Middle East / Central Asia 2003 - 101

[tw]

Warning - these two posts will be too short to really discuss the topic:

When they say that Al Qaeda and Saddam were coordinating activities, and if you have sufficient background in the Middle East, then you know immediately and beyond a doubt... they are lying. They know they are lying. But they don't care. Enough of us are so poorly informed that we would believe almost anything reported by the spin doctors about Middle East politics. It is how George Jr got a majority to support his lies about Iraq and the resulting war. But then those domestic politicians know Middle East politics is more complex than a stew containing every vegetable. IOW most people, informed only by sound bytes, could never possibly understand the multi-dimensional problem called Middle East.

What does the murder of Anwar Sadat (during a military parade and recorded by international TV), a 1954 attempt on Nasser's life, the WTC attack, a massacre of tens of thousands by Hafid al Asad in Syria, the war in Chechnya, and Saddam all have in common? Common factor is something called the Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood had so infiltrated the Egyptian military that they could carry bullets and grenades to a parade that no one within one mile was permitted to do. It has so infiltrated the Saudi military that Saudi police are careful to tell American investigators not to share information. And we (our spin doctors) call them uncooperative? Muslim Brotherhood compatriots in Iran so scared Hafid al Asad of Syria that he literally attacked everyone; even neighbors of suspected Muslim Brotherhood. He had tens of thousands massacred (including a whole town) to drive the Muslim Brotherhood out of Syria. What he considered necessary to be successful. One of Saddam's greatest enemies and one reason why he needed such an iron grip on Iraq - Muslim Brotherhood. And who is a major faction of the Muslim Brotherhood? Al Qaeda. George Jr just forgot to tell us any of this. Otherwise some contradictions would have been obvious.

Name a single country, other than Israel, that has not fought or is confronted internally by the Muslim Brotherhood. Jordan? Sudan? Pakistan? Fundamental to the movement are writing of Ibn Taymiyah, born in 1263 in what is now Turkey. Not all factions of the Muslim Brotherhood particularly like one another. Islamic Jihad and Hamas subscribe to the philosophy in one way or another. PLO does not (despite what the pundits might say). But the enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood are the same leaders, Amirs, and dictators, that Americans (often foolishly) label as enemies. As Robert Baer notes, the CIA had literally one page of information on this movement. We so little wanted to understand the complexity. Therefore some label as enemies the same people that the Muslim Brotherhood calls its enemy. Therefore we must be allies of the Muslim Brotherhood? Only if we believe spin doctored sound bytes and also understand Muslim Brotherhood.

Washington bureaucrats will say Saddam or Syria are cooperating with Al Qaeda because they assume (rightly so) that Americans neither know nor want to learn any of this. What cannot be taught in a soundbyte or in the Daily News must not be important! It is how our political leadership gets us to endorse self serving political crusades such as the unjustified invasion of Iraq. Notice why this author was so adamantly against the war in Iraq. My facts did not come from distorted White House "intelligence". Saddam was not a threat to America. He was an obstacle to Muslim Brotherhood.

In Oct 2001, a poll in Saudia Arabia said that 95% supported bin Laden. Again, those spin doctors would be so quick to have you assume Saudis are anti-American. Again, they count on us not knowing facts. And again, they would be right about our ignorance because Middle East politics is that complex. Too complex even for a soap opera.

Just because they approve of bin Laden does not mean they are anti-American. To understand, one must first learn how the Middle East works.

It is said America is 'face to face' allies with Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Pakistan, Australia, Russia, South Africa, etc. However we are joined at the hip with Saudia Arabia. You may have heard it said that way. But did you really understand what it means? American politics in this region is a slew of backroom deals. Some of the more obvious ones are outright attempts to protect Boeing - with large commission checks to be shared by all insiders. Rumored so often throughout Washington are these stories - this one widely considered fact - especially considering the man:

from Robert Baer's Sleeping with the Devil
In late 1968, days after Richard Nixon won the White House, Khashoggi was one of the first to fly out to congratulate the president-elect. He didn't forget to pass on the regards of Interior Minister Fahd - the prince who'd sent him to San Clemente and the current brain-dead king. When Khashoggi got up to leave, he "forgot" his briefcase, which happened to be stuffed with $1 million in hundreds. No one said a word. Khashoggi went back to his hotel to wait for a telephone call. The phone never rang. It never would. A couple days later, and Khashoggi knew the trick had worked: Washington was for sale.

