O óbvio é oficial
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Epá, isso agora
são águas passadas, o que interessa é que já temos lá as »nossas« empresas a facturar. Quanto ás armas de destruição em massa, também não as encontramos, mas pelo menos tiramos um ditador 
, assim agora coloca-se lá outro, mas de »nosso« interesse
, assim agora coloca-se lá outro, mas de »nosso« interesse -
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Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11
By PHILIP SHENON and CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
Published: June 17, 2004
WASHINGTON, June 16 - The staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharply contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for the Iraq war, reporting on Wednesday that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The assertion came in staff reports that offer a chilling, richly detailed chronology of the Sept. 11 plot and rewrite much of the history of the attacks.
The chronology, based on the panel's review of highly classified accounts of interrogations of captured Qaeda leaders, shows that Osama bin Laden was far more intimately involved in the planning of the attacks than previously known and approved the selection of each of the 19 hijackers. It also shows that the original plot called for attacks that would have been even larger and more deadly.
The commission's investigators said in a pair of reports released at a public hearing that Mr. bin Laden and his deputies discussed target lists as early as 1999 that would have included the White House, the Capitol, C.I.A. and F.B.I. headquarters, nuclear power plants and skyscrapers in California and Washington State. The plot involved hijacking 10 jets instead of 4 and, the commission's staff said, originally included a plan for simultaneous hijackings of American passenger planes in Southeast Asia.
The reports say that Mr. bin Laden, who has been depicted in the past as being far less involved in the logistics of the operation, ordered the Sept. 11 attacks over the opposition of many of his advisers and of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader in Afghanistan.
"Bin Laden effectively overruled their objections, and the attacks went forward," one report said, adding that Mr. bin Laden "thought that an attack against the United States would reap Al Qaeda a recruiting and fund-raising bonanza."
The commission's investigators said information found in a captured Qaeda computer showed that Mohamed Atta, a ringleader of the plot and the pilot of one of the hijacked planes, selected the date for the attacks, choosing a day after the first week of September, when he knew that Congress would be in session after a summer recess. The report said information suggested that the Capitol was the target of the hijacked United Airlines plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11.
As for Iraq, the commission's staff said its investigation showed that the government of Mr. Hussein had rebuffed or ignored requests from Qaeda leaders for help in the 1990's, a conclusion that directly contradicts a series of public statements President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made before and after last year's invasion of Iraq in justifying the war.
"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States," one of the staff reports released on Wednesday said. "Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The report said that despite evidence of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 90's, "they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
The White House said on Wednesday that it did not see the commission's staff reports as a contradiction of past statements by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and that the administration had always been careful not to suggest that it had proof of a tie between Mr. Hussein and Sept. 11.
"It is not inconsistent for Iraq to have ties with Al Qaeda and not to have been involved in 9/11 or other potential plots against America," Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the November election, said that the reports by the Sept. 11 commission were evidence that the "administration misled America, the administration reached too far." In an interview with the Detroit radio station WDET, Mr. Kerry said that "they did not tell the truth to Americans about what was happening or their own intentions."
While Republican members of the bipartisan commission suggested in the past that their investigation might support the White House by uncovering broad links between Mr. Hussein and the terrorist network, the full panel appeared to embrace the staff reports, suggesting that they would be used as the framework for chapters in the commission's final report next month.
"There were systematic efforts by Al Qaeda to connect with Iraq - many of them failed," Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, said in an interview.
http://www.nytimes.com
By PHILIP SHENON and CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
Published: June 17, 2004
WASHINGTON, June 16 - The staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharply contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for the Iraq war, reporting on Wednesday that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The assertion came in staff reports that offer a chilling, richly detailed chronology of the Sept. 11 plot and rewrite much of the history of the attacks.
The chronology, based on the panel's review of highly classified accounts of interrogations of captured Qaeda leaders, shows that Osama bin Laden was far more intimately involved in the planning of the attacks than previously known and approved the selection of each of the 19 hijackers. It also shows that the original plot called for attacks that would have been even larger and more deadly.
