Posted on 04/29/2003 10:02:04 AM PDT by knighthawk
Well surprise, surprise. Documents found in the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service, show that Saddam Hussein's people were talking to Osama bin Laden's people, according to a story in the Toronto Star.
Actually, make that "STAR FINDS DOCUMENTS LINKING BIN LADEN, IRAQ" -- at the Toronto Star, the Toronto Star is always the story. The minor detail that a reporter for the Daily Telegraph was also present when the documents were found, or that the crucial reference to bin Laden was spotted by their interpreter, played rather below the fold.
Still, it is fortuitous that the Star, of all people, should have stumbled upon evidence of Saddam's links to bin Laden, since for the past year-and-a-half the Star, like most of the media, has been scoffing at the notion there was any such link. Had another paper discovered the incriminating documents, at least without the Star also being present, the paper's editors might have been inclined to bury the story as just another one of those bits of "inconclusive" evidence. But Star Finds Documents was apparently too good to resist.
The documents show that an emissary from bin Laden was secretly invited to Baghdad in March of 1998, to discuss "the future of our relationship" -- based, according to the Telegraph, "on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia" -- and to lay the groundwork for a later visit by bin Laden himself. This was just months before the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that were to establish bin Laden as America's public enemy number one. Imagine that: Saddam, the avowed secularist, in bed with the world's leading Islamic terrorist, notwithstanding the sage advice from a thousand Western experts that this could never happen. Apparently, neither man reads the Star.
But this is hardly the first piece of evidence linking the Iraqi regime to al-Qaeda, among the many other terrorist organizations on Saddam's client list. Just the day before, American forces had captured Farouk Hijazi, the Mukhabarat's former operations director. Aside from masterminding the famous 1993 assassination plot against George Bush Sr., Hijazi is believed by U.S. intelligence to have met with bin Laden in Kandahar, the southeastern region of Afghanistan, in December of 1998.
Nor is Hijazi the only name of note linking Saddam to bin Laden. Remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? He's the al-Qaeda operative who, according to Colin Powell's testimony before the UN Security Council, headed a cell of some two dozen terrorists in Baghdad, and set up a chemical weapons facility at a camp run by an affiliated outfit. Perhaps Mr. Powell will get a better hearing now than he did then.
Or what about Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani? He was the Iraqi spymaster in Prague who allegedly met with Mohammed Atta, the lead plotter behind the Sept. 11 attacks, in April of 2001. The allegation had supposedly been discredited, based largely on CIA denials. But the Czechs, who ought to know, have never wavered in their insistence that indeed the two men did meet. As the Observer newspaper reported recently, "in a signed statement dated 24 February, 2003, Hynek Kmonicek, the Czech ambassador to the UN, says his government 'can confirm that during the stay of Mohamed Atta ... there was contact with Mr. al-Ani, who was on 22 April, 2001, expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities not compatible with his diplomatic status [the usual euphemism for spying].' "
Then there's Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi embassy employee who, according to Newsweek, attended the January, 2000, al-Qaeda "summit" in Malaysia, along with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. There's Yusuf Galan, now awaiting trial in Madrid on charges of having helped to plan the Sept. 11 attacks. Galan's links to bin Laden are not in doubt: He was photographed with him at an al-Qaeda training camp. But Spanish investigators also have documents showing he was invited to a party by the Iraqi ambassador there, under his al-Qaeda code name.
There's Mamdouh Salim, also known as Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, who is awaiting trial in New York on charges related to the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. According to former U.S. intelligence officials, Salim was bin Laden's chief procurer of weapons of mass destruction, and served as a liaison to Iraqi intelligence.
And there's Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi, an Iraqi-born al-Qaeda operative, dispatched to Iraq on several occasions in the late 1990s, Jeffrey Goldberg writes in The New Yorker, for help in acquiring poison gases. Could he have been the unnamed envoy in the Telegraph/Star documents?
All told, David Rose reports in Vanity Fair, the CIA has more than 100 separate reports of Iraq-al-Qaeda co-operation, dating back more than a decade. Perhaps these were not enough to persuade the doubters until now. But as the documents start to surface in Iraq, and as various Iraqi and al-Qaeda officials now in captivity start to talk, how long until "there is no link between Saddam and bin Laden" takes its place alongside "the Arab street will rise" and "the Iraqi people do not want to be liberated" on the ash heap of conventional wisdom?
IRAQcornucopia
Very nice summary of what we have found regarding links to Saddam and bin Laden.
The important thing to note here is that Israel is not included in this list. Saudi Arabia is. So much for American support of Israel causing bin Laden's hostility.
Sounds to me like another tie between the success of Al Queda and Klinton...
Great find, knighthawk!
BTTT!
We talked with Iraq's people since the creation of Al Qaeda?
When did we talk to Al Qaeda and who did we talk to?
Also try the keyword IRAQ .
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