For some reason, Americans are so foolish as to assume that democracy in the desert would solve everything. Americans myopically assume all peoples want democracies. It is another lie that domestic politicians, such as George Jr, use to promote their agenda. It is, after all, one of the 'reasons' given to invade Iraq.

But as I said, we are joined at the hips to Saudia Arabia because that is where the dic and cunt are, and that is where the wallet is kept. This is the reality that is sucking us into a morass called the Middle East. Being sucked in, just like in VietNam, because, for example, too many readers here don't know most of this. It is complex. But current events say we are going to learn it ... now or later.

(continued in next post)

[tw]

(continued from first post)

Nixon was not the only president open for sale. Basically, look at how decisions are made. If decisions constantly favor big money and campaign contributions, then you know where Khashoggi's predecessors are visiting. A visit by Saudi crown prince Abdallah to Crawford TX was not just a chance to wear the same hat and ride the same range as Vladimir Putan. When Ariel Sharon started attacking Palestinian diplomatic convoys with helicopters, what do you think got Sharon to stop that - and never do it again. Much influence is bought liberally by both Americans and Saudis. Saudia Arabia, specifically Abdallah and Bandar, got Sharon to stop those attacks. Its not hard when the right people are getting commissions especially for defense contracts.

Asad knew how to solve the problem of people being educated by right wing extremists - in the mosques. Iraq and Egypt did much the same. Saudia Arabia, on the other hand, is using Islamic fundamentalism to its benefit. That dog will eventually bite back. Ask a Russian. He will tell you the war in Chechnya is being financed by Saudia Arabia with the tacit approval of the US. The war in Georgia, Turkmenistan, Ubeckistan, and even the western province of mainland China is even more complex. And the US is in the middle of all of it. We are building new bases in every one of those locations - except China.

But Saudia Arabia stands in a very volatile situation, not the least of which is due to the addiction of a royal family (numbering tens of thousands) to money and how they get their money. And so we list some names that one must know to be able to follow what could be the next Iran.

The King is Fahd. His brothers are Sultan, Na'if, and Salman. They don't particularly like each other but must ban together for survival. The crown prince and future king is Abdallah. A son who appears to want Fahd to terminate much if not all the corruption. Abdallah is not popular even with Fahd especially when he is always at odds with those other powerful members of the House of Sa'ud. Conflict will be inevitable if he opposes what makes them all so rich. Its not called a kleptocracy for nothing.

Jawhara al-Ibrahim and her son Azouzi have setup gatekeeping on the king now that a stroke may have even turned the King into a brain dead body - kept alive only by machines. They were not interested in his mind - just that his heart kept working. Bandar, the face best known as Saudi ambassador during the 1990 Gulf War and also fully involved in Oliver North's Iran Contra affair, is the son of Sultan.

And all this while, the many crown princes conspire to find new sources of income. A government best defined as a ** kleptocracy **. Among some of the most powerful friends in this soap opera is the well known 'master of leaks' Henry Kissinger. Yes he too is still quite active having discovered how to earn money in this political jungle.

But notice nothing of the Muslim Brotherhood is listed. Therein lies the problem. Those who see things only in black and white, such as Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (opinions therefore only from the perspective of a political agenda - reality be damned) see everything in one dimensional terms of 'them' and 'us'. 'They' is always relabeled Al Qaeda. The words Muslim Brotherhood never mentioned since that term exposes some administration lies. No wonder Perle was in direct confrontation with everyone from Richard Holbrook to even George Wills on Last Week with George Stephenapoulis (8 Nov 2003). It was an all-star roundtable discussion where virtually everyone finds the administration's positions flawed, erroneous, or just plain dangerous. And yet Richard Perle represents a current (and myopic) US foreign political agenda. An agenda that does not even acknowledge the Muslim Brotherhood.

Another important term to watch for is Yamama - which could become the reason for a major world crisis - possibly being the straw that breaks a camel's back.

Probably 90% of the readers here have never before heard much of this. It has taken years to collect these and so many other little stories and agendas. Finally Robert Baer put them together. This is the first essay that finally put the pieces together cohesively.

