Saddam Warned of WTC Attack Before 9/11, Praised Bin Laden Afterwards

Why did the Bush administration immediately suspect that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks when there was no evidence of any connection, as Richard Clarke and other Bush critics maintain?

Maybe it was because there was indeed evidence, very dramatic evidence, in fact - in the form of warnings in the state-run Iraqi press that such an attack was coming, along with praise for Osama bin Laden and his kamikaze hijackers in the days after the World Trade Center was destroyed.

Less than two months before 9/11, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper "Al-Nasiriya" carried a column headlined, "America, An Obsession Called Osama Bin Ladin." [July 21, 2001] In the piece, Baath Party writer Naeem Abd Muhalhal predicted that bin Laden would attack the U.S. "with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House."

The same state-approved column also insisted that bin Laden "will strike America on the arm that is already hurting," and that the U.S. "will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs" - an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, "New York, New York." [Two 9/11 families were awarded over $100 million last May by U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer based on this and other evidence that Iraq was involved in 9/11]

Saddam's threats of a 9/11-style attack before 9/11 weren't limited to that single report. In 1992, his son Uday used an editorial in Babil, the newspaper he ran, to warn of Iraqi kamikaze attacks inside America, saying, "Does the United States realize the meaning of every Iraqi becoming a missile that can cross countries and cities?"

Then in the late 1990s, according to UPI, "a cable to Saddam from the chief of Iraqi intelligence was transmitted by Baghdad Radio. The message read, 'We will chase [Americans] to every corner at all times. No high tower of steel will protect them against the fire of truth.'"

But after the 9/11 attacks, Saddam became the only world leader to offer praise for bin Laden, even as other terrorist leaders, like Yassir Arafat, went out of their way to make a show of sympathy to the U.S. by donating blood to 9/11 victims on camera.

The day after the attacks, in quotes picked up by Agence France Press, Saddam proclaimed that "America is reaping the thorns planted by its rulers in the world."

"There is hardly a place (in the world) that does not have a memorial symbolizing the criminal actions committed by America against its natives," AFP quoted the Iraqi dictator complaining, based on reports in the Iraqi News agency.

After excoriating the U.S. for ending World War II by using nuclear weapons, and for its involvement in Vietnam, Saddam gloated, "[He] who does not want to reap evil must not sow it, and [he] who considers the lives of his people precious must remember that the lives of the people in the world are precious also."

"The American peoples should remember that no one ever crossed the Atlantic carrying weapons to be used against them. They are the ones who crossed the Atlantic carrying death, destruction and ugly exploitation to the whole world."

A day later Saddam told visiting Tunisian Foreign Minister Habib ben Yahya, "America brought the hatred of the world upon itself."

For his part Uday flat-out praised the 9/11 attacks, saying, "These were courageous operations carried out by young Arabs and Muslims," according to quotes picked up by the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat.

As Richard Clarke and his fans in the Democrat-media complex report in ominous tones that President Bush ordered him to launch an unwarranted investigation into the 9/11-Iraq connection, it's worth remembering how much Iraq had done justify that order.

http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=95001120

The Iraqi Connection
Did Osama bin Laden act alone? Not likely.

BY LAURIE MYLROIE
Thursday, September 13, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

Whether Osama bin Laden was involved in Tuesday's terrorist assault remains to be seen. Yet if that proves to be so, it is extremely unlikely that he acted on his own. It is far more likely that he operated in conjunction with a state--the state with which the U.S. remains at war, namely Iraq.

First, bin Laden's Afghan-based al-Qaeda organization does not really have the organizational capabilities to carry out such well-coordinated attacks. Someone had to understand how to smuggle weapons through U.S. airport security and which airports and airlines to choose. The hijacked planes were flown by terrorists as they crashed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Where did these pilots come from?

During the recently completed trial for the 1998 African embassy bombings, a story emerged of bin Laden's attempt to acquire a pilot and airplane. He turned to an Egyptian, Essam Rida, who had previously been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan, but had since settled in the U.S. Rida purchased a mothballed jet in 1993, refurbished it and flew it to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, then returned home. Some months later, al-Qaeda called him back to Khartoum to take some passengers to Nairobi. Apparently, no one else could fly the plane.

