Osama and Saddam Worked Together for Years

Sen. Boxer intends to repeat her charges against Condi Rice today on the floor of the Senate.

Among those charges is the lie that Iraq and Al Qaeda did not have a relationship.

You sound just like another disruptor and since you're new here I have to wonder if you have two screen names. LOL

Shakir information comes down on both sides of the argument. But there's no taking away from the fact that Shakir is Iraqi. Whether he's fedayeen is the only argument. Regardless, an Iraqi was present during at least on 9/11 planning meeting.

Care to explain that away? Care to explain a few hundred other links away? Be my guest. You can't.

That an Iraqi was present during some meeting is not in any way proof of Baghdad's involvement. 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, others from the UAE, Egypt and Lebanon. Yet none of those countries' governments were held responsible, for good reasons.

And nice of you to cherry pick among those links but there this as well for a more complete picture:

Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq.

According to the 9/11 Commission report, quoting from an email from Clarke to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on November 4, 1998:

This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was "probably the direct result of the Iraq-al Qida (sic) agreement". Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the "exact formula used by Iraq."

KEAN: We gave weight to the testimony. And it's the same belief that President Clinton had, the same belief that Sandy Berger has. But there are a whole bunch of people on the other side who dispute that finding, who say there is no independent collaborative evidence that those chemicals were there.

And this is a debate that goes on. We were not able to come to a conclusion on that debate. We could say that there is no evidence that we found--independent evidence--that those chemicals were there. But I can tell you that the belief of people we all respect, from the president of the United States, President Clinton, down through Sandy Berger and down through Cohen, believe very, very strongly that they were right to target factory and in fact it was what they thought it was.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/357lnryy.asp?pg=2

That part that Iraq and al Qaeda reached an understanding of non-aggression and that they would collaborate on weapons development is based on a US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of NY indictment, and while it led Clarke to speculate, this language was dropped however with a superseding indictment the same year. (Commsssion Report p.128)

The passage in the Report reads:
"Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda-save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against "Crusaders" during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.53

To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.54" (Report p.61)

OK, "reportedly" and "there are indications that" Saddam tolerated Bin Laden stopping actions against him. That's it? Doesn't sound very illegal to me.

Interesting question though: who "reported", and what are those "indications"? The Report doesn't say, but why do I have the strong feeling those reports were coming from the same source that led us to believe there were WMD all over Iraq: Chalabi's INC, and ultimately foreign secret services? Bingo, the pre-War Intelligence report says just that:

"Contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida were an important factor in determining whether Iraq would have cooperated, assisted, or directed al-Qaida in any terrorist operation against U.S. interests. However, the intelligence reporting used to create the finished papers often came from foreign government services whose reliability was questioned by the CIA. For instance, some of the contacts between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaida were reported to the CIA by foreign government services or XXXXXXXX groups opposed to the Iraqi government. The raw intelligence reporting from the CIA detailed the questionable nature of reporting by countries or groups that clearly opposed the Iraqi regime. (p.326)

According to that Report those CIA sources with questionable reliability were: the INC, Italian newspapers, and the Italian secret service. Oh boy.

And if you're going to quote from the section that the 9/11 Commission got wrong, why didn't you quote from this one? Oh, that's right. It doesn't support your seemingly ignorant position that there was no relationship.

Then there is the interesting case of Ahmad Hikmat Shakir — an Iraqi VIP facilitator who worked at the international airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Citing "a foreign government service," page 340 of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-Iraq-War intelligence indicates that, "Shakir claimed he got this job through Ra'ad al-Mudaris, an Iraqi Embassy employee" in Malaysia.

Let's see what else page 340 of that report is saying (the parts that aren't blacked out at least):

CIA judged in "Iraqi Support for Terrorism", however, that al-Mudaris’ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX that the circumstances surrounding the hiring of Shakir for this position did not suggest it was done on behalf of the IIS.
The CIA’S reluctance to draw a conclusion with regard to Shakir was reasonable based on the limited intelligence available and the analysts’ familiarity with the IIS.

So neither the CIA nor the pre-war Intellignece Committee were drawing conclusions? So shouldn't Deroy Murdock then, me thinks.

On January 5, 2000, Shakir greeted Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi at Kuala Lampur’s airport. He then escorted them to a local hotel where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared.

