Bush protected terrorists in Iraq - the great betrayal

[SoCalDemocrat]

This is the Bush achilles-heel. He protected the most dangerous terrorist group in Iraq from attack by the Pentagon and U.S. forces on three seperate occasions. He sheltered them. Partly because the CIA was in secret talks with these supposed Al Qaeda terrorists, but mainly so Bush could use this as his #1 reason for invading Iraq as presented by Colin Powell to the United Nations on Feb 5th.

It's all here...read it, understand it, and use it to change the face of this election. The National Guard and swift boats are small change compared to this story.

Bush lied about the connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. More importantly he prevented the Pentagon from assisting PUK on three seperate occasions at taking out this terrorist stronghold. Today as a result, Ansar Al Islam working behind their leader Zarquawi, are responsible for the majority of terrorism deaths throughout Iraq.

Bush refused the Pentagon's request to bomb Ansar Al Islam's camp three times, so he could have Powell go to the UN and use that camp as justification for war against Iraq.

Ansar initially had just 200 fighting men. By executing the Pentagons plans with a PUK ground forces attack, supported by U.S. special forces, we could of wiped out that camp.

Zarquawi was known to have been in that camp during that time. We would of very likely killed him as well.

Today Ansar al Islam has claimed over 700 lives in Iraq, including many U.S. service personnel. They are the driving terrorist force at work in the region, and are lead by Zarquawi. Their numbers swelled in the intervening period, and now they have thousands of new recruits swelling their ranks.

George Bush prevented the Pentagon from taking out Zarquawi and his terrorist camp, in spite of the grave threat we knew they posed in the region. All so he could try and draw two weak and innacurate links that Ansar was involved with Al Qaeda, and Saddam with Ansar.

Bush was asleep at the wheel on 9/11 and the Republicans still gave him a pass. He is "tough on terrorists" they said. Ok, so we gave him another chance. What did he do? Dragged us into a war with Iraq, and in so doing allowed a dangerous terrorist base, THE terrorist base in Iraq in fact, to go unmolested so he could drum up support for the invasion.

People of good conscience should not allow this act to go unnoticed and unchallenged. Irregardless of who our leaders are and what their political party, we must learn to hold them accountable for their actions or inactions. We hold the Dixie Chicks accountable for a minor slight, but we won't hold Bush accountable for this monumental failure and lie that has led to the deaths of hundreds of U.S. service personnel?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
---------
By Jim Miklaszewski
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:14 p.m. ET March 2, 2004

With Tuesday’s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq. But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

‘People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of pre-emption against terrorists.’
----------

CSMonitor has a good article with bacground from November 2002.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1122/p01s02-wome.html

Kurdish officials liken this current front line to the Tora Bora standoff between Al Qaeda and US forces in Afghanistan late last year. Some say that Ansar has dug into the mountains, and built houses over their cave entrances in some of the 18 villages local commanders say are under Ansar control. "We can only fight Ansar from the sky, just as America fought the Taliban from the sky," says a senior Kurdish official. "This kind of work can't be done just with machine guns."

But several officials suggest that Ansar can be crushed handily with Iranian help, or even if Iran allowed the PUK - with which it has close ties - to temporarily enter Iranian territory and attack from behind. "If Iran helps the PUK to cross the border, the PUK can get rid of 80 percent of them," says defector Said. "If Iran engages itself, it would be a big victory. And if the US Air Force comes, I will not give them days, but hours. Ansar is not prepared for air attack."

The massacre of the Kurdish fighters in Oct. 2001 was the event that "made everything clear to me," says the defector. "Now I believe made many mistakes, that are not part of Islam.

"My thoughts and ideas have now changed," says Said, quietly. "If they did not, I would not be talking to you."

---------------

Iraq's Tora Bora
Al Ansar was based in the U.S. no-fly zone, on the Northwest border with Iran. Al Ansar wanted to overthrow Saddam, but also fought regularly with the PUK whom they disagreed with. Al Ansar had ties to Al Qaeda, some members shared training camps in Afghanistan. Zarquawi linked up with Al Ansar in 2000 or therabouts, and was in this camp for quite some time. While there he developed chemical and biological weapons which were unleased on targets in Europe.