The commission's investigators said in a pair of reports released at a public hearing that Mr. bin Laden and his deputies discussed target lists as early as 1999 that would have included the White House, the Capitol, C.I.A. and F.B.I. headquarters, nuclear power plants and skyscrapers in California and Washington State. The plot involved hijacking 10 jets instead of 4 and, the commission's staff said, originally included a plan for simultaneous hijackings of American passenger planes in Southeast Asia.
The reports say that Mr. bin Laden, who has been depicted in the past as being far less involved in the logistics of the operation, ordered the Sept. 11 attacks over the opposition of many of his advisers and of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader in Afghanistan.
"Bin Laden effectively overruled their objections, and the attacks went forward," one report said, adding that Mr. bin Laden "thought that an attack against the United States would reap Al Qaeda a recruiting and fund-raising bonanza."
The commission's investigators said information found in a captured Qaeda computer showed that Mohamed Atta, a ringleader of the plot and the pilot of one of the hijacked planes, selected the date for the attacks, choosing a day after the first week of September, when he knew that Congress would be in session after a summer recess. The report said information suggested that the Capitol was the target of the hijacked United Airlines plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11.
As for Iraq, the commission's staff said its investigation showed that the government of Mr. Hussein had rebuffed or ignored requests from Qaeda leaders for help in the 1990's, a conclusion that directly contradicts a series of public statements President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made before and after last year's invasion of Iraq in justifying the war.
"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States," one of the staff reports released on Wednesday said. "Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The report said that despite evidence of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 90's, "they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
The White House said on Wednesday that it did not see the commission's staff reports as a contradiction of past statements by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and that the administration had always been careful not to suggest that it had proof of a tie between Mr. Hussein and Sept. 11.
"It is not inconsistent for Iraq to have ties with Al Qaeda and not to have been involved in 9/11 or other potential plots against America," Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the November election, said that the reports by the Sept. 11 commission were evidence that the "administration misled America, the administration reached too far." In an interview with the Detroit radio station WDET, Mr. Kerry said that "they did not tell the truth to Americans about what was happening or their own intentions."
While Republican members of the bipartisan commission suggested in the past that their investigation might support the White House by uncovering broad links between Mr. Hussein and the terrorist network, the full panel appeared to embrace the staff reports, suggesting that they would be used as the framework for chapters in the commission's final report next month.
"There were systematic efforts by Al Qaeda to connect with Iraq - many of them failed," Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, said in an interview.
http://www.nytimes.com
-
Visitante
With 9/11 Report, Bush's Political Thorn Grows More Stubborn
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: June 17, 2004
WASHINGTON, June 16 - The bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks further called into question on Wednesday one of President Bush's rationales for the war with Iraq, and again put him on the defensive over an issue the White House was once confident would be a political plus.
In questioning the extent of any ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the commission weakened the already spotty scorecard on Mr. Bush's justifications for sending the military to topple Saddam Hussein.
Banned biological and chemical weapons: none yet found. Percentage of Iraqis who view American-led forces as liberators: 2, according to a poll commissioned last month by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Number of possible Al Qaeda associates known to have been in Iraq in recent years: one, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose links to the terrorist group and Mr. Hussein's government remain sketchy.
That is the difficult reality Mr. Bush faces 15 months after ordering the invasion of Iraq, and less than five months before he faces the voters at home. The commission's latest findings fueled fresh partisan attacks on his credibility and handling of the war, attacks that now seem unlikely to be silenced even if the return of sovereignty to the Iraqis comes off successfully in two weeks.
Senator John Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, was quick to seize on the commission's report to reprise his contention that Mr. Bush "misled" the American people about the need for the war. Even some independent-minded members of Mr. Bush's own party said they sensed danger.
"The problem the administration has is that the predicates it laid down for the war have not played out," said Warren B. Rudman, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire, who has extensive experience in assessing intelligence about terrorism. "That could spell political trouble for the president, there's no question."
Mr. Bush has said that he knows of no direct involvement by Mr. Hussein and his government in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the president has repeatedly asserted that there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a position he stuck to on Tuesday when he was asked about Vice President Dick Cheney's statement a day earlier that Mr. Hussein had "long-established ties with Al Qaeda."
Mr. Bush pointed specifically on Tuesday to the presence in Iraq of Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadist who sought help from Al Qaeda in waging the anti-American insurgency after the fall of Mr. Hussein, and who has been implicated by American intelligence officials in the killing of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American who was beheaded by militants in Iraq in March.
