Amazingly, the US invasion of Iraq STOPPED a deadly gas attack on the NY subway by al Qaeda in 2003

[Dan Druff]

Most terror attacks are perpetrated as punishment -- often for military action taken in the region.

However, in 2003, Al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri actually CANCELLED a 2003 attack on the NY subway system with deadly gas which was likely to take a lot of lives.

Why?

With the planned invasion of Iraq weeks away, al-Zawahiri was afraid that a chemical attack against the NY subway would be confused with the chemical WMDs the US was supposedly invading Iraq over.

He was afraid that this would confuse people into supporting the Iraq invasion -- that people would erroneously believe the NY subway attack would "prove" the existence of WMDs in Iraq -- and therefore the attack would be counter-productive. So al-Zawahiri called it off.

Details here: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/12/world...rpt/index.html

[MumblesBadly]

WTF, Druff? I thought that you believed that CNN was liberal biased media!!! Do you only believe the stories they publish when you like the content?? #ConfirmationBias

[thesparten]

Most terror attacks are perpetrated as punishment -- often for military action taken in the region.

However, in 2003, Al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri actually CANCELLED a 2003 attack on the NY subway system with deadly gas which was likely to take a lot of lives.

Why?

With the planned invasion of Iraq weeks away, al-Zawahiri was afraid that a chemical attack against the NY subway would be confused with the chemical WMDs the US was supposedly invading Iraq over.

He was afraid that this would confuse people into supporting the Iraq invasion -- that people would erroneously believe the NY subway attack would "prove" the existence of WMDs in Iraq -- and therefore the attack would be counter-productive. So al-Zawahiri called it off.

Details here: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/12/world...rpt/index.html

To be honest my rhino friend.
That is just luck or coincidental to the false pretense we started war on a functioning state and a decent leader (comparatively) that had general anymosity towards extremest and coptic Christian's could walk the street.

Our globalist leaders took down every functioning Arab state and called the Sharia take over as the Arab spring.

Orwellian cnn at it's best.

[Dan Druff]

WTF, Druff? I thought that you believed that CNN was liberal biased media!!! Do you only believe the stories they publish when you like the content?? #ConfirmationBias

I never said everything CNN posts is false.

I said they're biased.

I don't believe anyone is calling this story into doubt.

Also, CNN didn't frame this as a positive effect of the Iraq War. It was simply stated matter-of-fact why al-Zawahiri called off the attack.

[PLOL]

Most terror attacks are perpetrated as punishment -- often for military action taken in the region.

However, in 2003, Al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri actually CANCELLED a 2003 attack on the NY subway system with deadly gas which was likely to take a lot of lives.

Why?

With the planned invasion of Iraq weeks away, al-Zawahiri was afraid that a chemical attack against the NY subway would be confused with the chemical WMDs the US was supposedly invading Iraq over.

He was afraid that this would confuse people into supporting the Iraq invasion -- that people would erroneously believe the NY subway attack would "prove" the existence of WMDs in Iraq -- and therefore the attack would be counter-productive. So al-Zawahiri called it off.

Details here: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/12/world...rpt/index.html

To be honest my rhino friend.

What do you think the H in Rhino stands for? Or what do you think a 'rhino' is, in this context?

[thesparten]

To be honest my rhino friend.

What do you think the H in Rhino stands for? Or what do you think a 'rhino' is, in this context?

I call druff in "Republican in name only".. when he talks about Trump he sounds like a cross of Sheppard Smith and Carl Rowe..

Basically quasi positive but snitty on the bull shit things like breaking the so called norms our globalist overlords expect from us..

[hongkonger]

NYC subway smells bad enough already.

[MumblesBadly]

WTF, Druff? I thought that you believed that CNN was liberal biased media!!! Do you only believe the stories they publish when you like the content?? #ConfirmationBias

I never said everything CNN posts is false.

I said they're biased.

I don't believe anyone is calling this story into doubt.

Also, CNN didn't frame this as a positive effect of the Iraq War. It was simply stated matter-of-fact why al-Zawahiri called off the attack.

