Posted on 03/21/2008 11:53:46 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
Iraqi Documents Show al Qaeda Ties by Kenneth R. Timmerman
A much-publicized report released by the Pentagon last week details the extensive ties between the regime of Saddam Hussein and a wide variety of international terrorist organizations, including Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
“Despite their incompatible long-term goals, many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States,” the report’s authors at the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) state.
But instead of reporting on this conclusion, most of the media accounts have focused on a single sentence that appears in the executive summary, stating that the report’s authors found “no smoking gun” or “direct connection” between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaida.
The United States Joint Forces Command, which commissioned the report from IDA, provided reporters late last week with a CD containing nearly 2,000 pages of supporting documents that purportedly formed the basis of the conclusions authored by Lt. Col. Kevin Woods and James Lacey in the 94-page redacted summary that initially was leaked to the press.
Intriguing Analysis
An analysis by Newsmax identified several documents with critical evidence of Saddam’s close ties to al-Qaida that were overlooked or ignored by the report’s authors, however.
These documents, published previously by the Foreign Military Studies Office of the Joint Reserve Intelligence Center, Fort Leavenworth, have since been taken down from U.S. government Web sites. Newsmax downloaded copies when they were still available.
“This is not a comprehensive, end-all, all-in-one study,” a source familiar with the drafting of the report told Newsmax. He spoke on background because his comments had not been cleared in advance by the U.S. military.
“This was a study very specifically for military lessons learned, to explain an environment. People shouldn’t make this report into something it’s not,” he added.
Another source involved in the report told Newsmax that one reason some documents were not included in the analysis was because of the sheer mass of material available — more than 600,000 documents, in all.
I have written about the Harmony data base of captured Iraqi military and intelligence documents in my recent book, Shadow Warriors: Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender.
One of the most damning documents to emerge from the Harmony data base, I wrote, was a Jan. 18, 1993 order from Saddam Hussein, transmitted to the head of Iraqi intelligence, “to hunt the Americans that are in Arab lands, especially in Somalia, by using Arab elements or Asian (Muslims) or friends.”
In response, the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service informed Hussein that Iraq already had ties with a large number of international terrorist groups, including “the Islamist Arab elements that were fighting in Afghanistan and [currently] have no place to base and are physically present in Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt.” In other words, al-Qaida.
The authors of the IDA study note that Saddam’s Iraq “was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism,” and that these particular documents provided ‘detailed evidence of that support.'”
The study also points out that the captured documents “reveal that Saddam was training Arab fighters (non-Iraqi) in Iraqi training camps more than a decade prior” to the 2003 war.
But the study shies away from identifying them as al-Qaida terrorists, even though many of them were members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose leader, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, became the deputy leader of al-Qaida in 1998.
Preparations for Suicide Operations Against U.S.
While the IDA study includes no information that would show operational ties between Saddam’s regime and the 9/11 hijackers, it reveals that Saddam personally gave orders on Sept. 17, 2001 to his general military intelligence directorate to recruit Iraqi officers for “suicide operations” against the United States.
The 112-page Harmony data file ISGQ-2005-00037352 contains Saddam’s order, as well as personal pledges to carry out suicide operations from more than one hundred “volunteers,” including a brigadier general.
In the order he issued just one week after the 9/11 attacks, Saddam stated that the volunteers should sign pledges “to be written in blood,” presumably their own.
Four years before this order, Saddam announced with great fanfare that he had tasked a prominent Iraqi calligrapher to produce a Quran written with his own blood. Saddam reportedly had doctors draw his blood for the task.
Several other key documents are glaringly absent from the IDA report and provide direct evidence of Saddam Hussein’s deep involvement with al-Qaida and its component organizations.
Among them is a 1999 notebook kept by an unidentified Iraqi intelligence official that detailed meetings between top Iraqi leaders and visiting Islamic terrorists. (Harmony document ISGP-2003-0001412).
