I was just wondering what took so long to get the tapes translated ? would it be because there are not enough arabic translator working within the CIA ? :s
I just hope the tapes are better translated than the mistake CNN made last month when translating one of Ahmadinejad speech. As a result CNN had to apologize many times on air for its mistake. Read this.
newkerala.com/news.php?actio … s&id=87814
sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=E … an-cnn.xml
I’d characterize it more as you throw things up against the wall to see what sticks and we make observations about the obsessive futility of it all.
I’d characterize it more as you throw things up against the wall to see what sticks and we make observations about the obsessive futility of it all.[/quote]
:bravo:
(Put much nicer than I was about to)
Somwe additional information presented at a privately sponsored “Intelligence Summit” in Alexandria, Va. ( www.intelligencesummit.org ).
Some of the questions posed by distinguished Forumosa members are addressed in this article.
My posting of items from this website, Newsmax.com, should not be interpreted as a blanket endorsement of the veracity of all articles posted on Newsmax.com. The same grain of salt and additional resourcing used for www.wikipaedia.com should be followed.
[quote]Ex-Official: Russia Moved Saddam’s WMD
Kenneth R. Timmerman, Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006
A top Pentagon official who was responsible for tracking Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs before and after the 2003 liberation of Iraq, has provided the first-ever account of how Saddam Hussein “cleaned up” his weapons of mass destruction stockpiles to prevent the United States from discovering them.
“The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon,” former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw told an audience Saturday at a privately sponsored “Intelligence Summit” in Alexandria, Va. (www.intelligencesummit.org).
But as Shaw’s office increasingly got involved in ongoing intelligence to identify Iraqi weapons programs before the war, he also got “a flow of information from British contacts on the ground at the Syrian border and from London” via non-U.S. government contacts.
“The intelligence included multiple sitings of truck convoys, convoys going north to the Syrian border and returning empty,” he said.
In addition to the convoys heading to Syria, Shaw said his contacts “provided information about steel drums with painted warnings that had been moved to a cellar of a hospital in Beirut.”
But when Shaw passed on his information to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and others within the U.S. intelligence community, he was stunned by their response.
"My report on the convoys was brushed off as
About that Intelligence Summit:
[quote]CAIRO, Egypt - Two former CIA directors have resigned from the board of the organization planning tomorrow to make public secret recordings of Saddam Hussein and his advisers.
In the last week both John Deutch and James Woolsey abruptly left their positions at Intelligence Summit, according to its president, John Loftus, who said their departure is part of a campaign by the directorate of national intelligence to punish him for releasing the recordings.
The reason both men gave for their resignations was new information they received regarding one of the summit’s biggest donors, Michael Cherney, an Israeli citizen who has been denied a visa to enter America because of his alleged ties to the Russian mafia.
Mr. Loftus said Mr. Cherney was framed by the Russian mob as part of a scheme to extort him. Mr. Woolsey, however, wrote in an e-mail, “My only response is that I got new information this week about the funder from someone I know and whose judgment on these matters I trust. Based on that information I decided to withdraw. If Mr. Loftus is saying that anyone pressured me about this issue he is quite wrong.” Mr. Deutch did not respond to a request for comment.[/quote]
Even AnnCoulter-wannabe Debbie Schlussel is backing out
[quote]February 16, 2006
Saddam Tapes or Not, I WON’T Be @ the Intelligence Summit & Here’s Why (CIA’s Woolsey, Deutch Cancel, Too)
By Debbie Schlussel
To all my readers and friends, I’ve cancelled my appearance and will NOT be appearing or speaking at this weekend’s Intelligence Summit in the Washington, DC area, as I had originally planned. I apologize if you made plans to go to this conference to see and hear me.
You’ve probably heard a lot about how the “Saddam WMD Tapes” will be presented there. But Saddam tapes or not, I, for one, won’t be there. And it looks like former CIA Directors James Woolsey and John Deutch have followed suit and cancelled their appearances, as well.
This is the first time I have ever cancelled an appearance. I cancelled my appearance at the Intelligence Summit for a number of reasons. I reluctantly agreed to appear at this event, based on representations that were made to me that were never backed up. I had questions and issues, the answers and resolutions to which were never satisfactorily provided after repeated requests. Therefore, I felt it was not in my best interest to appear.
…
Mr. Loftus has presented himself–and continues to–as a “terrorism expert” over the years, and many foolish parties have bought in, including The Washington Post and FOX News Channel. FOX News hired Loftus as its terrorism expert, but fired him after he broadcast the address of a California home as being the home of an Islamic terrorist. It was not (the terrorist had since moved), and the innocent people who lived there had their homes vandalized. I’m sure that he did not do this on purpose and never meant for that to happen.
My first experience with Mr. Loftus, in 2002–well before FOX News hired him–showed me, glaringly, that he is a fraud. He spoke at a counter-protest to the University of Michigan Palestinian Students Divestment Conference. I was the keynote speaker at the event. At the time, Mr. Loftus had recently filed a lawsuit (which was dismissed) against Islamic Jihad terrorist/founder and South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian, a man about whom I know, and have written, a great deal.
