Bush's Second Term Agenda? It's all spelled out in Newsweek.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5457389/site/newsweek?site=newsweek

9/11: The Iran Factor
The final report of the 9-11 Commission reveals troubling new evidence that Tehran was closer to Al Qaeda than Iraq was
The 9/11 report says Iranian government officials may have facilitated terror attacks by helping Al Qaeda members to travel with 'clean' passports

July 26 issue - The Iranian frontier with Afghanistan is a wild and desolate area of goat farmers and mud-brick huts, the perfect place for illicit opium—and terrorists—to cross the border. But the region is hardly a no man's land. U.S. intelligence believes that in faraway Tehran, the hard-line Islamist clerics who now exercise near total control over Iran directed their border guards to help jihadists coming from Afghanistan. And sometime between October 2000 and February 2001, according to the forthcoming final report of the 9-11 Commission, eight to 10 of the "muscle" hijackers of the September 11 plot were among those who benefited from this Iranian good-fellowship.

That conclusion—the strongest evidence yet of a relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda—is one of the most surprising findings to emerge in the commission's report, which is due out this week. According to a December 2001 memo buried in the files of the National Security Agency, obtained by the commission, Iranian officials instructed their border inspectors not to place Iranian or Afghan stamps in the passports of Saudi terrorists traveling from Osama bin Laden's training camps through Iran. Such "clean" passports undoubtedly helped the 9/11 terrorists pass into the United States without raising alarms among U.S. Customs and visa officials, sources familiar with the report told NEWSWEEK.

[UTUSN]

1. We Don't Need No Stinking NewsWeak!!!

We DU KNEW the illegal Iraq attack was FAKE!!!! We didn't need no STINKING intelligence!!!!!!!!!!!! (Need i really say more?)

[Taylor Mason Powell]

2. Hmmm...

According to a December 2001 memo buried in the files of the National Security Agency, obtained by the commission, Iranian officials instructed their border inspectors not to place Iranian or Afghan stamps in the passports of Saudi terrorists traveling from Osama bin Laden's training camps through Iran. Such "clean" passports undoubtedly helped the 9/11 terrorists pass into the United States without raising alarms among U.S. Customs and visa officials, sources familiar with the report told NEWSWEEK.

Okay. But here's what Mindy Kleinberg had to say about the INS in her testimony before the 9/11 Commission:

The INS
Prior to 9/11, our US intelligence agencies should have stopped the 19 terrorists from entering this country for intelligence reasons, alone. However, their failure to do so in 19 instances does not negate the luck involved for the terrorists when it comes to their visa applications and our Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS.

With regard to the INS, the terrorists got lucky 15 individual times, because 15 of the 19 hijackers' visas should have been unquestionably denied.

Most of the 19 hijackers were young, unmarried, and un-employed males. They were, in short, the "classic over-stay candidates". A seasoned former Consular officer stated in National Review magazine, "Single, idle young adults with no specific destination in the United States rarely get visas absent compelling circumstances."

Yet these 19 young single, unemployed, "classic overstay candidates" still received their visas. I am holding in my hand the applications of the terrorists who killed my husband. All of these forms are incomplete and incorrect.

Some of the terrorists listed their means of support as simply "student" failing to then list the name and address of any school or institution. Others, when asked about their means of support for their stay in the US wrote "myself" and provided no further documentation. Some of the terrorists listed their destination in the US as simply "hotel" or "California" or "New York". One even listed his destination as "no".

Had the INS or State Department followed the law, at least 15 of the hijackers would have been denied visas and would not have been in the United States on September 11th, 2001.

----

Now, I'm no expert on the visa process, but it doesn't sound to me like this Iran thing is a valid explanation for the failures that Ms. Kleinberg identifies here. So their passports weren't stamped with Iran or Afghanistan, but that doesn't explain why they were let in when their visa applications were so obviously sketchy. What am I missing here?

[midwayer]

4. Maybe this would explain it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x14695

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

5. Maybe Donald "Keeping A Low Profile" Rumsfeld has the answer

...but let's hope the hell he doesn't. Saddam tried to hurt Bush's pappy, Bush punished him and got a neat little souvenir (Saddam's gun) that he can play with whenever he wants. We don't need to manufacture "evidence" for another war. Plus (and I do not remember who said this on TV lately)...the American public needs to remember that Al Qaeda is frigging EVERYWHERE...including the US...so yes, I'm sure there are Iran links, as well as links that lead directly to Bush's little buddy Bandar.

