Why must I hash through this again and again? I think it is that you have cast off all your higher cognitive faculties in order to avoid facing the inescapable.

From piece 1:
"The Tenet letter declassified CIA reporting on weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's links to al Qaeda. Two sentences on WMD garnered most media attention, but the intelligence chief's comments on al Qaeda deserved notice. "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qa'ida going back a decade," Tenet wrote. "Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom [in Afghanistan], we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qa'ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that al Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." "

So, we are to believe that there was Al-Qaida in Iraq because administration and CIA officials say so? Pardon me, but this is the same pack of loonies who said that there were WMD factories, WMD stockpiles and "Credible evidence", so I am not inclined to count their 'BECAUSE I SAY SO' as evidence. Their claims of 'SOLID EVIDENCE' everywhere else have been wrong, the evidence has NEVER been produced, so Why should I believe? Sorry, no dice.

But if the CIA can roll out a paper trail, a financial connection, a Al-Qaeda Cell in Iraq that pre-dates the War, or ANY sort of raw data, I'd listen (and so would the world). Why, I wonder, can they not do this? Hmmm? Maybe because non exists?

Piece one is nothing, its a glorified OpEd making a mountain out of affirmative and unsubstantiated claims. Its another straw for you to grasp at.

"Their assignment was not to collect new intelligence but to evaluate existing intelligence gathered by the CIA, with particular attention to any possible Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration. A CIA counterterrorism team was given a similar task, and while many agency analysts remained skeptical about links, the counterterrorism experts came away convinced that there had been cooperation. "

Again, another 'Because we say so', proffered up without evidence.

"For one thing, they cross-referenced old intelligence with new information provided by high-level al Qaeda detainees. Reports of collaboration grew in number and specificity. The case grew stronger. Throughout the summer and fall of 2002, al Qaeda operatives held in Guantanamo corroborated previously sketchy reports of a series of meetings in Khartoum, Sudan, home to al Qaeda during the mid-90s. U.S. officials learned more about the activities of Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi, an al Qaeda WMD specialist sent by bin Laden to seek WMD training, and possibly weapons, from the Iraqi regime. Intelligence specialists also heard increasingly detailed reports about meetings in Baghdad between al Qaeda leaders and Uday Hussein in April 1998, at a birthday celebration for Saddam. "

Okay, how about some evidence here? How about something other than reports about reports from Al-Qaeda operatives at Gitmo? how about a paper trail placing Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi in Iraq? How about the capture of Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi. I know what the CIA claims and what the administration claims, but they have been categorically incorrect on EVERY OTHER POINT. This is like asking the town pahelogical liar if he stole the jewels, and then taking his word for it.

"In December 2002, as the Bush administration prepared its public case for war with Iraq, White House officials sifted through reams of these intelligence reports on ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda. Some of the reporting was solid, some circumstantial. The White House identified those elements of the reports it wanted to use publicly and asked the CIA to declassify them. The Agency agreed to declassify some 75 percent of the requested intelligence. "

So the non-evidence that has been vomited up by the admin- Niger Yellowcake and meetings in Eastern Europe... This was the good stuff? This was the stuff hand-selected by the Admin and declassified by the CIA? Wow, your case looks stronger by the picosecond, Tom.

"According to administration sources, Colin Powell, in his presentation before the U.N. Security Council, used only 10 or 15 percent of the newly declassified material."

Okay, since it was declasified, he does not have to worry about protecting sources, so surely he must have rolled out his best stuff, right? Wow.

Interesting, because EVERYTHING in the Powell address so far concerning WMD, Autonomous Drones and etc has FAILED to materialize. So I am to believe that the Skinny allegations made about Ansar Al Islam and the one-legged Al-Qaeda guy are going to be true?

"IF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION had been out to hype the threat from an al Qaeda-Saddam link, it stands to reason that it would have used every shred of incriminating evidence at its disposal. Instead, the administration was restrained in its use of available intelligence. What the Bush administration left out is in some ways as revealing as what it included. "

Oh great, I see it already. We can't judge because we don't have the best stuff, and the best stuff is secret so we can't ever judge. Its UFOlogy all over again.

"--Iraqi defectors had been saying for years that Saddam's regime trained "non-Iraqi Arab terrorists" at a camp in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. U.N. inspectors had confirmed the camp's existence, including the presence of a Boeing 707. Defectors say the plane was used to train hijackers; the Iraqi regime said it was used in counterterrorism training. Sabah Khodada, a captain in the Iraqi Army, worked at Salman Pak. In October 2001, he told PBS's "Frontline" about what went on there. "Training is majorly on terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism. . . . All this training is directly toward attacking American targets, and American interests." "

Now, how is it that we OWN salman Pax, and have for 6 months, and havbe been unable to produce ANY definitive evidence that it was
1) A terrorist training camp
2) Had a stockpile of 'poisons' (as claimed) that were used to train terrorists on the employ of WMD. No residue, No stockpile, Nothing.
3) Any documents or facilities at Salman Pax that can be exhibited as proof of (1) or (2)

Additionally, the CIA largely dismissed the Iraqi ExNat/INC folks as nbot credible, but the Pentegon was in daily consultation with them.