One Baghdad visitor was Maulana Fazlur Rahman a signer of Osama bin Laden’s infamous 1998 fatwa calling on Muslims to “murder Americans.” Another was Afghan mujahedin leader Gulbudin Hekmatyar, who was also supported by Iran.
Roy Robison, a former U.S. government contractor who published an analysis of Saddam’s relationship to al-Qaida last year, argues that when Rahman met with Iraqi Vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan in 1999 “he did so as the father of the Taliban and as a leader of the World Islamic Front which declared war on the U.S the year before.”
Another document not included in this latest report was a review by Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) of their ongoing ties with Osama bin Laden and other opponents to the Saudi regime (Harmony document ISGZ-2004-009247).
This document reads like a memorandum for the record, written in early 1997, tracing the beginnings of the Iraqi regime’s relationship to Osama bin Laden.
In a letter dated Jan. 11, 1995, Saddam Hussein personally authorized the General Director of Intelligence to establish direct contact with bin Laden in Sudan, the report states.
The initial meeting with bin Laden took place just one month later, on Feb. 19, 1995, and included an offer by Iraq to provide bin Laden with broadcasting facilities and a discussion of plans “to perform joint operations against foreign forces in the land of Hijaz [ie, Saudi Arabia].
Following bin Laden’s expulsion from Sudan, in July 1996, the memo states that the Iraqi intelligence service is “working to revitalize this relationship through a new channel.”
The IDA report includes in its supporting documentation a detailed report by the Iraqi general director of intelligence in response to an “action directive” issued by Saddam on Jan. 18, 1993, ordering his intelligence service to establish relations with terrorist groups around the world and to develop the “expertise to carry out assignments.”
In addition to a variety of Palestinian groups, the document lists the Hezb Islami of Afghanistan, the Islamic Scholars Group of Pakistan, the Jam’iyat “Ulama Pakistan, all of which subsequently became affiliated with al-Qaida.
The authors of the IDA report note in the abstract accompanying their work that the captured documents provide “evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including . . . Islamic terrorist organizations.”
While the documents “do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al-Qaida network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al-Qaida,” and to provide financing and training of these outside groups.
“This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a 'de facto' link between the organizations,” the report’s authors stated.
Much of the polemic over Saddam’s support for al-Qaida arises from disputed claims, put forward in a Czech government intelligence report, that an Iraqi intelligence official met with 9/11 pilot Mohamed Atta in Prague in the April 2001.
No documents have surfaced that would corroborate that claim, while in press interviews well after the liberation of Iraq, the Iraqi intelligence officer who reportedly met with Atta in Prague told reporters that the meeting never took place.
All Iraqi Roads Lead to Terrorism
Contrary to the accounts that have appeared in mainstream media outlets, the Harmony documents and the IDA report show beyond any doubt that Saddam Hussein was willing to fund, train, and use Islamic terrorists, including groups affiliated with al-Qaida, to carry out his long-standing plans against the United States and U.S. allies in the region.
A 2002 annual report to the Iraq Intelligence Service M8 directorate of liberation movements shows that the IIS hosted 13 terrorist conferences during the year, and that Saddam personally received 37 congratulatory messages from international terrorist groups. The annual report also noted that the IIS had issued 699 passports to terrorists during the year.
“Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al-Qaida [such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri], or that generally shared al-Qaida's stated goals and objectives,” the IDA report states.
But an element of competition also kept Saddam from too much direct involvement with al-Qaida, the IDA report states.
While both Saddam and bin Laden wanted to drive the West out of Muslim lands and to create a single powerful state that would replace America as a global superpower, “bin Laden wanted — and still wants — to restore the Islamic caliphate while Saddam, despite his later Islamic rhetoric, dreamed more narrowly of being the secular ruler of a united Arab nation,” the report’s authors state.
The relationship between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden bore some resemblance to the Cali and Medellin drug cartels.
While the seemingly rival cartels were vying for market share, “neither cartel was reluctant to cooperate with the other when it came to the pursuit of a common objective,” the report’s authors state.
