Saddam had “no operational ties” to AQ: Pentagon

Hot Air ^ | March 11, 2008 | by Ed Morrissey

[jdm]

A new study commissioned by the Pentagon has reviewed over 600,000 documents captured in the invasion of Iraq, and the analysis shows no evidence of operational ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda. It did find operational ties and more between Saddam and other terrorist groups, however, which will likely be lost in an avalanche of I-told-you-sos:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy Newspapers. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime’s archives found no documents indicating a “direct operational link” between Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.

The study found, though, that Saddam Hussein turned Iraq into a state sponsor of terrorism, including for groups with “global” scope.  Saddam had openly bragged about some of his activities.  He made a great show of paying $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, for instance, and at one point held a convention for international terrorists in Baghdad.

McClatchy reporter Warren Strobel also includes a strange passage in this report:

As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al-Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq.

“The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims,” the president said.

That has little to do with pre-war intelligence.  Not too many people dispute that AQ has an active presence in Iraq in the post-invasion period, mostly because AQ keeps reminding people of it.  The argument which the Pentagon report addresses is whether AQ existed in Iraq before we invaded, or whether they entered Iraq as a consequence of the invasion.  Clearly, the Pentagon report believes it to be the latter.

As this report makes clear, though, Saddam sponsored terrorist groups outside of Iraq as well as conducted terror inside Iraq with his own security forces.  He made himself into a malevolent force in the region, and he represented a threat to American and Western interests in the region.  Had we let the sanctions regime collapse — which was what was happening when we invaded — Saddam would have restarted his WMD programs and would have continued in his ambitions to make himself the leader of a unified and hostile Arab state.

[FFranco]

I agree! Everyone knows Saddam was working with all kinds of terrorist groups, including Al-Quaida. And that’s what President Bush, VP Cheney, Powell, Rice and everyone else in the Administration said.

Plus, we all know Saddan either had at the time we invaded, or would have soon, nuclear weapons because he wanted them and was working on them. (I believe Saddam’s nuclear weapons and other WMDs are now in Syria or another location.)

What we have here is a conspiracy by the Left, the MSM, and their fellow-travellers in the Pentagon to put out a “report” designed to make Bush, and by implication McCain, look bad shortly before the election. This goes along with their efforts to talk down the economy just before the election too.

I wonder if most Americans will be able to figure out what’s going on and not allow this Leftist conspiracy to sway their votes. I doubt it.

[piasa]

SEPTEMBER 1999 : (IRAQ : NINTH POPULAR ISLAMIC CONGRESS INCLUDES AYMAN AL ZAWAHIRI) Baghdad, 23 May (AKI) - The number two of the al-Qaeda network, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited Iraq under a false name in September 1999 to take part in the ninth Popular Islamic Congress, former Iraqi premier Iyad Allawi has revealed to pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. In an interview, Allawi made public information discovered by the Iraqi secret service in the archives of the Saddam Hussein regime, which sheds light on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and the Islamic terrorist network. He also said that both al-Zawahiri and Jordanian militant al-Zarqawi probably entered Iraq in the same period.
"Al-Zawahiri was summoned by Izza Ibrahim Al-Douri – then deputy head of the council of the leadership of the revolution - to take part in the congress, along with some 150 other Islamic figures from 50 Muslim countries," Allawi said.
According to Allawi, important information has been gathered regarding the presence of another key terrorist figure operating in Iraq - the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"The Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi entered Iraq secretly in the same period," Allawi affirmed, "and began to form a terrorist cell, even though the Iraqi services do not have precise information on his entry into the country," he said. Allawi's remarks come after statements to al-Hayat by King Abdallah II of Jordan over Saddam's refusal to hand over al-Zarqawi to the authorities in Amman.
On this question Allawi said: ''The words of the Jordanian King are correct and important. We have proof of al-Zawahiri's visit to Iraq, but we do not have the precise date or information on al-Zarqawi's entry, though it is likely that he arrived around the same time."
In Allawi's view, Saddam's government "sponsored" the birth of al-Qaeda in Iraq, coordinating with other terrorist groups, both Arab and Muslim. "The Iraqi secret services had links to these groups through a person called Faruq Hajizi, later named Iraq's ambassador to Turkey and arrested after the fall of Saddam's regime as he tried to re-enter Iraq. Iraqi secret agents helped terrorists enter the country and directed them to the Ansar al-Islam camps in the Halbija area," he said.
The former prime minister claims that Saddam's regime sought to involve even Palestinian Abu Nidal - head of a group once considered the world's most dangerous terrorist organisation - in its terrorist circuit. Abu Nidal's organisation was responsible for terrorist attacks in some 20 countries, killing more than 300 people and wounding hundreds more. He added that Abu Nidal's refusal to cooperate with Islamist groups was the reason for his death in Iraq, in the summer of 2002.
----- (Ham/Aki) 23-May-05 12:08-----IRAQ: FORMER PM (ALLAWI) REVEALS SECRET SERVICE DATA ON BIRTH OF AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ it) | May 23, 2005 | AKI