Mr. Loftus’ speech betrayed him to be almost completely ignorant on Mr. Al Arian, Islam in general (claimed Mohammed loved the Jews and treated them well; tell that to the Jews who built Medina, whom Mohammed slaughtered, forcibly converted to Islam, or expelled), and to be a blatant liar. I watched in amazement as he claimed to the large audience assembled, that he was the attorney for INS, Customs, and FBI agents, and others who’d investigated Sami Al-Arian. I know several of those parties, and to my knowledge, none of them have ever been represented by Loftus.
…
The Intelligence Summit claims to be operated by a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) organization and pled poverty. Yet, I got a million excuses why I could not locate the organization’s tax returns on any number of free websites that would contain PDF files of those returns. I wanted to see these, based on my previous knowledge of Mr. Loftus. When I was finally sent a hint of a tax return, it was a link to a Florida Holocaust Museum of which Mr. Loftus was once President and for which he is apparently the registered agent. There is no record on the tax returns of any connection to the Intelligence Summit, or any recording of the Summit’s employees, officers, salaries, expenses, etc. from previous years of the event.[/quote]
And that would be this John A. Shaw?
(original story from LA Times, but it’s in their pay archives)
[quote]WASHINGTON
For which he was fired, and promised in revenge to " unleash Iran-Contra II"
[quote]Pentagon Ousts Official Under FBI Investigation
LA Times -December 11
By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON
So, to sum up, we have a shadowy organisation run by a fraud, paid for by a Russian/Israeli Mafia boss who was run out of Russia and is forbidden to enter the US, from which two former CIA directors have just resigned, whose keynote speaker was fired from the Pentagon for corruption- vowing to get revenge- with another speaker who relies on messages from God and clairvoyants to find Saddam’s WMDs.
Sounds good so far.
MikeN -
Its a twisted scenario ain’t it… 
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]MikeN -
Its a twisted scenario ain’t it… [/quote]
Uh…yeah
Basically you’ve got to believe the Bush Admin is covering up evidence of WMDs in Iraq
Now, in my brief career as a liberal hawk, I fully believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons programs still ongoing, and back when he kicked the inspectors out I railed against Clinton as a gutless wimp who was undermining the international rule of law (I know, I know, you’ve got to swallow and accept all the scumbag gov’ts involved, but , hey, it’s an ideal)
I supported the war because I thought that the sanction regime was devastating the Iraqi populace- due entirely to Saddam’s cynical manipulation- and that there was strong evidence that it was crumbling, and that as soon as it collapsed, courtesy of the scummy French, German and Russian gov’ts, he’d be right back developing nukes.
But the Bush Admin’s totally screwed up handling of the lead-up to the war in the end put me off- not that it was all their fault- Chirac’s arrogance, Putin’s cynicism and , especially, Schroeder’s totally sleazy electoral posturing, added up to a perfect storm of bad diplomacy.
I dunno- I’ve got to admit, at these dark 3:00 am nights of the soul, if it’s just dislike of Bush’s right-wingism that’s the main reason for my opposition to his Iraq policy- if a nice liberal Democrat had done exactly the same, would I be cheering the march of human progress?
By Paul R. Pillar
prp8@georgetown.edu
Paul R. Pillar, the former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year, writes that the press was insufficiently questioning both in the run-up to war and in its coverage of the 9/11 Commission. He proposes questions reporters should ask – retrospectively and prospectively – about the use and abuse of intelligence by policymakers. . . .
Q. When was the decision to go to war in Iraq made, what beliefs and analysis led to that decision (as distinct from arguments used to muster support for the decision), and where did those beliefs and analysis come from?
Much effort and expense have been devoted to inquiries that one might hope would shed light on deficiencies in the intelligence-policy relationship. But they have failed to do so, because of the agendas or political constraints that have afflicted the inquiring bodies themselves.
The 9/11 Commission established as its goal the generation of enough public support to enact a reorganization of the intelligence community. Pursuit of that goal led it to produce a selective and misleading account of strategic intelligence on terrorism, obscuring the actual reasons US counterterrorist policy took the course it did prior to 9/11. The press was remarkably acquiescent in this; as Judge Richard Posner noted in his critique of the commission’s work, a combination of political circumstances paralyzed criticism of the commission and led its report to be accepted unquestioningly as “holy writ.” The politics of the Congressional intelligence committees have led them to delay repeatedly any public appraisal of how the administration used intelligence on Iraq (in the case of the Senate committee) or not even to attempt to address the subject (in the case of its House counterpart). The commission investigating intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction produced an otherwise useful report, but its White House provenance constrained it from exploring all the ways in which policy preferences affected the intelligence.