Shakir, the Iraqi airport greeter, was arrested in Qatar on September 17, 2001. On his person and in his apartment, authorities discovered documents connecting him to the 1993 WTC bomb plot and “Operation Bojinka,” al-Qaeda’s 1995 plan to blow up 12 jets simultaneously over the Pacific.
Interestingly enough, as a May 27, 2004 Wall Street Journal editorial reported, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir's name appears on three different rosters of the late Uday Hussein's prestigious paramilitary group, the Saddam Fedayeen. A government source told the Journal that the papers identify Shakir as a lieutenant colonel in the Saddam Fedayeen.

As I already pointed out the Fedayeen Shakir is a different Shakir. The 9/11 Commission Report is right.

Below is a rare photograph of Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. He was Consul and Second Secretary at Iraq's Czech embassy between March 1999 and April 22, 2001. He long has been suspected of meeting with September 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, most likely on April 8, 2001. Perhaps at other times, too. While skeptics dismiss this encounter, Czech intelligence found Al-Ani's appointment calendar in Iraq's Prague embassy, presumably after Saddam Hussein's defeat. Al-Ani's diary lists an April 8, 2001, meeting with "Hamburg student." Maybe, in a massive coincidence, Al-Ani dined with a young scholar and chatted about Hegel and Nietzsche.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1254304/posts?page=1

Irrelevant what some diary lists for April 8. Atta traveled to Prague on June 2 by bus from Germany and then flew from Prague to Newark the next day. See 9/11 report p.224.

For your convenience I'm quoting a whole section (p.228):

Atta's Alleged Trip to Prague
Mohamed Atta is known to have been in Prague on two occasions: in December 1994, when he stayed one night at a transit hotel, and in June 2000, when he was en route to the United States. On the latter occasion, he arrived by bus from Germany, on June 2, and departed for Newark the following day.69

The allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001 originates from the reporting of a single source of the Czech intelligence service. Shortly after 9/11, the source reported having seen Atta meet with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, an Iraqi diplomat, at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague on April 9, 2001, at 11:00 A.M. This information was passed to CIA headquarters.

The U.S. legal attaché ("Legat") in Prague, the representative of the FBI, met with the Czech service's source. After the meeting, the assessment of the Legat and the Czech officers present was that they were 70 percent sure that the source was sincere and believed his own story of the meeting. Subsequently, the Czech intelligence service publicly stated that there was a 70 percent probability that the meeting between Atta and Ani had taken place. The Czech Interior Minister also made several statements to the press about his belief that the meeting had occurred, and the story was widely reported.

The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11, where he and Shehhi leased an apartment. On April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida. We cannot confirm that he placed those calls. But there are no U.S. records indicating that Atta departed the country during this period. Czech officials have reviewed their flight and border records as well for any indication that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001, including records of anyone crossing the border who even looked Arab. They have also reviewed pictures from the area near the Iraqi embassy and have not discovered photos of anyone who looked like Atta. No evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001.

According to the Czech government, Ani, the Iraqi officer alleged to have met with Atta, was about 70 miles away from Prague on April 8-9 and did not return until the afternoon of the ninth, while the source was firm that the sighting occurred at 11:00 A.M. When questioned about the reported April 2001 meeting, Ani-now in custody-has denied ever meeting or having any contact with Atta. Ani says that shortly after 9/11, he became concerned that press stories about the alleged meeting might hurt his career. Hoping to clear his name, Ani asked his superiors to approach the Czech government about refuting the allegation. He also denies knowing of any other Iraqi official having contact with Atta.

These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001. He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias, but this would be an exception to his practice of using his true name while traveling (as he did in January and would in July when he took his next overseas trip). The FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Atta held any fraudulent passports.

KSM and Binalshibh both deny that an Atta-Ani meeting occurred. There was no reason for such a meeting, especially considering the risk it would pose to the operation. By April 2001, all four pilots had completed most of their training, and the muscle hijackers were about to begin entering the United States.

The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting.70

Do you understand? There is basicaly not the slightest chance Atta was in Prague on April 8th. The Iraqi ambassador is now in US custody, you can bet he got agressively questioned. He denies, like everyone else in custody.

