Posted on 07/12/2003 2:17:32 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:15:05 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
July 12, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - A federal judge helping to rebuild Iraq's judicial system says he's come up with an intriguing document linking Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden.
Federal appellate Judge Gilbert Merritt, who is currently in Iraq, said an Iraqi lawyer brought him documents that included the name of an Iraqi officer in that country's embassy in Pakistan who was described as "responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The fact that he's a Democrat and would still say this means the evidence must be pretty damn strong in his mind.
The judge is on 90-day assignment in Iraq and his time is about up, so he has to come up with something to say.
Local Judge Chosen to Help Rebuild Iraqi Justice SystemA judge from Cincinnati is one of 13 legal experts chosen by the Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system.
Judge Gilbert Merritt is a senior judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Merritt will go to Fort Bliss, Texas, Sunday for orientation before flying to Baghdad for the 90 day assignment.
It'll be interesting to see how the dems spin this one. Any guesses?
[snip]
The story Judge Merritt relates is similar to an account reported in The Weekly Standard last May. Splashed across the front page of the November 16, 2002, edition of Uday Hussein's Babil newspaper were two "honor" lists, one of which included Aswod (spelled "Aswad") and identified him as the "official in charge of regime's contacts with Osama bin Laden's group and currently the regime's representative in Pakistan."
I stumbled upon this passage doing research for another piece. So I brought the article to the attention of administration officials, who hadn't yet seen it, and asked for comment. Intelligence analysts were perplexed, particularly because of a passage in the text preceding the list. It read: "We publish this list of great men for the sons of our great people to see." And below that: "This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them. A list of the leaders of Saddam's regime, as well as their present and previous posts."
The second description was clearly hostile in tone--"henchmen of the regime" and "woe unto them." Analysts weren't sure what to make of the introduction or the list, but suggested Uday Hussein may have simply republished a list of "henchmen" distributed by an Iraqi opposition group without realizing he was publicly linking his father to Osama bin Laden.
That still seems like the most plausible explanation to me. (Although Judge Merritt's report that the front page of the four-page newspaper carried side-by-side photographs of bin Laden and Saddam is interesting.) Still, some intelligence officials believe that Aswad--who publicly raised doubts after September 11 about whether Osama bin Laden is a terrorist--was an important link between Iraq and al Qaeda
. If the newspaper reports are interesting but inconclusive, two other recent reports are more compelling. Jessica Stern, a Harvard professor and Clinton administration national security official, discusses the links in a fascinating and sober analysis of the Al Qaeda threat in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.
Under the subheading, "Friends of Convenience," she writes:
Meanwhile, the Bush administration's claims that al Qaeda was cooperating with the "infidel" (read: secular) Saddam Hussein while he was still in office are now also gaining support, and from a surprising source. Hamid Mir, bin Laden's "official biographer" and an analyst for al Jazeera, spent two weeks filming in Iraq during the war. Unlike most reporters, Mir wandered the country freely and was not embedded with U.S. troops. He reports that he has "personal knowledge" that one of Saddam's intelligence operatives, Farooq Hijazi, tried to contact bin Laden in Afghanistan as early as 1998. At that time, bin Laden was publicly still quite critical of the Iraqi leader, but he had become far more circumspect by November 2001, when Mir interviewed him for the third time.
Hijazi has acknowledged meeting with al Qaeda representatives, perhaps with bin Laden himself, even before the outreach in 1998. According to news reports and interviews with intelligence officials, Hijazi met with al Qaeda leaders in Sudan in 1994.
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the congressional commission investigating the September 11 attacks, added to the intrigue this week when he flatly declared, "there is evidence" of Iraq-al Qaeda links. Lehman has access to classified intelligence as a member of the commission, intelligence that has convinced him the links may have been even greater than the public pronouncements of the Bush administration might suggest. "There is no doubt in my mind that [Iraq] trained them in how to prepare and deliver anthrax and to use terror weapons."
Yes. See my post #18.
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