Bush: "9/11 Was Just A Down Payment On Violence Yet To Come"

Bush: Iraq at center of terror fight

Source: pennlive.com

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5/23/2007, 3:32 p.m. EDT
By DEB RIECHMANN
The Associated Press

NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — President Bush portrayed the Iraq war as a battle between the U.S. and al-Qaida on Wednesday and shared nuggets of intelligence to contend Osama bin Laden was setting up a terrorist cell in Iraq to strike targets in America.

Bush, who faces a public weary of war and is at odds with Democrats in Congress over funding troops, said that while the Sept. 11 attacks occurred in 2001, Americans still face a major threat from terrorists.

"In the minds of al-Qaida leaders, 9/11 was just a down payment on violence yet to come," Bush said during a commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in which he defended his decision to order a troop buildup in Iraq. "It is tempting to believe that the calm here at home after 9/11 means that the danger to our country has passed."

"Here in America, we are living in the eye of a storm," he said. "All around us, dangerous winds are swirling and these winds could reach our shores at any moment."

Critics of the war insist that U.S. troops are in the middle of fights among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

"As global terror threats remain very real, President Bush is sinking more money and sending more troops to referee Iraq's civil war, when those precious resources would be better spent in finishing the mission left unaccomplished in Afghanistan," said Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress, a think tank led by President Clinton's former chief of staff John Podesta.

The White House has repeatedly said the U.S. and its allies will be successful when the Iraqis can sustain, govern and defend themselves, yet Bush used his speech to stress the threat from al-Qaida activities in Iraq.

"Hear the words of Osama bin Laden: He calls the struggle in Iraq a `war of destiny,'" Bush said. "He proclaimed `The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever.'"

Much of the intelligence information Bush cited in his speech described terrorism plots already revealed. But he declassified information to flesh out details and highlight U.S. successes in foiling planned attacks orchestrated by bin Laden, the al-Qaida boss.

"Victory in Iraq is important for Osama bin Laden, and victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America," Bush told the graduating class seated in a stadium under bright sunshine along the Thames River.

Bush said intelligence showed that in January 2005, bin Laden tasked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, to organize a terrorist cell and use Iraq as a staging ground for attacking the United States.

This information expanded on a classified bulletin the Homeland Security Department issued in March 2005 to state homeland security officials. The bulletin, which warned that bin Laden had enlisted al-Zarqawi to plan potential strikes in the United States, was described at the time as credible but not specific. It did not prompt the administration to raise its national terror alert level.

Bush said that in the spring of 2005, bin Laden also instructed Hamza Rabia, a senior operative, to brief al-Zarqawi on an al-Qaida plan to attack sites outside Iraq.

"Our intelligence community reports that a senior al-Qaida leader, Abu Faraj al-Libi, went further and suggested that bin Laden actually send Rabia, himself, to Iraq to help plan external operations," Bush said. "Abu Faraj later speculated that if this effort proved successful, al-Qaida might one day prepare the majority of its external operations from Iraq."

Bush said another suspected al-Qaida operative, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, was training in poisoning at a camp in Afghanistan and was dispatched to the United States before the Sept. 11 attacks to "serve as a sleeper agent ready for follow-on attacks."

U.S. intelligence asserts that al-Marri, who was captured in December 2001, discussed with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, potential assaults on the New York Stock Exchange, water reservoirs and U.S. military academies, Bush said.

Bush said bin Laden attempted to send a new commander to Iraq, an Iraqi-born terrorist named Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi. Al-Iraqi, who was al-Qaida's top commander in Afghanistan, was captured last year and recently transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

Democrats and other critics have accused Bush of selectively declassifying intelligence, including portions of a sensitive National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, to justify the U.S.-led invasion on grounds that Saddam Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. That assertion proved false.

Rand Beers, national security adviser to John Kerry's 2004 Democratic presidential campaign, contended Wednesday that the Bush administration was releasing intelligence to buttress the argument that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism while a number of intelligence sources say the most recent attacks or planned attacks against the U.S. and its allies have originated in Pakistan instead.

"Bin Laden is using Iraq to kill and demonize the United States while remaining secure and planning further operations in Pakistan," Beers said.

Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said new details about the plots were declassified because the intelligence community had tracked all leads from the information and the players were either dead or in U.S. custody.

In May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Several months later, in December 2005, al-Rabia was killed in Pakistan. In June of 2006, al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq in a U.S. airstrike.