[quote=“MikeN”][quote=“TainanCowboy”]MikeN -
Its a twisted scenario ain’t it… [/quote]
Uh…yeah
Basically you’ve got to believe the Bush Admin is covering up evidence of WMDs in Iraq[/quote]MikeN -
No Mike, what is being shown is that an element in the US Intel group - specifically in the CIA - acted in such a manner as to downplay/denigrate/ignore information regarding the continued presence and subsequent movement out of Iraq of WMD’s.
IMO, Bush shot himself, and the USA, in the foot by not clearing out the Clinton* appointee and cronies in the CIA, and a few other areas, as soon as he came in his 1st term. The record has shown that they acted in numerous ways to thwart his stated course of action. And he dleayed and appeased while they continued. For this he has seriously compromised a great deal.
Too little and too late. It was a rats nest of anti-Bush cohorts at Foggy Bottom.
That makes sense. U.S. Intelligence is deliberately ignoring evidence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Arab terrorists because it hates President Bush so much.
[quote=“spook”]That makes sense. U.S. Intelligence is deliberately ignoring evidence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Arab terrorists because it hates President Bush so much.[/quote]Methinks you have no idea of the backbiting, ass-covering and pettiness that can and does exist at the higher levels of beauracracy. Especially among long time Gov’t employees.
It’s not any wonder that Bush is trying so hard to dismantle retirement systems in the US. All these retired guys are saying bad things about his administration.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”][quote=“MikeN”][quote=“TainanCowboy”]MikeN -
Its a twisted scenario ain’t it… [/quote]
Uh…yeah
Basically you’ve got to believe the Bush Admin is covering up evidence of WMDs in Iraq[/quote]MikeN -
No Mike, what is being shown is that an element in the US Intel group - specifically in the CIA - acted in such a manner as to downplay/denigrate/ignore information regarding the continued presence and subsequent movement out of Iraq of WMD’s.
IMO, Bush shot himself, and the USA, in the foot by not clearing out the Clinton* appointee and cronies in the CIA, and a few other areas, as soon as he came in his 1st term. The record has shown that they acted in numerous ways to thwart his stated course of action. And he dleayed and appeased while they continued. For this he has seriously compromised a great deal.
Too little and too late. It was a rats nest of anti-Bush cohorts at Foggy Bottom.[/quote]
Were the NSA in on this? the DIA? post-bellum, the Iraq Survey Group? We know the State Department’s NRI were part of the Conspiracy, since everyone at Foggy Bottom for the last 50 years has been an anti-American traitor (pause for a brief invocation of Saint Joe)
Clinton appointes and cronies? Well, I’ll agree the first thing Bush should have done after 9/11 was fire Tenet- and if, as you say, Tenet stood by while his underlings sabotaged the Administration’s main case against Iraq, the President certainly shouldn’t have given him a medal.
MikeN -
I believe the recent exposure of Mary McCarthy and her leaking classified information is an example of what I was referring to. She was a Clinton* crony, has made several campaign contributions to John Kerry and the DNC and also contributed $$$'s to the DNC fund for Ohio (remember the false brouhaha stirred up there after the 2004 Pres election?).
Agreed completely about Tenet…among others. Empty room, pistol on the table and one round standing next to it. Do the right thing George.
It all started about three Thanksgivings ago, that’s three years ago on Thanksgiving when my friend and I decided to go down to Iraq and find some weapons of mass destruction. So we loaded a white United Nations microbus with shovels and rakes and implements of detection and headed off to find the weapons of mass destruction.
We didn’t find any.
So we decided it would be a friendly gesture if we bombed the crap out of Iraq. That’s what we did. Went to church and had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat and went to sleep and didn’t get up until the next morning when we invaded Iraq. We sent soldiers and marines with tanks and humvees and implements of destruction to go and find the weapons of mass destruction.
We didn’t find any.
We looked for one year, two years, three years… We looked for a long time using all kinds of inspections, detections, and elections. Trying to find the weapons of mass destruction.
And we didn’t find any.
Not 'til we came to a stack of papers, all written in Arabic. And we looked at all the papers, and we didn’t find anything. Not until we came to the last paper. The very last paper. And we turned it over, and there on the other side. (In the middle of the other side.) Away from everything else on the other side. (In capital letters.) Quotated. Read the following words, “Kid! You are one stupid chimpanzee.”
Does he have to give his merit badge for duplicity back first?
"The Presidential Medal of Freedom is our nation’s highest civil award given to men and women of exceptional merit, integrity and achievement. . . . and whose efforts have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty.
George Tenet . . . is rightly proud of the people of the Agency, and I have been proud to work with George. . . . today, we honor a fine public servant and patriot in George John Tenet."
Spook -
Whats your point?
Does the phrase “time line” mean anything to you?
Hell…George Armstrong Custer was made a General officer.
And Benedict Arnold was also highly regarded for most of his career.
Henri-Philippe Petain was promoted to Field Marshal two weeks after the Armistice, and remained active in French military affairs as well as serving as War Minister in 1934.