Iraq conspired with Bin Laden to produce WMDs...according to Richard Clarke

Washington Post

[Jim_Curtis]

Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.

[VOA]

(Excerpted from "Embassy Attacks Thwarted, U.S. Says; Official Cites Gains
Against Bin Laden; Clinton Seeks $10 Billion to Fight Terrorism," Vernon Loeb,
Washington Post, A02, January 23, 1999.)

Well, at least we Freepers are the first to know which journalist will be the
next to review his tapes and decide he "misheard" what was on the tape!

[VOA]

bump for publicity

[kcvl]

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War. According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in 1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions. According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:


4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes.


http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:oo2_pQu5GawJ:www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp++osama+bin+laden,+Saddam&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[Future Useless Eater]

http://www.nwc.navy.mil/balkans/bc2j18p3.doc

Clinton described a world of frightening terror scenarios involving nerve gas and germ attacks and computer hacking that, until now, have largely been the province of thriller novels.

Indeed, Clinton developed a personal interest in the possibility of a biological attack after reading a novel by Richard Preston called ``The Cobra Event,'' which deals with such an attack in New York.
....
[Clinton] said the threat was made clear last spring when a satellite malfunctioned, disabling pagers, automatic money machines, credit card systems and television networks around the world.

Clinton's national coordinator for the counter-terrorism effort, Richard Clarke, said there was a threat of ``information warfare'' in which a rogue nation, terrorist group or criminal cartel could perform a ``systematic national intrusion'' into computer systems, with effects comparable to the strategic bombing of infrastructure during the Second World War.

``What we're concerned about is in the future, nations will have that same capability to destroy each other's infrastructure, not by bombs, but by cyber attack,'' Clarke told reporters.

[Wallaby]

Also see:

• CLARKE IN 92: BUSH WAS LAX ON IRAQ
• Backfired [The Failures of Richard A. Clarke]

[driftless]

You are so right. I too have noticed the tendency of Big Media to (1) formulate a distorted opinion of some event and then (2) ignore all following evidence that contradicts their original lies. One great example is the lie that the Bush admin claimed that Iraq had ties to 9/11. When the fact came out that the Bush admin never made that claim, the libs just plowed ahead and kept repeating the lie. Another one is the canard that Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaeda then and now. Well the facts as presented by Laurie Mylroie and Steve Hayes confirm their past complicity and the presence of Al-Qaeda in the current Iraq terrorism has been confirmed. But the libs still keep on denying reality.

[Future Useless Eater]

http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/11/09/index.html

• CIA: Iraq could revive arsenals BY JOHN DIAMOND The Associated Press Voice of America 09 November 1998 -- "Iraq could retain a small force of Scud-type missiles, a small stockpile of chemical and biological munitions, and the capability to quickly resurrect weapons of mass destruction production absent U.N. sanctions" and international inspections, the CIA wrote. John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists said U.S. and European laboratories have found evidence of the nerve gas VX on spent Iraqi shells.
• 2 U.S. Options for Iraq Strike: Swift or Larger STEVEN LEE MYERS The New York Times November 9, 1998 -- The Pentagon has drafted separate plans for a sharp, swift strike that could begin at any time, and a larger, more punishing assault that would require sending more forces to the region. Either of the two plans could cause significant damage to Saddam's bases of power, including Iraq's military and special police and factories or other sites suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons. The president plans to leave the United States on Friday for a nine-day trip to Asia.
• U.S. Department of State Daily Press Briefing , NOVEMBER 9, 1998 -- IRAQ Prospects for the Use of Force in Iraq Contacts With and Cooperation of European and Gulf State Allies Prospects for Unilateral Action Against Iraq US Policy Goals Toward Iraq Status of UNSCOM Inspections
• The Regional Response to the Iraq Crisis Iraq News, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1998 In response to 'a fruitless stance' against Saddam, the Clinton administration had quietly decided to avoid military action and to maintain international support for economic sanctions. As a result, a new strategy was developed last spring by Richard Clarke, a national security official, who concluded it simply was not feasible to track down all of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons caches and military strikes could not force Saddam to let the United Nations in to search for them.

[Chapita]

bttt

[Amelia]

FYI & perhaps ping list.

BTTT

[Paradox]

Wow, this stuff is GREAT! FR busted open the "outraged families" scam, now this. Thank heavens for the Internet. I wonder if the media is gonna be kicking itself for archiving stuff online now...

[Dog]

Freeper research strikes again..

[Right_in_Virginia]

bttt

[reformedliberal]

great resource. BTTT

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Peach]

Thanks for the ping!

[TomGuy]

Per some commentaries on talk radio yesterday, Clarke was instrumental in convincing Clinton to bomb the aspirin factory in Sudan.

IIRC, nothing in the way of WMDs was found there.

Apparently, the one success Clarke had in getting Clinton to act turned out to be wrong.

[sultan88]

Bumping a real interesting thread!

[cookcounty]

Hey Leslie! Will this be in the next 60 minutes edition?

[Conspiracy Guy]

Surely it's just a conincidence.

[Peach]

How to get the word out is our problem. We get all this great research and then what happens? FNC sometimes reports some of it. Sometimes.

Rush reports some of it. Sometimes.

Meanwhile the masses only know what they are told by the mainstream media. We need a more coordinated level of attack of we are going to get through to the mainstream media and thus inform voters.