The U.S. was fully aware of his presence and the base from the get go.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2149499.stm

According to this source, An Alsar was in secret discussions with the U.S. to help overthrow Saddam Hussein, which was also one of their goals. Al Ansar is also cited as being a secular leaning group, which was in conflict with PUK.

The Ansar Al Islam leader threatened to go on record and tell about his links to the Bush administration and the secret talks. Based on what we know now, this sounds extremely credible.

---------

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030503_ansar.html

DUBAI, Feb 1 (AFP) - The suspected leader of a Kurdish Islamic extremist group threatened in an interview published Saturday to produce evidence of his contacts with Washington prior to the September 11 suicide hijackings.

" I have in my possession irrefutable evidence against the Americans and I am prepared to supply it ... if (the United States) tries to implicate me in an affair linked to terrorism," Mullah Krekar, who is believed to front Ansar al-Islam, told Al-Hayat newspaper. He dismissed as "fabrications" reports linking his group to Al-Qaeda, saying they were designed to justify a strike against Iraq.
Krekar told the Arabic-language daily he had been approached by the United States before September 11.

" I had a meeting with a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of 2000. They asked us to collaborate with them ... but we refused to do so," he said.

British and US news reports this week claimed that Krekar, who has enjoyed political refugee status in Norway since 1991, and Ansar al-Islam would be key elements of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's proof of links between Al-Qaeda and Baghdad to be presented to the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

------------
Powell speaks to the UN on Feb 5th.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm

When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp.

The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch -- imagine a pinch of salt -- less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote. There is no cure. It is fatal.

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region.

After we swept al-Qaida from Afghanistan, some of those members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.

------------

http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/526/1/3/

Powell claimed that Iraq has given safe haven to an al-Qaeda cell founded by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. But the New York Times revealed that a member of the Qatar Royal family has set up a safe house for al-Zarqawi in Qatar and provided him a million dollar bank account to finance his terrorist activities. The Bush administration has been silent because Qatar is the main base for the U.S. war on Iraq.

------------

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0211-04.htm

Though Powell spoke of Saddam having an agent in the Ansar al-Islam camp, unnamed U.S. officials later explained in the Post that this agent might be spying on the Kurdish Islamic group, not running it.

In short, the Al Qaeda, Iraqi poison factory controlled by Saddam that Powell spoke of may not be Al Qaeda, may not be a poison factory, and is almost certainly not controlled by Saddam.

-------------

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/15381/
March 14th, 2003

Bush delayed until any attack on this terrorist base until he secured his case for war on Iraq with the bogus Al Qaeda-Hussein claims.

With such threats on the northern front, officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), who control the eastern half of the Kurdish enclave protected since 1991 by the U.S. no-fly zone, say that the final showdown with Ansar is coming soon and is likely to include American support. "We would like to finish them off before any attack on Baghdad," said Sarbast Mohammad, head of security for Halabja. "We are happy to work with the American army to do so."

Whether that help will arrive remains in question. President Bush's special envoy for Iraqi opposition groups, Zalmay Khalilzad, reportedly promised PUK leader Jalal Talabani in Ankara in early February to help snuff out Ansar with American aerial support as the first salvo of any war. Talabani's aides told the press soon afterwards that U.S. special forces snipers were scouting the valley, and that the PUK was supplying target information to American bombers based in Turkey.

-------------

Then it appears Bush forgets all about Ansar once he's invaded Iraq. They forget that is, until Ansar starts killing U.S. service personnel.

http://www.meforum.org/article/579
Ansar al-Islam: Back in Iraq
by Jonathan Schanzer

Months before the Iraq war of 2003, The New Yorker, Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times published reports about Ansar al-Islam ("Partisans of Islam"), a brutal band of al-Qa‘ida guerrillas based in a Kurdish area of northern Iraq near the Iranian border. U.S. officials pointed to Ansar al-Islam as the "missing link" between al-Qa‘ida and Saddam Hussein. When Secretary of State Colin Powell made the U.S. case for war against Saddam at the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he cited Ansar al-Islam as a key reason for invasion. Powell drew links among the group, al-Qa‘ida, and Saddam, citing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents declassified upon the request of the White House.<1>