“Recognizing Iraq as a second, or parallel, "terror cartel" that was simultaneously threatened by and somewhat aligned with its rival helps to explain the evidence emerging from the detritus of Saddam's regime,” the IDA report states.
Link to First World Trade Center Attack
One terror tie apparently put to rest in this latest report are the suspicions that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
Analysts such as Laurie Mylroie have argued for years that Saddam’s regime was behind the 1993 attack, and cited as evidence the fact that a key member of the plot, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Iraq immediately after the bombing.
As I reported in Shadow Warriors, Saddam Hussein recorded all meetings in his presidential office, and the Harmony data base includes tapes from a series of meetings during 1993 that discussed the interrogation of Yasin.
Saddam “discusses the possibility that the attack was part of the ‘dirty games that the American intelligence would play if it had a bigger purpose,’” and expresses concern that Yasin might be an American agent, the IDA report states.
According to Saddam, Yassin was “too organized in what he is saying and [he] is playing games, playing games and influencing the scenario” during his interrogations by Iraqi intelligence. Saddam ordered that the interrogations continue but “actually warns against allowing Yasin to commit suicide or be killed in jail,” the report states.
Saddam believed that “the most important thing is not to let the Arabic public opinion [believe] we are cooperating with the US against the opposition. I mean that is why our announcement [that Yasin is being held] should include doubts . . . [about] who carried out this operation. Because it is possible that in the end we will discover — even if it is a very weak possibility — that a fanatic group who carried it organized the operation.”
Saddam and his advisors were hoping to use the interrogations of Yasin, and whatever information they could gather from him about the organizers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to enhance their position in world public opinion.
If handled correctly, Saddam said, Yasin’s confessions "will benefit us greatly; it will benefit us in our issue in the matter of the stance that the U.S. has taken against us.”
Kenneth R. Timmerman was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize along with John Bolton for his work on Iran. He is Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, and author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum: 2005).
You can bet your butt that this information won’t make it into the Lame Stram Media.
BFL
Saddam was too much of a control freak to let any other organization operate in his country.
I guess that won’t be on tonite’s 6 PM news.
U.S. authorities in Iraq say they have new evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime gave money and housing to Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, according to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials.
Military, intelligence and law enforcement officials reported finding a large cache of Arabic-language documents in Tikrit, Saddam's political stronghold. A U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said translators and analysts are busy "separating the gems from the junk." The official said some of the analysts have concluded that the documents show that Saddam's government provided monthly payments and a home for Yasin.
Iraq sheltered suspect in '93 WTC attack
Also at issue is the Prague connection:
In Washington, the FBI moved to quiet the Prague connection by telling journalists that it had car rentals and records that put Atta in Virginia Beach, Va., and Florida close to, if not during, the period when he was supposed to be in Prague. The New York Times , citing information provided by "federal law enforcement officials," reported that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 2, 2001, and by April 11, "Atta was back in Florida, renting a car."
All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license.
His international license was at his father's home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April). Nor were there other records in the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2002, "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias" to "meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague." Clearly, it was not beyond the capabilities of the 9/11 hijackers to use aliases.
The only dispute over Atta's whereabouts is whether he was in Prague on April 9, 2001, to meet with Samir al Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer. Czech intelligence insists he was. Able Danger, apparently, had information supporting the Czechs.
Also, he had a fake passport so he could have traveled under an alias:
Spanish police last February arrested Algerians Khaled Madani, 33, and Moussa Laour, 36, on suspicion of furnishing phony passports to, among others, al Qaeda operatives Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohamed Atta. According to a February 29 Associated Press dispatch, Binalshibh revealed Madani's identity to interrogators at the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In a totalitarian regime such as under Ba’athist rule, you have an enormous amount of insight as well as control by the state apparatuses. High profile individuals such as the master mind of the Achila Laura, living as a free man in Baghdad, did so with the knowledge of this regime. MEK (A terrorist group) facilities operating in plain daylight north of Baghdad and conducting attacks in Iran were behind closed doors even condoned, as long as they don't turn on the Ba’ath regime, since after all, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
The Ba’ath regime had extensive ties and links with various individual terrorists as well as groups, but all of that is water under the bridge and has been washed away in a sea of BS media accounts to the contrary. Like the misinterpretations of government reports that never stated “no WMD found,” but sold that way to the public, this too is an issue which the anti-war pundit attempts to minimize in their quest to de-legitimize the war. It's polemics, minimize the arguments against ones case, maximize those for ones position. May it be assassination attempts on George H. Bush in Kuwait where the Iraqi intelligence agents were snatched, or the $20,000 reward given to every family of a suicide bomber in Lebanon and Israel which Saddam himself proudly proclaimed on TV, proof of Iraq's meddling with terror is plain as day.
