for an intelligence analysis such as that to be presented at the NSC [National Security Council] and the office of the vice president without you being part of the presentation? Is that typical?"
"My experience is that people come in and may present those kinds of briefings on their views of intelligence," responded Tenet, who said he had not known about the briefings at the time. "But I have to tell you, senator, I'm the president's chief intelligence officer; I have the definitive view about these subjects. From my perspective, it is my view that prevails."
Hussein's Role
Feith, who worked on the NSC staff in the Reagan administration, is a well-known conservative voice on Israel policy who once urged the Israeli prime minister to repudiate the Oslo peace accords. His views are a source of tension between him and foreign policy officials at the State Department and elsewhere who advocate concessions be made by Palestinians and Israel to achieve a peace settlement.
No sooner had Bush announced that the United States was at war on terrorism than it became Feith's job to come up with a strategy for executing such a war.
"We said to ourselves, 'We are at war with an international terrorist network that includes organizations, state supporters and nonstate supporters. What does that mean to be at war with a network?' " Feith said in an interview.
But Feith felt he needed to bring on help in the Pentagon for another reason, too, said four other senior current and former Pentagon civilians: the belief that the CIA and other intelligence agencies dangerously undervalued threats to U.S. interests.
"The strategic thinking was the Middle East is going down the tubes. It's getting worse, not better," said one former senior Pentagon official who worked closely with Feith's offices. "I don't think we thought there was objective evidence that could be got from CIA, DIA, INR," he added, referring to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's main intelligence office, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Feith's office worked not only on "how to fight Saddam Hussein but also how to fight the NSC, the State Department and the intelligence community," which were not convinced of Hussein's involvement in terrorism, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Feith set up the first of his two shops, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, to "study al Qaeda worldwide suppliers, chokepoints, vulnerabilities and recommend strategies for rendering terrorist networks ineffective," according to a January 2002 document sent to DIA.
The group never grew larger than two people, said Feith and William J. Luti, who was director of the Office of Special Plans and deputy undersecretary of defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.
The evaluation group's largest project was what one participant called a "sociometric diagram" of links between terrorist organizations and their supporters around the world, mostly focused on al Qaeda, the Islamic Resistance Movement (or Hamas), Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. It was meant to challenge the "conventional wisdom," said one senior defense official, that terrorist groups did not work together.
It looked "like a college term paper," said one senior Pentagon official who saw the analysis. It was hundreds of connecting lines and dots footnoted with binders filled with signals intelligence, human source reporting and even thirdhand intelligence accounts of personal meetings between terrorists.
One of its key and most controversial findings was that there was a connection between secular states and fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.
If anything, the analysis reinforced the view of top Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul N. Wolfowitz and Feith, that Hussein's Iraq had worrisome contacts with al Qaeda over the last decade that could only be expected to grow.
The evaluation group's other job was to read through the huge, daily stream of intelligence reporting on terrorism and "highlight things of interest to Feith," said one official involved in the process. "We were looking for connections" between terrorist groups.
From time to time, senior defense officials called bits of intelligence to the attention of the White House, they said.
Feith said the worldwide threat study itself never left the Pentagon. It helped inform the military strategy on the war on terrorism, but it was only one small input into that process, he said.
Mainly, the work of the evaluation group, Luti said, "went into the corporate memory."
'Very Helpful'
In the summer of 2002, Shelton, who had been working virtually on her own, was joined by Christopher Carney, a naval reservist and associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Together they completed their study on the links between al Qaeda and Iraq.
"It was interesting enough that I brought it to Secretary Rumsfeld because Secretary Rumsfeld is well known for being a particularly intelligent reader of intelligence," Feith said.
Rumsfeld told Feith, " 'Call George and tell him we have something for him to see,' " Feith said. On Aug. 15, 2002, a delegation from Pentagon was buzzed through the guard station at CIA headquarters for the Tenet meeting. Shelton and Carney were the briefers; Feith and DIA Director Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby accompanied them.