As war approached, however, the Bush administration said less about Ansar al-Islam and al-Qa‘ida. Rather, the administration focused on Saddam's attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction. After the war, it became a matter of common wisdom that Saddam had no links to al-Qa‘ida. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that the case linking Saddam to al-Qa‘ida was never "bullet-proof."<2> Former vice president Al Gore denied that such ties existed at all.<3>

But since the defeat and dispersal of Saddam's regime, U.S. officials have begun to talk of Ansar al-Islam once more. In July 2003, U.S. joint chiefs of staff chairman General Richard Myers stated "that group is still active in Iraq."<4> A week later, Myers revealed that some cadres from the group had been captured and were being interrogated.<5> The U.S. top administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer III, reiterated Myers's message in August, saying that there were "quite a number of these Ansar al-Islam professional killers on the loose in the country," that they were staging attacks against U.S. servicemen, and that U.S. forces were trying to track them down.<6>

--------------

Too late however as Ansar is already well aware of U.S. plans and has been dispersing its fighters.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/2020/iraq030221_ansar.html
By Kevin McKiernan


The secret Ansar report, which is dated Feb. 17, 2003, maintains that a U.S./PUK attack on the guerrillas will take place before Feb. 28. It says that Ansar guerrilla units have already been dispersed to at least six mountain locations and that fighters are instructed to infiltrate into civilian areas if the attack becomes too intense to maintain their positions.

Meanwhile, large numbers of PUK peshmergas — "those who face death" — reportedly are moving to Halabja, near the front lines of a ground battle between the Ansar militants and the peshmergas.

At the same time, according to the Ansar report, the guerrillas have planned ambushes and have dispatched special squads to attack U.S. forces making "weekly visits" to a PUK command center near the front line.

-----------------

January 2003, Ansar Al Islam still has not been taken out.
By Jonathan Schanzer
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy | January 17, 2003
From: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=5571

Today, Ansar operates in fortified mountain positions along the Iran-Iraq border known as "Little Tora Bora" (after the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan). There, the group's Kurdish, Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian, Moroccan, Syrian, Palestinian, and Afghan members train in a wide array of guerrilla tactics. Approximately 30 al-Qaeda members reportedly joined Ansar upon the group's inception in 2001; that number is now as high as 120. Armed with heavy machine guns, mortars, and antiaircraft weaponry, the group fulfills al-Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri's vision of a global jihad. Ansar's goal is to disrupt civil society and create a Taliban-like regime in northern Iraq. To that end, it has already banned music, alcohol, photographs, and advertising in its stronghold. Girls are prevented from studying; men must grow beards and pray five times daily.

-------------------

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4428430/
Ansar-al-Islam eyed in Iraq bombings
Al-Qaida-linked group behind majority of post-9/11 terror deaths

NBC News
Updated: 3:29 p.m. ET March 2, 2004NEW YORK - In the immediate aftermath of the deadliest postwar bombing in Iraq on Tuesday, U.S. and Iraqi officials pointed the finger at the shadowy al-Qaida-linked terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, and its leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi.

Only a month ago, U.S. officials released what they said was a letter by the Jordanian militant outlining a strategy of spectacular attacks on Shiites, aimed at sparking a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

The attacks "follow the blueprint laid out in the Zarqawi letter," one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, while "the multiple simultaneous bombings are a trademark of al-Qaida."

------------

Bush finally wakes up again from his slumber, and the U.S. bombs the Ansar Al Islam mountain base. Way too late. They're already entrenched by now throughout the country. Also, the vast majority of their members escape the bombing attack, which is not accompanied by a ground assault. Even more strange, the U.S. not only did NOT include PUK in a coordinated assault, which would of been more effective, but they bombed the PUK controlled town of Khormal in addition to the Ansar base. This might of been an attempt to appease Turkey?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81843,00.html
U.S. Missiles Hit Islamist Strongholds in Northern Iraq

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq — As many as 40 American cruise missiles slammed into two mountain villages held by an Islamic fundamentalist group in northern Iraq late Friday and early Saturday, according to local Kurdish officials. U.S. officials had no comment.

Later in the day, an explosion at a roadside checkpoint nearby killed at least one person, but details were sketchy about what caused the explosion or how many people were involved.

"The indication is that at 100 people were killed or injured during the raids," said Mustafa Sayyid Qadir, a military commander with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, according to Reuters.