At year's end, he was called back again. The plane had not been maintained and was in terrible condition. Rida nonetheless took it out on a test flight. When he landed the plane, the brakes failed, so he drove it into a sand dune on the edge of the landing strip and left it there. Indeed, following the conclusion of that trial, the New York Times noted the discrepancy between the image of al-Qaeda as a fearsome terrorist organization and the reality of a group that was "at times slipshod, torn by inner strife, betrayal, greed."

Moreover, the trial revealed that al-Qaeda was intimately connected to at least one foreign intelligence agency: Sudan's. In 1991, Sudanese intelligence approached bin Laden, then based in Afghanistan, and invited him to move to Khartoum, which he did. The government's star witness--who defected from al-Qaeda in 1996--also worked for Sudanese intelligence. The information that emerged in the trial about the close ties between bin Laden and the Sudanese government helps explain why the U.S. also struck Khartoum, in addition to bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the embassy bombings.

Yet although the trial detailed close ties between Sudanese intelligence and al-Qaeda, they were not portrayed as especially significant. Instead attention focused on the individual wrongdoers, some of them in the dock, others still on the lam. Presumably, that is because a prosecutor cannot indict and convict a state, or at least not so easily. Thus, the trial distorted the public understanding of bin Laden's terrorism to make it appear to be a "stateless" phenomenon.

States have far more capabilities for terrorist actions than do individuals. They control territory; maintain embassies abroad; regularly transfer material in diplomatic pouches, secure from outside probing; and often have very large intelligence agencies.

And al-Qaeda's demonstrated ties to Sudanese intelligence raise another question. Iraq has close ties to Sudan. Sudan supported Iraq during the Gulf War and subsequently established Khartoum as a major center for Iraqi intelligence. Abd al Samad al-Ta'ish, a highly placed Iraqi intelligence agent, was Iraq's ambassador to Khartoum until the summer of 1998. Al-Ta'ish arrived in Khartoum in July 1991 with 35 other intelligence officers to establish a base for Iraqi operations in the wake of the upheaval wrought by the Gulf War.

Was al-Qaeda also in contact with Iraqi intelligence while it was based in Khartoum? The months preceding the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings are suggestive. The bombings occurred during Saddam's campaign to drive the United Nations weapons inspectors (known as Unscom) out of Iraq. Starting in the fall of 1997, Baghdad orchestrated a series of crises that had the effect, a year later, of ending Unscom's presence there.

Following the "resolution" of the second crisis, in late February 1998, through the mediation of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, bin Laden began to issue a series of bloody-minded threats against Americans. Soon Baghdad was issuing its own threats, asserting that its proscribed weapons of mass destruction had been eliminated and demanding that sanctions be lifted.

The threats issued by bin Laden, the threats issued by Iraq, and the preparations for the bombing all moved in virtual lockstep. On Aug. 3, 1998, Unscom chairman Richard Butler arrived in Baghdad. The Iraqis demanded that he declare Iraq in compliance or leave immediately. Mr. Butler departed the next day. The following day, Aug. 5, Baghdad declared "suspension day"--that is, the suspension of weapons inspections. It restated its previous threats, affirming, "To those against whom war is made, permission is given to fight."

Two days later, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed simultaneously. Initial media speculation focused on Iraq, but as luck would have it, one of those involved in the bombing, Muhammad Sadek Odeh, was already in the custody of Pakistani authorities. He had flown into Karachi on a false passport that was so ill-suited to his likeness that he was detained at the airport and subject to a harsh interrogation. U.S. authorities soon had critical evidence linking bin Laden to the attacks.

Yet that information did not address the question of whether Iraq might also have been involved, as its harsh threats and the crisis over Unscom had seemed to suggest. Indeed, the possibility of Iraqi involvement was probably a line of inquiry that the Clinton White House was not interested in pursuing--although it could have been legitimately asked whether bin Laden alone really had the capability to carry out simultaneous bombings of two major U.S. targets.

One reason so many in the U.S. bureaucracies believe that bin Laden is the greatest terrorist threat to America--and, therefore, quite possibly behind Tuesday's attacks--is the wealth of signals intelligence they pick up about al-Qaeda's plotting. That intelligence leads to repeated alerts about possible attacks on U.S. targets, including an alert last June, which caused U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and Jordan to put to sea.

