Bin Laden intel declassified ahead of commencement.
Bin Laden intel declassified ahead of commencement.
“President Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday asserting that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq — and that the United States should be the top target.”
Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said the intelligence bolsters the Bush administration’s contention that al-Qaida wants to use Iraq as a staging area to launch terrorist attacks around the world, including the United States. [...]
Townsend disclosed the information to The Associated Press and other news agencies in advance of Bush’s commencement speech Wednesday at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Bush is expected to emphasize the continuing threat of terrorism and recount steps taken by his administration to prevent attacks.
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog Roll
Will George present himself a Medal of Freedom too?
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:42 pmWho’s the terrorist? Bush or Bin Laden?
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:42 pmWill George present himself a Medal of Freedom too?
Comment by the republic of stupidity — May 22, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
You’re damn right he will.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:44 pmActually, Fools on the Hill, I suspect at this point that Busch and Bin Laden are working togehter, seeing how much BuschCo has benefitted from 9/11 and how much they’ve backed off on the hunt for Osama.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:46 pmAh, yes, Mr. President.
Here to prove once again how well you can type w/ just one hand.
Wink-wink…
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:47 pmDid bin Laden give the order via Ouija board?
OBL’s been dead since 2001, folks. Don’t forget that.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:51 pm“Bush administration’s contention that al-Qaida wants to use Iraq as a staging area to launch terrorist attacks around the world, including the United States. […]”
Why would al-Qaida need to stage and launch an attack from Iraq. They can already do that in Pakistan. You know, Pakistan, our partner in the war on terror. The Pakistan we give over a billion dollars a year to because they are helping us fight the war on terror.
I don’t necessarily believe this story, but even if it is true, people need to ask themselves how al-Qaida got into Iraq in the first place. They were not there before we invaded Iraq. They are there now because we created a fertile breeding ground for future terrorists.
And, if we were to leave Iraq, al-Qaida would be kicked out of that country quicker than shit. The Iraqi’s don’t like al-Qaida any more than they like us.
Bush has created such a mess, I’m not sure there is a good solution to fix it.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:54 pmGee, and if we had killed him in Tora Bora instead of pulling our resources to invade Iraq, Usama ibn Ladin would be dead and nor ordering anybody to do anything, and Iraq would not be in flames and not be capable of being a launching pad for Salafi jihadists (like al Qaeda) who were sworn enemies with the secular Ba’athist regime in Iraq.
So thanks for holding up evidence of your catastrophic failure as leader Bush, ya f*cknut.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:54 pm#6 and you know this how exactly?
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:55 pmBush is expected to try and distract our attention away from the “lovely” Monica Goodling/badling
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:57 pm#10 I just hope they make her cry on camera tomorrow. (Yes I hate theocons that much)
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:00 pmGood question, lestatdelc.
Bush has created such a mess, I’m not sure there is a good solution to fix it.
Also, I agree, Kate Henry. This is a huge f*#king mess and I just don’t see a good solution to it. THANK YOU, Mr. President (you f#**king moron from Hell…).
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:00 pmWho would believe bushco Intelligence at this point?
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 pmOK, so let me get this straight. Osama orders attacks “outside Iraq”, and this bolsters claims that “al-Qaida wants to use Iraq as a staging area”?
Wait a minute. Doesn’t that mean that Osama is more concerned about outside Iraq than inside Iraq? And how do we conclude that al-Qaida plans to use Iraq as a staging area?
(Sorry, I can’t figure out how to prview this, so it is what it is.)
–Kibitzer
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:02 pmActually, isn’t the phrase “BushCo Intelligence” rather a screaming oxymoron?
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:02 pmlestadelc sez:
Here you go.
Of course, just one verifiable communication from bin Laden since 2001 would prove me wrong…but that’s one more than the number we’ve seen. Every communication from OBL since the infamous “fatty bin laden” confession video has been manifestly fake.
Ask yourself: who stands to benefit from perpetuating the fantasy of Osama bin Laden?
Osama bin Laden is the real-life equivalent of the fictitious Emmanuel Goldstein.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:02 pm#16 ROFLMAO
Sorry, tin-foil crank CT sites prove only you are a f*cking idiot.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:06 pmOsama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005…
Um – they’re using this to retroactively defend why we attacked Iraq 5 years ago?
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:06 pmBush / Inteligence. Boy is that a contradiction in terms.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:07 pmI think dogeatdogi (#10) is definitely on to something. The Bush administration has a proven strategy of generating major news (like announcing the capture of al Qaeta’s second-in-command when it actually happened weeks earlier) to counter and drown out negative news. The Goodling hearings may make tomorrow a tough day news-wise for the White House, so I anticipate major leaks like this.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:07 pmand here I thought he wasn’t worried about him…
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:09 pmthe man has no scruples whatsoever. Why is noone discussing just what the declassification of classified materials could possibly do to entrenched agents.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:11 pmOh, I forgot. The pigs did the same thing to Plame!