By collecting so many little pieces and facts, most know I strenuously opposed the Iraq war for many logical reasons. We (most unfortunately) are now observing much of what I feared would happen. We created a power vacuum ripe for the Muslim Brotherhood. Those same sources have long been saying that Saudia Arabia is a closest regional ally. But because of how we are joined, we have permitted, if not encouraged, a severe cancer to grow inside that ally. And we may have created a power vacuum just up north. But then virtually the entire world was warning us. George Jr was too smart to listen.

Some being so manipulated by political pundits to instead label the Saudi's as a 'secret' enemy. A very complex story. One that we have no choice but to spend the next decade being bled dry from because we got into it without sufficient knowledge. We must now figure out how to get out of our quagmire. Currently we don't even have an exit strategy for Iraq or Afghanistan. We are diplomatically and militarily that deep in the muck called Middle East - and getting in deeper as the commission checks keep flowing to the elite. Better understand why it could get much worse.

George Sr first got us in. He only got us partially out. George Jr apparantly loves playing in the mud - not smart enough to see that it was quicksand.

This post should be a wakeup call to all those who have been using the George Jr White House as their only source of facts. Afghanistan was a doable situation. Iraq will be many long years in the making - or another convert to the religious right extremists called Muslim Brotherhood.

[Skunks]

Fnord.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Muslim Brotherhood? Strange this middle eastern/asian conspiracy would take an English name.

[Undertoad]

The thing you don't know, tw, and can't know, is whether the entire Iraq gambit is really just setting the chess board up for the next move. Maybe Iraq sets free enough of the world's oil that the rest of the region can now be addressed properly. (Oil shipments are close to prewar levels.) Maybe Muslim Brotherhood is in the targets, maybe not. Maybe upsetting the apple cart and causing the region to go unstable is part of the approach.

If al Qaeda is not a threat any longer - sure, maybe another one of the alphabet soup non-governmental radical Islamic organizations is the one that brings all the hardliners out to get their 72 virgins. There are plenty of them. (Some we are more familiar with - Hamas, Hezbollah - and some we are less. We know what they want though.)

Maybe the administration doesn't admit it up front because to do so would be destructive to the overall mission. Maybe that's why the war on terror is described in such loose terms and the enemy is not really described directly.

You don't know, and your conceit that you think you DO know is annoying.

[Undertoad]

"When they say that Al Qaeda and Saddam were coordinating activities, and if you have sufficient background in the Middle East, then you know immediately and beyond a doubt... they are lying."

This afternoon's news says you are wrong.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...3/378fmxyz.asp

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

Bold mine. Too many people to be involved in a lie, is it not?

[tw]

Originally quoted by Undertoad
Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources.

From that quote, those agencies don't say Saddam and Al Qaeda cooperated. All that quote says is information in that report ALSO came from those other sources.

UT is quick to post spin doctored concepts from the George Jr administration. In the meantime today, Tony Cordesmann repeated again on ABC News "This Week" in blunt terms: there remains no reliable evidence whatsoever anywhere that Saddam and Al Qaeda cooperated. Once outside the realm of George Jr's spin doctors, then facts change sharply. It is why the US cannot get any world cooperation for Iraq. Reality and his political agenda are not same.

George Jr is in disagreement with virutally the entire world. Even Tony Blair admitted those many reasons for going to Iraq were lies. By admitting the truth, Blair lost 35 percentage points in popularity - but saved his job. And yet UT would still believe the interpretations from this administration?

UT has a serious problem. How many times is his primary source of information going to outright lie to him before he finally questions its integrity? They lied about aluminum tubes - and that was obvious before we attacked. He lied about uranium from Niger. We were fully involved in air attacks planned just for the invasion because the invasion was planned that long in advance - when George Jr first entered office. His administration outed a CIA agent to seek revenge against others who told the truth - exposing his spin doctors as liars. At what point does UT no longer trust these people for honest facts?

Even the claim that major combat ended was a lie.

Let's put some numbers up. Since combat ended, then about 200 soldiers died. Since medical help is so effective, the number of wounded is now up to 10 for every one dead. IOW since combat ended a few months ago, some 2000 injured have been evacuated from the battlefield. And for every two dead Americans, there is now one America who has lost one or more limbs. Activity in Arlington National Cemetary was this high in the early 1960s days of VietNam - when no one was saying major combat had ended.

