Former spy chief: No link between Iraq and 9/11

LONDON (AP) — The war in Iraq led to a loss of focus on the threat from al-Qaeda, emboldened al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and helped to breed a generation of homegrown terrorists, Britain’s former domestic spy chief told a U.K. inquiry Tuesday.

Making the sharpest criticism so far aired in the inquiry, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of the MI5 agency between 2002 and 2007, said Britain’s government paid little attention to warnings that the war would fuel domestic terrorism.

Manningham-Buller also said Iraq had posed little threat before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and insisted there was no evidence of a link between former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA,” she told the inquiry. “It was not a judgment that found favor with some parts of the American machine.”

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Former spy chief: No link between Iraq and 9/11

I’m not the head of MI5 or the CIA, I’m not a former *spy chief*, but long time readers of this blog will recollect the fact that I said the same things about the invasion of Iraq, and all the reasons that were given, long before it became a part of the accepted theory.

The ex-spy chief said those pushing the case for war in the United States gave undue prominence to scraps of inconclusive intelligence on possible links between Iraq and the 2001 attacks. She singled out the then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“It is why Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment,” said Manningham-Buller, who was a frequent visitor to the U.S. as MI5 chief.

Rumsfeld was merely doing the bidding of his boss. George W. Bush saw an opportunity to strike Saddam Hussein and take revenge for the threats Saddam had made against GHW Bush. I have stated that as my belief on numerous occasions.

Maybe the former head of MI5 reads my blog… Hey… It could happen…

“Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and I have never seen anything to make me change my mind,” she said.

Ditto. Save the desperate desires of a child to please his father, there was NO reason to go into Iraq when we did. Saddam was contained, a no-fly zone was in place and enforced, every time a SAM site lit up, it got lit up by American fighter jets and Iraq was just hanging in there, a threat to no one on this side of the Atlantic.

I too have seen nothing that will ever change my mind on that. Sorry about that Amy…

Manningham-Buller also indicated that MI5 disagreed with then-Prime Minister Tony Blair over a key justification for the war — Iraq’s purported harboring of weapons of mass destruction.

She said the belief that Iraq might use such weapons against the West “wasn’t a concern in either the short term or the medium term to either my colleagues or myself.”

To date, Iraq had some yellow cake uranium, that, in and of itself is NOT a danger, it wasn’t refined and posed NO danger to anyone in it’s condition. Saddam’s nuclear scientists had all but abandoned the idea of building Saddam a nuclear device, they knew he was a madman but they placated him and kept him happy with useless research and data.

The only other so-called WMD was a few .155mm Howitzer shells loaded with sarin gas. That gas was so depleted that it had liquefied. It was manufactured pre-1991, it could be poured directly on the skin with NO adverse effect.

Also, the effective range of a .155mm Howitzer is 18,000m - 30,000m (with rocket-assisted projectile), that hardly qualifies as a WMD that the continental USA needed to concern itself with.

Manningham-Buller said the focus on Iraq had far-reaching consequences for the mission to tackle global terrorism.

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33 dead in suicide attack on Iraq tribal leaders

BAGHDAD (AP) - A suicide bomber struck Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders and high-ranking security officials touring a market after a reconciliation meeting west of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 33 people in the second major attack in the capital area in two days.

Despite the ongoing violence, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said he does not believe the Iraqi government will ask Americans to remain in the country past a 2011 deadline set by a security agreement between the two countries.

The bombing - which left clusters of bodies near the shabby market stalls lining a road - was part of a spike of violence that comes as the U.S. military begins to draw down its forces.

The bomber detonated an explosives belt as the tribal leaders were walking through the market in the town of Abu Ghraib, accompanied by security officials and journalists, according to the Iraqi military.

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33 dead in suicide attack on Iraq tribal leaders

Is it just me?? Does anyone else think it strange that now, after 6 years of U.S. occupation and supposed pacification, that Iraq still has these kinds of attacks with such huge numbers of casualties?