[SoCalDemocrat]

1. Help me condense this message

The information I've covered above should be all we need to defeat George Bush in November. It shows clear negligence on the part of the Administration and their inaction and political maneuvering can be seen to have directly resulted in the deaths of many hundreds of U.S. service personnel and countless more civilians in Iraq.

Help me to condense this message down to a paragraph, or a few sentences and sound bites. If we can do that, we can circulate it and make it start to stick. Right now it's difficult to follow, especially among a short attention span populace.

[dave123williams]

2. That's it, isn't it?

They've fucked up so often, in so many different ways that it's hard to put all the bullshit in one nutshell.

[SoCalDemocrat]

3. This is the A#1 colossal Bush screw up

This is THE #1 reason why we went to war on Iraq. This is the mystical Saddam - Al Qaeda link, the one they used to make their case for fear. Bioterror weapons would reign down on U.S. cities if we didn't stop Saddam and his terrorist network!

The damning part is how Bush refused to bomb that base. He flat out refused them three times, in spite of the grave and imminent threat he thought they posed.

There is NO WAY Bush can spin his way out of this mess. We have him nailed. He personally gave TERRORISTS a FREE PASS so he could use them as an excuse for invading Iraq. They weren't even a legitimate excuse. He LIED to make the connection, knowingly. The Pentagon was fully aware of Ansar Al Islam. There was no suspiction of Al Qaeda - Saddam ties. They wanted to bomb the camp because they were radicals who were terrorizing the Kurds, among other Iraqi's.

Bush protected the terrorists! He protected the same terrorists that have since then killed many hundreds of U.S. soldiers. He protected them for purely political gain, because he had a vendetta against Hussein and a burning desire to be remembered as a great warrior of God that would bring Christianity and Democracy to the middle-east. He was going to win the crusades.

The man is unfit to lead. He has cost hundreds of lives. He is a failure and a fraud and we must expose him.

[dave123williams]

11. Hundreds of lives? Try thousands...

1000 + U.S. dead.

30-50,000 + Iraqi dead. Ten times what we lost on 9/11 and counting. I'm just amazed that GWB can say this is about 'Democracy' and keep a straight face.

I'm going to be at the polls on November 2, the minute they open.

[mzmolly]

31. Dup - Deleted

[mzmolly]

32. One soundbite "Bush let terrorists go free for political purposes"

followed by, "how can anyone think he's tough on terror."

I think you should blast this to the media by the way! Also copy the Kerry campaign and a few leftwing 527's like Moveon.org

[SoCalDemocrat]

4. How about a 30 second ad featuring this topic...

I believe that I've compiled the information we need above to produce a 30 second advertisement that will destroy George W. Bush and win the election for us in November.

TAG LINE:
George Bush protected Al Qaeda terrorists from U.S. forces!

This is a matter of public record, easily documented, and what's better is that it's true. Bush turned down three seperate Pentagon requests to bomb Ansar Al Islam, the terrorist organization now lead by Zarquawi, credited today with the majority of terrorist deaths in Iraq.

I ask the DU members to help shape this message into a 30 second TV spot. Maybe someone with flash skills can create a web-ad?

[Southern Patriot]

10. The spot writes itself...

I'd frame it in terms of TRUST.

We've GOT to trust our President in these dangerous times.

George Bush declined to attack Zarquawi THREE times in order to justify invading Iraq--- an invasion that crippled our Afghanistan effort to capture OBL, the mastermind of 9/11.

George Bush's invasion of Iraq was ill-timed for ensuring our safety but perfectectly timed for political gain.

How can we trust him?

John Kerry trusted him to make war the last option in Iraq. Instead it was his first.

Now, John Kerry has the real answer: LEAD the world toward peace in Iraq. Don't stiff-arm our allies.

It's time for a change.

Vote Kerry for a strong America.

[SoCalDemocrat]

35. Impressive

I like that flavor, but it's not harsh enough. We need to tie in the loss of life which the Bush administration itself has attributed to Zarquawi and his terrorist group. They blamed Zarquawi for the beheadings, for thousands of civilian deaths, and for many of the attacks on our soldiers. It's only appropriate that we use their own claims to point out that Bush let Zarquawi go for political gain.

[SoCalDemocrat]

5. Is this just too long to read?

Should I write a one paragraph version? I'm shocked at the lack of feedback.