Actually, making the new information public earlier might have allowed Bush to use it to his political advantage, Townsend said. "This is kind of late to be able to bring this to the game," she said, adding that intelligence officials needed time to exploit the information.

Unreal. I don't know what

Unreal. I don't know what else to say.

The Eleventh Day of Every Month

What's next?

This news: "Bush: "9/11 Was Just A Down Payment On Violence Yet To Come"
hot on the heels of this news: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html
indicate the imminent threat of another manufactured terror event within the USA before Nov 2008 followed
by martial law, the draft and further loss of freedoms.
I hope I'm wrong (please forgive me for being alarmist if I am) but all the signs are pointing to just such an outcome.

ALERT ALERT

BUSH GIVEN DICTORSHIP POWERS, FALSE FLAG COMING

have to agree

when you look at everything that has gone on domestically as of late, including that COG thing and now this Dictator thing, and then theres the prison camps...

food, water, guns, plenty of ammo, and gold

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Physics/Science/Mathematics do not lie, only people do.
9/11 was an INSIDE JOB

Me?

Bush Threatening Not Warning The American People

Is that a threat or a warning Gee Dubya?

Does Bush think the American public is still...

....stuck in February of '03?

Staggering BS.

Laughable, really....

"....intelligence officials needed time to EXPLOIT the INFORMATION".... ya think?

again they threaten us. i

again they threaten us. i guess we should feel lucky that Cheney and company didnt threaten us with a "dirty bomb" this time.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Former Director, CIA

The big bad wolf

They seem to have a lot of information about what bin Laden is doing, yet they never capture him. Wasn't the guy physically in a rather bad shape in autumn 2001? Isn't it a miracle how this dialysis patient just survives year after year and manages to escape the most powerful intelligence agencies of the world.

WHO TAKES THIS BULLSHIT FOR REAL?

While the US govt keeps Osama "alive"

The U.S. sheeple will continue to be scared of their own shadow.

$10 says Osama was deep-sixed over four years ago. Any takers?

"A patriot must be ready to defend his country against his government" - Edward Abbey

Bush and Company Don’t Want You to Know: UBL Died Many Years Ago

Usama bin-Ladin still being alive is one of the great modern myths. According to published funerary orations in Arabic (I have only one of them) and several Indian journalist friends in Rajasthan, UBL died from kidney failure at the beginning of 2002 in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi and is now buried in the tribal area of NW Pakistan. This may be one of the reasons why he is so hard to locate and capture. He is a skeleton hiding underground. As two of my friends have demonstrated with their very lives, once you are locked into the medical procedure of maintaining your life through regular kidney dialysis, your chances of survival past two or three years maximum is slim to none. We also know from mainstream sources like Le Figaro and the India Times that UBL was hospitalized for dialysis treatment in the Summer of 2001 (Dubai) and in the Winter of 2001 (Pakistan). To expect a man who needs regular dialysis to survive and be alive in 2007 is completely mythical. The only ones planning massive terror attacks against America right now are the members of the CFR-Cheney-Busch Terror Cartel. Why do you think that all of the al-Qaeda video messages in the last few years have come from MI6’s Egyptian asset Ayman al-Zawahiri? I wonder if UBL’s wives are still receiving his CIA pension checks? Later...

right on Lazlo. "The Central

right on Lazlo.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Former Director, CIA

Bush/Porter Goss/Bin Laden clip?

...where PG cracks up as bush talks about hunting down Bin Laden?

I couldn't find it.

It would be a good companion piece to Lazio's post.

...

There is certainly reason to think Osama Bin Laden is dead.


It's Not The Crime That Kills You, But The Cover-Up

Down payment

"
Well, Bush should know, he knew about 911, so I believe him. HE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED AND HUNG AS A TRAITOR, BUT ON THIS, I believe him.

The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong."
Georges Bidault, French resistance leader WWII

Fear we go again...

Bush is truly...

....fucking laughable....

These are some desperate scumbags....scheduling a once-in-blue-moon bush press conference directly during the View!....

It's all Olbermann can do to not call Bullshit on Bush's transparent fear-mongering.....

This is a nice piece coming right after his correctly recognizing the Democrats for the controlled opposition pussies they are for folding on the war funding vote this week.

We really need to start treating these people with the contempt they deserve in any encounters we may have.

Yeah, right

Bush: "Abu Faraj later speculated that if this effort proved successful, al-Qaida might one day prepare the majority of its external operations from Iraq."

The reek of desperation.

This is so fucking, fucking pathetic.