First time I've heard that one...the secular argument is normally used... but you are incorrect if you really believe that:
In in 1998, an Arab intelligence officer, who knows Saddam personally, predicted in Newsweek: "Very soon you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis." The Arab official said these terror operations would be run under "false flags" --spook-speak for front groups--including bin Laden's organization.
Then there were the predictions by an Iraqi with ties to Iraqi intelligence, Naeem Abd Mulhalhal, in Qusay's own newspaper several weeks before the attacks that stated bin Laden would “demolish the Pentagon after he destroys the White House and ”bin Laden would strike America “on the arm that is already hurting.” (referencing a second IRAQI sponsored attack on the World Trade Center). Another reference to New York was “[bin Laden] will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra everytime he hears his songs.” (e.g., “New York, New York”) which identified New York, New York as a target. Mulhalhal also stated, “The wings of a dove and the bullet are all but one and the same in the heart of a believer." which references an airplane attack.
The Arabic language daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabic also cited the cooperation between Iraq, bin Laden and Al December 1998 editorial, which predicted that “President Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to a four day air strike, will look for support in taking revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating with Saudi oppositionist Osama Bin-Laden, whom the United States considers to be the most wanted person in the world.” This info is in the link provided below. How could these people have had foreknowledge without Iraq being involved?
Warning...slow loading .pdf file. This was from a lawsuit filed against Iraq after 9/11...the court ruled against Iraq.
There was also another lawsuit filed by the family of John O’Neill (a former FBI agent who captured Ramzi Yousef after the 1993 WTC bombings) after he died in the WTC on 9/11. His personal files from his years of traveling around the world investigating al-Qaeda are were used as evidence in the lawsuit. The evidence includes documents unearthed in the headquarters of the Mukhabarat (Iraq's intelligence service) and information gleaned from the interrogation of both al-Qaeda and Iraqi prisoners. (Link below). It also quotes Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA counter-terrorism chief, who stated in October 2000 that Iraq had been wanting to carry out terrorist attacks, and that the Iraqi military had been in contact with Osama bin Laden.
We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
Abu Nidal, September 11 and Saddam The terrorist network may be closer knit than we think.
Weekly Standard: The Mother of All Connections
The Saddam-Al Qaeda Links: In Photos and Video (MUST SEE) List of newspaper article in the 90's which mention the world's concern regarding the growing relationship between OBL and Saddam:
Son of Saddam coordinates OBL activities:
The AQ connection (excellent):
Western Nightmare:
Saddam's link to OBL:
NYT: Iraq and AQ agree to cooperate:
Document linking them:
Iraq and terrorism - no doubt about it:
A federal judge rules there are links:
Wall Street Journal on Iraq and AQ:
Iraq and Iran contact OBL:
More evidence:
Saddam's AQ connection:
Further connections:
What a court of law said about the connections:
Some miscellaneous stuff on connections:
Saddam's Ambassador to Al Qaeda: (February 2004, Weekly Standard)
Yes - it's NewsMax but loaded with interesting bullet points.
