latest Fox fantasy: Osama is in Iran

[buycitgo]

Mansoor Ijaz, Fox "correspondent," says he has 'unimpeachable' information that Osama is on the western border of Iran/Afghanistan.

he also says that some Iranian guard group has a bunch of Osama body doubles traipsing around the Afghan, testing to see if they can fool anybody looking for him.

he ALSO says that a large army of insurrectionists is gathering in Iran, waiting to sneak into Afghanistan.

Iranians are doing this to "desparately hold onto power," and to ramp up terrorist incidents in the area.

and who is this guy, Ijaz, you might axe?

try this, for starters:

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Mansoor_Ijaz

he also was on the other day, saying that he's talked to lots and lots of people in London, and did not encounter ONE SINGLE person who didn't support B*! Everybody he talked to wanted him to visit!
Every single one. I saw him say it.

Mansoor Ijaz is a foreign affairs commentator on Fox News and in the National Review. He also runs the investment firm Crescent Investment Group, Inc. whose top advisors and/or directors also include former CIA director R. James Woolsey, Jr.. He has also sat on the Council on Foreign Relations. According to the Pakistani daily, Dawn, he is a "lobbyist for Pakistan."

In 1996, Ijaz attempted to broker a hand-over of Osama bin Laden from the government of the Sudan to the U.S. and has ever since criticized the Clinton National Security team of having failed to get their man. This story has telescoped through the right wing press to lay blame on Clinton et al. for having failed to fight terrorism. According to Samuel Berger, who was National Security Advisor under Clinton, Ijaz was unreliable because of his oil investment interests in Sudan. (There's an interesting side-bar on this on p. 113 of Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.)

Ijaz also managed to become involved in the Daniel Pearl situation in 2002. According to Dawn, Ijaz was a reference given by Pearl to Khalid Khawaja, a former Pakistani intelligence officer; Pearl had hoped Khawaja would arrange a meeting between himself and Shah Gillani, reportedly Richard Reid's spiritual mentor. During the investigation into Pearl's murder, when Gretel Kovach of Newsweek wrote an article implying that Khawaja might be the one who had set Pearl's trap, it was Mansoor Ijaz who urged Kovach to tone the article down. (See links below.)

Ijaz has been on the forefront of arguing in his National Review Online pieces that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and he has been advocating to increase U.S. military support for the Pakistani Government, especially the sale of F-16s

[buycitgo]

1. wonder how they'll tie this into the discredity Feith memo

I heard an excellent story on PRI's "The World" the other night.
They had on both Anthony Cordesman and the excellent Karen Kwiatkowski, discussing the ludicrousness of the raw, cherry-picked intel data from Feith, and made it very obvious why no other news outlets gave it any credence.

can't wait to see where this Osama BS goes

[Timefortruth]

2. So we need to invade Iran.

It is a no brainer (literally).

[oasis]

3. Rummy tracked Osama to Iran using his reliable PNACometer.

:eyes:

[giantrobot_2000]

4. *Sigh*

Osama bin Laden lives inside Bush's box of Froot Loops. Maybe he should contact General Mills to plan the invasion.

[newyawker99]

10. Hi giantrobot_2000!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[ComerPerro]

16. Or a five year old

Actually, great metaphor. Bush is tearing through nations trying to get to the prize at the bottom of the box. He doesn't care what he wastes trying to get to it.

But wait until we discover that there is nothing at the bottom of the box but the useless cereal dust...

[buycitgo]

5. from an August 25 blog......."destabilizing" to FIND Osama?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!

"Mr Ijaz believes an agreement was reached between Gen Musharraf and the American authorities shortly after Bin Laden's flight from Tora Bora. The Pakistanis feared that to capture or kill Bin Laden so soon after a deeply unpopular war in Afghanistan would incite civil unrest in Pakistan and would trigger a spate of revenge al-Qaida attacks on western targets across the world.
"There was a judgment made that it would be more destabilising in the longer term," he said. "There would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate."

GET THIS:

The Americans, according to Mr Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of the shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq. So the months that followed were centred on taking down not Bin Laden, but the "retaliation infrastructure" of al-Qaida.

For the future, the single greatest task facing the Pakistanis and the Americans will be to tame the powerful elders who run Pakistan's tribal areas and who appear to have given Bin Laden sanctuary. The danger is that the longer he remains uncaught, the bolder and stronger the surviving al-Qaida elements will feel."

is this common knowledge? I thought I've kept at least somewhat abreast of all the dirty dealings, but this is pretty disgusting, yes?

http://www.petrifiedtruth.com/archives/000760.html

[Muddleoftheroad]

6. He could be

Of course, he could be in Burbank too.

