Part of the problem with the media's ignoring of the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection via Ansar Al Islam is that they sloppily report Ansar as having been a "Kurdish resistance group in territory beyond Saddam's control." That is baloney.
Ansar was co-headed by one of Saddam's top intelligence generals, a man whose name now escapes me, and the group was used regularly to attack anti-Saddam Kurdish forces. It is highly doubtful that Ansar consisted of Kurds at all. It is likely that they were mostly the foreign fighters who escaped from Afghanistan that you make reference to using the cover of being some sort of Kurdish resistance group to shield themselves from US scrutiny. They were also likely the vanguard force of the Al Qaeda terrorist movement in Iraq headed by Zarqawi.
But this doesn't fit with the pre-conceived story line developed by the MSM on Ansar Al Islam, the same kind of story-line thinking Hayes makes reference to in his piece. The MSM just took in the bull that Ansar Al Islam was an anti-Saddam Kurdish resistance force, despite being headed up by one of Saddam's intelligence generals, and never again bothered to examine what Ansar really was all about. Saddam likely sent his general to keep an eye on Zarqawi who was the co-head of the group and to help direct Ansar's activities.
And if Ansar which was co-lead by Al Zarqawi was an anti-Saddam resistance force, why was he treated in an elite Baghdad hospital reserved for Baathist party officials and then allowed to freely return to Ansar's camps afterwards? Saddam was not known to be this magnanimous to his enemies.
Exactly! In fact, I just got done posting this snip from an article Paul Wolfowitz wrote in 1996 detailing this failure...and its implications on the problem we face today:
"...Perhaps most damaging was the pretense that nothing serious needed to be done to bring the feuding Kurdish factions together. In 1992 Secretary of State James Baker brought the Kurdish factions together as part of an Arab-Kurdish coalition, a coalition that was intact when its representatives met the following year with Vice President Al Gore and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who assured them that the U.S. would protect Iraq's Shiites and Kurds and would make no deals with Saddam.
Yet in 1995, when the Kurdish factions began to show serious divisions, the administration failed to lead. According to press reports, the administration even disowned promises of military support for a successful operation against Iraqi forces (this was further confirmed by the CIA). The most serious mistake was the failure to address the root of the conflict among the factions, their desperate need for resources. The administration never moved to provide an exception from the U.N. sanctions--which were supposed to be aimed at Saddam--for the liberated north of Iraq, which was being strangled far more seriously.
Desperate Kurdish factions began fighting over the limited resources available. And when the democratic Iraqi opposition negotiated a peace agreement between the two main Kurdish factions, the administration couldn't even come up with $4 million for a monitoring force to supervise the accord. Little wonder the Kurdish factions began to look elsewhere for support..."
What's important to note because of Clinton's lack of support, is that some of these Kurdish factions DID look for support from other sources. One of those sources just happened to be Zarqawi and AQ, who began funding a small group of fighters know as Jund al-Islam...who later turned into Ansar al-Islam. The objectives of this group quickly turned from one of supporting an independent Kurdish state to one of becoming an affiliate of Al Qaeda...as Afghan fighters soon began infiltrating the region.
Even Human Rights Watch noted that other Kurds were reporting the influx of foreign fighters, who were raping and razing villages, and assassinating political opponents.
While liberals have often tried to distance Saddam from the Kurds and problems in N. Iraq, he was smack-dab in the middle of it. As one Kurdish commander (Qada) reported, Ansar al-Islam has ties to agents of Saddam Hussein operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and [Ansar] al-Islam."
While Saddam may not have wanted an independent Kurdish state within Iraq, these other Arabs and Kurds had different objectives that interested Saddam. Not only were they doing his bidding by fighting the real Kurdish seperatists, they were a perfect cover for him to continue his war against America. Just the fact that Saddam would've allowed Zarqawi to be treated in a Baghdad hospital...and than released unharmed, to return to Ansar, kind of puts this claim to rest.
And Ansar later became ISIS.