[annabanana]

7. we are just flabbergasted...............yet again.

Your post said it all. Right there in black and white. Aside from repeating it (Which, yes, we should be doing) what can we add?

this is a job for media blast if anything is..........

[chelaque liberal]

8. This desires a lot of attention

Thanks for all of the work you have put into it. I need more time to read it all and absorb the information. Yes, maybe you should paraphrase it to draw more attention.

Too important to let pass.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Great job, SCD -- nominated for homepage!

[flvegan]

9. Wow...great work. Why isn't this

in the headlines across the country? Oh, wait...I forgot. Amazing, simply amazing. Haven't read all the links yet. Afraid I'll start cursing here at work.

[timefordrinking.com]

12. Keep it simple, for the simple folk!

Great legwork tracking down those stories. If you want to have an impact on the average joe, however, you have to do two things:

1) Make it short and to the point.

2) Only use sources that Joe will recognize (i.e. NBC, NYT, FOX, but not AlterNet, etc.)

I'd suggest something like:

- - - -

BUSH: SOFT ON TERRORISM

“Abu Musab Zarqawi … blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq. … Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation … but never pulled the trigger.” –NBC News March 2, 2004

“Al Ansar had ties to Al Qaeda, some members shared training camps in Afghanistan… he developed chemical and biological weapons which were unleashed on targets in Europe. The U.S. was fully aware of his presence and the base from the get go.” –Christian Science Monitor, BBC July 24, 2002

"Mission Accomplished" -George W. Bush, 2003

George Bush talks the talk, but he let the terrorists walk.

- - -

Hey, that was fun! I wish someone would actually PAY me to do that!

Basically, my rule is to write as if your reader is mildly retarded. Sad, but true. Anyway, keep up the good work. And remember, we ARE the media!

[SoCalDemocrat]

15. Great feedback, keep it coming!

That was pretty good! Lets keep churning these ideas until we come up with some really biting material. We can then forward it on to the 527 groups and hopefully they can go to work on it.

Anyone have flash skills that could produce a DU special?

[PurityOfEssence]

13. Long tradition: Daddy, Jeb and he all protected serial terrorist Bosch

Here's a guy with a rap sheet longer than Junior's pause when asked about his mistakes. Among other things, the guy blew up a commercial airliner with over 70 people on board, just to continue his vendetta with Cuba.

The Bushies have no problem with terrorists when it serves their purposes, which are, of course, money and power.

[Cheswick2.0]

14. Wonderful job

If I were you I would send this to Dan Rather and beg him to have his assistants read it all over and do a story about it.

[SoCalDemocrat]

16. Scripting the story

When we finalize a few sound bites and scripts I'll definitely forward it to the major news networks, the 527's, etc.

[Rose Siding]

17. I'd love to see a debate question about not taking Zarqawi.

But that isn't likely, is it?

[deckerd]

20. The fact Kerry hasn't picked up on this tells everything you need to know

About what the campaign needs to be doing, that they have not done yet.

McCain ad -- air it -- too late

Keep pressing Stone link -- screw reasonable doubt -- instead of allowing their only friendly news source and one of their main character issues against * to be discredited -- Kerry camp took the honorable, Walt Starr approach, as if they were old-school journalists -- if they couldn't pile on Stone they should have piled on CBS instead.

And now this, hopefully they'll pick up on it.

OTOH, we don't know what he's holding in reserve but he's waited too long to drop some of these bombshells that Cahill et al. probably never intended to drop in the first place. We'll see.

[Kool Kitty]

18. Kick for the late night crew.

I don't even know where to begin with all this. Un-fuckin'-believable, and yet, it happened.

[AirAmFan]

19. My 'boil-down': * HELPED a few anti-Saddam terrorists strengthen their

foothold in Iraq, and his policies have backfired "big-time". Dubya's Iraq policy two years ago was the OPPOSITE of fighting terrorism--it was to PROTECT terrorists and use them as political pawns to gain oil and power. The hooded executioner sawing off an American civilian's head in a recent ghoulish terrorist Internet video is a man named Zarqawi, leader of a fast-growing fundamentalist Islamic terrorist sect called Ansar al-Islam.

