Replies

You have selective reality.
Your Left Wing mantra, no WMD is a bit old and thin.
There were several UN resolutions that Sadam Hussein
broke, along with no fly zone, etc.

July 12, 2005

The Saddam/al Qaeda connection

Readers of this site will be familiar with the work done by Stephen Hayes in bringing to public attention the voluminous circumstantial evidence linking Saddam to al Qaeda, which has gone almost totally unreported in Britain. Now Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn have unearthed some startling new information about this incendiary connection:

‘There could hardly be a clearer case - of the ongoing revelations and the ongoing denial — than in the 13 points below, reproduced verbatim from a “Summary of Evidence” prepared by the U.S. government in November 2004. This unclassified document was released by the Pentagon in late March 2005.

It details the case for designating an Iraqi member of al Qaeda, currently detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an “enemy combatant.”

‘1. From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades.
2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994.
3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban.
4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan.
5. The Taliban issued the detainee a Kalishnikov rifle in November 2000.
6. The detainee worked in a Taliban ammo and arms storage arsenal in Mazar-Es-Sharif organizing weapons and ammunition.
7. The detainee willingly associated with al Qaida members.
8. The detainee was a member of al Qaida.
9. An assistant to Usama Bin Ladin paid the detainee on three separate occasions between 1995 and 1997.
10. The detainee stayed at the al Farouq camp in Darwanta, Afghanistan, where he received 1,000 Rupees to continue his travels.
11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
12. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars.
13. Detainee was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan, in July 2002.

‘Interesting. What’s more interesting: The alleged plot was to have taken place in August 1998, the same month that al Qaeda attacked two U.S. embassies in East Africa. And more interesting still: It was to have taken place in the same month that the Clinton administration publicly accused Iraq of supplying al Qaeda with chemical weapons expertise and material.’

Once again, this latest disclosure has either been ignored by the US media or, where it has been reported, downplayed and all but dismissed.

As Hayes says, it is possible that this account has been exaggerated or is plain wrong. But not to report it, in the circumstances, is an act of censorship to support an assertion – that Saddam had no connection with al Qaeda – that underpins the prevalent media and intellectual hostility towards the war in Iraq and George W Bush and Tony Blair.

It is an assertion that has only been maintained by suppressing evidence which, although far from conclusive, all leads overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. And as Hayes goes on to say, much more in this vein has emerged since the fall of Saddam:

‘We know about this relationship not from Bush administration assertions but from internal Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) documents recovered in Iraq after the war—documents that have been authenticated by a U.S. intelligence community long hostile to the very idea that any such relationship exists.

‘We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden’s request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television.

We know from IIS documents that a “trusted confidante” of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

‘We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members “with open arms” before the war, that they “entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation,” and that the regime “strictly and directly” controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan’s King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi’s group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell.

We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden’s top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.

‘All of this is new—information obtained since the fall of the Hussein regime. And yet critics of the Iraq war and many in the media refuse to see it.’

They are on the wrong side of history – and history will eventually judge them.

Melanie Phillips UK