Posted on 04/26/2003 4:20:20 PM PDT by MadIvan
The revelation that Saddam Hussein's intelligence chiefs were seeking to establish links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda network is the first concrete proof that the dictator was colluding with the world's most ruthless terrorist operation.
The documents discovered yesterday by The Telegraph in the former headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, will also reopen the debate about whether Saddam was directly involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
The issue of Saddam's involvement has been a long-standing source of contention between London and Washington. In the days immediately following the attacks, President George W Bush confided to colleagues that he believed that Saddam was directly involved in the attacks. "He probably was behind this in the end," he said.
In his State of Union speech in January, Mr Bush made the case for confronting Iraq, saying: "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qa'eda."
This belief has been the driving force behind Washington's determination to seek "regime change" in Baghdad, particularly after Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, indicated in February that he had received intelligence reports that al-Qa'eda operatives had approached Iraq about co-operating on chemical and biological weapons.
Washington's insistence that Saddam had links with bin Laden was not reciprocated in London, where Tony Blair, acting on the advice he received from British intelligence, was more circumspect about the links.
During his appearance before a Commons select committee in January, Mr Blair said that while "there is some intelligence about loose links between al-Qa'eda and various people in Iraq", he was unaware of any evidence linking Saddam to September 11.
Until now, most of the evidence presented by Washington to prove the link between Saddam and al-Qa'eda has been inconclusive. In the weeks immediately after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration was keen to draw attention to a report issued by the Czech Republic's interior ministry claiming that Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker, had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague earlier that year. The report later turned out to be false.
Washington was similarly frustrated earlier this year when it claimed that an al-Qa'eda cell called al-Ansar al-Islam was operating in Iraq. It later transpired that the group was active in a region beyond Saddam's control.
The new documentation uncovered by The Telegraph, however, is the first concrete evidence to emerge to back up claims made by Mr Powell during his presentation to the United Nations Security Council. He said Iraqi intelligence had funded a number of terrorist training camps in Sudan in the 1990s which were used by al-Qa'eda.
During his presentation, Mr Powell said that al-Qa'eda had been working with Baghdad since the early 1990s after reaching an understanding that bin Laden would stop targeting Saddam's regime. "Ties were forged by secret, high-level intelligence contacts," he said.
"We know members of both organisations have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996 . . . bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and later met with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service."
US officials also claimed that Saddam was particularly impressed by al-Qa'eda's 1998 terrorist attacks against the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and sent Iraqi intelligence officers to help train al-Qa'eda fighters in Afghanistan after bin Laden was forced to move his base there from Sudan.
The documents also give the lie to those who said that al-Qa'eda, the Islamic zealots, would have nothing to do with the brutally secular regime of Saddam. It appears that their shared hatreds - of America, of Saudi Arabia, of the West - outweighed such considerations.
"This discovery backs up everything we have heard about Baghdad's dealings with bin Laden," a Western intelligence official said last night. "It shows that Iraqi intelligence was desperate to form an alliance with al-Qa'eda. And if Saddam was working with bin Laden from the mid-1990s, that raises the question of whether he was involved in the 9/11 attacks."
Saddam himself always rigorously denied having any links with al-Qa'eda. During an interview with Tony Benn, the Left-wing former MP, in early January, Saddam said: "We have no relationship with al-Qa'eda." He added: "If we had a relationship with al-Qaeda and we believed in that relationship, we would not be ashamed to admit it."
No, what I was recalling were several articles posted here at that time, discussing families who had had members murdered & their identities stolen by "men of middle-eastern origin."
No saved links, here's what a search found:
HOW TERRORISTS HAVE INFILTRATED AMERICA
... to Hamas in the Middle East, reconfiguring passports to enable ... bombs and other explosives for use in the Middle East. ... supporting terrorist activities in the Middle East and elsewhere. ...
So you are admitting that he had some, as he can't destroy what he didn't have.
Which is good, be cause we know for a fact that he had the stuff, given that he's actually used it on several occasions, to wipe out not just the oft cited Halabja, but an entire series of small towns and villages numbering over a hundred.
Not to mention the stuff UNSCOM found and disposed of themselves.
Or the stuff which was listed in his own records, only some of which he can account for.
The problem was, it wasn't the job of UNSCOM or the US or UK to account for these items. It was Iraq's job to account for what they themselves claimed to have had, and then it was Iraq's job to account for the disposal of these items, in front of UNSCOM teams. It was all part of their own agreement in exchange for which they were granted a cease fire.
The fact is, they had no right to that cease fire from the very beginning as they had never- not even once- abided by the terms. They were in violation fromt he start. It was their job to work their way out of violation and they never did. So they were not entitled to probation.
There was an interesting report by a top Iraqi biotech/chem weapons scientist that actually stated that.
Sure there was... and you don't know his name and can't provide the quote, or you would have done so. Maybe his name was Baghdad Bob? Or maybe he's the very scientist who's been spoken of last night who was forced to lie to the UN in order not to displease Iraq's leadership and so to save his and his family's skins. Which is no suprise- a mass murdering dictator does have a way of intimidating his people...
The report may have been flim flam or it may have been substantive -- I don't know.
If it was the guy the newsies are talking about, apparently it was flim flam... if it wasn't him it might have been a figment of your imagination. If you had seen this article it should be found on the many cached pages on Google or on some of the wayback archived sites, if not on this site too. (Google holds things for quite a long while.) If it was ever a news article, it's bound to be out there.
Anyway, the report was immediatley spiked and has been pulled from the web without a trace.
I don't think so. But it makes for a convenient claim.
As alien as it is to many, Iraq just may not have had the weapons that we claimed they did.