**************

Well, the Pentagon can stretch it and claim AQ wasn't in Iraq before 9/11 because Zarqawi's group went by its own name. Though Zarqawi and his group had operational ties to al Qaeda before 9/11 in Iraq and shared the same spiritual leaders, trainers, etc, Zarqawi had not yet "formally" sworn the oath of allegiance to bin Laden, and did not do so until after the invasion. I suppose since he forgot to notarize a written copy of his oath and file it down at the county courthouse, some could claim that lack of evidence of a pre-9/11 al Qaeda oath is proof of his innocence, no matter how well-established his relationship to bin Laden and AQ beforehand, and no matter his involvement with the pre-invasion London ricin plot or the even earlier 1999 Millennium Plot, etc.

Zarqawi's one thing but I'm not sure how they can explain away Zawahiri.

The phrase "for all practical purposes" tends to go over the heads of too many people these days.

[piasa]

Note that Patrick Fitzgerald is the guy who nailed Scooter Libby for perjury, so the antiwar crowd should love him:

#111 Patrick Fitzgerald testimony, June 16, 2004

FITZ : ....."We did understand from people, including al-Fadl -- and my recollection is that he would have described this most likely in public at the trial that we had, but I can't tell you that for sure; that was a few years ago -- that at a certain point they decided that they [Iraq and Al Qaeda] wouldn't work against each other and that we believed a fellow in al Qaeda named Mondu Saleem (ph), Abu Harzai (ph) the Iraqi, tried to reach a, sort of, understanding where they wouldn't work against each other. Sort of, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. "
"And that there were indications that within Sudan when al Qaeda was there -- which al Qaeda left in the summer of '96 or spring '96 -- there were efforts to work on joint -- you know, acquiring weapons. "
"Clearly, al Qaeda worked with the Sudan in getting those weapons in the national defense force there and the intelligence service. There were indications that al-Fadl had heard from others that Iran was involved. And they also had heard that Iraq was involved. "
"The clearest account from al-Fadl as a Sudanese was that he had dealt directly with the Sudanese intelligence service, so we had first-hand knowledge of that. "
"We corroborated the relationship with Iran to a lesser extent [than Sudan] but to a solid extent. And then we had information from al-Fadl, who we believe was truthful, learning from others that there were also was efforts to try to work with Iraq. That was the basis for what we put in that indictment. Clearly, we put Sudan in the first order at that time as being the partner of al Qaeda. "
"We understood the relationship with Iran but Iraq, we understood, went from a position where they were working against each other to a standing down against each other. And we understood they were going to explore the possibility of working on weapons together. "
"That's my piece of what I know. I don't represent to know everything else, so I can't tell you, well, what we've learned since then. But there was that relationship that went from opposing each other to not opposing each other to possibly working with each other. "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46525-2004Jun16?language=printer

Who's al-Fadl?