Druff, you seem to fail to understand what confirmation bias is. Here’s a refresher:

[BCR]

Let me get this straight, so it’s as if there were Catholic terrorists operating out of Brazil who had pulled off an attack against the US, and were planning subsequent attacks using say anthrax, but in the interim, realized that the US was preparing itself to go to war against Mexico because they’re also brown and Catholic and the US was convinced Mexico was hoarding anthrax, despite having none. Thus they abandoned plan? Curious. Launching the US into full scale war against all Muslim States was an AlQaeda guiding principle. They seemed less interested in PR, and winning hearts and minds of infidels, and more interested in rallying their own. It would seem they tried to play the long game and lost in an attempt to embarrass us.

It doesn’t seem to make coherent sense. Logic dictates they would wait until later, after the US had already claimed victory is Iraq, and then launch chemical attack leaving the US with egg on its face and further outrage the Muslim world.

So I don’t doubt the validity of the article, but your title is totally misleading. It would be accurate to say that Misinformed Prepartions for War in Iraq successfully delayed NY subway gas attack, because the key arrest occurred in February of 2003, while the war against Iraq didn’t occur until the following month and victory in the form of Mission Accomplished occurred on May 1st. So basically they knew the US has an idiotic notion, didn’t want to stop the US from embarrassing itself, and in the waiting for a bigger payout, lost the gamble because of the work of intelligence agents who sniffed out the plan before they had a chance to carry it out, which they almost certainly would have.

They would have waited until we said Mission Accomplished, the inspectors confirmed there was nothing found in Iraq, then gassed us with an accompanying video from some cave in Afghanistan mocking our incompetence at bombing over there when we’re over here, and further laughed at taking out a rather secular barbarian in Saddam, while failing to kill the true caliphate being formed in the mountains 1500 miles to the east. Interesting gamble by Al Qaeda, fortunate luck on our part coupled with some good intelligence work. Really lucky ending. We got lucky a lot in that period of time post 9-11. Partly we created some of our own luck with aggressive tactics, but also at times, purely dumb luck. I don’t know anyone who would have bet, regardless of tactics, that we would have not had anything resembling 9/11 for almost 20 years after 9/11. Seemed inevitable.

[Dan Druff]

Let me get this straight, so it’s as if there were Catholic terrorists operating out of Brazil who had pulled off an attack against the US, and were planning subsequent attacks using say anthrax, but in the interim, realized that the US was preparing itself to go to war against Mexico because they’re also brown and Catholic and the US was convinced Mexico was hoarding anthrax, despite having none. Thus they abandoned plan? Curious. Launching the US into full scale war against all Muslim States was an AlQaeda guiding principle. They seemed less interested in PR, and winning hearts and minds of infidels, and more interested in rallying their own. It would seem they tried to play the long game and lost in an attempt to embarrass us.

It doesn’t seem to make coherent sense. Logic dictates they would wait until later, after the US had already claimed victory is Iraq, and then launch chemical attack leaving the US with egg on its face and further outrage the Muslim world.

So I don’t doubt the validity of the article, but your title is totally misleading. It would be accurate to say that Misinformed Prepartions for War in Iraq successfully delayed NY subway gas attack, because the key arrest occurred in February of 2003, while the war against Iraq didn’t occur until the following month and victory in the form of Mission Accomplished occurred on May 1st. So basically they knew the US has an idiotic notion, didn’t want to stop the US from embarrassing itself, and in the waiting for a bigger payout, lost the gamble because of the work of intelligence agents who sniffed out the plan before they had a chance to carry it out, which they almost certainly would have.

