Free Republic

WASHINGTON – It has been denied, downplayed, overlooked, forgotten, disregarded and omitted from the public record. But a thorough review of open-source material demonstrates conclusive and widespread cooperation between former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime and terrorists from the Iraqi al-Qaida network. Dozens of former Saddam Hussein loyalists captured by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq were found to be working with al-Qaida or linked to their operations.

Some Phase II Conclusions (particularly #9) Beyond Comprehension Future DOCEX Efforts Dismissed In Order To Buttress SSCI Phase II Report Conclusions as ComprehensiveIn the ‘Iraqi Links to Al-Qaeda’ section of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Phase II Report on prewar intelligence on Iraq, Conclusion 9 - the final conclusion – asserts that “additional reviews of documents recovered in Iraq are unlikely to provide information that would contradict the Committee’s findings or conclusions.” This is a bold statement for many reasons, not the least of which is that this can be interpreted as an assertion that the Committee’s findings hold...

In the latest categorical rejection of Saddam Hussein's links to al Qaeda Charlie Gibson said the following in an interview with President Bush: Gibson: And that's the one thing that I question, whether people do have any sense of that. For loathsome as he may have been, Saddam Hussein was not connected to al Qaeda This isn't just bias. It means that ABC isn't telling the truth now or wasn't telling the truth in some of their previous reporting. Charles Gibson doesn't need to even go outside of his own network to find examples of Saddam Hussein's links to al...

The recent arrest and confessions of Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi shines an uncomfortable light (uncomfortable for those who warned such cooperation wasn't possible due to ideological differences) on what many observers of the Iraq war warned wasn't possible: Cooperation between Iraqi Baathists loyal to secular Saddam Hussein and religiously fanatic al-Qaeda. al-Saeedi, also known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, told his captors that he has been "'responsible for more attacks than he can remember' and has been involved in the insurgency almost from its beginning three years ago," according to officials. al-Saeedi admitted that "Al Qaeda in Iraq was...

Abu Abbas, head of the Palestine Liberation Front, was captured in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad and died of natural causes in U.S. custody the following year. Notorious for the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro, Abbas's most deadly terrorist attack actually occurred in 1974, when a PLF assault in northern Israel killed 36 people. Abbas was also behind a foiled attack on a Tel Aviv beach in May 1990, when the U.S. was first trying to establish a dialogue with the PLO. Abbas's assault interfered with those efforts, and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait two months later halted...

The recent train bombings in India have intensified the scrutiny of the Pakistan-based, al Qaeda affiliated terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. In particular, one key question is being asked: What role does LET play in the war against Islamofascists and their allies? The al Qaeda-linked Wahhabi group, formed in 1989, has been blamed for a number of attacks on Indian officials and civilians. It was added to the U.S. terrorist list in December 2001. LET’s agenda, as announced in one of their pamphlets and detailed by MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, is to wage jihad with the goal of imposing their narrow version...

Sachin Parashar, of The Times of India, is reporting that the American embassy in India is on heightened alert amid reports of an impending terror attack. The attack is reportedly scheduled to take place before July 30 by a 20-man cell. The cell is described as an "Iranian terror group" made up of Iranian, Afghan and Kashmiri nationals, armed with sophisticated weaponry. What is noteworthy about this report is not only that the unnamed terror group is said to have previously "backed" Saddam Hussein but that the warning for the attack was gathered, at least in part, from captured members...