This group, numbering only in the dozens two or three years ago, was the only noteworthy terrorist presence in Iraq before the trumped-up US invasion, Against near-impossible odds, they wanted to end Saddam's mainly secular regime and replace it with an Islamic republic. They wanted to spread their "little Tora-Bora" on the Iranian border country-wide, banning women from education, prohibiting alcohol, and outlawing PHOTOGRAPHY!

They stood no chance of success until Dubya's White House overruled the Pentagon and PROTECTED them from US airstirkes. After 9/11, the Pentagon was serious about striking at known terrorist bases, however small, but Dubya was dreaming Neocon dreams of huge oil reserves and a dozen US military bases in the Middle East. The "President" explicitly barred the Pentagon from carrying out planned air strikes at Ansar Al-Islam's main base camp, when they numbered only a few dozen and were mainly all in one place.

In their now-familiar Orwellian way, the White House and State Department lied relentessly about this group. Colin Powell told the UN they were pro-Saddam and exaggerated their numbers while they still were a tiny fringe group.

The UN bought this story only enough to refrain from explicitly barring and condemning a mainly unprovoked US invasion. Hundreds of US troops were killed or maimed to overthrow Saddam and create a power vacuum. But so far, outside a "green zone" in Baghdad, it has been Ansar al-Islam that has filled the post-Saddam power vacuum rather than a US puppet regime.

Ansar has dispersed Iraq-wide, recruited hundreds or thousands of additional religious zealots, and is waging a successful Jihad against Western ways and Westerners. Thanks to Dubya's go-it-alone invasion, the main group of Westerners now in Iraq are more than a hundred thousand hapless Americans, most of whom thought they were joining a peacetime military. Dubya's policies have painted bullseyes on their backs and helped those who are targeting them grow their numbers exponentially.

[deckerd]

21. Send this to Kerry for use in debates-this could be the Beslan inoculation

n/t

[AirAmFan]

22. Glad you liked SoCalDem's OUTSTANDING research, and my attempt to

summarize in a storyline. But what is a "Beslan inoculation"?

[deckerd]

27. The Russian School Massacre resulted in a 10% drop for Kerry among women

See thread entitled "WHY KERRY IS LOSING STIPID WOMEN"

This is an incredibly important discovery about why the polls are skewing
Republican. Undecided, non-likely voter women are breaking for Bush big time,
if only temporarily, because of the frickin' SCHOOL MASSACRE!

(Beslan School #1)

Is Kerry even aware of this? much less is he aware of the potential
this Zarqawi stuff has to counteract Bush's perceptions on terror?
I doubt it, given how clueless some of the "Dem Strategists" have been round these parts.

The fact that the Beslan stuff is NOT making the rounds here on DU,
the fact DU'ers can't see through the GOP smokescreen on the tampered CBS memos -- tells me all I need to know. We're not prepared to deal
with the full force of what's going on -- just yet.

[SoCalDemocrat]

28. Wow. Can we counter this topic?

Some research should show Bush changing positions on the Chechian issue over the past four years. Dig back to when he was mad at the Russians for their lack of support on Iraq and we'll find him calling them an independence movement or something similar.

Maybe Kerry needs an ad that shows he's going to do something about school shootings, to make our kids safer. I would think Bush supporting the Assault Weapons would do the trick? Kerry wants to keep AK-47's off our streets, Bush wants to put them in the hands of criminals and terrorists. We could also hilight the weapons used in many attacks on school children and how those are the same weapons BUsh would allow to be peddled legally in the U.S.

Probably a good topic for a 527 to go negative on.

[AirAmFan]

30. Maybe we need a "Daisy 2004" ad, to try to beat * as badly as Lyndon

Johnson beat Barry Goldwater. I imagine the original "Daisy" worked wonders with 1964 Security Moms. I haven't seen any forty-year-old polling data, but somewhere, in some PoliSci journal, maybe there are data to back up my hunch. I do remeber reading somewhere that Goldwater got only 25 percent of the popular vote, and the "Daisy" ad was credited for the Democratic victory!

Someone could even do an hommage to the 1964 ad, with a little girl pulling petals off a daisy in a schoolyard, counting "one, two, three, ...," and making cute mistakes.