"The feedback that I got from George right after the briefing was, 'That was very helpful, thank you,' " Feith said.
CIA officials who sat in the briefing were nonplussed. The briefing was all "inductive analysis," according to one participant's notes from the meeting. The data pointed to "complicity and support," nothing more. "Much of it, we had discounted already," said another participant.
Tenet, according to agency officials, never incorporated any of the particulars from the briefing into his subsequent briefings to Congress. He asked some CIA analysts to get together with Shelton for further discussions.
Feith also arranged for Shelton to brief deputy national security adviser Hadley and Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
"Her work did not change [Hadley's] thinking because his source for intelligence information are the products produced by the CIA," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Nor did the briefing's content reach national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney or Bush, according to McCormack and Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems. (In November 2003, a written version of her PowerPoint briefing, a version submitted to the intelligence committees investigating prewar intelligence, was published in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.) The briefing openly challenged the prevailing CIA view that a religion-based terrorist, Osama bin Laden, would not seek to work with a secular state such as Iraq. "They were the ones who were intellectually unwilling to rethink this issue," one defense official said. "But they were not willing to shoot it down, either."
Whatever the agency really thought of Shelton's analysis, on Oct. 7, 2002, CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin sent a letter to the Senate intelligence committee which, in a general sense, supported her conclusion: "We have solid evidence of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade," it said. ". . . Growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's link to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action."
A Nondescript Name
In August 2002, as the possibility of war with Iraq grew more likely, Luti's Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (NESA) was reorganized into the Office of Special Plans and NESA. Its job, according to Feith and Luti, was to propose strategies for the war on terrorism and Iraq.
It was given a nondescript name to purposefully hide the fact that, although the administration was publicly emphasizing diplomacy at the United Nations, the Pentagon was actively engaged in war planning and postwar planning.
The office staff never numbered more than 18, including reservists and people temporarily assigned. "There are stories that we had hundreds of people beavering away at this stuff," Feith said. ". . . They're just not true."
The office's job was to devise Pentagon policy recommendations for the larger interagency decision-making on every conceivable issue: troop deployment planning, coalition building, oil sector maintenance, war crimes prosecution, ministry organization, training an Iraqi police force, media strategy and "rewards, incentives and immunity" for former Baath Party supporters, according to a chart hanging in the special plans office, Room 1A939, several months ago.
The insular nature of Luti's office, and his outspoken personal conviction that the United States should remove Hussein, sparked rumors at the Pentagon that the office was collecting intelligence on its own, that it had hired its own intelligence agents. Even diehard Bush supporters, some of whom were critical of Feith's and Luti's management style, were repeating the rumors.
Yesterday, Rumsfeld addressed the controversy, saying critics of the Office of Special Plans had a "conspiratorial view of the world." Shelton's analysis, he emphasized, was shared with the CIA, and White House briefings were not unusual.
"We brief the president. We brief the vice president. We brief the [CIA director]. We brief the secretary of state. . . . That is not only not a bad thing, it's a good thing."
UK and Poland are next on the list.
I hope Brits have bigger cojones than that …
I don't think Poles will cave ( I read somewhere that while there were millions of people protesting the war all over the western Europe and Russia , there were only 300 or so in Warsaw) but obviously Poland doesn't have means to support US the way UK did.
In any case, it was a sad they for western civilization.
I hope Brits have bigger cojones than that …
I don't think Poles will cave ( I read somewhere that while there were millions of people protesting the war all over the western Europe and Russia , there were only 300 or so in Warsaw) but obviously Poland doesn't have means to support US the way UK did.
In any case, it was a sad they for western civilization.
DonP
Member
Al Queda and Iraq
I'm havin a little trouble figuring this all out.
We are being told repeatedly by Ted Kennedy, Kerry, our own "ABB" crowd that Al Queda had nothing to do with Iraq and that's one of the big reasons GWB must be an idiot and a liar.
