“Iraqi Kurdish media are reporting that the Iranian military is massing at the main border crossing into northern Iraq, possibly for an incursion against PEJAK. Clashes between PEJAK and the Iranians have been increasing steadily, and Iraqi Kurdish officials say that about 40 Iranian soldiers were killed on Saturday. Whether or not the Iranians attack, the timing of the buildup is ominous. . .”
9/11 was designed to draw us completely into Afghanistan leaving other targets more vulnerable.
The next 9/11 will be designed to draw us into Pakistan leaving other targets more vulnerable.
State sponsors of terror use non-state terrorists like al Qaeda as proxies/subcontractors.
” . . .The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI’s Kurdish network in Iran planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target. “A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki’ and will ‘shake the Roman throne’. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.” . . .”
Timing is everything.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=3378
(excerpt)
Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:
24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting indicates Shakir’s travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network of terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur airport—a job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee.
One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole.
25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the CIA, “fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement.”
26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was “encouraged” after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training.
The analysis of this report follows.
CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh’s timeline is consistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and “poisons.”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/hammurabi.htm
(excerpt)
. . . On 12 October 2000 the Republican Guard’s Hammurabi Division began moving westward from its base in Baghdad. The movements was in the general direction of Jordan, but that there was no indication that it was anything other than maneuvers or a public flexing of Iraqi military muscle. At the time, the Hammurabi Division was said to be composed of about 15,000 troops.
As of late October 2000 Iraq had between four and five armored divisions near Jordan. One of these was also situated within 100 kilometers of the Syrian border. The main purpose of the deployment was a “symbolic” show of support for the Palestinians. The moves were viewed as Iraq’s way of showing that it is doing more than other Arab states that are “just talking” about solidarity with the Palestinians. . .
In an early November 2000 interview, Condoleezza Rice [the top foreign affairs advisor to Governor George W. Bush] complained “We right now have troops peacekeeping in the Balkans that if the Hammurabi division of Saddam Hussein were actually to decide to cross into Jordan, as opposed to just be at the border, and we had to reinforce our own troops, we have troops in the Balkans who are out of commission, and we could not use them because they are not combat-ready.” . . .
In December 2000 it was reported that Iraq had begun to form a special corps called “Al-Maqdis,” to be stationed near the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Reportedly, the new corps would consist of elements from the 2nd mechanized infantry division, in addition to two divisions from “Saddam Fedayeen,” and a brigade from the Republican Guard’s Hammurabi Division. According to other reports, in December 2000 Saddam Hussein’s youngest son, Qusay, was said to have visited Syria to discuss contingency plans for Syrian-Iraqi military cooperation in the event of an Israeli attack. Qusay reportedly agreed to establish a joint command and control center and place two Iraqi armored divisions (the 10th Armored Division and an unspecified Republican Guard division) on a state of heightened readiness for deployment to Syria.
In August 2001 the Jerusalem-based Israeli Web site DEBKA.com published an unconfirmed report that over 1,000 Iraqi forces had infiltrated Jordan since 10 July 2001, with ten times that number poised across the border in western Iraq in preparation for further incursions. The Iraqi troops supposedly included the Republican Guard’s Hammurabi Division and four mechanized infantry brigades.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110003069
(excerpt)
” . . . More recently, and eerily, a July 21, 2001, commentary in the Iraqi publication Al-Nasiriya praised bin Laden: “In this man’s heart you’ll find an insistence, a strange determination that he will reach one day the tunnels of the White House and will bomb it with everything that is in it.”
The article recounts bin Laden’s attacks on U.S. targets and U.S. efforts “to pressure the Taliban movement so that it would hand them bin Laden, while he continues to smile and still thinks seriously, 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 commentary is ominously prescient, especially since it could never have appeared without official sanction. “Bin Laden is a healthy phenomenon in the Arab spirit,” it continues, speaking about his goal to “drive off the Marines” from Arabia. Most eerily of all, the writer adds that those Marines “will be going away because the revolutionary bin Laden is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting.
That the man . . . will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs.” Is that a reference to Sinatra’s “New York, New York”? Did Saddam know what would happen two months later?”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/10/11/world/main314368.shtml
U.S. To Iraq: Don’t Get Any Ideas
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 11, 2001 (excerpted)
(AP) Iraq says it has been warned by the United States to expect a “crushing” reply if it tries to exploit any instability following the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
Iraq responded it was not afraid of the United States, according to a statement on the exchange issued Thursday by the Information Ministry.
The ministry said the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, John Negroponte, contacted Iraq’s U.N. envoy Sunday, the day the United States began its retaliatory bombing of Afghanistan. Negroponte delivered “the following message orally without demanding an answer,” the ministry said.
The message, according to Iraq, concerned exploiting turbulence following U.S. strikes on Afghanistan. Afghanistan was targeted because it is the haven of Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks.
“If you use force against your neighbors or Israel or the Kurdish side or any other part of the Iraqi people, then we will reply very strongly to defeat you,” Negroponte was quoted as telling Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed al-Douri.
Negroponte was quoted as saying the U.S. “reply will be crushing” should Iraq “use weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or our forces or even our friends and allies.” . . .
Negroponte has refused comment on the exchange first reported earlier this week by diplomats at the United Nations. The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Negroponte came to Iraq’s U.N. Mission after the U.S. air strikes began on Sunday to read a letter warning the Iraqi government not to use the current situation to take any action either against its own minorities or its neighbors. . .
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1687360.ece
From The Sunday Times
April 22, 2007
Al-Qaeda ‘planning big British attack’
Dipesh Gadher (excerpted)
AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.
Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West. . .
The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq. . .
The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI’s Kurdish network in Iran planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target.
“A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki’ and will ‘shake the Roman throne’. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.” . . .
Thanks for that compilation callmejoe.