U.S. Officials: Saddam's Hijack Drills Were Counter-terror Ops

You know, there are stories so stupid that even my liberal Seattle friends won't try them. This is one.

"I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. "I mean, what, actually, do you expect?" he added.

I think a lot of people are losing the context here. Saddam got his butt whipped in a conventional war in 1991, and he knew perfectly well that there was no way he could build another conventional army that would oppose the clamps the "coalition" was putting on his country. He had a past history of actual use of chemical weapons, a nuclear program that the Israelis hindered, but did not stop, in 1982, and a very, very great deal of money to spend. He had active contacts with a galaxy of terrorist organizations and was funding suicide bombers directly in Israel. His intelligence service was premier in all of the Middle East, taking a back seat not even to such notables as the Syrians and the Iranians.

This whole thing isn't just a product of Dubya's hostility, it is a documented, comprehensive set of proven facts that lead to no other conclusion than that he was in it up to his unwashed, fleabitten neck. It isn't going to be spun or explained away. Every intelligence service in the world knew what he was up to including the CIA, and most of them said so. This isn't even in question except in the rarified air of a D.C. committee room, by people who are starting to stutter from hypoxia.

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