Yes, really;
Iraq and al Qaeda
| 4/15/03 | WSJ
Wall Street Journal BAGHDAD AFTER SADDAM REVIEW & OUTLOOK Iraq and al Qaeda Terrorists now have fewer places to hide. Monday, April 14, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
"Among the illusions now being exposed in Iraq is the assertion that toppling Saddam Hussein would "disrupt" the war on al Qaeda and global terror. With the war less than a month old, we've learned that Iraq and terrorism have the same address.".......
"Start at the various terrorist-training camps that coalition forces have been locating. The camps are already yielding a trove of information on the links between Saddam Hussein's regime and external terrorist organizations."........
"In the north, a large compound run by Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) has been overrun. Among the document cache is a list of followers, including about 150 foreigners--Turks, Pakistanis, Algerians, Iranians, Yemenis and Palestinians. Another find produced a phone directory of militants in the U.S. and Europe. A sweep of Ansar's "poisons factory" uncovered traces of what is thought to be the same batch of deadly ricin that surfaced in London this past January.".............
UK Newspaper Says Documents Link Bin Laden to Iraq
Sat April 26, 2003 05:13 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - "Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper said it had discovered documents showing Iraqi intelligence hosted an envoy from Osama bin Laden in 1998 and sought to meet the alleged September 11 mastermind in person."
"The finding, if verified, would appear to support Washington's assertion of links between ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and bin Laden, one of the justifications for the U.S.-led war in Iraq."
"The paper said the documents, which its correspondent found in the wrecked headquarters of the Iraqi Mukhabarat intelligence service, showed Iraq brought a bin Laden aide to Baghdad in early 1998 from his former base in Sudan to arrange closer ties."............
Growing Evidence of a Saddam - al-Qaeda Link
By Stephen F. Hayes
The Weekly Standard | July 15, 2003
"The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ''responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.".....
"..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."
To me, the fact that we uncovered parts of a banned nuclear weapons program buried in a scientists rose garden is ALL the justification we need for the war. But why has the Bushies not even published a picture of the find with cameras taking pictures and video tape of the digging up of this banned component of a WMD program?!!
You can say that they are stupid not to but I think they are not hyping that find because they went to war based on the notion that Saddam had nuclear weapons about to be ready to go into production.
In reality what Saddam looks like he was hidding was not stockpiles of WMD ready to use but the programs and components to re-start up production once the world's gaze was averted. But the Bushies sold the war on the basis of existing stockpiles of WMD not on the continued existance of a WMD production program which the evidence now indicates was all that Saddam had nad was what he was protecting.
If the WH sold the war just on non-compliance and told us flat out we don't think they have WMD stockpiles (but with a better safe than sorry provision) I think that would have been more--honest---and would not have gotten us into the PR problems the WH is having now with this issue.
I hope what I said sounds resonable and as you can see is more reasoned than what you would think I was thinking.