Scrapbook
The Two Colin Powells Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked at a news conference about a new report by three antiwar scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace....
...It probably increases our chance that we're going to be able to put down somebody who tries to take a plane with a box cutter...
...Here's what one senior administration official said last February: "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zar-qawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants...
...A woman with a Kucinich sticker affixed between her shoulder blades discoursed to The Scrapbook on the color of the auras of the nation's children ("indigo") and poured herself tea from her own thermos ("Chinese recipe, I never travel without it...
...people like him...
...He's the incumbent, he's been prodigious in his fundraising ability, which matters...
...Asked by the Sun's Eric Wolff, "Do the Democrats have a chance...
...An older man discussed the dirty details of D.C.'s Sisyphean statehood campaign but asked that his name not be used in connection with the Ku-cinich event because, he confided, "I'm a Republican...
...When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp...
...She arrived as a Sharpton supporter...
...Do I think Bush has a very strong hand...
...He sounded at times very much like a fish out of water...
...monitoring team that hasn't operated in Iraq for nine months...
...Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al Qaeda...
...But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq...
...Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq...
...statehood when Congress comes back in session, a gold medal pander as these things go...
...Dick Cheney...
...It was a response that indicated that something else was wrong...
...Coalition said that she "has a problem...
...He and Bush both have the same sort of physiognomy...
...But Kucinich, she said, "has given us a lot of what we want...
...Donald Rumsfeld...
...In his debriefing, [Abu] Zubaydah [an al Qaeda planner and recruiter] said Mr...
...In fact, it's hardly "evidence" at all...
...Hardly compelling...
...That the Carnegie report cites this Times article as "new evidence" that Iraq and al Qaeda didn't collaborate speaks volumes about the strength of its research...
...But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did...
...The CIA report adds that Zubaydah "admitted that it was entirely possible that there were communications or emissaries" of which he would not be aware...
...These al Qaeda affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money, and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months...
...Huh...
...But it was all downhill (uphill...
...Was he kidding...
...There is no new evidence that Iraq actively aided al Qaeda...
...ouch...
...Abu Zubaydah explained that [Osama bin Laden's] personal goal of destroying the U.S...
...In 2000 this agent offered al Qaeda safe haven in the region...
...Condo-leezza Rice...
...An earnest young man talked to a woman seated nearby about his "photo documentary on inequities in education...
...Paul Wolfowitz...
...bin Laden had vetoed the idea [of an alliance] because he did not want to be beholden to Mr...
...After citing his "longstanding commitment to urban America," Kucinich opined that "democracy, like charity, should begin at home...
...For Democracy in D.C...
...women like him...
...Although focused on Iraq's WMD capabilities, the report threw in another finding for good (or political) measure...
...People need to like you...
...These denials are simply not credible...
...He photographs very well, his still photographs are very good, and that's not small...
...But that same report contained an important caveat from Zubaydah: "Bin Laden views any entity which hated Americans or was willing to kill them as an ally...
...Who was this official presenting "smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection...
...What "new evidence" do the authors cite...
...Zubaydah also confirmed that bin Laden "approved of contacts and funding" for militant Islamists in northern Iraq widely believed to have had Iraqi intelligence officials in their ranks...
...And the minus...
...I think that any Democrat who doesn't get 200 electoral votes has done a terrible job...
...he began with the party line: "Yes...
...At a campaign lunch we attended, Karen A. Szulgit from the Stand Up...
...After we swept al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven...
...He had at least one success...
...None of the above...
...After all, in response to the first question, he had promised to introduce a bill for D.C...
...he's got great political and personal skills...
...They probably should issue knives to everybody...
...Primarily a Joke D.C.'s nonbinding "beauty contest" primary will be held on January 13, and the Friday before, Dennis Kucinich was working hard to grab votes...
...People laugh a lot about Kucinich, but he showed impressive skill in fending off the hobby horses of various conspiracy theorists in the crowd ("it wouldn't be appropriate to bring that up in the context of presidential debate...
...Hussein, the official said...
...There is some new evidence that there were no operational links...
...coalition put her finger on why—Kucinich "obviously sees us as having some kind of power," she said...
...Asked about the Carnegie finding, Powell said: "I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection...
...During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there...
...And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq...
...But the prevailing mood was open and good-humored...
...It was Colin Powell in his report to the U.N...
...he looks like a wrestler...
...He's not likable...
...That never happens to us...
...Another member of the Stand Up...
...For instance, this take on airport security is not likely to endear him to the other members of University Presidents Local 2865: "We nationalized security, put another billion dollars out there, bailed out the airline industry, which was already providing lousy service—that's why they were in trouble—and shut down National Airport...
...from there: "Twenty percent of the American people will vote for anybody but Bush...
...They take away our knives, they take away sharp objects...
...The Scrapbook isn't surprised that reporters fell for the "new evidence," but we found it odd that Colin Powell was likewise so gullible...
...That view certainly puts Powell at odds with most other administration officials familiar with intelligence on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda...
...He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day...
...He's got a big neck...
...is so strong that to achieve this end he would work with whomever could help him, so long as al Qaeda's independence was not threatened...
...He then accepted a DVD filled with evidence that Bush is protecting murderers and other unsavory characters from prosecution, and with surprising grace ran out the door to catch a plane...
...In the Times story cited by Carnegie, it was reported that "two of the highest-ranking leaders of al Qaeda in American custody have told the CIA in separate interrogations that the terrorist organization did not work jointly with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein...
...A discredited claim made in a newspaper article from six months ago, the absence of reporting about the debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence official, and a "study" by a U.N...
...They remain there today...
...Howard Dean has a plus and minus there...
...The Times's source was an "official who has read the Central Intelligence Agency's classified report on the interrogation...
...But as THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S Stephen Hayes first reported in October, the Times reporter got only half the story...
...Security Council...
...Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of northeast Iraq...
...Our Kind of Democrat Still catching up with our Christmas vacation reading backlog, we came across the New York Sun's December 29 interview with former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, now president of the New School...
Vol. 9 • January 2004 • No. 18