[midwayer]

6. Mary Schneider vs. John Ascroft & James Ziglar, Commissioner, U.S. Immigra

yup, the plot thickens

[MasonJar]

3. The US helped alQaeda and the Taliban. So why all the war?

[69KV]

7. Really.

The final report of the 9-11 Commission reveals troubling new evidence that Tehran was closer to Al Qaeda than Iraq was

Really.

About a week ago I saw Farenheit 9-11. It only drove home a point that I already knew from the start: Bush deliberately diverted us away from bringing Osama to justice, and into an invasion of Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with 9-11.

Bush named three members in his "Axis of Evil", none of which had anything to do with 9-11. That sorry bastard lied about Iraq, fabricated links to Osama and WMDs, and launched a war.

I also remember the few months leading up to the Iraq invasion. Rumors were all over the media about preparations for an attack on Iraq, and the Bush regime kept denying the rumors, until the last minute before they launched their attack. Those rumors were planted there by the Bush regime to prepare the American people for what was coming and get us used to the idea.

The above stuff about Iran gives me the willies, because it tells me we are going to see the SAME GOODDAM THING HAPPEN WITH IRAN!!! Watch the media over the next few months. Rumors, planted stories, fabricated links to Osama and 9-11. That lying POS Bush is at it again. I was wondering whether his next target would be Iran or North Korea, and now I am convinced it is Iran. North Korea will be his next target after Iran.

Unless he is defeated in November.

[buycitgo]

8. remember Nathan Thurm?

IraQ? IraQ? you think we said IraQ? I think it's so funny you think we said IraQ!

We said IraN! Can't you hear at all? We said IraN!

I think it's so funny you think we said IraQ!

people are just about that gullible. the media (at least Sue Schmidt) certainly are

all they have to do is repeat it was Iran all the time, and maybe we'll forget about Iraq, and get all febrile about the Iranians again.

[Taylor Mason Powell]

12. I'm not being defensive.

You're the one who's being defensive. Maybe you should ask Khatami what he's being defensive about.

/smoking and sweating profusely

:-) Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

[midwayer]

9. Outraged yet?

ORLANDO, FL -- Tuesday, July 13, 2004 Posted 1:30 PM EDT -- TomFlocco.com -- Homeland Security whistleblower Mary Schneider is naming names, revealing that former FBI Director Louis Freeh, Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and numerous U.S. senators and congressmen knew before the September 11 attacks that U.S. immigration officials were bribed by an illegal Moroccan Muslim allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden’s half-brother. This according to Schneider, who was told about the illegal alien's ties to terrorism by outside informant Bonnie Sharrit.

___________________________________

Schneider said she contacted U.S. Senators more than one year before the attacks about the allegations linked to Abad and Khalil bin Laden--including Bob Graham (D-FL), Trent Lott (R-TX), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), but also Congressmen Cliff Stearns (R-FL), Joe Scarborough (former Florida Republican congressman and current MSNBC host), Walter Jones (R-NC), Harold Rogers (D-KY), Corrine Brown (D-FL), John Mica (R-FL), Bill McCollum (former Florida Republican congressman and current U.S. Senate candidate), former Florida congressional Republicans Charles Canady (R-FL) and Tillie Fowler (R-FL), Lamar Smith, (R-TX) Dan Burton (R-IN) and David Weldon (R-FL).

Besides multiple contacts with the FBI, INS and Congress before the attacks, Schneider also sent letters since 9-11 to all members of both the Senate and House Permanent Select Intelligence Committees who have ignored and thus far failed to respond to her pleas for action to remove the terrorist cells.

[midwayer]

10. Corrine Brown? (eom)

[alfredo]

11. Before the Iraq conquest began I said that the US wouldn't need to

take all of Iran, just the northern part. That way they would be able to run a pipeline from the "Stans" through the south of the Caspian through nothern Iran to Kirkuk, through Jordan or Syria, to Israel and the sea.

Forgot to mention, the big oil deposits are in north east Saudi Arabia. North east SA borders Iraq and Jordan.

Iran has oil but it is heavy crude, expensive to refine.