It is somewhat surprising that the U.S. can regularly pick up so much information about bin Laden's planning, but miss the signs of Tuesday's attack. Is it possible that deception--a common practice in war--is involved? Is the U.S. meant to pick up those communications, thereby reinforcing a disposition to believe that the terrorism is being carried out by al-Qaeda and not by an enemy state?

There is plenty of precedent for such actions. In World War II, prior to the Allied landing at Normandy, an elaborate deception campaign was conducted to make the Germans believe that the allies would attack elsewhere. That included the creation of a fake "First Army" in Britain, which appeared poised to attack at Pas de Calais. False signals were a critical element of that deception.

Similarly, the U.S. used fake communications prior to the start of the Gulf War to make the Iraqis believe that it would attack their forces up through Kuwait, while radio silence was maintained in the area where the real attack--far off to the west--would come.

It does not make a great deal of sense to attribute to one man--Osama bin Laden--all the acts of terrorism which are regularly ascribed to him, including Tuesday's assault. It is time to take a new look at the major terrorists acts of terrorism directed against the U.S. in recent years. Are they, perhaps, more complicated than they seem? Indeed, are they acts of war, with all the complexity that wartime activities regularly involve?

Ms. Mylroie is author of "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America" (American Enterprise Institute, 2000).

See also
http://meib.org/articles/0106_ir1.htm

I haven't found any specific commentary on the mural you posted. However, this mural is briefly explained by The Boston Globe:

Major General Buford ''Buff'' Blount, commander of the Third Infantry Division, stood in the middle of a dusty parade ground yesterday at a militia training center, billows of black smoke rising behind him from yet another destroyed target of Iraqi resistance. As Blount watched, his soldiers unfurled a large mural they had discovered at the facility. There, in vibrant hues, a beaming image of Saddam Hussein, victory cigar in hand, had been painted beside a rendering of the World Trade Center at the awful moment of attack. ''God protect Saddam and Iraq,'' the artist inscribed in Arabic.

The sprawling training center for the Quds Regiment, the Iraqi equivalent of the US National Guard, had other evidence of the vitriolic hatred that Hussein reserves for his enemies. In an indoor shooting range, paper targets showed drawings of a human face, fangs protruding from the mouth, a Star of David on the forehead.

Outside, on the fringes of the parade ground, other targets had been painted on posts. This time, some of the images were of children.

Blount watched in silence, waving his hand dismissively at the mural when a reporter questioned him about this depiction of glee at an American tragedy. Blount offered no stock expressions of anger.

"We've still got some fighting to do," said Blount. "It's still a tough neighborhood here."

So a crappy Star ship captain is also a crappy analyst. Osama has been working with Iraq for years no matter what the disinformation specialists would have you believe about the secular/religious split. Information out of Iraq since the war shows that conclusively.

There have been massive amounts of information released showing the prior involvement of Iraq and terrorist organizations across the globe INCLUDING Al Queda. There were AQ groups operating with Saddam's sanction in Iraq. There were terrorist training campst set up in Iraq at which AQ terrorists were trained (and kept away from the Iraqis.) Iraqi diplomatic personnel have been kicked out of several countries because of their ties to bin Laden's group. How did this fact elude such a craptacular analyst as YOU?
There was Iraqi involvement with the first WTC attack in providing passports and then sanctuary after the act. Quite likely Iraqi involvement with the Oklahoma City bombing.

Clarke the Liar even admitted the latter in his book.

Unfortunately for your hope there was no actionable information that AQ was going to use airliners in NYC on 9/11 and there is no question that Bush ramped up the war on AQ and terrorism to a far greater degree than Clinton ever did. All attempts to undermine Bush are the work of LIARS in conjunction with the RATmedia. Not "democratic media" but RATmedia is the proper term.

There are huge differences between the RAT party and the GOP and those who can't understand that are of little use to anyone. Blathering on about socialists parties does nothing but point out the ignorance of the blatherer. Hints that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor are also indicative of such ignorance.

Admit it you are Howard Dean aren't you?

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