They would have waited until we said Mission Accomplished, the inspectors confirmed there was nothing found in Iraq, then gassed us with an accompanying video from some cave in Afghanistan mocking our incompetence at bombing over there when we’re over here, and further laughed at taking out a rather secular barbarian in Saddam, while failing to kill the true caliphate being formed in the mountains 1500 miles to the east. Interesting gamble by Al Qaeda, fortunate luck on our part coupled with some good intelligence work. Really lucky ending. We got lucky a lot in that period of time post 9-11. Partly we created some of our own luck with aggressive tactics, but also at times, purely dumb luck. I don’t know anyone who would have bet, regardless of tactics, that we would have not had anything resembling 9/11 for almost 20 years after 9/11. Seemed inevitable.

I don't think that they expected the US to "embarrass itself" with the war in Iraq, because al-Zawarihi had no clue whether there were WMDs there or not.

Remember, Saddam DID have WMD programs on and off dating back to the 80s, and it was always the same dance with him. He would claim he shut it down, would actually just suspend it, then would restart, then would get caught again, then would say, "Okay, I'm REALLY shutting it down this time", rinse and repeat.

The US ran bad in that when they finally attacked, Saddam either really had shut it down by that point, or had dismantled them shortly before the impending war started.

But al-Zawahiri had no idea what the US would actually find there.

You are correct that al Qaeda wanted to rally the infidels to take up arms against the US, but al-Zawahiri apparently wanted to do so by making the US look like pointless aggressors against the Muslim people, and he was afraid that a chemical attack on the US shortly before the invasion of Iraq would muddy the message.

So he figured it was better to simply let the US attack Iraq, get his Muslim brothers angry about the unjustified aggression, and more of these Muslim brothers would want to join the fight.

On a side note, I'm actually impressed how good US intelligence typically is regarding stopping these domestic terror attacks. You'd think they'd be able to pull more of them off without detection, but someone always seems to screw something up along the way and US authorities get wind of it. 9/11 also should have been in that category, but the FBI seriously dropped the ball. They arrested Zacarias Moussaoui after suspicious behavior was reported in August 2001 while in a flight school, but he sat in jail without any real investigative action which could have uncovered the 9/11 plot, despite warnings from the flight school that they believed he was going to crash a plane into a building: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/22/u...uspicions.html

[PLOL]

What do you think the H in Rhino stands for? Or what do you think a 'rhino' is, in this context?

I call druff in "Republican in name only".. when he talks about Trump he sounds like a cross of Sheppard Smith and Carl Rowe..

Basically quasi positive but snitty on the bull shit things like breaking the so called norms our globalist overlords expect from us..

But what does the H in RHINO stand for?

[Dan Druff]

I call druff in "Republican in name only".. when he talks about Trump he sounds like a cross of Sheppard Smith and Carl Rowe..

Basically quasi positive but snitty on the bull shit things like breaking the so called norms our globalist overlords expect from us..

But what does the H in RHINO stand for?

The same thing the H in Whitteles stands for.

[BCR]

Let me get this straight, so it’s as if there were Catholic terrorists operating out of Brazil who had pulled off an attack against the US, and were planning subsequent attacks using say anthrax, but in the interim, realized that the US was preparing itself to go to war against Mexico because they’re also brown and Catholic and the US was convinced Mexico was hoarding anthrax, despite having none. Thus they abandoned plan? Curious. Launching the US into full scale war against all Muslim States was an AlQaeda guiding principle. They seemed less interested in PR, and winning hearts and minds of infidels, and more interested in rallying their own. It would seem they tried to play the long game and lost in an attempt to embarrass us.

It doesn’t seem to make coherent sense. Logic dictates they would wait until later, after the US had already claimed victory is Iraq, and then launch chemical attack leaving the US with egg on its face and further outrage the Muslim world.

So I don’t doubt the validity of the article, but your title is totally misleading. It would be accurate to say that Misinformed Prepartions for War in Iraq successfully delayed NY subway gas attack, because the key arrest occurred in February of 2003, while the war against Iraq didn’t occur until the following month and victory in the form of Mission Accomplished occurred on May 1st. So basically they knew the US has an idiotic notion, didn’t want to stop the US from embarrassing itself, and in the waiting for a bigger payout, lost the gamble because of the work of intelligence agents who sniffed out the plan before they had a chance to carry it out, which they almost certainly would have.