Saddam's Fingerprints on NY Bombing (Wall Street Journal, June 1993)
Colin Powell: Iraq and AQ Partners for Years (CNN, February 2003)
The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connections (September 2003, Richard Miniter)
Oil for Food Scandal Ties Iraq and Al Qaeda (June 2003)
Saddam and OBL Make a Pact (The New Yorker, February 2003):
Al Qaeda's Poison Gas (Wall Street Journal, April 2004):
Wolfowitz Says Saddam behind 9/11 Attacks:
Saddam behind first WTC attack - PBS, Laurie Mylroie:
Growing Evidence of Saddam and Al Qaeda Link, The Weekly Standard, July 2003:
Qusay Hussein Coordinated Iraq special operations with Bin Laden Terrorist Activities, Yossef Bodansky, National Press Club
The Western Nightmare: Saddam and Bin Laden vs. the Rest of the World, The Guardian Unlimited:
Saddam Link to Bin Laden, Julian Borger, The Guardian, February 1999
The Al Qaeda Connection, The Weekly Standard, July 2003
Cheney lectures Russert on Iraq/911 Link, September 2003:
No Question About It, National Review, September 2003
Iraq: A Federal Judges Point of View
Mohammed's Account links Iraq to 9/11 and OKC:
Free Republic Thread that mentions some books Freepers might be interested in on this topic:
The Proof that Saddam Worked with AQ, The Telegraph, April 2003:
Saddam's AQ Connection, The Weekly Standard, September 2003
September 11 Victims Sue Iraq:
Osama's Best Friend: The Further Connections Between Al Qaeda and Saddam, The Weekly Standard, November 2003
Terrorist Behind 9/11 Attacks Trained by Saddam, The Telegraph, December 2003
James Woolsey Links Iraq and AQ, CNN Interview, March 2004, Also see Posts #34 and #35
A Geocities Interesting Web Site with maps and connections:
Bin Laden indicted in federal court, read down to find information that Bin Laden agreed to not attack Iraq and to work cooperatively with Iraq:
Case Closed, The Weekly Standard, November 03
CBS - Lawsuit: Iraq involved in 9/11:
Exploring Iraq's Involvement in pre-9/11 Acts, The Indianapolis Star:
The Iraq/AQ Connection: Richard Minister again
Militia Defector says Baghdad trained Al Qaeda fighters in chemical weapons, July 2002
The Clinton View of Iraq/AQ Ties, The Weekly Standard, December 2003
Saddam Controlled the Camps (Iraq/AQ Ties): The London Observer, November 01
Saddam's Terror Ties that Critics Ignore, National Review, October 2003:
Tape Shows General Wesley Clark linking Iraq and AQ:
The Missing Link (What the Senate Ingelligence Report Said about Iraq/AQ Connections)
Credit to Peach for the above info.
Credit to joesbucks for the following links:
Dozens of links here:
Just a few of those links include:
The Clinton Justice Department's indictment against OBL in federal court which mentions the terrorist's connections to Iraq. November 4, 1998. The federal indictment:
Iraq and AQ agree to cooperate. The federal indictment against OBL working in concert with Iraq and Iran is mentioned. November 1998. The New York Times
Saddam reaching out to OBL January 1, 1999. Newsweek
ABC news reports on the Osama/Saddam connections January 14, 1999. ABC News
Western Nightmare: Saddam and OBL versus the World. Iraq recruited OBL. February 6, 1999. The Guardian
Saddam's Link to OBL February 6, 1999. The Guardian
Saddam offered asylum to bin Laden February 13, 1999. AP
Video coverage from drzz:
Saddam- Al Qaeda VIDEOS library (MUST SEE)
And kabar submitted these two little gems showing Bin Laden supported Iraq and its struggle against the US and the West.
1996 Fatwa: "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places."
I see you have just joined FR if your not a troll and make it here for long you will learn the truth about what Saddam did and didn’t do.
One thing is certain he did give support and training to many islamic terrorist groups including Al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, in a February 24 letter to James Beasley, Jr., the attorney in the aforementioned lawsuit, Czech U.N. Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek affirms an October 26, 2001 statement by Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross: "In this moment we can confirm, that during the next stay of Mr. Muhammad Atta in the Czech Republic there was the contact with the official of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Al Ani, Ahmed Khalin Ibrahim Samir, who was on 22nd April 2001 expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities which were not compatible with the diplomatic status." Atta flew from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Prague on April 7, 2001. Car-rental records place him in the Czech capitol the next day. He flew home to Florida that April 9.
