Posted on 05/27/2004 5:57:09 AM PDT by RaceBannon
Saddam's Files New evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Thursday, May 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
One thing we've learned about Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein is that the former dictator was a diligent record keeper. Coalition forces have found--literally--millions of documents. These papers are still being sorted, translated and absorbed, but they are already turning up new facts about Saddam's links to terrorism.
We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix. But John Ashcroft's press conference yesterday reminds us that the terror threat remains, and it seems especially irresponsible for journalists not to be open to new evidence. If the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn't it have also missed Saddam's terror links?
One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Five more months before the election. Bush is a master of rope-a-dope. Either the dems can quietly admit sometime this summer that there were links, or Bush will hit them with it in the October debates.
I am just shocked by the Administration's lack of aggresiveness in defending their position. The Klintoon admin. spent 10s of millions of $s defending his "indescretions" and cigar circus acts, but Bush can't seem to push a message to defend an obviously defendable action of taking these ba$t@rds out of power.
I'll bet the willfully ignorant Dan Rather will scan this and not comprehend it.
Memorize the name. Ask your liberal friends what they know about him.
I'm not sure there is such as source. WSJ reaches millions, and its web site reaches millions more.
Furthermore, WSJ is a media source for thousands of other papers around the world including the International Herald Tribune, among others.
The other side of this is pure competition. Enough Newspaper editors and broadcast media editors will see this and want to run a story. The beauty of this is that the more others publish this the more the Peter Jennings of the world become superfluous
The left will only believe Iraq was involved in 9/11 if they see evidence that Saddam himself was on the flight deck of Flight 11. Anything less will be disregarded as "rogue and disaffected elements of the Iraqi regime ."
That's what the bully pulpit is for. If the President says it, the press has to cover it.
-PJ
That's amazing in Europen Edition of WSJ that article is missing. Instead readers have to read : "An Oil Crisis Made in USA"
Yep, it's not like they would track his movements to locate other terrorists.
Everyone knows the CIA just isn't that smart.
"On October 21, 2001, Shakir flew from Doha to Amman, Jordan, and was arrested by Jordanian authorities. The CIA even interrogated him. Does anybody here actually think if he really had anything to do with 9-11, they would have let him go? Don't be naive, it's not like it is a major find."
That dog won't hunt. This information was not known to interrogate Shakir about until long after October 2001.
ping
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