Those non-existent Saddam/al Qaeda links - (see this! Bush has been right all along, from Day #1))

Stephen Hayes, whose book The Connection detailed the links that are said not to have taken place between Saddam and al Qaeda, returns to the fray. Marvelling at the bare-faced lies of CNN which has been stating that there were no links -- and that the 9/11 Commission said so, when it said explicitly that there were -- he adds a few more examples of the contacts:

'In 1992 the Iraqi Intelligence services compiled a list of its assets. On page 14 of the document, marked "Top Secret" and dated March 28, 1992, is the name of Osama bin Laden, who is reported to have a "good relationship" with the Iraqi intelligence section in Syria. The Defense Intelligence Agency has possession of the document and has assessed that it is accurate. In 1993, Saddam Hussein and bin Laden reached an "understanding" that Islamic radicals would refrain from attacking the Iraqi regime in exchange for unspecified assistance, including weapons development.

'This understanding, which was included in the Clinton administration's indictment of bin Laden in the spring of 1998, has been corroborated by numerous Iraqis and al Qaeda terrorists now in U.S. custody. In 1994, Faruq Hijazi, then deputy director of Iraqi Intelligence, met face-to-face with bin Laden. Bin Laden requested anti-ship limpet mines and training camps in Iraq. Hijazi has detailed the meeting in a custodial interview with U.S. interrogators. In 1995, according to internal Iraqi intelligence documents first reported by the New York Times on June 25, 2004, a "former director of operations for Iraqi Intelligence Directorate 4 met with Mr. bin Laden on Feb. 19." When bin Laden left Sudan in 1996, the document states, Iraqi intelligence sough "other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of his current location." That same year, Hussein agreed to a request from bin Laden to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state television. In 1997, al Qaeda sent an emissary with the nom de guerre Abdullah al Iraqi to Iraq for training on weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell cited this evidence in his presentation at the UN on February 5, 2003. The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Powell's presentation on Iraq and terrorism was "reasonable."

'In 1998, according to documents unearthed in Iraq's Intelligence headquarters in April 2003, al Qaeda sent a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden to Baghdad for 16 days of meetings beginning March 5. Iraqi intelligence paid for his stay in Room 414 of the Mansur al Melia hotel and expressed hope that the envoy would serve as the liaison between Iraqi intelligence and bin Laden. The DIA has assessed those documents as authentic. In 1999, a CIA Counterterrorism Center analysis reported on April 13 that four intelligence reports indicate Saddam Hussein has given bin Laden a standing offer of safe haven in Iraq. The CTC report is included in the Senate Intelligence Committee's review on prewar intelligence.

'In 2000, Saudi Arabia went on kingdom-wide alert after learning that Iraq had agreed to help al Qaeda attack U.S. and British interests on the peninsula. In 2001, satellite images show large numbers of al Qaeda terrorists displaced after the war in Afghanistan relocating to camps in northern Iraq financed, in part, by the Hussein regime. In 2002, a report from the National Security Agency in October reveals that Iraq agreed to provide safe haven, financing and weapons to al Qaeda members relocating in northern Iraq. In 2003, on February 14, the Philippine government ousted Hisham Hussein, the second secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, for his involvement in al Qaeda-related terrorist activites. Andrea Domingo, head of Immigration for the Philippine government, told reporters that "studying the movements and activities" of Iraqi intelligence assets in the country, including radical Islamists, revealed an "established network" of terrorists headed by Hussein.'

It is simply astounding that virtually none of this has ever been reported in Britain. Isn't there anyone in the British mainstream media, not one single proper journalist or editor who is prepared to start putting this material into the public domain?