Suspected terrorist hijacker Mohammed Atta contacted an Iraqi agent to discuss a terror attack on the Radio Free Europe building in the Czech capital, Prague, Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman told CNN.
Zeman told CNN on Friday that Atta had met the Iraqi agent twice in the run-up to the suicide plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
That alone is justification for our presence in Iraq.
Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records
-Download the Report
-Download the Translated Records
-Download the Original Records
New Harmony Report - Cracks in the Foundation: Leadership Schisms in al-Qa`ida 1989-2006
New Harmony Profiles-Abu'l Walid and Abu Khabab
CTC Report-Trends in Egyptian Salafi Activism
Possibly the following added to information:
Pentagon Report on Saddam's Iraq Censored?
…The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia...ABC News obtained the comprehensive military study of Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism on Tuesday. Read the report's executive summary HERE. The study, which was due to be released Wednesday, found no "smoking gun" or any evidence of a direct connection between Saddam's Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist organization. The report is based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion. It is also based on thousands of hours of interrogations of former top officials in Saddam's government who are now in U.S. custody……(ABC Blog, 13 Mar 08)
Executive Summary (Redacted): Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents 2008
Recovered Iraqi Intelligence document reveals Al Qaeda connection
IRAQI documents recovered by US troops reveal a terrorist group with connections to Al Qaeda was operating in Bahrain in 2001, it emerged yesterday. An Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) agent is said to have reported to his superiors on July 9, 2001 that a group calling itself The Army of Muhammad was active inside the country and wanted help from Baghdad. Correspondence from the agent claimed it was "under the wings" of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, but was using a different name as cover. "Information available to us is that the group is under the wings of Bin Laden," the Iraqi agent told spy chiefs in Iraq. "They receive their directions from Yemen. Their objectives are the same as Bin Laden." A later note lists the group's objectives as being: Jihad in the name of God; Striking the embassies and other Jewish and American interests anywhere in the world; Attacking the American and British military bases in the Arab land; Striking American embassies and interests unless the Americans pull out their forces from Arab lands and discontinue their support for Israel; Disrupting oil exports [to] the Americans from Arab countries and threatening tankers carrying oil to them. A later memorandum to the director of the ISS, also known as the Mukhabarat, reports that The Army of Muhammad was seeking assistance from Iraq to implement its objectives "and that the local IIS station has been told to deal with them in accordance with priorities previously established".……(Gulf Daily News, 15 Mar 08)
The NEFA Foundation also has interesting reports available: http://www.nefafoundation.org/
There was an interesting comment about Saddam being a control freak, and I believe he was.
Here’s an interesing tidbit from the period when Irag and Iran were at war and the US was supporting Iraq to some extent, mainly with intelligence, so that Iran wouldn’t invade and take over the country.
Now for the tidbit. Most people have forgotten that an Iraqi Air Force jet attacked one of our ships in the Persian Guld by firing an Exocet millsile at it. This was covered up with a lot of diplomatic gobbledegook and an explanation that it was a mistake.
Anyone who believes Saddam wasn’t fully aware of that attack and approved of it needs to take my condo off my hands at a bargain price.
In a totalitarian regime such as under Ba’athist rule, you have an enormous amount of insight as well as control by the state apparatuses. High profile individuals such as the master mind of the Achila Laura, living as a free man in Baghdad, did so with the knowledge of this regime. MEK (A terrorist group) facilities operating in plain daylight north of Baghdad and conducting attacks in Iran were behind closed doors even condoned, as long as they don't turn on the Ba’ath regime, since after all, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
The Ba’ath regime had extensive ties and links with various individual terrorists as well as groups, but all of that is water under the bridge and has been washed away in a sea of BS media accounts to the contrary. Like the misinterpretations of government reports that never stated “no WMD found,” but sold that way to the public, this too is an issue which the anti-war pundit attempts to minimize in their quest to de-legitimize the war. It's polemics, minimize the arguments against ones case, maximize those for ones position. May it be assassination attempts on George H. Bush in Kuwait where the Iraqi intelligence agents were snatched, or the $20,000 reward given to every family of a suicide bomber in Lebanon and Israel which Saddam himself proudly proclaimed on TV, proof of Iraq's meddling with terror is plain as day.
