You thought I was going to say Iraq. Didn't you? Bzzzt! Wrong. New al Qaeda cell leader trained with Saudi military http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/21/alaoofi.ap/index.html
Interesting, but really not a surprise by any stretch. Hell, even some Americans have been caught with an Al Queda link..
Perhaps he was trying to answer to some posters who claimed based on the 9/11 report how big a "myth" it was to link the Saudis govt. and AQ, when all the report really claimed was the lack of tangible (paperwork and such) of said evidence, while stating the huge funder of AQ SA as a nation is...
possibly.. I wasnt attacking the inital post, I was just looking for clarification. The article itself states that this guy is #5 on the "most-wanted" terrorist lists of the Saudi Gov't. Look, I am not big fan of the Saudi Gov't. I have little doubt that quite often, crooked deals and coverups are going on re: terrorism. Everyone seems to be in bed w/ each other, and it is hard to know who to trust.
why! when it's so much easier to just blurt something out because someone else probably said it somewhere back on another thread and it became the gospel!?
Wow, so this guy was trained by the Saudi's back in the 80's. What's that? He was then fired by the Saudi government in 1992? Why is this surprising? Furthermore, what's the big deal?
Was bin laden personally in afghanistan fighting against the russians with CIA/USA help? Are significant numbers of the muslims that fought the soviets with USA/CIA help now basically leaders of Al-Queda/Taliban? I was under the impression that the above 2 are far more concrete facts than the AQ-Iraqi "evidence". Can you show us wrong?
Of course, the USA trained Fidel Castro, too. Then he turned against America. Maybe we should stop training foreigners. Wait, I am a foreigner. Never mind.
I wouldn't say he was fighting, it's well known that he was more of a backroom kind of guy. Never really in harms way. Anyways, there were hundreds of thousands of fighters in Afghanistan. Does that mean the US trained every single one? We funded the Mujahedeen, bin Laden was not a Mujahedeen leader then. We didn't write checks to ObL, we didn't send shipments of weapons to him either. He wasn't running around the mountains with our Special Forces soldiers. To say we funded him is wrong.We funded the Mujahedeen, not bin laden or Al Qaeda. I would say no, if you look at the leaders many of them are younger and did not fight in Afghanistan.
Why is this a big deal? Well, since the Bushies had repeatedly linked Iraq to Al Qaeda, its only fair to consider what governments were also linked to AQ. Evidence seems to point to far greater AQ collaboration w/ Pakistan and the Saudis than to Iraq. I've posted this link elsewhere, but Robert Sheer does such a good job of exposing the BIG LIE, that I'll put it here too: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer22jun22,1,5819212.column?coll=la-home-utilities [quote\]For example, the administration is now saying that when Bush announced on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that the defeated Hussein was "an ally of Al Qaeda," he didn't mean they actually helped each other. When Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that Al Qaeda was operating inside Iraq, he apparently assumed people knew that he was referring to an affiliate called Ansar al Islam that was operating in the northern "no-fly" zone patrolled by the United States and outside Hussein's control. And when Vice President Dick Cheney said on "Meet the Press" that by attacking Iraq "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11," he was only helpfully pointing out that Iraq is in the Middle East too.[/quote]
I don't think you can link this to the Saudi's involvment in funding or training AQ operatives. That's like saying that the Egyptians are linked to Al Zawahiri because he went to medical school in Egypt. You can't control everyone. What about John Walker Lindh, he went with the Taliban. Are you going to blame the US government?
C'mon, this is the faultiest logic I have seen in awhile on these boards... One individual who decides to strike out on his own, regardless of where/by who he was trained doesnt account for the entire gov't/country.. You will find abberations anywhere you look, John Walker Lindh doesnt represent the US, afterall...
Okay. I'll put it another way - and I'm expressing this as my opinion. Feel free to challenge any and all unreasonable assertions: Since: The Saudis and Pakistanis have been or were providing direct support to the religious loonies (i.e., the wahabbies {sp?}), And: AQ was created from the embers of Wahadism. Therefore: The SA/Pak-AQ link exists, though possibly through an indirect connection. (But I would say that, at best, the Saudis and Pakistanis were turning a blind eye to the rise of AQ.) To reiterate, the point of this thread initially was to say that if the war on terrorism is to de-connect the dots to AQ (not to mention wiping AQ from the face of the Earth), then Iraq was a pretty damn poor #2 choice (after Afghanistan). The Saudis and Pakistanis have been far, far more complicit. So far there have been a number of reasons for us to go to war with against Iraq. The Iraq-AQ connection was always very high on the list - and more so since the WMD claim turns out to have been wrong and the whole yellow cake-nuclear thing was a red herring. So, we've still got the supposed Iraq-AQ link (now on spindly legs), human rights (prisoner abuse story has really, really hurt), and Saddam was a freaking dung hole (certainly true, but a common afflication amongst Mid-East dictators). What's left is oil (a legit reason, but kind of unseemly) and dude tried to off my dad.