Bin-Laden has made previous attempts to obtain nuclear materials – according to the FBI’s “supergrass” Jamal al-Fadl.  Once a close associate of bin-Laden, al-Fadl made a deal with the FBI that, in return for his life, he would assist them in penetrating bin-Laden’s organisation, Al-Qaeda. He has provided the FBI with hard evidence that he had personally been ordered to offer £1 million for a half-kilo of uranium.  Al-Fadl claims that the material came from a nuclear refining plant outside Pretoria, South Africa.  His claims formed part of an affidavit for the U.S. Justice Department to extradite two bin-Laden suspects from Britain.  ----use the latter that concerns MI5. http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:APNR_aC_LmAC:www.gordonthomas.ie/NUCLEAR.html+%22Serge+Salfati%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 http://www.gordonthomas.ie/NUCLEAR.html

Who's Mondu Saleem?

Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (Aka) Abu Hajer al Iraqi http://www.terrorismcentral.com/Library/Biographies/Bios/Salim/BioSalim.html

1981 to 1983 : (M M SALIM aka ABU HAJER AL-IRAQI IS AN IRAQI ARMY COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER-- See IRAQ, SUDAN, BIF, WMD, IRAQ/ALQAEDA) "Salim was born to Iraqi parents in Sudan. [Gunaratna, "Inside Al Qaeda", says he was born in Iraq.] He later studied electrical engineering in Baghdad and was an Iraqi army communications officer from 1981 to 1983. (p.94) - from "Through Our Enemies' Eyes", by "Anonymous", a retired intelligence officer- from "Through Our Enemies' Eyes", by "Anonymous", a retired intelligence officer...via apokatastasis | 05/04/2004 8:33:12 AM PDT

* Mamdouh Salim : highest ranking member of al Qaeda [a Sudanese of Iraqi descent?] who used the same phone number of Taba Investments that was found among the posessions of Hikmat Shakir the Iraqi who attended the infamous Malaysian terror summit
*******
[Iraqi] Shakir also had an old number for Taba Investments, an al Qaeda front group. It was the number long used by Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim, the highest-ranking Iraqi member of al Qaeda. According to testimony from al Qaeda informants, [Mahmdouh ] Salim maintained a good relationship with Saddam's intelligence service. Despite all of this, the Qatari authorities released Shakir shortly after they arrested him. ------ "Stephen Hayes:See No Evil, Hear No Evil," (What the 9/11 Commission narrative left out: Iraqis) , Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, September 5 / September 12, 2005, Posted on 08/28/2005 1:49:07 PM PDT by RWR8189

...Iraq was, indeed, interested. ABC News has learned that in December [1998?], an Iraqi intelligence chief, named Farouk Hijazi, how Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad. And intelligence sources say they can only speculate on the purpose of an alliance. What could bin Laden offer Saddam Hussein? Only days after he meets Iraqi officials, bin Laden tells ABC News that his network is wide, and there are people prepared to commit terror in his name who he does not even control. ---------- "TARGET AMERICA: THE TERRORIST WAR," Sheila Macvicar: 1999 ABC News(Crime and Justice), Radio America ^ | January 14, 1999 | ABC News

[Paige]

No one will understand any of this as long as they listen to thirty-second sound bytes from the lamestream news media. We are now a nation of well conditioned people(mind) who are walking around like zombies.

The electorate doesn't participate because, let's face it, the conditioning has taken place and asylum is now being controlled by the patients.

[april15Bendovr]

Here are the FReeper videos we posted pointing out evidence of links between Saddam including WMD, Terrorist Training Camps along with incompetent journalism and fraud committed by the media and Democrats to cover this evidence.

People need to watch these before believing propoganda the left wants to distribute and disseminate about no links between Saddam, terrorism and Al Qaeda.

The behavior of the left has been treasonous and if they are upset about hearing it from me than I’m begging them to sue me for slander.

Salman Pak: Saddam’s Al Qaeda Connection (more details)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cSSKsUOVjE

The Failure of The 911 Commission and the disinformation from Scott Ritter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-Un1otZ37Y

Saddam’s WMD based on captured Iraqi documents

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCdJ5HoxILQ

al Qaeda video documents Hussein era training in Northern Iraq

http://regimeofterror.com/archives/2007/07/al_qaeda_video_documents_husse_1/

[prophetic]

Saddam had “no operational ties” to AQ: Pentagon

Saddam had “no operational ties” remaining to AQ: Pentagon

There - fixed :-)