Key events in the history of the Middle East as relates to al Qaeda, Iraq and Iran and US culpability in creating a reason for attacking Iraq and al Qaeda to attack the US.
1945 - Britain leaves Iraq and it becomes part of the Arab League
1948 - Israel is carved out of Palestine (with British and UN support) and Arab-Israeli war erupts
1953 The 1953 Iranian coup d'état (known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup) was the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States under the name TPAJAX Project. The coup saw the transition of Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi from a constitutional monarch to an authoritarian one who relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979.
1979 - Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq; Iranian Revolution; Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty
1979 - 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in support of the Iranian Revolution.
1980-1989 - Iran–Iraq War results in 1-1.25 million casualties, Iraq uses chemical weapons against Iran and rebel Kurds. {US supports Iraq and Saddam against Iran then later ingenuously faults Saddam for his war tactics.}
1986 - During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo. Some U.S. officials also hoped that the arms sales would secure the release of hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.
1990 - The Persian Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991), commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from thirty-four nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of the State of Kuwait. {Fabricated stories of Iraqi violence to Kuwaitis helped the war seem justified.}
On April 29, 2007, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on 60 Minutes, "We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period."
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Osama bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia by sending mujahideen from Afghanistan to repel Saddam's forces. After the Gulf War, bin Laden continued to criticize Saddam's Ba'ath regime, emphasizing that Saddam could not be trusted. Bin Laden told his biographer that "the land of the Arab world, the land is like a mother, and Saddam Hussein is fucking his mother." Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist, and Ba'athism is a movement which combines pan-Arab nationalism with secularism and Arab Socialism. It is therefore very much at odds with political Islamism. The ideological founder of Ba'athism, Michel Aflaq, was himself a Christian.
The 9/11 Commission stated in its report that bin Laden had been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army. Those forces mostly operated in areas not under Saddam's control. Sudanese Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi, to protect his ties with Iraq, brokered an agreement with Bin Laden to stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Laden seemed to honor this agreement for a time, although, he continued to aid Islamic extremists in Kurdistan. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, the extremist groups, with help from Bin Laden, re-formed into an organization called Ansar al-Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.
Osama bin Laden's expressed hostility to Saddam's regime, critical assessment of evidence from the Iraqi National Congress (the source of most of the claims of cooperation between the two) as well as the paucity of evidence for the alleged links, particularly for any substantial collaboration, have led most journalists and intelligence analysts not associated with or supporters of the Bush administration to dismiss the claimed links.
The CIA's assessment that Iraq and al-Qaeda were "two independent actors trying to exploit each other" was accurate only about al-Qaeda. "Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qa'ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qa'ida to provide material or operational support."
Thanks to Wikipedia. My comments added in { }. For direct source location, Google search any particular sentence. AN
Also read:
http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/ A whole series of researched articles that take the air out of conspiracy theories
http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/building-seven/ about WT3 and why an explosive was not the cause
http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/hijackers/ The hi jackers, who were they?
http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/pentagon/ The Pentagon
http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/donald-rumsfeld/ Rumsfeld obfuscates
http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/iraq-war/ Trying to implicate Iraq: it does not work with reality
The effort to tie 9/11 to Saddam Hussein began as early as six hours after the first plane strike, with an aide to Donald Rumsfeld noting his boss’s orders as: “Best info fast, judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only U.B.L. [Osama bin Laden].” From that point until the invasion of Iraq began, on March 19, 2003, the Bush administration would pursue several theories—all ultimately debunked—as it sought to build its case for war.
1) The Prague Connection
Birth of Theory: September 18, 2001: A U.S. official tells the AP of a report suggesting Mohamed Atta met earlier that year with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Europe. Sources add that the meeting took place in a restaurant outside Prague on April 8, 2001. Three days after the initial press report, CIA director George Tenet tells President Bush that the story “just doesn’t add up.”
Apex: December 9, 2001: Dick Cheney claims on Meet the Press that it’s “been pretty well confirmed that [Mohamed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service … several months before the attack.”
Death of Theory: October 21, 2002: The New York Times reports that Czech President Václav Havel told senior U.S. officials that they should “discount” previous Czech-intelligence reports on the Atta meeting.
2) The Switched I.D.
Birth of Theory: September 13, 2001: Former CIA director James Woolsey champions a theory that Iraqi intelligence helped Ramzi Yousef carry out the 1993 Trade Center bombing. The claim rests on proving that Yousef and his alias Abdul Basit are in fact two different people. The Iraqi government, the theory goes, helped Yousef steal Basit’s identity so he could obtain a fraudulent passport and flee the U.S. after the attack. If the theory is corroborated, Woolsey thinks, it would point to Saddam Hussein’s involvement in 9/11 as well.
Apex: Late September: Woolsey travels to Britain to investigate. There, he obtains copies of Basit’s fingerprints. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz signs off on the trip.
Death of Theory: April 21, 2004: Newsweek cites a Justice Department official who reveals that the Basit fingerprints were a match for Yousef’s—the two were the same person. And in fact, Abdul Basit is likely Yousef’s real name.
3) The Salman Pak Training Camp
Birth of Theory: November 6, 2001: The New York Times and PBS interview an Iraqi identifying himself as former lieutenant general Jamal al-Ghurairy at a hotel in Beirut. He asserts that Saddam’s intelligence service runs a terrorist training camp at Salman Pak, near Baghdad. Among the skills taught: hijacking an airplane without using weapons.
Apex: November 12, 2002: President Bush delivers a speech to the U.N., using as background a report that includes the Salman Pak story.
Death of Theory: April 6, 2003: U.S. forces overrun the Salman Pak facility and find no evidence that it was used as a terrorist training camp. Three years later, Jamal al-Ghurairy is exposed as an impostor.
4) The Chemical-Weapons Link
Birth of Theory: December 19, 2001: Libyan Al Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is captured by Pakistani forces and soon transferred to U.S. custody, then rendered to Egypt. After weeks of “enhanced interrogations,” al-Libi states that Al Qaeda members received biological- and chemical-weapons training from the Iraqi government. Less than a month later, a Defense Intelligence Agency report questions the veracity of al-Libi’s claims.
Apex: February 5, 2003: Colin Powell, citing al-Libi, tells the U.N., “I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [biological and chemical] weapons to Al Qaeda.”
Death of Theory: February 2004: In CIA custody, al-Libi recants his story of Iraqi–Al Qaeda collaboration.