Cheney: Iraq Documents Show Saddam-Osama Tie

NewsMax.com ^ | Carl Limbacher

[Carl/NewsMax]

Vice President Dick Cheney predicted Wednesday that thousands of boxes of documents captured from Saddam's Hussein's former regime will show that the Iraqi dictator had a much closer relationship with Osama bin Laden than was previously known.

"I think what we'll find as we get a chance to go through and analyze these documents -- there's some 50,000 boxes of them that are now being made available here over the next few months -- that we'll see a pretty complete picture that Saddam Hussein did, in fact, deal with some pretty nefarious characters out there," Cheney told Fox News Radio's Tony Snow.

Asked if he was referring to Osama bin Laden, Cheney replied:

"Yes, we don't know the full scale of it there yet, and I don't want to make a hard and fast prediction here. But there is reporting, obviously, that we've seen over the years that there was some kind of a relationship there between the Iraqis and Osama bin Laden."

An Iraqi intelligence document ordered released by the White House two weeks ago detailed a Feb. 1995 meeting between bin Laden and an Iraqi intelligence official that was personally approved by Saddam, where bin Laden requested help in conducting "joint operations" against U.S. forces then stationed in Saudi Arabia.

The document went on to note that Saddam agreed to help bin Laden with propaganda broadcasts into Saudi Arabia and that "the development of the relationship and cooperation between the two parties [would] be left according to what's open based on dialogue and agreement on other ways of cooperation."

The vice president stressed that nothing in the new documents uncovered so far links Saddam to the 9/11 attacks. But he added: "That's a separate proposition from the question of whether or not there was some kind of a relationship between the Iraqi government, Iraqi intelligence services and the al Qaida organization."

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Page 128. 9/11 Commission Report. What information did Clarke have exactly!

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http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/fullreport.pdf

Though intelligence gave no clear indication of what might be afoot, some intelligence reports mentioned chemical weapons, pointing toward work at a camp in southern Afghanistan called Derunta.On November 4, 1998, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed its indictment of Bin Ladin, charging him with conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations. The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hezbollah.The original sealed indictment had added that al Qaeda had “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.”109 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 a direct result of the Iraq–Al Qida agreement.” Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the “exact formula used by Iraq.”110This language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq had been dropped, however, when a superseding indictment was filed in November 1998.