And folks want to know why there is such anger out here!!!!!!!
lestadelc sez:
Nice ad homenim, jackass.
Dispute the facts of the article, or don’t bother responding.
Or are you actually stupid enough to believe that these two pictures are of the same person?
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:13 pmlestatdelc,
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:13 pmDid you even look at the pictures? It is obvioulsy a different man in the videos. So why should we believe the WH? Please tell me, they have been so forthright and honest in the past, no?
Besides TMM at least has valid points that he backs up. And has for quite some time now. You?
I have to say, Tripmaster Monkey, I’m personally not disagreeing w/ you. I agree, at this point, dead or alive, OBL has become irrelelvant. BushCo got their new Pearl Harbor and haven’t looked back once. Just wondering where you got your info from.
Did you read about Bush’s latest executive order, transferring control of the country to the Exec Branch completely if there’s another national emergency? He’s increasing troop levels in Iraq, again. The US is building an enormous embassey over there. The Deciderer keeps trying to pull more and more power to himself. The Admin keeps thumbing their noses at Congress’s requests for docs.
I’m getting this BAD feeling that the Deciderer isn’t expecting to leave officeor Iraq for that matter, in ‘08. What’s going to happen here? Right-wing, Christian military coup? Will the sane half of the Pentagon strike first? This is going to get so freakin’ hairy before it gets better, if it does get better.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:13 pmThis shit would be hilarious if it wasn’t costing millions of lives. The Republicans are such morons, the stuff that they declassify just makes them look even more insane.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:15 pmOsama who?
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:15 pmFatty binladen vs, Osama Bin forgotten.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:17 pmTripmaster,
The first picture of “Bin laden” was actually his piss-boy.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:18 pmOsama just got a intel-pentium M. Cool.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 pmNow I finally get it! The connection between the War on Terror and the War on Global Warming Science!
You see, just like he wants to use Iraq, bin Laden also wants to use the Earth as a staging area from which to launch attacks on the U.S.
Soooo — just like we have to destroy Iraq in order to “save” ourselves, we have to destroy the Earth in order to save ourselves.
If we protect the environment, the terrorists will have won.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 pmThe ONLY threat to this country is Bush.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:23 pmDeclassified intelligence? Intelligence from what source? The CIA? Something from some secret agency hidden in the administration, much like Douth Feith’s old Office of Special Plans? What is the source of this so-called intelligence?
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:24 pmFEAR!!!
FEEEEEEEAAARRR!!!!!!
Do something about it, you mediocre excuses for American leadership.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:27 pmIf this is true, how does it validate GWB’s “war strategy”? The idea of UBL desiring to exploit a newly-destabilised Iraq as a terrorist training ground seems like the ultimate repudiation of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy to me.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 pm…to counter and drown out negative news.
Comment by JosephP — May 22, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
Are they building a boat to fit two of every species? It’ll take a Great Flood to drown the negative news generated by these criminals.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:34 pmAt this point in the game I think it’s more than fair to regard anything said in public by an administration figure as a lie and anything said in public by George Bush or Dick Cheney as a damned lie.
Given their stunning record of getting every fact backwards and every decision exactly wrong, I believe we can anticipate where their next step will take us — deeper into the crapper.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:46 pm“Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said the intelligence bolsters the Bush administration’s contention that al-Qaida wants to use Iraq as a staging area to launch terrorist attacks around the world, including the United States. […]”
In other words, Al Qaeda has a staging area–Iraq–that they didn’t have before the 2003 invasion. In other words, the policy to invade was a complete and utter failure. In their own words. Didn’t anyone pick up on that?
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:56 pm#18
Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005…
Um – they’re using this to retroactively defend why we attacked Iraq 5 years ago?
Comment by Namtillaku — May 22, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
That’s the absolute BEST take, it’s all so crystal-clear and perfectly logical
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:07 pmDan, Jay, you’re not supposed to actually think it through.
You’re just supposed to piss your pants when you hear the bogeyman’s name, and run to daddy Chimpy for protection. All he asks in return is your silent, obedient consent.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:10 pm#38
How exactly do you come to the conculsion that they did not have a staging area prior to 2003?
You could just as easily assume Bin Laden is referign to pre-exsisting staging areas when he is talking about attacks outside of Iraq. I mean have you ever looked at western Iraq? You can be out there months and no one would find you. Great place to stage and train.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:22 pmWhy doesn’t Dumbya simply give the same stupidly bland speech he “delivered” at St. Vincents a few days ago?
Worstest. President. Ever.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:35 pm(Warren Harding and Richard Nixon rest so much easier knowing their criminality, corruption, and infamy will be ignored for decades as historians and political scientists delve into the morass of the Bush/Cheney malevolent regime.)
Hey, wait a minute! I thought we were fighting them there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here. But they are planning to come here from there?
Oh, no, no, no! This means that the rationale for the war is bogus!
I’m shocked!