I suppose I can accept that but what I can NOT accept is the cRATS who know better insisting that George W lied to us ~ take Biden for example:

On July 31, 2002 Biden was Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the IRAQ Hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at which DR. KHIDIR HAMZA, Director of Council for Middle Eastern Affairs and Former Iraqi Nuclear Engineer gave the following testimony:

"Mr. Chairman, distinguished members, yesterday Saddam met members of the atomic energy -- what he called "mujaheddin" -- that is, people who put extreme effort and may sacrifice themselves for their work -- and this is what he had to say. That's yesterday. "The Americans and British say that if Iraq is left to its own means, it might make such-and-such weapons." He didn't name them, but it's clear what he meant. "They mean to harm us. It is to prevent any Arab or Muslim from progress." He call it "progress."

"This is the evil program of the West, and especially the Americans, assisted by Zionism and their supporters." That's a clear -- now, at this critical junction, his meeting with atomic energy, exhorting them to do their national duty, is Saddam back at his own old games of trying to create at least the impression that he is a dangerous man and a menace and should not be trifled with.

The last meetings of the Iraqi delegation with the U.N. relevant personnel on resuming inspectors, their work in Iraq, the Iraqi government decided, after they failed to agree on the -- make the U.N. agree to their terms of getting the inspectors back -- they wanted some concessions, they declared that inspectors' job is to disarm Iraq and leave it defenseless against an American strike, since the Americans will never remove sanctions. So, the whole game they thought the inspectors are charged with is to disarm Iraq. Since the inspectors are charged only with dismantling weapons of mass destruction and their facilities, this was an admission that Iraq may possess these weapons and also an implied threat that facing an invasion, it might use them.

If we go back to the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iraq built its own weapons of mass destruction technologies indigenously, with some foreign help. It understood that its main assets were not the equipment, but the scientists and engineers that make these weapons. The Saddam government kept a tight lid on its science and engineering military teams at the same time it allowed UNSCOM and IAEA to demolish some of its weapon production sites.

That these science and engineering teams were capable of rebuilding the program was made manifestly clear in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Within less than a year, these teams rebuilt successfully most of Iraq's services infrastructure, this including rebuilding power stations, major telephone exchanges and oil refineries.

Elated by their success, Saddam kept these teams as contracted entities to the government for the civilian sector with a much reduced load and assigned them the rebuilding of the needed facilities for the weapons of mass destruction program. This provided them with a cover of civilian contractors with actual work to prove it, but at the same time, their weapons of mass destruction work continued unhindered.

Thus, the computer we used for the nuclear weapon design is now located in a hospital in Saddam City at the outskirts of Baghdad. If an inspector should arrive at the site, he or she will be shown contracts for the civilian sector. The only indication that things are not what they seem is that it is headed by a man who worked extensively on the Iraqi nuclear weapon design and that most of his staff are former workers in the nuclear weapon program.

Legally, and according to the current mandate of UNMOVIC, the new U.N. inspection body, the burden is on the inspectors to prove otherwise.

Thus, Saddam as managed, from the experience of the last 11 years, to create the perfect cover and in effect turn the whole Iraq science and engineering enterprise into a giant weapon-making body. And since they do actually accomplish civilian tasks, the economic burden on the government is also reduced.

Saddam valued his people more than equipment, and while he initially allowed the U.N. teams to destroy some of his equipment and facilities, Saddam kept tight control over his scientists and engineers. Thus, defections were kept to a minimum. This was helped by well-publicized cases of defectors seeking help and were turned down. One of them was killed in Jordan by Iraqi agents while waiting for the U.S. embassy to grant him an entry visa. Not a single high- level defector left the regime since the botched defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, to Jordan in 1995. This kept the information flow out of Iraq to a minimum, increasing the opacity of the WMD programs.

Iraq is well into CW production and may well be in the process of BW production. With more than 10 tons of uranium and one ton of slightly enriched uranium, according to German intelligence, in its possession, Iraq has enough to generate the needed bomb-grade uranium for three nuclear weapons by 2005. Iraq is using corporations in India and other countries to import the needed equipment for its programs, then channel them through countries like Malaysia for shipment to Iraq. Germany already black-listed some of these companies for violating sanctions imposed on Iraq.