[madrchsod]

7. i thought i saw him

behind the glass at a local gas station....

[Muddleoftheroad]

9. Remember the song?

"Elvis is Everywhere?" Sort of reminds me of that.

[AntiCoup2K4]

13. So then who would be the "anti-Osama"??

The guy with absolutely no Osama in him.

Is it still Michael J Fox??

[buycitgo]

8. ya KNOW

I find it amazing that there's zero interest in where this person is, considering that Bush's entire presidency rides on the events of 911.

had this not occurred he'd be on his way out, as the most laughably terrible head of state since the Mikado.

he's been able (I mean his puppeteers) to transform this country into a realworld version of Oceania, maintaining a constant state of fear/ignorance/sycophancy, which threatens to continue on for as long as one can unhappily foresee.

But nobody seems to care that the impetus for this war on terra has been supplanted by the killing fields of the Sunni Triangle, in a nation that had as much to do with 911 as, well, Burkina Faso.

Point is, with all these alleged AlQaeda bombings happening every other day, why is there still almost no emphasis on Osama? B* and Bl* are still allowed to spout their nonsense WRT Iraq being ground zero for their war.

how do they get away with it? I know.....media. but what about the Dems? oh

never mind

[Scott Lee]

11. That's nuts. Everyone knows he's in The Bahamas.

Pumping gas at the station owned by Jim Morrison? Come on folks this is common knowledge.

;)

[cosmicdot]

12. but but but ~ Gen. Pace, vice chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff said ..

U.S. General Says Bin Laden 'Out of the Picture'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=233097

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A senior U.S. general said on Friday that al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) had "taken himself out of the picture" and that his capture was not essential to winning the "war on terror."

General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at U.S. military headquarters just north of Kabul that the 11,500-strong U.S.-led force hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants was not focusing on individuals.

"He (bin Laden) has taken himself out of the picture," Pace told reporters after visiting U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan (news - web sites).

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=1&u=/nm/20031121/ts_nm/afghan_laden_dc

I can't imagine dragging dialysis equipment across the landscape -- conjecture - he's either dead, and been dead ... or bin Laden family money has bought him recluse and private care far from the maddening crowd ...

[MrPrax]

14. Jeez sounds reliable...

I still think if they wanted to find Osama they could just get someone at the Carlyle Group to ring his cel...
But I am cynical...Ijaz sure sounds like he is in the 'loop'...which loop? Who knows...

Clark on his Fox interview said maybe if Newsweek knows where he is then maybe the WH should check it out...

He was chastised by the Fox 'head' for suggesting that Newsweek if hiding the information?

Well...maybe the FOX dude should ask his collegue the same question.

[ComerPerro]

15. Well, they are learning

Their Iraq lies didn't go over too well.

But Afganistan was popular.

So, the administration learned that the way to get a war without a bunch of communist America haters on your ass is to say that we are after Osama. Hell, maybe Saddam is in Iran too.

And, who knows where that wacky Osama and Saddam might turn up next. They may be in Syria, maybe North Korea, maybe France... Hell, they might be reported to be at the Democratic Nominating Convention.

[David Zephyr]

17. Osama, The Billionaire, Is in Saudi Arabia

He is not roughing it in a cave. He's a billionaire.

[onebigbadwulf]

18. I remember people saying that Osama's Islam

was completely different than Iran's Islam. To a point where he hated them. Anyone else hear this?

[The Monkey]

19. Fox

Ha! Fox News-talk about a oxymoron...no wait, that's Bush's election...no wait, it's Bush's running the country.

Seriously, I doubt I'd ever believe anything coming from Fox News, or even Anybody News, for that matter. Real news shouldn't have product placement.

[A Texas Democrat]

20. What the...?

Fox News gets funnier and funnier everyday. That Bill O'Reiley is something else too.

According to other news sources, bin Laden is on the Afghani-Pakistani border.

[buycitgo]

21. is this part of a pattern?

the Feith memo was hawked to death for a week on Fox. Andrew Sullivan commented on the fact that the Wash Post finally was forced to deal with it, so it did apparently get some mention other than at the Fox Press Cesspool.

Then comes this Ijaz goof, with his unimpeachable sources+baggage. This story wasn't repeated anywhere, far as I can see, even at Fox, so it may have already been shoveled under.

point is, are the Ailes drones over there going to continue tossing out stories like this, one after another, just to keep the terror-fear alive?

another thing, the Atta-in-Virginia-not-Czech story is supposedly not true, according to a Slate article, which quotes some other blog.......

anybody heard about that? this, supposedly, strengthens Feith's assertion that Atta was, indeed, in CzechRep (twice) during the time frame alleged.

[Oracle]

22. Because "they hate our freedoom" What the fuck does that mean?