Be any of that what it may, what the Bush Administration said late in 2002 was patently false.
Further, Iraq was invasion-proof to any force we could possibly generate and this information was readily available to Rumseld, Cheney, Franks, et al.
First time I've heard that one...the secular argument is normally used... but you are incorrect if you really believe that:
Wow, you put up a lot of links, but even President Bush has said that there was no operational tie between Saddam and Al Qaida.
"The administration does not want the victims of Sept. 11 interfering with its foreign policy," says Peter M. Leitner, director of the Washington Center for Peace and Justice (WCPJ). Leitner says the Bush administration may be concerned that if other victims of the Sept. 11 attacks also filed lawsuits and won civil-damage awards it would reduce Iraqi resources that the administration wants to use to rebuild the country. Leitner and others say this explains Bush's reticence at this time to report the convincing evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda that has been collected by U.S. investigators and private organizations seeking damages. "The [Bush] administration is intentionally changing the topic," claims Leitner, and sidestepping the issue that "Iraq has been in a proxy war against the U.S. for years and has used al-Qaeda in that war against the United States."
I have the full report-on dvd-not the 94 page summary that was handed out.
There is a LOT of stuff there !!
For example,on January 30,2001,Saddam’s “action group”-the Fedayeen Saddam-began planning an attack on a US warship: the Portland (LSD-37),and went through detailed attack scenarios,based on slipping a wooden craft,disguised as a fishing vessel,within close range of the ship.
It turned out their plans were impractical-BUT-they had Presidential Authority to go ahead with them-according to their correspondence.
Some WMD were found, if you want I can find the exact citations in the Congressional reports publicized. Terrorist links did exist. There were violations of the armistice and our pilots being shot at nearly on a weekly basis might be a good reference point for you to start from. They did break UN mandates as the missiles that exceeded the maximum range limit came smashing into Kuwait city proved......... What people do in order to define failure or de-legitimize the war is to create arbitrary benchmarks they know create a de facto perception of failure, redefine or interpret historical facts, and gerrymander through the minefield of Saddams actions cherry picking only those things they see as fitting in their picture. These people are idiots, and they do not seek the truth, they do not act in their own country's, the Western world, or even Middle East, and Iraqi best interest. They have a personal agenda since Iraq is intricately tied in "perception" to Bush and the Republicans, even though we know this too isn't really completely true. Iraq became politicized even before the war began.
There have been NUMEROUS finds of WMD: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4997808/
There have been US soldiers exposed to it and of course compared to Abu Gharib this made practically no news! All this will simply be ignored or minimized by those making truthful documentaries like Michael Moore. Unless the US DoD found a giant cache of 20,000 shells, all filled, all labeled “made in Iraq pre 2003,” some will deny it, and even then some will claim it was planted. Let me quote Newsweek to you, “There were no substantial finds of weapons of mass destruction.” (2004) Check it up. That's how you win the argument or paint the picture be redefining things.
The administration moved on, allowing the issue to fade, which it has. If you have a genuine interest and not some agenda, you might want to actually browse through the publicized Congressional reports on WMD in Iraq. They never said there were none, that's how some in the media interpreted it. It's how some, cherry picking what it said lifted quotes from it that only fit into their argument......... "patently false. " What aspect? When we said they had WMD? That there were links to terrorist groups? That they had long range missiles? That they were in violation of the armistice?......... What exactly was "patently false?" I think those who claim to be so "open minded," seem to have a hard time with that concept when things don't fit into their paradigm.
Harmony data base Ping
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