Dubious Link Between Atta and Saddam (document falsified)

[private_ryan]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3741646/
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Newsweek
Updated: 5:53 p.m. ET Dec. 17, 2003
Dec. 17 - A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in the summer of 2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents.

*snip*

The Telegraph story was apparently written with a political purpose: to bolster Bush administration claims of a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime. The paper described a "handwritten memo" that was supposedly sent to Saddam Hussein by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, chief of Iraqi intelligence at the time. It describes a three-day "work program" that Atta had undertaken in Baghdad under the tutelage of notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, who lived in the Iraqi capital until his death under suspicious circumstances in August 2002.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3741646/

[Cush]

1. are we suprised?

didn't think so :-)

[Shadder]

4. Nope

Not at all.

[La_Serpiente]

2. I knew it

they didn't even provide the source of the document. The entire intelligence community is corrupt now.

[Just Me]

35. THIS HAS TO BE CRIMINAL,...

,...fabrication of an intelligence document,...isn't that what is being asserted by this article? If so, THAT HAS TO BE A CRIME!!!!

[jenk]

3. Anything on FOXNEWS about it?

[alcuno]

10. It'll never happen.

The US Ministry of Disinformation strikes again.

[louis-t]

5. Interesting that the story broke

at the same time SH was captured. Bushco always manage to deflect.

[aquart]

6. I'm shocked. Shocked.

A lie connected with this administration? Oh, the shame! The scandal!

Poor thing better get in line.

[pansypoo53219]

16. what

will we tell the children?

[Bozvotros]

7. Say it ain't so Joe,

You too Rush, Hannity, O'Liely, Hume, Matthews and the rest of you whores who trumpeted this bogus shit as if it had been found burned into stone tablets. Between this, Kean's statement about 911 being preventable and the rapid deterioration of the official story about how Saddam was captured, this should be a good week for the official White House dry cleaner.

[robbedvoter]

8. Why is this web exclusive? And how widely was the lie carried?

I remember someone asking here if it was true that Brokaw said it. Did anyone confirm that? Is this another one of those lie publicly, retract privately scenarios? Hasn't this been done before the war on the same topic? Got 70% believing it? Are they fooling us twice?

[alcuno]

11. Absolutely. I've heard all the right-wingers screaming about this

important document being ignored by the mainstream media. Saw Joe Scarborough with John Loftus on last night carrying on about it.

[0007]

22. Yes and the calls to the Washington Journals about,

how American was missing this important document. The proof that Atta was in bed with Saddam, LOL!! Now this. Wonder how the freepers will handle this one.

[w4rma]

13. That's what I want to know. Why is this story exclusive to the internet?

It looks important enough to put in the magazine, itself, to me. :mad:

[private_ryan]

14. the magazine is already printed for this week

wait till next week?

[BigBigBear]

9. Frankly, I'm shocked

No...I really am....

Has anyone documented and really done a dissertation of the desperation and willful gullibility of Bush supporters on these war stories? I sure hope someone is keeping track of the Iraq War mythology in all its debunked glory - goodness knows, I have a few hundred links at home, but I'm sure I've missed a few.

[0007]

12. Wasn't it Atta's passport that flew out the plane that slammed

into the World Trade Center and was found three block away? Now that is wild, I mean wild.

[underpants]

41. Yes the magic passport. It made it through the explosion and fire...

was found with in an hour of the WTC coming down and was quickkly passed onto a flat foot or at least through the chain of command while NYC was in a news and telephone blackout so no one knew who supposedly were the rat bastards that did it but somehow it got to where it needed to, the passport that is.

Very incredible.

[GermanDJ]

15. Those forged documents regarding British MP George Galloway come to mind

when I read this story.

More spinmasters at work ...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0425/p01s04-woiq.htm
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,941081,00.html

[truthisfreedom]

17. what say the glorious sheeple freepers?

have they responded to this news?

[paulthompson]

18. The good news...

Color me surprised this was debunked - not! Shame on the Telegraph for running such an obviously bogus story. Both the Niger uranium story and the Iraq 9/11 connection in one document? Talk about absurd!

The good news is, virtually no mainstream media picked up the story, except for the usual right wing rags. If you run a google news search, one sees that the usual suspects - NewsMax, WorldNetDaily, National Review, and that kind of ilk, ran the story. But that was it. Not even an AP or Reuters blurb on it. The only halfway respectable outlet to run it was The Age in Australia, but they gave the story a different headline: Atta Linked to Baghdad in Dubious Document.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/14/1071336810270.html

But I'm sure that in the fantasy land Rush Limbaugh fans live in, this story will be accepted as fact anyways (Rush of course has covered it as well).

[Dudley_DUright]

24. Yes, the fact that it included the Niger story also

made the whole document a transparent fake. Of course you are right that the wingnuts will forever accept this crap as the gospel truth.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Why am I not surprised

[sistersofmercy]

20. Well get use to the BS stories many more to come

[candy331]

21. The Man( Con Coughlin) who wrote the article was on MSNBC

today and said that this was authentic and did so with great enthusiasm as if he had really discovered something and was really telling the truth. "Lying Liars"

His first name is Con, enough said.