Our involvement in Iraq is akin to owning a boat. Yes, a boat. A device that produces a hole in the water, one into which the owner throws great sums of money. That is what Iraq has been for America. We have lost over 4,250 lives, the lives of U.S. troops, we have spent untold BILLIONS of U.S. taxpayer dollars and we have gained absolutely NO return from our investment.

I’d say that lack of return, in and of itself, pretty much dispels the Libbers claims of Iraq being a *WAR FOR OIL*. Iraq was not a war for oil, Iraq was a temper tantrum thrown by George W. Bush and was the catalyst for this terrible money crunch that we are suffering. Well, along with some other sweetheart and brother in law deals made BY Bush and Cheney!

The 2011 deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw was set in a security agreement that took effect on Jan. 1. There has been speculation the Iraqis may ask the U.S. for an extension.

Count on it, and I’ll tell you why. The Iraqis are the most ill-motivated people on the face of this earth. Iraqis have been ruled under a dictatorship, in one form or another, for centuries. That is all they know. They are incapable of standing on their own. That is a totally foreign notion in their mindset.

The Iraqis will accept whatever happens to them, Saddam was proof of that. Iraq was a relatively peaceful place as long as Saddam was in power, peaceful in the terms of open warfare and insurgent bombings. That was because Saddam kept a tight lid on Iraq, the Iraqi people KNEW what Saddam would do if they went against him and his regime.

Terror, and RULE by TERROR are the accepted method of government by the Muslims, of all sects. The strong man wins, corruption is the rule of the day in Iraq, democracy is not an acceptable practice and the idea of a Republic? Well, that’s as strange to the Iraqis as is democracy and acceptance of Christianity.

Iraq has basically been a waste of life and fortune, and if the USA continues to remain engaged in Iraq, Iraq will continue to bleed us dry! The only good thing I can say about this entire story is, NONE of the dead were U.S. servicemen…

Iraqis fear U.S. pullout from Mosul

MOSUL, Iraq - Grenades lie unattended next to a west Mosul bazaar. Garbage bags throughout the city are searched daily for bombs. At a sprawling sheep market, Iraqi army soldiers are careful not to kick over rocks for fear of setting off hidden explosives.

War has ebbed in most parts of Iraq, but not in Mosul, the third-largest city and al-Qaida’s last stronghold in the fragile new democracy. And time is running out on the around-the-clock U.S. military patrols of Mosul. U.S. troops must vacate cities by June 30 under an agreement with the Iraqis, and President Barack Obama is ending all American combat operations after August 2010.

The Iraqi security forces are not sure they’ll be ready.

“If you don’t have the Americans, this is not going to be good,” said an Iraqi army captain who gave his name only as Ahmed to protect his family from insurgents. “I cannot take care of it.”

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Iraqis fear U.S. pullout from Mosul

Well, I guess it’s time for the Iraqi army to *grow a set*. As some are fond of saying, fish or cut bait. Then there’s my favorite, put up or shut up. There’s a few more little euphemisms that could be used, but you get the idea.

Anyone that has ever read this blog knows, I NEVER felt that Iraq was the right place, the right time or the right people. I always felt that Iraq was nothing more than a temper tantrum and GWB’s way of vindicating himself in his fathers eyes. Once we were in Iraq I was totally, 100% behind the troops and their jobs to be done, even if I didn’t agree with the mission, a *troop* follows orders and gets the job done.

My biggest gripe was this, we didn’t need to go, many advisers tried to tell Bush that but he wasn’t going to listen to anything that wasn’t in lockstep with HIS ideas, so, once there, why did Bush and Rumsfeld tie the hands of our troops and not allow them to actually eliminate al-Qaeda from Iraq? Why did Bush insist on micromanaging the war instead of leaving warfighting to the warriors?

So far, there has not been so much as one thing that I can even remotely agree on or like concerning the administration of Barack Obama, but if he can withdraw our troops from Iraq then he will have done at least one thing right. He may destroy this nation, but by God, George Bush started it, all Obama is doing is finishing the job…