They would have waited until we said Mission Accomplished, the inspectors confirmed there was nothing found in Iraq, then gassed us with an accompanying video from some cave in Afghanistan mocking our incompetence at bombing over there when we’re over here, and further laughed at taking out a rather secular barbarian in Saddam, while failing to kill the true caliphate being formed in the mountains 1500 miles to the east. Interesting gamble by Al Qaeda, fortunate luck on our part coupled with some good intelligence work. Really lucky ending. We got lucky a lot in that period of time post 9-11. Partly we created some of our own luck with aggressive tactics, but also at times, purely dumb luck. I don’t know anyone who would have bet, regardless of tactics, that we would have not had anything resembling 9/11 for almost 20 years after 9/11. Seemed inevitable.

I don't think that they expected the US to "embarrass itself" with the war in Iraq, because al-Zawarihi had no clue whether there were WMDs there or not.

Remember, Saddam DID have WMD programs on and off dating back to the 80s, and it was always the same dance with him. He would claim he shut it down, would actually just suspend it, then would restart, then would get caught again, then would say, "Okay, I'm REALLY shutting it down this time", rinse and repeat.

The US ran bad in that when they finally attacked, Saddam either really had shut it down by that point, or had dismantled them shortly before the impending war started.

But al-Zawahiri had no idea what the US would actually find there.

You are correct that al Qaeda wanted to rally the infidels to take up arms against the US, but al-Zawahiri apparently wanted to do so by making the US look like pointless aggressors against the Muslim people, and he was afraid that a chemical attack on the US shortly before the invasion of Iraq would muddy the message.

So he figured it was better to simply let the US attack Iraq, get his Muslim brothers angry about the unjustified aggression, and more of these Muslim brothers would want to join the fight.

On a side note, I'm actually impressed how good US intelligence typically is regarding stopping these domestic terror attacks. You'd think they'd be able to pull more of them off without detection, but someone always seems to screw something up along the way and US authorities get wind of it. 9/11 also should have been in that category, but the FBI seriously dropped the ball. They arrested Zacarias Moussaoui after suspicious behavior was reported in August 2001 while in a flight school, but he sat in jail without any real investigative action which could have uncovered the 9/11 plot, despite warnings from the flight school that they believed he was going to crash a plane into a building: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/22/u...uspicions.html

I guess I don’t believe there was any real evidence Saddam had any type of chemical weapons beyond the mid 90s. UNSCOM leaders were saying they were disarmed for years. I recall inspectors talking about Clinton bombing them in ‘98, and when asked which facilities to target, they had none they knew linked to any WMDs of any sort, and there was no indication we had hit anything of note.

When the CIA tried to make an Al Qaeda-Iraq link, al-Zawahiri was the individual rumored to have met with Iraqi intelligence twice, so either he did meet with them, in which case he knew they didn’t have anything to give him, or he didn’t, and likely assumed the CIA was making the whole thing up. Most follow-up investigations that occurred after concluded he likely never met with Iraqi officials. So assuming he didn’t meet with them, I guess I assume he knew they were making up stories considering he was the focus of the misinformation himself. I tend to think with as well-financed as AlQaeda was, and with how sympathetic many in Middle Eastern govts are to these terror groups, that they have a pretty good idea who has what. That’s conjecture, but given he either met with Iraq intelligence, or didn’t, he either knew they had nothing, or knew the CIA was lying about him and fabricating a case. Iirc, he’s a doctor and from a family of highly educated surgeons. He’s dodged a huge bounty on his head for a long time now. I assume he’s pretty intelligent however radicalized he is. I guess I assume if he called it off he did so because he knew there was nothing there, but more importantly since he had already been rumored to have met with Iraq, they’d blame him and act like Iraq gave it to him, so waiting would be the more prudent move regardless.

Saddam was definitely his own worst enemy. He bluffed his way into a noose because he liked to play the strongman always. He made an easy target to construct a narrative around.