Now a lot of the same people are telling me that the reason Al Queda hit Spain was because they are in Iraq with us?
Which is it?
If you really believe that there is and has never been a relationship between Al Q' and Iraq, why would they give a damn that Spain is/was in there with us?
Seems to me ...
Either Al Q' has/had a real presence in Iraq and are intensely interested in what happens there, (ergo GWB was right and that couldn't be).
Or
They are going to hit any country that has any kind of relationship with the US or the coalition e.g. Bali bombing (long before we went into Iraq) no matter what we do.
No matter how you look at it, turning tail just exposes another place to get kicked by these guys.
I'm havin a little trouble figuring this all out.
We are being told repeatedly by Ted Kennedy, Kerry, our own "ABB" crowd that Al Queda had nothing to do with Iraq and that's one of the big reasons GWB must be an idiot and a liar.
Now a lot of the same people are telling me that the reason Al Queda hit Spain was because they are in Iraq with us?
Which is it?
If you really believe that there is and has never been a relationship between Al Q' and Iraq, why would they give a damn that Spain is/was in there with us?
Seems to me ...
Either Al Q' has/had a real presence in Iraq and are intensely interested in what happens there, (ergo GWB was right and that couldn't be).
Or
They are going to hit any country that has any kind of relationship with the US or the coalition e.g. Bali bombing (long before we went into Iraq) no matter what we do.
No matter how you look at it, turning tail just exposes another place to get kicked by these guys.
jonesy9 said
I think our dysfunctional intelligence apparatus led Rumsfeld and the President to conclude Iraq did have ties to AL-Q. Or maybe not. I do not think we citizens will ever know. I, for one, consider that a moot issue.
For the sake of argument, let's say the nay-sayers are correct; the administration KNEW Saddam had no DIRECT ties to AL-Q. Further, the administration KNEW Saddam had no WMD and was in fact NOT an imminent threat (to the continental U.S.). The fact remains that worldwide terrorism stemming from radical Islam emanates from the middle east.
Perhaps the administration saw an opportunity to place U.S. forces in the most strategic location possible, oversold WMD, outsmarted the U.N., France, Germany AND Saddam. I think it was a strong move. The results speak for themselves. There has been no terrorist attack on the CONUS since 9/11.
I guess we're gonna have to agree to disagree, Jonesy, but one thing is for sure. There is no way the people of this country are gonna put John Kerry in the WhiteHouse.
I think our dysfunctional intelligence apparatus led Rumsfeld and the President to conclude Iraq did have ties to AL-Q. Or maybe not. I do not think we citizens will ever know. I, for one, consider that a moot issue.
For the sake of argument, let's say the nay-sayers are correct; the administration KNEW Saddam had no DIRECT ties to AL-Q. Further, the administration KNEW Saddam had no WMD and was in fact NOT an imminent threat (to the continental U.S.). The fact remains that worldwide terrorism stemming from radical Islam emanates from the middle east.
Perhaps the administration saw an opportunity to place U.S. forces in the most strategic location possible, oversold WMD, outsmarted the U.N., France, Germany AND Saddam. I think it was a strong move. The results speak for themselves. There has been no terrorist attack on the CONUS since 9/11.
I guess we're gonna have to agree to disagree, Jonesy, but one thing is for sure. There is no way the people of this country are gonna put John Kerry in the WhiteHouse.
very specious argument and pretty simple actually. Which is it? probably both.To think it can only be one way or the other makes no sense and kills your argument.
why would they care? because Spain now has troops on muslim ground, hallowed muslim ground. The bombers also refrenced Spain in context of the Crusades. Spain was once Muslim land. Militant Muslims still view it as part of there empire that needs to be retaken by jihad for all we know.
It still looks like the Popular Party screwed this one up but maybe we'll know more later this week.
Red Dane
Member
I am simply dumbfounded by Spain's reaction to the bombings. 
