I Get to Say It First

Ooh, ooh, I think I am the first one to say that this story is utter bullshit (and not only because Glenn Reynolds, The Hack of Record, links to it favorably):

Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.

Abu Nidal trained Atta. Right. Pull the other one. Could it be that this is meant to counter the effect of this story? And do intelligence officers really provide their ultimate bosses with handwritten memos?

But wait! There's more:

The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

So there, Joseph Wilson! Quite literally, this is incredible. I sure can't wait for the right-wingers to fall all over themselves endorsing it.

Comments

[priscianus jr]

Yes, it's bullshit -- but if we see where the bullshit's coming from, it becomes a source of genuine information. Connect the dots... Press reports of August 8/9, 2003 say Pentagon officials from Doug Feith's office -- the notorious "Special Plans (disinformation) Office" -- held several meetings in Rome with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the same Iranian middleman from the Iran-Contra scandal of the early 1980s. One of those from Feith's office was Harold Rhode, described in the same report as "a protegé of Michael Ledeen." Ledeen is a major neocon ideologue but he also played a big role in Iran-Contra, in fact he was the man who introduced Ghorbanifar to Oliver North back in those days. Congressman Ron Paul, in a speech on July 10 this year, quoted from Ledeen's book Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: “Lying is central to the survival of nations and to the success of great enterprises, because if our enemies can count on the reliability of everything you say, your vulnerability is enormously increased.”
Fred Landis, in his article "Disinformationgate," (Covert Action Quarterly, 1987, p.162:)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Iran_Contra_Israel_CA.html
"[Oliver] North and [Michael] Ledeen have worked together in a number of operations in recent years, very different, but all, one way or another, involving psyops or disinformation. In 1983, North was involved in the Grenada invasion l The media were excluded and U.S. Army psyops took over the local press and radio. The mainstream U.S. media got a bizarre white paper authored by Michael Ledeen, purportedly based upon the three tons of documentation the U.S. invaders seized." A lot more info in that article.
BTW - why Rome? Turns out, Ledeen has deep, longstanding connections with the Italian far right and secret service (SISMI). See Excerpt, taken from Edward Herman / Gerry O'Sullivan, The "Terrorism" Industry
http://www.eyeranian.net/2003/05/07,54.shtml
John Laughlan, "Flirting with Fascism,"
http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html
and for more background:
Jason Vest, "The Men from JINSA and CSP"
http://www.rescuemideastpolicy.com/bk/vest.html
Jim Lobe, "Uphaval, any upheaval will do"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3003.htm
For the Italian connection to Iran/Contra, see:
http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/institutional_analysis/p2masons.html
The bottom line is, these guys have been doing this for the last 25 years. The Niger/Yellowcake and the rest of the WMD bullshit is just Iran/Contra all over again. It's the same crowd behind it. Just keeps piling higher and higher, so keep digging!