Conclusion: there's still no credible evidence for a "relationship" al-Qaeda-Saddam, other than Saddam and Osama being in a state of cold war. Just lots of grasping at straws.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Oh, please. No relationship? The enemey of my enemy is my friend. You may recall our relationship with Stalin during WWII.

Iraq paid Zawahi to merge his organization with AQ because they just felt like it, right?

Iraq provided terror groups with some forms of logistical, intelligence, transportation, training, weapons, and other support.

Bomb maker, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was also a Baghdad resident. He was one of the conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who had fled there after being detained briefly by the FBI. Recent document finds in Tikrit show that Iraq supplied Yasin with both money and sanctuary. The 1993 WTC attack was masterminded by Yasin's associate Ramzi Yousef, who received financial support from al Qaeda through Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key 9/11 planner. Just a little coincidence.

Abu Zubayr, an officer in Saddam's secret police who was also the ringleader of an al Qaeda cell in Morocco.
Iraq made direct payments to the Philippine-based al Qaeda-affiliated Abu Sayyaf group. Hamsiraji Sali, an Abu Sayyaf leader on the U.S. most-wanted terrorist list, stated that his gang received about one million pesos (around $20,000) each year from Iraq, for chemicals to make bombs. The link was substantiated immediately after a bombing in Zamboanga City in October 2002 (in which three people were killed including an American Green Beret), when Abu Sayyaf leaders called up the deputy secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, Husham Hussain.

Toronto Star reporter Mitch Potter found documents in Baghdad in April, 2003. The documents detail direct links between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime dating back at least to 1998, and mention Osama bin Laden by name. The find supports an October 2001 report by William Safire that noted, among other things, a 1998 meeting in Baghdad between al Qaeda #2 Ayman al Zawahiri and Saddam's vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan. Other reports have alleged bin Laden himself traveled to Iraq around that time, or at least planned to. Former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, now in custody, allegedly met with bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.

According to Czech police, visa records indicate that Atta visited Prague twice in 2000. His first confirmed visit was while he was in transit from Hamburg to Newark, New Jersey, June 2-3, 2000. The German newspaper Das Bild reported on October 25, 2001 that according to unnamed FBI sources, Atta met with Iraqi diplomat Ahmad Samir al-Ani in a cafe in Prague on June 2. Another report has it that Atta did not leave the airport terminal since he lacked a visa. Later that summer Atta flew back to the CR. He stayed one night in the Prague Hilton, and may have spent a brief period of time in the town of Kutna Hora, 35 miles north of Prague, under the name Mohammed Sayed Ahmed. During his second visit, he allegedly met with Ahmed Hedshani, the former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey.

The more controversial part of the story is the alleged meeting between Atta and al-Ani in the Iraqi embassy in Prague in the spring of 2001. Atta was identified based on photographs published after the 9/11 attacks by an informer who was at the embassy at the time and had met Atta, though said he was "not 100 percent sure" it was him. The Czech counterintelligence service (BIS) gives it a 70 percent probability. Al-Ani was expelled from the Czech Republic in April 22, 2001, for "activities which conflicted with his status." He was allegedly plotting an attack on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which was also supporting Radio Free Iraq.

Because the US has no independent evidence that the 2001 meeting occurred, and since an examination of INS records published in May 2002 showed no movements corresponding to the Czech timeline, Justice concluded that the meeting could not have taken place. (The report did however show Atta going to Madrid for a week in January 2001, and to Zurich for twelve days in July 2001.) Yet, the Prague meeting came and went in a day or so. If Atta had traveled under an assumed name, a possibility the Justice Department acknowledged, he could have been there and back before anyone noticed. (Iraqi deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz also denied the meetings took place.)

Oh, and then there's this little tidbit:
Coalition forces have found alive and well key terrorists who enjoyed Hussein's hospitality.

Among them was Abu Abbas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Manhattan retiree who Abbas's men rolled, wheelchair and all, into the Mediterranean.

Khala Khadr al-Salahat, accused of designing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 (259 killed on board, 11 dead on the ground), also lived in Baathist Iraq.

Before fatally shooting himself four times in the head on August 16, 2002, as Baghdad claimed, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal had resided in Iraq since 1999.

As the AP's Sameer N. Yacoub reported on August 21, 2002, the Beirut office of the Abu Nidal Organization said he entered Iraq "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities." Nidal's attacks in 20 countries killed at least 275 people and wounded some 625 others.