The White House said Wednesday that there was a distinction between Mr. Bush's position and the commission's determination that Iraq did not cooperate with Al Qaeda on attacks on the United States.
The commission's report did not specifically address that distinction or Mr. Zarqawi's role. It found that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1994, but that Iraq never responded to Mr. bin Laden's subsequent request for space to set up training camps and help in buying weapons. It said there were reports of later contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but "they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
It quoted two senior associates of Mr. bin Laden denying adamantly "that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq." It concluded that there never was a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers; in an interview with National Public Radio in January, Mr. Cheney cited intelligence reports about the possibility of such a meeting in asserting that there was not confirmation "one way or another" about links between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Democratic strategists said there was now no question that Mr. Bush would be dogged through the rest of the campaign by questions about whether the war was necessary, justified and sufficiently well planned. But Mr. Bush's supporters said that in political terms, the amazing thing was how well he had weathered the problems thrown at him by Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: June 17, 2004
WASHINGTON, June 16 - The bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks further called into question on Wednesday one of President Bush's rationales for the war with Iraq, and again put him on the defensive over an issue the White House was once confident would be a political plus.
In questioning the extent of any ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the commission weakened the already spotty scorecard on Mr. Bush's justifications for sending the military to topple Saddam Hussein.
Banned biological and chemical weapons: none yet found. Percentage of Iraqis who view American-led forces as liberators: 2, according to a poll commissioned last month by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Number of possible Al Qaeda associates known to have been in Iraq in recent years: one, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose links to the terrorist group and Mr. Hussein's government remain sketchy.
That is the difficult reality Mr. Bush faces 15 months after ordering the invasion of Iraq, and less than five months before he faces the voters at home. The commission's latest findings fueled fresh partisan attacks on his credibility and handling of the war, attacks that now seem unlikely to be silenced even if the return of sovereignty to the Iraqis comes off successfully in two weeks.
Senator John Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, was quick to seize on the commission's report to reprise his contention that Mr. Bush "misled" the American people about the need for the war. Even some independent-minded members of Mr. Bush's own party said they sensed danger.
"The problem the administration has is that the predicates it laid down for the war have not played out," said Warren B. Rudman, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire, who has extensive experience in assessing intelligence about terrorism. "That could spell political trouble for the president, there's no question."
Mr. Bush has said that he knows of no direct involvement by Mr. Hussein and his government in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the president has repeatedly asserted that there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a position he stuck to on Tuesday when he was asked about Vice President Dick Cheney's statement a day earlier that Mr. Hussein had "long-established ties with Al Qaeda."
Mr. Bush pointed specifically on Tuesday to the presence in Iraq of Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadist who sought help from Al Qaeda in waging the anti-American insurgency after the fall of Mr. Hussein, and who has been implicated by American intelligence officials in the killing of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American who was beheaded by militants in Iraq in March.
The White House said Wednesday that there was a distinction between Mr. Bush's position and the commission's determination that Iraq did not cooperate with Al Qaeda on attacks on the United States.
The commission's report did not specifically address that distinction or Mr. Zarqawi's role. It found that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1994, but that Iraq never responded to Mr. bin Laden's subsequent request for space to set up training camps and help in buying weapons. It said there were reports of later contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but "they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
It quoted two senior associates of Mr. bin Laden denying adamantly "that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq." It concluded that there never was a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers; in an interview with National Public Radio in January, Mr. Cheney cited intelligence reports about the possibility of such a meeting in asserting that there was not confirmation "one way or another" about links between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Democratic strategists said there was now no question that Mr. Bush would be dogged through the rest of the campaign by questions about whether the war was necessary, justified and sufficiently well planned. But Mr. Bush's supporters said that in political terms, the amazing thing was how well he had weathered the problems thrown at him by Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com
-
Visitante
O óbvio é oficial
A comissão independente que investigava a "ligação" entre o regime de Saddam e a Al-Qaeda, deu como provado que não existia ligação nenhuma.
George W. Bush,, ainda na semana passada, insistia nesta "ligação".
George W. Bush,, ainda na semana passada, insistia nesta "ligação".
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Visitante
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