Haven't they learned by now that there is no other way to handle crazy terrorist groups other than decisive harsh military action?
I guess the only way they will figure it out is by being repeatedly sucker punched.
I suppose that this is just the tip of the iceberg for Spain, so long as they keep providing the soap on a rope and an invitation.. the terrorists will oblige.
Haven't they learned by now that there is no other way to handle crazy terrorist groups other than decisive harsh military action?
I guess the only way they will figure it out is by being repeatedly sucker punched.
I suppose that this is just the tip of the iceberg for Spain, so long as they keep providing the soap on a rope and an invitation.. the terrorists will oblige.
Adam
Member
Poland to keep troops in Iraq, chides Spain
REUTERS
7:51 a.m. March 15, 2004
TARNOW, Poland – Poland vowed Monday to keep troops in Iraq and warned Spain's incoming government that its plan to pull out could be seen as weakness in the face of terror after the Madrid bombings.
Poland has 2,400 troops in Iraq and commands a 9,000-strong division of troops from 24 nations, including 1,300 Spanish soldiers, in a central-south zone.
"Revising our positions on Iraq after terrorist attacks would be to admit that terrorists are stronger and that they are right," Prime Minister Leszek Miller told a news conference in the Polish town of Tarnow.
Spain had been due to take over the command of the international division on July 1 but the plan was thrown into doubt Monday when Socialist Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he would bring the troops home.
The Socialist victory in Spain's general election Sunday followed last week's bomb attacks by suspected Islamist militants in Madrid, which killed nearly 200 people.
Poland, the biggest of 10 mostly ex-communist states joining the European Union in May, fears it may be the next target, prompting the authorities to step up security at borders, airports and railway stations.
Some analysts said Zapatero's pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq made Poland more vulnerable.
"If terrorists see that you can force a country to pull out, they may think it is worthwhile to try the same again," said Janusz Reiter, head of the International Relations Center in Warsaw.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040315-0751-iraq-poland.html
Don't be afraid about Poland, even alone and under attack we will fight with terror, no matter where...
WhoKnowsWho
Member
Any chance that this attack could have been done by some local extremists just to push the issue over the edge? Kill a few 100, save a 1000? Something sick like that?
Mark Tyson
Member
I doubt it. It would be a real departure for the ETA to do that. They've never targeted civilians en masse like that - it's usually a specific government figure or some such. They did blow up a market once and kill 20+ people(in the 80's I think) but they actually apologized for it. Also remember that ETA has Marxist trappings, and they'd be loathe to attack the mode of transport used by the proletariat/working classes. That's where their support comes from.
Michigander
Member
Don't think a terrorist attack pre-November in the US wouldn't have a similar effect? I beg to differ.
I think the conservatives may be grossly underestimating the liberals this time around.
• The libs ferociously HATE Bush.
• To them, the skirmish in Iraq is about oil and power, not WMD's (which haven't been found) or US security or AlQ (WoT). To the libs, Bush really is an "international terrorist."
• Bush proposes a gay marriage ban amendment.
• The libs are going to do their best to make sure the Florida fiasco does not happen again. After all, they were, ooooh, just this close! And they all know Bush stole the election.
I believe the libs are going to be much more driven to the polls already. If similar events happened in the US as in Spain just before the election, I think it would propel the libs much more than the cons.
I think the conservatives may be grossly underestimating the liberals this time around.
• The libs ferociously HATE Bush.
• To them, the skirmish in Iraq is about oil and power, not WMD's (which haven't been found) or US security or AlQ (WoT). To the libs, Bush really is an "international terrorist."
• Bush proposes a gay marriage ban amendment.
• The libs are going to do their best to make sure the Florida fiasco does not happen again. After all, they were, ooooh, just this close! And they all know Bush stole the election.
I believe the libs are going to be much more driven to the polls already. If similar events happened in the US as in Spain just before the election, I think it would propel the libs much more than the cons.