Here's one possible scenario (imagine how much better somebody at MoveOn.org might do compared to what I came up with off the top of my head):

After a narrator explains who Zarqawi is and how Dubya spared him from air attacks three times, there could be a jump cut from Iraq to an American schoolyard. When the little girl with the flower has counted up to eight, there's another jump-cut to a big black motorcycle strapped with suitcase bombs. Its rider is black-clad and hooded, like Zarqawi when he PERSONALLY sawed off Philip Berg's head in the May Internet video excerpted at the opening scene. An Arabic voice finishes the little girl's countdown as the bike enters the schoolyard: "Nine, ten, ELEVEN"! Fade to black, and the tagline: "George Bush: he let the terrorists get away. Do you want four more years of this?"

[AirAmFan]

38. Zarqawi personally sawed off NICHOLAS Berg's head in the May Internet video

not Philip Berg. See the Reuteres link in post #26. Let's keep our Bergs straight!

[AirAmFan]

29. (1) Thanx4 explanation (2) Any links on "Security Women"?

(1) I tend to tune out non-Iraq international violence news, so your reference to "Beslan inoculation" made no sense to me. "Beslan School" never registered in my consciousness. I thought you might be making an obscure reference to "Star Trek 9"! Thanks for the explanation--I'm glad I asked.

(2) The electoral impostance of "Security women" is very relevant to SoCalDem's research, but we shouldn't take this vital thread off-topic. If you have a link to a "live" thread--on GD2004 page 17 or so, for example-- we could revive that discussion elsewhere, or start a new "Security women" thread.

[SoCalDemocrat]

24. Nice, lets work this line

What you've got there is almost useable in a 60 second segment. If we clean up the wording I think it can work well. I'm envisioning a narrator talking with the text appearing in the foreground, and war scenes in the backdrop.

Lets see if I can rewrite the opening...


Zarqawi (execution image in background of hooded executioner sawing off an American civilian's head) is the leader of a fast-growing fundamentalist Islamic terrorist sect called Ansar al-Islam.

George Bush assisted Zarquawi in gaining a foothold in Iraq, and now his policies have backfired and cost the lives of hundreds of U.S. soldiers and countless more civilians!

Bush explicitly barred the Pentagon from carrying out planned airstrikes on three seperate occasions, protecting the Ansar Al Islam terrorist group. He used them as pawns to have Colin Powell make his case for war before the UN, in order to pursue an ill advised nation building exercise.


...

[AirAmFan]

25. Glad you found my narrative helpful. PLEASE feel free to borrow from it--or

not--as you wish. I'm not very proprietary about what I post on DU. IMO an argument for an ad should have a narrative that's easy to follow and makes intuitive sense.

Please fact-check any statement that Abu Musab Zarqawi was the hooded executioner in the video, and find a blue-ribbon source like the Washington Post if possible. In writing that line, I was relying on what I thought I heard said while very sleepily half-listening to a local TV news report.

Does anybody have links to carefully-censored photos from the execution video? A "storyboard" would strengthen the case for an ad. It would be good to have the name of the civilian as well, and links to photos or footage of his grieving family.

Also, please be sure to mention and document the THREE SEPARATE OCCASIONS when Bush protected Ansar from US air raids. When something happens once, it could be an accident. Twice and it still could be coincidence. But the third time makes it intentional for sure.

If I had it to do over again, I'd state that Ansar plans to ban MUSIC, and say nothing about alcohol. Also, if they are Sunni rather than Shiites like Iranis, that should go into the piece to remove any apparent inconsistency between charges of Islamic fundamentalism and reports that Iran supported Ansar's Kurdish enemies.

Again, great work! I recognize "SoCalDem" from my earliest days on DU, and look for your name for valuable news and research. This is your best yet!

[SoCalDemocrat]

34. Different person

Actually SoCalDem is still around, it's a different user. I use SoCalDemocrat on the JohnKerry forums and carried it over here.

[AirAmFan]

36. Great! Now I have an EXTRA "byline" to click on for valuable posts!

[pdx_prog]

23. Thanks for your work!

I have sent this along to almost eveyone I know with email...:)

[AirAmFan]

26. (1) Ansar al-Islam has a new official name (2) Zarqawi fact-check

Reuters UK says that, in 2003, when the US FINALLY destroyed long-known Ansar al-Islam bases in Northern Iraq, Zarqawi's group became known as "Tawhid and Jihad -- which means Monotheism and Holy War".