It’s a really interesting anecdote though. I’l glad you linked it because I had missed it. I guess we’ll unlikely ever know exactly why it was canceled. Given he cancelled it, I assume it was because his name had already been linked to Iraq. So either self-preservation or knowing they had nothing would seem two most likely options. I guess there a possibility he did meet with Iraqi intelligence, and possibly they gave Al Qaeda the knowledge or materials to build the weapon in question.possibly they didn’t want the heat? In that scenario, he’d know they didn’t have it and he did. There’s been no evidence to point to that though, and most of those accounts are considered unverified and likely false.

[gimmick]

WMD's in 2003 meant nukes. No one cared about chemical weapons and everyone knew Saddam still had his stockpile.

[FPS_Russia]

So what he's saying is the Iraq War was totally worth it, so much so we should do the same to Iran.

[Salty_Aus]

WMD's in 2003 meant nukes. No one cared about chemical weapons and everyone knew Saddam still had his stockpile.

They knew he had nothing, they knew he had abandoned his chemical weapons program many years earlier, and they knew it was highly unlikely that he had a hidden stockpile.

They leaked, then milked the aluminium tubes story for all it was worth.

They knowingly lied their heads off!

[gimmick]

WMD's in 2003 meant nukes. No one cared about chemical weapons and everyone knew Saddam still had his stockpile.

They knew he had nothing, they knew he had abandoned his chemical weapons program many years earlier, and they knew it was highly unlikely that he had a hidden stockpile.

They leaked, then milked the aluminium tubes story for all it was worth.

They knowingly lied their heads off!

They found enough stuff after the war. Nukes was how the war was sold to people in the US. Without them there's no urgency. Papa Bush started Iraq war part 1 after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Pretty much nothing out of the ordinary was going on in the middle-east in 2003. Preemptively attacking Iraq because they might gas their Arab neighbors again wasn't something you could sell to the public back then.

[gimmick]

Prolly should add that they never found any new active WMD program. It was all just remnants from the 80s. Either hidden, forgotten or stolen. That's the part that was generally accepted and from that batch US/Europe had receipts.

[FPS_Russia]

Most people forget the aggressive push for war with Iraq that occurred under Clinton, check out the lies they were peddling in 1998. The term "weapons of mass destruction' was already being thrown in 98. NTM we killed about 5% of Iraq's population w sanctions. We're using the same playbook in Iran as we speak.
The whole thing is prophetic but 18 min is Prohetic AF.


If the US govt had a role in planning the Sept 11 attacks I bet it was under Clinton. Just hours before the Sept 11 attacks Bill Clinton was in Australia giving a speech where he claimed Osama was smart man or something like that. That is an odd thing to say in an odd location and it wasn't released til ten years after the attacks.

[Salty_Aus]

They knew he had nothing, they knew he had abandoned his chemical weapons program many years earlier, and they knew it was highly unlikely that he had a hidden stockpile.

They leaked, then milked the aluminium tubes story for all it was worth.

They knowingly lied their heads off!

They found enough stuff after the war. Nukes was how the war was sold to people in the US. Without them there's no urgency. Papa Bush started Iraq war part 1 after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Pretty much nothing out of the ordinary was going on in the middle-east in 2003. Preemptively attacking Iraq because they might gas their Arab neighbors again wasn't something you could sell to the public back then.

I'm sure there is a lot of folks on this forum who don't give a flying fuck about brown people, but every time I'm reminded of what these crooked politicians and government officials did it still makes me angry.

Amazes me how they got away with it. The UN had 800 odd inspectors on the ground and there was zero chance they could have hidden refining enough weapons grade material even if those tubes were intended for this purpose.
Even now some think SH was kicking out the inspectors and making WMD, rinsing and repeating. But that's utter nonsense he was just playing silly games and saving face. Guess his ego might have really been his downfall.

They made the best of 9/11 as everybody wanted revenge, and the Saudis got a free pass... lemonade from lemons.

I'm just sick of it, this was a crime against humanity and nobody was punished. Same with the global finance mess, they rewarded the criminals.

Will things ever change, or get worse?