You mean, "Iraq just may not have had the weapons the IRAQI government claimed it did." Blix's job was to take the very report Iraq turned over to the UN and VERIFY it. His job wasn't to verify any US claims- only Iraq's. That's what's so funny about apologists for Iraq like yourself- Iraq should be able to easily provide verification for the written report it supplied the UN, either by accounting for unused materials by simply showing balanced inventories from the point of receipt to the point of distribution, sotrage and use, or by inviting the inspectors to come and count the stocks and verify that Iraq had the number of cartons or barrels it claimed and to verify that the contents were what Iraq claimed them to be.
That's all. Iraq didn't have to account for what the US said it had... only for what Iraq's own books said Iraq had.
If Iraq had purchased 15 rocket engines, it had to either present fifteen rocket engines to inspectors, or show them enough dissassembled & destroyed parts to account for 15 rocket engines, or account for any missing ones by showing records of launches and test frings or wartime use.
If Iraq puchased x tons of Aerosil, it had to show an accounting for how that Aerosil was used by showing which companies recieved certain quantities and for what purpose, and then the inspectors would go to those places and check the books to make sure those companies received what the freight bills said they did, and then the companies books had to show that the output of their facilities reasonably matched the amount of raw materials the company claimed it imported. A certain amount of error is allotted, but Iraq couldn't, in many cases, even do what any other country could do, becuase they had so many black programs sucking off dual use goods that their accounting books looked like the multiple sets of logbooks truckers keep to avoid getting nabbed at the scales on their hours.
One of the other stipulations on the cease fire was to cooperate- that means when inspectors want to open a door, it gets opened. When they ask to speak with someone, that person is expected to be available immediately. When they ask to lok at a site where weapons are stored, it is supposed to be in a weapons facility, not under a chicken coop or hidden under other civilian areas. When inspectors ask to see where weapons were destroyed, they expect to see evidence weapons were destroyed in the quantities that are claimed; in otrher words, there should be enough concentrations and residues to account for chem weapons destroyed, and enough shell casings, enough unique parts about, accurate records and corroborating witnesses to say that the disposal was in good faith. No waiting, no stalling, and no mortar attacks on inspectors, no assassinations of witnesses, not imprisonements, etc., allowed. Yet we saw all of that, plus bribery and blackmail.
Iraq was in a state of perpetual breach of contract. It's not and never was just a matter of finding weapons already made, but of verifying that the means of manufacture had also been disposed of or rendered useless. That means incubators for bioweapons must be accounted for and destroyed along with any tools or instruments involved int heir manufacture and the facilities have to be monitored; bioweapons scientists have to have testimony which reflects that and which approximates the testimony of others involved. Iraq instead stalled.
It admitted things and then denied them later. Or it didn't admit things, and these things were discovered upon oppening up Iraq's own books.
That's all the UN had to do- simply verigfy the information provided by Iraq itself, and Iraq should have eagerly helped them do this since it would be EASY and it would mean that Iraq could then be left alone.
It was only difficult because Iraq was dishonest from the beginning, its books were faked, and it had no intention of cooperating since it believed its propaganda was was going to save the day for Uday and friends.
Iraq, instead of taking the easy route and trying a little thing like honesty...
...Instead opted for establishing front companies worldwide to get around restrictions on missile and aircraft parts, tools and precursors, all while singing softly to the appeasniks and bleeding hearts about how sanctions - effectively a bleeding heart solution to prevent a decisive military conclusion in the first place back in 91 - were hurting the children.
You don't need front companies and smugglers to import bananas.
My point is and remains that this war was "sold" with all the PR hype and misinformation that the administration could come up with. Just wars don't need to be sold and hyped. The public would intuitively know it without all the fabricated "intelligence" reports and all the other nonsense that went into building support that went into this "mission".
I was all for going after the terrorists in Afganistan as, to me at least, the case for doing so was perfectly clear. Not so with Iraq. All the vague "terrorist links" and "secret chem labs" and "mystery ships" and "nuke development" information put out by the administration never did have an honest ring to it. Then there was all the diplomatic fumbling and bumbling and the "buying" of "willing" friends like Turkey. GW went from calling for regeme change, to disarming, to terrorist threat to liberation of the people, and then back again hoping that one of the excuses would stick with the public. I thought that alone was very confusing and smelled of dishonestly about the purposes for war and the real motivation for putting our sons and daughters in harms way. The administration never did convince me.
Maybe part of my problem with all this is that I took GW at his word about not getting into "nation building" and I have a real problem with the Dept. of Homeland Security and the Patriot Acts which naturally rub my convervative nature the wrong way. I trusted GW when I voted for him and now I don't. It ought to be interesting to see how this all works out over the coming weeks and months.
Richard W.
I was just guessing. They could already be moving to Plan C or D. So far they have reported everything from fertilizer and insecticide to two empty cans of stray starch as a new WMD find. Maybe they need to send over Colin Powell with his intelligence reports so he can point them out as he did for the UN. I do think that time is already up now though at least for keeping the dog and pony show going. Whatever they find now will be effectively discounted as plants by the administration to save whatever face they have left.
Richard W.
We have the common sense. You have chosen to believe Iraqi propaganda.
Heard about the journalists and politicians (so far documented George Galloway and Jim McDermott, for example) paid off handsomely by Iraq to spread their lies? Aren't you a teeny bit sick to your stomach at swallowing all it?
I consulted my facsimile of the 1865 edition (Richard Clay, London) - Chapter II, The Pool of Tears:
"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); "now I'm opening out lie the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!"
This matches the text in Gardner's Annotated Alice as well. (p. 35).
ALWAYS verify your references, and NEVER use secondary sources. While it has nothing to do with your argument here, it weakens your position.
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