This is not an emotional tug so that one only sees the causalty numbers and is appauled. These numbers are logic that say George Jr, et al had no idea what they were getting us into in Iraq. They have no exit strategy and no solution. The situation is only getting worse - as what can be expected when no enough troops are in country. The George Jr administration would have us ignore the full extent of causalties - because those numbers say George Jr was lying about what we could accomplish in Iraq. We are not the welcomed liberators. UT will have none of this because his sources, the George Jr's administration, is not even telling him these causalty numbers.

There remains no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. But George Jr's spin doctors are desperately trying to find one to justify this war. This George Jr invented problem is now our quagmire. A problem based on so many lies that closest US allies refuse to provide assistance. A problem that UT will not acknowledge because it is not part of the George Jr administration line. This administration has lied too many times to be a reliable source. No cooperation between Saddam and Al Qaeda has ever been located no matter how forcefully George Jr demands same. He has been trying since 11 September and still can't find any cooperation. It does not exist even in that report - as Tony Cordesmann said today.

[Undertoad]

"He lied about uranium from Niger."

No he didn't. This is one that we've been over and over and over, and you're just not paying attention. The "16 words" of the State of the Union address said Hussein was seeking uranium in AFRICA, not NIGER. Meanwhile, this bit from Instapundit details intel stories of uranium acquisition/attempts by both al Queda and Hussein, the latter multiple times, mostly in THE CONGO, SOUTH AFRICA, and SOMALIA.

Clinton believed this information and bombed Iraq (UNILATERALLY) solely on the basis of this type of intel.

"At what point does UT no longer trust these people for honest facts?"

The Clinton administration had most of the same concerns as the W administration. So when you say "these people lied", please include the Clinton administration, including the current CIA head who was a Clinton appointee.

[tw]

Originally posted by Undertoad
No he didn't. This is one that we've been over and over and over, and you're just not paying attention. The "16 words" of the State of the Union address said Hussein was seeking uranium in AFRICA, not NIGER.

There is no doubt what George Jr was referring to when he said "Africa". Why do you 'spin doctor' just like George Jr's staff? George Jr cited a mythical attempt to get uranium from Niger. What he did not say, his personal advisers filled in the gaps. Face it. George Jr lied about that uranium which his administraton claimed was obtained from Niger. He lied because he was desperately seeking any - even the most trivial reason - to justify an attack on Iraq. He lied because honesty is not one of his strong suites. An attack we now know was inevitable and in progress long before he gave that speech. Or are you denying that also?

Originally posted by Undertoad
The Clinton administration had most of the same concerns as the W administration. So when you say "these people lied", please include the Clinton administration, including the current CIA head who was a Clinton appointee.

And since Clinton had some intelligence, he did not automatically associate 'concerns' with 'justification for an invasion'. Why could George Jr not even get the UN to approve of his preordained war. Because he had no valid reason to invade Iraq. He and Tony Blair intentionally decieved the world to justify war. Lying we have not seen since Nixon - who lied even about Cambodia.

Unlike Clinton, George Jr did not have enough knowledge to understand that war is only justified *after* the smoking gun exists. Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Kuwait and South Korea were classic smoking guns. Iraq was a myth from the very beginning which is why the mother of the first Brit killed in Iraq does not think she will get to meet George Jr. She blames Geroge Jr and his lies for the death of her oldest son. She has some very good reasons for her opinions. The aluminum tubes being the benchmark example of why we are now in a morass in Iraq and why so many are dying unnecessarily. You would think this president would have learned how it is done from the Balkans. Unfortunately, extremists don't have respect for the lessons of history or US serviceman - the little guy who is taking it on the chin because this administration lied.

Shameful to be doing this to soldiers. Clinton had far more respect for that soldier which is why Clinton did not immediately associate concerned with 'justification for an invasion'. Clinton was smart enough to still wait for the smoking gun - and to use negotiation to solve problems with dramatic effect. This post is about how the interests of soliders and civilians have been subverted in the name of a George Jr personal agenda - the preordanced invasions of Iraq.