PATH
Member
COWARDICE! Show it and they will return in greater numbers and with greater vigor. Spains people showed their true colors! They are yellow. Good riddance to fair weather friends.
God Bless the Poles who are sticking with us!!! We shall remember their courage always!!!
God Bless the Poles who are sticking with us!!! We shall remember their courage always!!!
Declaration Day
Member
I only have one word to say:
SPINELESS!
SPINELESS!
commygun
Member
To quote Stephen Den Beste:
Spain marched in the street on Friday
Then they crawled on their knees to the voting booth on Sunday.
Spain marched in the street on Friday
Then they crawled on their knees to the voting booth on Sunday.
Mark Tyson
Member
El Cid is spinning in his tomb.
joab
Member
But Neville Chamberlain is nodding in agreement.
I have to believe that the American people will remember who they are and call for blood the way they always have, from the Alamo to the Towers. America as a people live by the feud always have and always will.
)
Lets not forget who the Poles are they were one of the only groups to oppose Hitlers great army using personal weapons in the Warsaw ghettoes and one of the first Soviet Bloc countries to tell mother Russian to go suck an egg. History shows them to be a proud and strong nation that does'nt like to be pushed around. (yeah I'm Polish
Cosmoline
Member
Well it's their country and their troops, so they certainly have a right to pull out. But it does point to some really enormous difference between us and them. Vast, cavernous differences. Grand canyon differences. The US response to such attacks is 180 degrees different from the Spanish response. This goes way beyond Republican or Democrat. When we are bombed, we want our government to GO OUT and GET the bastards. Our arguments come over the methods used, not the goals. The Spanish are apparently very, very different. Perhaps all of Europe is just fundamentally different from us. That is one way of explaning why we seem to be at loggerheads over every issue.
WonderNine
member
Terrorists Win.
feedthehogs
Member
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2003
- Messages
- 1,801
A sad day for the world.
One more country is bullied into submission.
Better to die fighting, than live as slaves.
Spain, the new slave state.
One more country is bullied into submission.
Better to die fighting, than live as slaves.
Spain, the new slave state.
Glock Glockler
Member
Could anyone tell me what ETA's beef is? I've been trying to do research on them but havent found much. I understand that they're descended from the the Neolithic Europeans that inhabited the continent before the invasions of the Indo-Aryan tribes and they're proud and all, but why blow things up?
Franco was a jerk to them, but he's dead, and they already have a pretty good degree of autonomy. If they want an independant country I think they'd fare better by trying through peaceful means.
Franco was a jerk to them, but he's dead, and they already have a pretty good degree of autonomy. If they want an independant country I think they'd fare better by trying through peaceful means.
ZekeLuvs1911
Member
Well so much for the reputed machismo of the Spainards. Don't need them anyways.....the govt want to sick their heads in a hole...better for them Terrorists to kick them in the ass.
Oleg Volk
Moderator Emeritus
Spaniards gutless? I recall a pretty major bloodletting c. 1936-39 in which people of that country fought hard. Plenty of gut-turning atrocities from all sides, too. And the "Blue Division" kicked butt on the Eastern Front for a while...
Il Duce
Member
God Bless the Poles
I believe the Poles will become our next great ally. Britain still holds the title, but I don't think it's to farfetched to say they may turn against us. The Poles learned the hard way what it's like to be slaves to a government. They might not have the numbers, arms, or technology that some other countries have, but they certainly have the heart. Makes me proud of my Polish heritage....I'm not biased or anything, though
Maybe this will put an end to those lame Polish jokes people insist on telling me.
Il Duce
I believe the Poles will become our next great ally. Britain still holds the title, but I don't think it's to farfetched to say they may turn against us. The Poles learned the hard way what it's like to be slaves to a government. They might not have the numbers, arms, or technology that some other countries have, but they certainly have the heart. Makes me proud of my Polish heritage....I'm not biased or anything, though
Maybe this will put an end to those lame Polish jokes people insist on telling me.
Il Duce
- Status