Iraq is importing directional control instruments for its missiles of much higher precision than those needed for the allowed 160-kilometer missiles under U.N. sanctions. Thus, Iraq is gearing to extend the range of its missiles to easily reach Israel. The type of equipment imported indicate that Iraq is in the process of creating its own foundation for the production of needed materials, thus avoiding detection if these materials are on the watch list of the exporting countries. Following this logic, Iraq is or will be able to produce its own growth media for the biological weapons program and many of the precursors for its chemical weapon program. The same can be said for local uranium production from phosphates, thus remove many limitations on production and allow Iraq to accelerate its own programs.

The inspection regime in Iraq had a mixed history. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body charged with ensuring that nuclear facilities are not used for nuclear weapon purposes, failed in its task with regards to Iraq before the Gulf War.

The International Atomic Energy Agency remains basically a weak organization beset by its international composition and multiple loyalties of its workers, though within its sphere it is quite successful in accounting for and keeping a tab on essential components of the nuclear fuel cycle. But it has limited leverage with the states and works best in a cooperative and (a malleable ?) environment. Against determined states such as Iraq, it is at a great disadvantage. Thus, it failed again after the Gulf War when it declared early that it took care of basically all of Iraq's nuclear program. It took the defection of Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, to force the Iraqi government to declare the actual scope of its nuclear weapons program and force the inspectors to start all over again unraveling what has not been declared before.

We are talking about now a two-stage process, dismantling what is there and monitoring after that that it does not get rebuilt. With Iraq's aggressive behavior toward the inspectors and the cat-and-mouse game it continuously plays with them, monitoring becomes problematic at best in the later stage of keeping Iraq disarmed. So even if some equipment are dismantled, getting them from not rebuilt again will be problematic in any future program. Iraq could just at any time stop cooperating and it might be just too late to stop it from continuing its work on its program.

If the inspectors go back now, there is very little human intelligence that will help them locate the new weapon sites. Spread widely among the government infrastructure in smaller, hard-to-detect units, the inspectors will have a hard time locating all the program's components. A recent defector with credible information asserted that all units are built with a backup. If one is detected or is in danger of discovery, all activity is immediately transferred to the backup facility.

The new UNMOVIC inspection body do not have the support and free hand UNSCOM enjoyed. With Russia and other states that favor removing sanctions keeping the pressure, the onus now is on the inspectors to prove that Iraq is in violation. Not finding a smoking gun after a series of inspections is over, the Russians and the French need to declare that the U.S. has no case and sanctions must be lifted. The U.S. case will be considerably weakened and more voices will rise against U.S.-Iraqi policy as baseless if the inspectors go in and find no smoking gun that Iraq is making weapons of mass destruction. This is a danger that must be carefully examined before inspection teams are allowed back possibly to divert an invasion.

Many voices declared that Iraq was not pursuing nuclear weapons before the Gulf War. This included the IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency, that declared Iraq clean in many statements. This happened even after the German publication Der Spiegel reported Iraq's successful attempt to acquire classified uranium centrifuge enrichment technology from Germany. However, the U.S. knew better and used the Gulf War setting as a way to dismantle Iraq's nuclear weapon program.

But its dismantling process ignored the knowledge base acquired over the years that can be used easily to rebuild what was destroyed. A similar insistence on proof before taking serious action will be allowing Saddam to achieve his goals unchallenged.

With no large, easily distinguishable nuclear sites and little or no human intelligence, it is difficult to see how any measure short of a regime change will be effective. Saddam is totally indifferent to the human suffering of his people and, with his threats of reprisals against the families of weapons of mass destruction workers, has managed to stop defections among his personnel, despite the fact that a large number of Iraqis from other walks of life manage to escape.