[Dudley_DUright]

25. Unbelievable quote from the "Con" man in the article

The Sunday Telegraph's Con Coughlin acknowledged that he could not prove the authenticity of the document. He said that while he got the memo about Mohammed Atta and Baghdad from a "senior" member of the Iraqi Governing Council who insisted it was "genuine," he and his newspaper had "no way of verifying it. It's our job as journalists to air these things and see what happens," he said.

No you moron. It is your job to verify the facts and check your sources before you publish this rubbish. :eyes:

[Robb]

37. Amazing

What a dipshit! Forgive me, but this is a fucking ignorant thing to say. :grr:

[KoKo]

23. I can't believe it! MSNBC actually "outed" that piece of c**p from the

Mudoch "Telegraph!" Unbelievable. I figured that would fly along like the rest of the Bush/PNAC lies. Good news. I hope it's good, anyway. These days, one never knows.

[prolesunited]

26. I would like to hold this up as evidence

to all those here who call us whacked-out leftists and tinfoil hatters when we refuse to believe anything that is put out there.

[TeeYiYi]

27. Original thread from "Spider" Sunday . . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=268774

TYY

[enki23]

28. i don't believe it

i mean, what's more believable than an inter-terrorist MEMO confirming *both* that muhammed atta and saddam were in cahoots *and* that the niger uranium bit was also right on the mark?

[proud patriot]

29. well It's about time they are reporting this

Don't think for a second that I'll forget
how long The media has sat on this . :grr:

[IndianaGreen]

30. Was it Chalabi who produced the forged document?

He said that while he got the memo about Mohammed Atta and Baghdad from a "senior" member of the Iraqi Governing Council who insisted it was "genuine," he and his newspaper had "no way of verifying it. It's our job as journalists to air these things and see what happens," he said.

I smell the handiwork of Chalabi in this. I also take exception to Con Coughlin saying that his "job as journalists" is to air uncorroborated stories. This man is another puke, working for a Murdoch tabloid.

How many Americans and Iraqis have died for these lies? How many more will die?

[sistersofmercy]

39. Or course, it was Chalabi's doing, this whole criminal war comes down

to Chalabi's doing. I would like to see an investigation on the INC, its thugs and practices. After all, they supplied the dubious intelligence of WMD. Chalabi's been barking "imminent threat" by Saddam for years.

[Lorien]

31. "Web exclusive"

does this mean the only place we'll see this story is tucked away on their website for a few days?

Hmmm...quite a pattern. Publish falsified story to boost * numbers, retract story weeks later...on your website, buried beneath other headlines.:grr:

[TeeYiYi]

32. It's not just that it was published . . .

. . . that joker Con Coughlin was paraded around on every channel Sunday (all day long ad nauseum) as the story was supposedly "breaking" whilst removing Saddam from his hidey hole.

This story smelled from the jump for a reason. . . It was rancid!

TYY

[Robb]

38. We'll also see it

in the Telegraph, on page 117, beneath the tide tables.


(thanks and apologies to Berke Breathed for the joke)

[pinniped]

33. When you have an imposter in the WH anything goes...

Even Dukakis said this was the worst admin he ever lived under.

We're all inclined to agree with him.

[cmd]

34. The damage has been done

Put out enough garbage to make a story and there will be plenty of people ready to lap it up. After the truth comes out, no one wants to admit they ate the garbage. They still believe it was good stuff. This is more Rovian politics.

[Guaranteed]

36. God DAMMIT

I'm sick of our government LYING to us in trying to build support for this BULLSHIT war.

Is this NOT fascism???

[HuckleB]

40. E-mail this far and wide.

We're going to have to act as our own press, that much is clear.

[UTUSN]

43. "under our direct supervision" - Haha, Scooter LIBBY's & ROVE's

The "admissions" are way explicit, direct citing of "al Qaeda". Lucienne GOLDBERG could come up with better political operative fakery.

And ISIKOFF is now acting as a journalist, eh. Were you a journalist then, or are you a journalist now.

[underpants]

42. Hell even CHALABI didn't buy the memo

Ironically, even the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi, which has been vocal in claiming ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, was dismissive of the new Telegraph story. "The memo is clearly nonsense," an INC spokesman told NEWSWEEK.

[skypilot]

44. Jesus, they just won't let this go.

Every few months they dust of this story about Atta meeting with some Iraqi in Baghdad or Prague. This administration loves to put stories in storage and then break them out again when they think that people have forgotten that the story was bogus the first time.

Did anyone see Ari Fleisher on David Letterman a while ago when he tried to claim that the Internation Atomic Energy Agency had put out a report saying that Hussein was 6 months away from developing a nuclear weapon? The IAEA had already denied the existence of such a report on numerous occasions so Ari waits a little while and then right before he steps down as press secretary he throws that lie out there one last time. That's how they operate. Putrid f*cks.