On Thu Sep 20 2001, Max Sawicky wrote:
That Mary Jane's Defense Weekly wrote:
> 19 September 2001
> Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view
> Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is
> the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade
> Center and the Pentagon in Washington.
Max, is there anything in here you find convincing? It seems like pure chaff to me. Nothing but "maybe, coulda" from guys who refuse to give their name. Who themselves admit that they haven't seen hide nor hair of their supposed prime suspect for years. And whose interest in pushing their cause is embarassingly patent.
Whereas the the WSJ article cites facts we all know: that Saddam is a militant secularist, that bin Laden has often expressed his hatred for him (bin Laden volunteered to fight on the other side when he invaded Kuwait), that Saddam has murdered a lot of clerics, and that this doesn't fit in at all with Saddam's interests at the moment since he's been increasingly successful at breaking down the sanctions coalition and this could only set him back.
I think classified information is useful for planning military operations. But useless for the political debate that sets the goals for those operations. If it's true, it has unclassified correlates.
> How to counter this kind of terrorism? "To fight these bastards you
> don't need a military attack," said an experienced Israeli commando
> officer. "You only need to adopt Israel's assassination policy."
Right. Which works so well that Mughniyeh, their main enemy, as well as the CIA's, is alive and well and active after 20 years of trying, even though he lives next door, in the country they know best on earth after their own.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com