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:39 pmAl Qaeda is no more coming to America to fight us than FDA is going to China to force them to produce untainted pet food.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 pmI mean have you ever looked at western Iraq? You can be out there months and no one would find you.
Saaaay, maybe that’s where all the DoJ-WH e-mails have disappeared to.
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 pmSomebody call Insector Closeau… it appears a crime might have been committed.
#41
Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq before the war because Saddam Hussein was a decidedly irreligious tyrant whose intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, snuffed out any threats to his rule. Al Qaeda would definitely be classified as a threat both to Saddam and his goal for a pan-Arabic association under the Ba’ath party.
As far as I know, the only documented presence of al Qaeda in Iraq before the invasion was in a Kurdish area in the north bordering Iran and possibly Afghanistan, a place he couldn’t control because of the no-fly zones and the defacto Kurdish self-rule. Yes, I suppose western Iraq is like the far side of the moon. But the far side of the moon isn’t exactly a great staging area for anything. Maybe training, but with Saddam’s control, it would have been very difficult to do anything on a meaningful scale–those things take time for recruits to get the info through trusted channels. And there have been a lot of interesting conspiracy theories about his WMDs being there, or traveling through there to go to Syria. But come on . . .
Al Qaeda’s MO seems to be to engage failed states, usually during civil wars (post-Soviet Afghanistan, Somalia come to mind) and install/control wahabist governments there. Sound familiar?
Bad as Saddam was, it would have been better for the US to have his tyranny as an odious bulwark against al Qaeda, the 2400+ lives we’ve lost there, the cheap gas, our credibility as a world power and champion of individual rights. Not even Saddam managed to make the millions of refugees and loss of what could be hundreds of thousands of Iraqis the way we have. We’ve out-Saddamed Saddam. Best thing to do is get out and let the ex-Ba’athist Sunni troglodytes take care of al Qaeda in Iraq for us. They’re already fighting openly.
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:16 pmDodger-in-Chief, what about “Bin Laden Determined to Attack the U.S.” – August 2001 – CIA, while you were on an Old Europe style month long vacation attempting to be a manly man on your ranch? Another for the “They STILL think we are Stupid” folder…
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:28 pmChris, what are you talking about? You could say the same thing about Nevada. What is your point?
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:34 pmYou know, I just can’t believe anything they say ever now, not ever….so this means nothing, probably just another lie.
They have cried wolf too many times.
Hating the Repukian liars daily
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:39 pmWhat a bunch of shameless dumb f&cks. Time to dust off the bogey man, again. Like no one’s keeping score?
So much for barrel boy going over the falls. He must be stuck in a guckert of mud.
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:48 pmThis administration has lost all credibility on every issue of policy. They are a gang of liars. I sincerely doubt Al Qaeda will be allowed to take over Iraq. If the Iraqi’s are willing to fight the US military to take back their country, a bunch of non-Iraqi Sunni militants aren’t going to be welcomed with open arms, either.
This is more BS justification to remain and control Iraq’s oil.
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:27 amBecause Nevada has a lot of uninhabited land…we must turn it into a parking lot…
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:41 amBOO!
Al Qaeda are gonna get you unless your brave President Bush can stop him.
Martin Gifford.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:02 amNothing better to produce on Bin Laden than info from early 2005? Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. By the way, so long as we don’t push harder to stop the war, we share equal culpability. It is not just the President’s war. It is the American’s war. That’s me and you. Get used to it or get some stomach and speak out.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:12 amStand, where have you been? Most of us speak out against it here and to our reps. Sorry, you wasted a self-righteous lecture.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:30 amYou couldn’t find a better man than George Bush to destroy the Republican Party. Keep it up, big guy!
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:50 am#43 THANK YOU!!!!
That was the very first thing that came to mind. . . . The right wing BS to justify the Iraq war by saying we’re fighting them there so we don’t fight them here. . . . as if there was any reason why they couldn’t attack us here other than the mere convenience of us being over there so they can save on travel expenses.
These guys won’t give up using whatever they have to fabricate reasons for us to be afraid and justify their obliteration of everything this country once stood for.
And yet, the people claiming to make political decisions based on Morality vote for THEM?!?!?!?
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:16 am“As y’all no…class-ee-fide leeks fer po-litikal perposis is gud as long as the Commander Guy does it”.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:08 amJunior Boosh’s attempts to instill fear have been more than tired for a hell of a long time.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:26 amI don’t believe he thinks people ‘are that stupid’.
I do believe whoever set this up did so assuming that people would then talk about how rediculous it is, etc.
As opposed to people yelling loud and clear that they see right through this last gasp at keeping the invasion going until the devil himself is out of office.
Impeach this SOB and stop the invasion.
Hello, Townsend? In 2005, the US had been in Iraq for TWO YEARS!
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:15 pmWake up America!
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:11 pmhttp://www.terrorismawareness.org/know-about-jihad
#23 your fact-less CT site bullshit is not worth “disputing”. It is like disputing a UFO abduction site.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:20 pm