We have been through this. the entire data about Salman Pax boils down to the say-so of two related sources. However, two UNRELATED sources on DIFFERENT sides of the atlantic, claim that Salman Pax was a legitamate Special Ops training ground founded with the help of the British when Iraq was an ally of america.

In the end, Tom, there was NOTHING at Salman Pax. No proof... So How much longer are you going to keep recycling this Bull Shit?

"--On February 13, 2003, the government of the Philippines asked Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, to leave the country. According to telephone records obtained by Philippine intelligence, Hussein had been in frequent contact with two leaders of Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda affiliate in South Asia, immediately before and immediately after they detonated a bomb in Zamboanga City. That attack killed two Filipinos and an American Special Forces soldier and injured several others. Hussein left the Philippines for Iraq after he was "PNG'd"--declared persona non grata--by the Philippine government and has not been heard from since.

According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, an Abu Sayyaf leader who planned the attack bragged on television a month after the bombing that Iraq had contacted him about conducting joint operations. Philippine intelligence officials were initially skeptical of his boasting, but after finding the telephone records they believed him. "

I can't and won't comment on this until you provide links to the CSM story or some substantiating data. You've thrown this around before, and I asked the same before. This may or may not be true, but you have to first make some sort of case.

"--No fewer than five high-ranking Czech officials have publicly confirmed that Mohammed Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker, met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer working at the Iraqi embassy, in Prague five months before the hijacking. Media leaks here and in the Czech Republic have called into question whether Atta was in Prague on the key dates--between April 4 and April 11, 2001. And several high-ranking administration officials are "agnostic" as to whether the meeting took place. Still, the public position of the Czech government to this day is that it did. "

Yet American Intelligence and British intelligence doubt this, and our own intelligence suggests that neither Mohammed Atta nor Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani was near that place at the time indicated. So we have to blindly trust the no-evidence claims of the Administration and Domestic intelligence when it suits the case for war, but deny their objections (or really, convinently not mention them) when it argues against the case for war. Bull Shit yet again.

"THE ADMINISTRATION'S CRITICS, including several of the Democratic presidential candidates, have alluded to new "evidence" they say confirms Iraq and al Qaeda had no relationship before the war. They have not shared that evidence. "

You can't produce support of the non-existence of any one thing. This is like faulting the tiger for not eating a balanced diet. Absurd.

Furthermore, this allegation is offered without example and without citation, so it sounds Pithy- but really is just propaganda. A journalistic slam for the critics of Bush.

"Even as the critics withhold the basis for their allegations, evidence on the other side is piling up. Ansar al-Islam--the al Qaeda cell formed in June 2001 that operated out of northern Iraq before the war, notably attacking Kurdish enemies of Saddam--has stepped up its activities elsewhere in the country. In some cases, say national security officials, Ansar is joining with remnants of Saddam's regime to attack Americans and nongovernmental organizations working in Iraq. "

Good GOD!!! Give me a break! AAI is an ethnically KURD group, LED by KURDS and composed mainly of KURDS- yeah, the same people Saddam gassed in the 80's. They MAY have Al-Qaeda connections, but they certainly don't have any Saddam connections. The only people who say so are the Sufi Kurds (which AAI is NOT) who are the TARGET of AAI, and their entire evidence rests on the 'say so' of a man they have held captive for YEARS. And if you think they respect the rights of prisoners over there, then I have a vat of Iraqi WMD to sell you.

Other then the say-so of this Kurdish captive, there is NO evidence whatesoever linking Saddam to AAI.

This is the same unsubstantiated BULLSHIT that was passed around before the war, But it is even more stupid, as exemplified by:

"has stepped up its activities elsewhere in the country. In some cases, say national security officials, Ansar is joining with remnants of Saddam's regime to attack Americans and nongovernmental organizations working in Iraq. "

So now we occupy the lands of a fundamentalist anti-american religious nut group with probable ties to Al-Qaeda, and that they attack american troops is PROOF POSITIVE that they were in league with Saddam before the war!?!?!

This is beyond defective and selective reasoning, this is (guess what!?) BULLSHIT

Why don't you READ SOMETHING on the geographic, ethnic and historical makeup of Iraq?

"And there are reports of more direct links between the Iraqi regime and bin Laden. Farouk Hijazi, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and Saddam's longtime outreach agent to Islamic fundamentalists, has been captured. In his initial interrogations, Hijazi admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994. "

Okay, so is this a report, or factual material released by thew admin. Got any links? Any at all? And BTW, you have to show more than a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, you have to show active collaboration. That was the claim that constituted a clear and immediate threat.

Look, I'm done with this piece. I think all your posted pieces are laughable rehashes of the same anorexic arguments presented befo0re the war. If, after 6 months of occupation, you are unable to do anything better than this, then you ain't got nothing.

I might read and reply to the other pieces later, but this one really was just a non-lined non-sourced piece of OpEd built to sound convincing to the already-convined. And noticing the ByLine, I am wondering why I even bothered.

Davin L.