From http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=589457§ion=news

"Reuters RSS

Zarqawi -America's phantom menace

Thu 23 September, 2004 14:55

By Ed Cropley

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Despite the bombs, the thousands of troops hunting him, and the $25 million (14 million pound) bounty on his head -- the same price offered for the al Qaeda leader himself -- Zarqawi and the myth which has grown up around him live on. The man himself remains largely a mystery. His only revelations to the outside world being menacing recordings on the Internet or grainy video tapes of hooded, heavily armed warriors posted on Islamist Web sites. ...

Before the war, he was linked to Ansar al-Islam, a militant group operating in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, an area placed beyond Saddam's control by U.S. air protection since 1991. Ansar's bases on the Iranian border were destroyed early in the 2003 invasion, but Zarqawi, a man with a string of aliases who had spent much of the previous three years in the lawless wastes of western Pakistan and Afghanistan, was not found. Following Saddam's capture in December and the waves of suicide attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces which followed, Zarqawi quickly became America's top enemy in Iraq, accused of sowing the seeds of civil war. Attacks claimed by his group include the August 2003 bombings of the U.N. Baghdad headquarters and a Shi'ite shrine in Najaf, as well as a suicide car bomb that killed the head of Iraq's now-defunct Governing Council, Izzedin Salim. ...

According to fellow inmates, during his days in a Jordanian jail in the 1990s he was a thug with a passion for body-building and the Koran. Later he cast aside his real name of Ahmed Fadhil al-Khalayleh and created a personal cult of brutality as the keystone of his campaign to destabilise Iraq. When an Islamist Web site showed a video in May of a man sawing off the head of American hostage Nicholas Berg, it said Zarqawi was the one wielding the knife. Similarly, the CIA said it was Zarqawi who read out the spine-chilling statement which accompanied the beheading of U.S. hostage Eugene Armstrong earlier this week. 'Killing for the sake of God is their best wish, getting to your soldiers and allies are their happiest moments, and cutting the heads of the criminal infidels is implementing the orders of our Lord.'"

[mzmolly]

33. This could be the "Willie Horton" ad of this campaign. If the Dems were

smart enough to use it.

Send this to the DNC/DLC and every darn 527 you can think of!

[SoCalDemocrat]

37. we can make it better

Lets get it down to like three versions, then send it off.

[AirAmFan]

39. A few edits before your much-clearer new lead-in is set in stone: "Traitor

WHO", not "traitor THAT"

ZARQAWI, not Zarquawi

"(aka Tawhid and Jihad--Monotheism and Holy War)" the last time you mention Ansar al-Islam, to satisfy the scrupulouslly picky

Get rid of "but it was their assertion" in #4--breaks the flow of your argument with a verbal puzzle. I'd suggest, "but that's what Rove and Bush made Powell say"

Other than these very picky edits, I don't see how you could improve your new post much. I've already nominated it for Homepage.

[SoCalDemocrat]

40. Bush should be impeached over this betrayal

We were already at war with Afghanistan and bombing their bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and had warned Iran that we would smoke bases in their country too if we found them.

We had been bombing Saddam daily since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

There was no issue with bombing this terrorist camp that was attacking PUK forces and towns, and commiting acts of terrorism in Iraq. We also linked that base to biological and chemical weapons production, and later linked them to a bio/chem attack in Europe.

Every probable cause was in place to justify an attack. Pre-emption and national sovereignity were never an issue in the Bush decision to not take out Zarquawi and his terrorist organization.

There is one reason Bush protected them. He wanted that excuse to invade Iraq, the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection.

There was also reports of secret dealings between our government and this terrorist group. I won't get into that because I don't want to divert this discussion away from very important issues of Bush sheltering terrorists for political gain, the same terrorists that have since killed hundreds of U.S. service personnel and thousands of civilians.

This is an inexcuseable failure of this President to act against a known terrorist threat, on three seperate occasions. This was right after 9-11-2001, when we were supposedly looking to find and kill Al Qaeda terrorists.

Since Bush believed this to be an Al Qaeda camp, and we had proof that they were developing biological and chemical weapons in this camp, why did he protect that camp from attack?

If the american people knew the truth about this, Bush would be impeached.