Among other atrocities, ANO henchmen bombed a TWA airliner over the Aegean Sea in 1974, killing all 88 people on board.

Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps including a base near Baghdad called Salman Pak.

It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where numerous Iraqi defectors reported that foreign terrorists were instructed how to hijack airliners with utensils.

(The Bush administration should bus a few dozen foreign correspondents and their camera crews from the bar of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel to Salman Pak for a guided tour. Network news footage of that ought to open a few eyes.)

As for Hussein's supposedly imaginary ties to al Qaeda, consider these disturbing facts:

The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell-phone records indicate that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City.

Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40. As Dan Murphy wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last February 26, those phone records bolster Sali's claim in a November 2002 TV interview that the Iraqi diplomat had offered these Muslim extremists Baghdad's help with joint missions.

Journalist Stephen F. Hayes reported in July that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper published by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, ran what it called a "List of Honor."

The paper's November 14, 2002, edition gave the names and titles of 600 leading Iraqis, including this passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan."

That name, Hayes wrote, matches that of Iraq's then-ambassador to Islamabad.

Carter-appointed federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt discovered this document in Baghdad while helping Iraq rebuild its legal system.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad.

He then opened a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.
Along Iraq's border with Syria, U.S. troops captured Farouk Hijazi, Hussein's former ambassador to Turkey and suspected liaison to al Qaeda.

Under interrogation, Hijazi "admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994."

While sifting through the Mukhabarat's bombed ruins last April 26, the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, the London Daily Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore and their translator discovered a memo in the intelligence service's accounting department.

Dated February 19, 1998 and marked "Top Secret and Urgent," it said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The memo's three references to bin Laden were obscured crudely with correction fluid.

Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge Harold Baer ordered Hussein and his ousted regime to pay $104 million in damages to the families of George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas, both killed in the Twin Towers along with 2,790 others. "I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, 'by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda," Baer ruled.

The Abu Nidal Organization, headquartered in Baghdad until 1983, has been responsible for terrorist attacks in 20 countries that killed or injured 900 people, including 12 Americans. Abu Nidal and his organization returned to Baghdad in 1998, where they remained until Nidal's death in August 2002

Oh, and then of course there's this:

Salim--who was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989 and who was for years one of bin Laden's most trusted confidants--had been captured in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States for prosecution related to his role in the grand conspiracy that resulted in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The bombings killed 224 people and injured more than 5,000.

But the proceedings in September had little to do with those attacks. Salim was answering for a simpler crime. On November 1, 2000, he squirted hot sauce in the face of Louis Pepe, a guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. Salim had sharpened one end of a plastic comb into a makeshift dagger that, after stunning Pepe with the fiery liquid, he thrust nearly three inches into the guard's eye socket. Pepe survived, barely, but today lives with severe brain damage and, obviously, without sight in that eye. Prosecutors tried to argue that Salim's attack was part of a larger plot that amounted to an act of terrorism. The judge was dubious. Salim will likely serve between 17 and 21 years in prison for the attack. And he may yet be tried for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings.

So who is Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim? He served al Qaeda in a wide variety of roles. He was a financier. He was a religious leader. He was a technology wizard. Most important, perhaps, was Salim's work as an emissary and a weapons procurer. Those last two responsibilities are the ones that most interest U.S. intelligence officials.

Salim, you see, is also known as Abu Hajer al Iraqi ("the Iraqi"). According to Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, two Clinton administration National Security Council appointees who wrote "The Sacred Age of Terror," Abu Hajer oversaw al Qaeda's efforts to produce and obtain weapons of mass destruction. Not coincidentally, say Bush administration officials familiar with intelligence reporting on Abu Hajer, he was one of the few deputies bin Laden trusted to maintain his relationship with Saddam Hussein throughout much of the 1990s.

The Treasury Department, as it examines al Qaeda's financial network, has come across the name Abu Hajer al Iraqi on numerous occasions. Published reports claim that he shared a bank account in Hamburg, Germany, with a man thought to have provided financing to three of the September 11 hijackers. His name has also been found on documents obtained by U.S. officials investigating Islamic charities and phony businesses believed to be al Qaeda front groups.

Oh, and this little tidbit:

Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

It was so interesting that two months before 9/11, Iraqi newspapers published this:

Less than two months before 9/11/01, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper “Al-Nasiriya” carried a column headlined, “American, 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 US “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 US “will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs” – an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, “New York, New York”.