With a Soviet-style economy that's basically geared toward war and its requirements, Iraq is currently the only Arab state that all Arab extremists look at as the future challenger to Israel and U.S. interests in the regime. Thus, if Saddam makes it in the nuclear arena, he will be the region's undisputed leader in Arab eyes. It will then be much harder to agree on the needed concessions for a peace process, and a viable peace will be impossible to achieve under any terms. Saddam has used and will continue to use the Palestinian issue to rally the Arabs around him as he did when he used the Arab leaders meeting in Baghdad to challenge the peace treaty of Egypt with Israel that President Sadat agreed to.

Saddam and Iraq imperialism. Saddam Hussein has a long history of involvement in international terrorism, from assassinations of Iraqis abroad in the '70s and '80s, to support for radical anti- Western groups in the '80s and '90s, to links with Islamic fundamentalists today. His track record speaks for itself.

Always the opportunist, he has used the bin-annual Islamic conferences held in Baghdad since the 1980's as a recruiting ground for Islamic radicals from around the Muslim world. A former Iraqi intelligence officer now in Europe has described how he would dress as a cleric and approach Islamists from key countries to put on the Iraqi payroll for special operations. He was tasked, that is the intelligence officer, to recruit Pakistanis, Indonesians and Malaysians, while other officers concentrated on Palestinians and Arabs.

We know from credible sources that Osama bin Laden was a frequent visitor to the Iraqi embassy in Khartoum, when bin Laden was a resident of the Sudanese capital until 1996. It is no coincidence that Khartoum is one of Iraq's intelligence service's largest foreign stations.

It has also been confirmed that the Iraqi ambassador in Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, traveled to Afghanistan and met bin Laden in December, 1998. It is revealing to note that prior to being appointed ambassador to Ankara, Hijazi was head of foreign operations for Iraqi intelligence service. Incidentally, the same Hijazi, who was hurriedly pulled out of Ankara on September 29, 2001, has recently resurfaced as Iraq's ambassador to Tunisia.

There have been several confirmed sightings of Islamic fundamentalists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states being trained in terror tactics at the Iraqi intelligence camp at Salman Pak, 20 miles south of Baghdad on the Tigris River. Three former intelligence officers have reported that they were surprised to find non-Iraqi fundamentalists undergoing training at the facility. The training involved assassination, explosions and hijacking.

All the three reported that there is a fuselage of an old Tupelev-154 airliner used for hijack training. This was later confirmed by satellite photographs.

Iraq's military capability has been considerably degraded since the Gulf War. Part of the drive to rebuild larger weapon-of-mass- destruction stockpiles is to make up for this depletion in military capability. Iraq now has practically no air force, a much-degraded air defense system, and particularly no new tanks, heavy artillery or armored vehicles.

What is left functioning from the Gulf War arsenal is basically in the hands of the special Republican Guards, and the rest of the armed forces are basically armed with light weaponry. With a highly corrupt officer corps, the Iraqi army suffers from a large number of absenteeism, poor or non-existent medical care -- (inaudible) -- and little or no pay.

It is estimated that Iraq has no more than a quarter of the fire power it possessed at the onset of the Gulf War. With the original Bath Party members mostly murdered or in jail, Saddam's government now is purely a personal dictatorship of Saddam and his clans. The original rhetoric of the Bath Party no longer carry any weight with the population.

Iraq WMD are under the control of the special security organization. This is the same group that are charged with Saddam's security. This feared and ruthless organization is mainly composed of conscripts from Saddam's hometown and very loyal tribes in the adjacent areas. They have an observer in all major military meetings, and they are present at the headquarters of all division commanders, and they report directly to Saddam's younger son, Qusay.

Any operation to disrupt the central authority of the Iraqi command structure, and especially the handling and deployment of weapons of mass destruction, must target this organization. Precision bombing and strict enforcement of no-drive zones should eliminate most, if not all, of the dangers of Saddam possibly using his CBW against U.S. forces. Past defections from this -- (inaudible) -- group indicate that it is not as tightly controlled as was earlier thought, and the defection rate may increase considerably when faced with an imminent invasion.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman".

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