Saddam: A terrorist sugar daddy

By Deroy Murdock NEW YORK (SH) - Critics of President Bush's Iraq policy employ a flimsy argument that nonetheless enjoys growing appeal among a largely hostile press corps. Since Saddam Hussein did not order the Sept. 11 attacks - the fuzzy logic goes - he has no ties to terrorists, especially al-Qaida. Therefore, the Iraq war was bogus, and Bush should be defeated.

"The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all," Al Gore declared Aug. 7. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq's alleged al-Qaida links were "tenuous at best and not compelling." The Times slammed Vice President Cheney on Sept. 16 for making "sweeping, unproven claims about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism." The president should confront his detractors by thoroughly detailing the evidence that connects Hussein to terrorists, including al-Qaida and possibly Sept. 11.

- Stephen Hayes reported in the July 11 Weekly Standard that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper, published by Hussein's son, Uday, ran a "List of Honor" in its Nov. 14, 2002, edition.

Among 600 leading Iraqis named was: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan."

Carter-appointed federal appeals judge Gilbert Merritt discovered this document while helping Iraq rebuild its courts. He wrote in the June 25 Tennessean that two of his Iraqi colleagues remember secret police removing that embarrassing edition from newsstands. Judge Merritt speculates that Uday showcased these dedicated Baathists to "make them more loyal and supportive of the regime."

- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, director of an Afghan al-Qaida camp, fled for Baghdad after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced there for two months. He then opened a terrorist base in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.

- According to Richard Miniter, author of the best-selling "Losing bin Laden," "U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show Iraq gave Yasin both a house and a monthly salary." Al-Qaida member Abdul Rahman Yasin was indicted for building the bomb that exploded beneath the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, killing six and injuring some 1,000 New Yorkers.

- While sifting through the Mukhabarat's bombed ruins last April 27, the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter and the London Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore discovered a Feb. 19, 1998, intelligence memo marked "Top Secret and Urgent." It said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden."

Tantalizing clues also suggest that Saddam Hussein might not have shared the world's shock when the Twin Towers blazed.

- On Jan. 5, 2000, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir - an Iraqi airport greeter reportedly dispatched from Baghdad's Malaysian embassy -escorted Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to a Kuala Lampur hotel where these two Sept. 11 hijackers met with 9-11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, Shakir disappeared. Qatari officials arrested him on Sept. 17, 2001. They discovered papers tying him to the 1993 WTC plot and "Operation Bojinka," al-Qaida's 1995 plan to atomize 12 jets over the Pacific.

- Finally, Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge Harold Baer ordered Hussein to pay $104 million to the families of two 9-11 casualties.

"I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely...that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al-Qaida." An airtight case? No, but sufficient evidence tied Hussein to 9-11 and won a May 7 federal judgment against him.

The administration should help Americans and the world understand the patterns that emerge through these sometimes-murky data. Plenty exists in the public record (and surely more should be declassified) to demonstrate that Iraq's liberation and rehabilitation are necessary phases of the War on Terror. President Bush and his spokesmen should present this case, not randomly, but repeatedly and in as comprehensive, well-documented and well-illustrated a fashion as their vast resources will allow.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2003 Scripps Howard News Service New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a Senior Fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Va.

However, two defectors from Iraqi intelligence stated that they had worked for several years at the secret Iraqi government camp, which had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/salman_pak.htm

While no hard evidence was provided of a link between Iraq and Al Qaida or the Palestinians, the overall impression given by these two defectors and information made available from European Intelligence officials is that Iraq‘s training camps, Al Qaida, Iran‘s Hezbollah and other non-Muslim groups are part of a determined and highly dangerous international terrorist network that is not controlled from Afghanistan or by Osama Bin-Ladin.

http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages/826.html

The people being trained were Iraqis in one group, and non-Iraqis, or foreign nationals, in another?

Non-Iraqis were trained separately from us. There were strict orders not to meet with them and not to talk to them. And even when they conduct their training, their training has to occur at times different from the times when we conduct the Iraqis our own training.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/khodada.html

9/11 Bombshell: Judge Rules Saddam Trained Hijackers

Friday, May 9, 2003 7:22 a.m. EDT
9/11 Bombshell: Judge Rules Saddam Trained Hijackers

In a bombshell finding virtually ignored by the American media, a U.S. district court judge in Manhattan ruled Wednesday that Salman Pak, Saddam Hussein's airplane hijacking school located on the outskirts of Baghdad, played a material role in the devastating Sept. 11 attacks on America.

The ruling renders moot complaints from Bush administration critics that the U.S. has so far failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, since an official verdict that Baghdad was complicit in the attacks provides more than enough justification for the decision to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.

In reporting Judge Harold Baer's $104 million judgment against Hussein and Osama bin Laden, only the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chinese news service Xinhua mentioned Salman Pak by name.

But according to courtroom testimony by three of the camp's instructors, the facility was a virtual hijacking classroom where al-Qaeda recruits practiced overcoming U.S. flight crews using only small knives - a terrorist technique never employed before 9/11.

At least one veteran of Salman Pak, Sabah Khodad, has maintained that the 9/11 hijackers were actually trained by Saddam's henchman. He told PBS in October 2001 that the World Trade Center attack "was done by graduates of Salman Pak."

The Inquirer called the finding "dramatic," noting that it was the first legal claim tying Baghdad to America's darkest day.

Meanwhile, the New York Times and the Washington Post, which opposed the war in Iraq, have so far declined to report the first official ruling linking Saddam to 9/11.

Baer's ruling represents a huge victory, not only for the families of Timothy Soulas and George Eric Smith - the two 9/11 victims in whose name the suit was brought - but also for former CIA Director James Woolsey, one of the earliest proponents of the Salman Pak-9/11 connection.

His authoritative testimony, backed by satellite photos showing a Russian-built Tupolev 54 airliner parked in the middle of an open field, offered key support for lawyer James Beasley's argument that Salman Pak played a role in the attacks.

Beasley told the Inquirer that persuading the court about the link was "a hell of a hurdle to get over."

One significant obstacle faced by the Philadelphia lawyer was that Woolsey's successor at the CIA, George Tenet, has never included Salman Pak among evidence tying Iraq to al-Qaeda - and has publicly denied that Baghdad played any role whatsoever in the 9/11 attacks.

Tenet's decision to ignore the critical role played by the camp is said to be based in part on friction between the CIA and the Iraqi National Congress, which helped several Salman Pak veterans defect to the U.S. and made them available to the media.

Tenet's opposition is believed to have been key in the decision by the Bush administration not to spotlight Iraq's 9/11 role, leaving White House officials with the sole argument that Saddam Hussein threatened the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction.

But as the postwar search for WMDs enters its fourth week without any major find, some now fear that the Bush administration's decision to side with Tenet over Woolsey on Salman Pak is shaping up as a major political blunder.

http://www.floydreport.com/view_article.php?lid=266

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