Oh, and while you're relying on the Senate Intelligence and 911 Commission Reports as the holy Bible, why not mention this:
"I don't think there's any doubt but that there were some contacts between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden's people." (9-11 Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, News Hour with Jim Lehrer, June 16, 2004)’

"We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa'ida discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa'ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad. (CIA Director George Tenet, Letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Graham, October 7, 2002)

Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime... A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994." (9-11 Commission Staff Statement 15, June 16, 2004)

I know it's the NYT and they are wrong a lot, but thought I'd throw it in here; they seem to be another Holy Bible source for the naysayers:

Iraqi intelligence agents contacted Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990s as part of an effort by Baghdad to work with foes of the Saudi ruling family, The New York Times reported on Friday, citing a newly disclosed document.

From the Senate Intelligence Report:
p. 326 to 329 deals specifically with the meetings between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda officials as far back as Sudan up into the late 1990s in Afghanistan and the caveats about taking the claims from governments and exile groups opposed to the Iraqi regime at face value are very much to be noted, a far cry from the whole "Chalabi suckered us all" canard that's been floating around the press. The training aspects of the report, beginning on p. 329, notes that there is indeed evidence that Iraq trained al-Qaeda fighters, and while the sources of the reporting concerning Iraq having provided assistance to Project al-Zabadi (al-Qaeda's WMD program) are indeed of varying credibility (of the 12, 2 reports were based on hearsay, 4 were merely accusations, and but the other 6 reports seem to have held up under scrutiny despite all the caveats), there are more than enough of them to have caused considerable worry within the intelligence community. They also blacked out the section that deals specifically with the al-Shifa plant in Sudan on p. 331.

On the issue of Salman Pak from p. 332-333, there appears to be a good deal of smoke there with respect to reports about al-Qaeda fighters being trained there alongside other Iraqi-sponsored terrorist groups since at least 1999, but the CIA censored the final analysis of what exactly was going on at Salman Pak.

The safe haven stuff from p. 334-338 is also quite juicy. A good chunk of it was censored, but it appears that Saddam Hussein issued a standing offer of safehaven for bin Laden in 1999, possibly in response to bin Laden's attempt to see how open the Iraqi government would to such an offer in the summer of 1998 in case he had to flee Afghanistan in the wake of the embassy bombings.

The Iraqi envoy in Afghanistan in 1999 was of course Farouk Hijazi and it seems that he was not authorized to discuss safe haven (which would tend to contradict some reports claiming that bin Laden turned down his offer of it) but instead turned the discussion back to areas of mutual cooperation. All of the stuff on Ansar al-Islam is censored, though the individual referenced on p. 336 who was identified by Ansar al-Islam detainees captured by the PUK as a Mukhabarat associate is none other than Abu Wael. It also appears, judging from the wording of the CIA report on p. 337, that the Mukhabarat could have sought to oppose the al-Qaeda presence in northern Iraq in some fashion but apparently chose not to.

Oh, and although no one is saying that Iraq had command and control over AQ, I also very much doubt that one could ever demonstrate that the Taliban ever possessed command and control over al-Qaeda and they were almost certainly doing so.

one important element can be found in the middle of p. 339 that is well worth reading, which states that there are provocative elements in the 1993 WTC bombing, the 9/11 attacks, and the Foley assassination which appear to suggest Iraqi involvement in any one of them as well as evidence that runs counter to these beliefs.

And maybe you don't know but Clinton, Gore, Wesley Clark, Dick Clark, and Cohen all linked Saddam and AQ. Of course, it's not popular to discuss such matters now that ya'll are trying to re-write history.

Oh, and while you were mentioning the 911 Commission Report, you forgot to mention this:

Two recent accounts have shed more light on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. A June 25, 2004 New York Times article, "Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says," reported on the contents of a mid-1990s Iraqi intelligence document believed to be authentic. According to the article,

* bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative."

* the Iraqi regime agreed to bin Laden's request to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda.

* bin Laden "requested joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. had a strong troop presence in Saudi Arabia at the time.

* following bin Laden's departure from Sudan, Iraq intelligence began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship."

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. But this post is too long and you are too much of a naysayer to have an open mind.

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