Saddam's Al Qaeda Connection

The Weekly Standard ^ | 09/01/03 | Stephen F. Hayes

[JennysCool]

Thank you for the ping! EXCELLENT article!

[LisaFab]

Thanks. Bookmarked.

[jwalsh07]

btt

[rwfromkansas]

bump

[cyncooper]

The only ones who did not believe an AQ/Iraq connection were those who sought to undermine the administration.

It's worse than that. It's not that they don't believe, it's that they know for a fact the connection exists but lie about it in order to undermine this administration.

That is pure evil. It is as anti American as I can imagine.

[Peach]

Thanks for the correction, and you're right. I remember seeing a list somewhere of all the major news organizations that wrote about the Iraq/AQ connection in 1998. There were at least a dozen, Newsweek among them.

[Peach]

Thanks for the correction, and you're right. I remember seeing a list somewhere of all the major news organizations that wrote about the Iraq/AQ connection in 1998. There were at least a dozen, Newsweek among them.

[cyncooper]

"The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction." So claimed Al Gore in an August 7 speech.

Later this article points out that during the clinton administration, during which Gore served as v.p.:

For one thing, they cross-referenced old intelligence with new information provided by high-level al Qaeda detainees. Reports of collaboration grew in number and specificity. The case grew stronger. Throughout the summer and fall of 2002, al Qaeda operatives held in Guantanamo corroborated previously sketchy reports of a series of meetings in Khartoum, Sudan, home to al Qaeda during the mid-90s. U.S. officials learned more about the activities of Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi, an al Qaeda WMD specialist sent by bin Laden to seek WMD training, and possibly weapons, from the Iraqi regime. Intelligence specialists also heard increasingly detailed reports about meetings in Baghdad between al Qaeda leaders and Uday Hussein in April 1998, at a birthday celebration for Saddam.

~snip~

And there are reports of more direct links between the Iraqi regime and bin Laden. Farouk Hijazi, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and Saddam's longtime outreach agent to Islamic fundamentalists, has been captured. In his initial interrogations, Hijazi admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994. According to administration officials familiar with his questioning, he has subsequently admitted additional contacts, including a meeting in late 1997.

For one thing, the meeting was reported in the press at the time.

End Excerpts:

Yes, it was reported in the press at the time. Al Gore knows about this, yet he's out there lying.

To read more about what the press was saying about the connection during the clinton/gore era see this:

Bin Laden and Iraq

[cyncooper]

* No fewer than five high-ranking Czech officials have publicly confirmed that Mohammed Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker, met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer working at the Iraqi embassy, in Prague five months before the hijacking. Media leaks here and in the Czech Republic have called into question whether Atta was in Prague on the key dates--between April 4 and April 11, 2001. And several high-ranking administration officials are "agnostic" as to whether the meeting took place. Still, the public position of the Czech government to this day is that it did.

That assertion should be seen in the context of Atta's curious stop-off in Prague the previous spring, as he traveled to the United States. Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but did not have a valid visa and was denied entry. He returned to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork, and took a bus back to Prague. One day later, he left for the United States.

Despite the Czech government's confirmation of the Atta-al Ani meeting, the Bush administration dropped it as evidence of an al Qaeda-Iraq connection in September 2002. Far from hyping this episode, administration officials refrained from citing it as the debate over the Iraq war heated up in Congress, in the country, and at the U.N.

[cyncooper]

remember seeing a list somewhere of all the major news organizations that wrote about the Iraq/AQ connection in 1998. There were at least a dozen, Newsweek among them.

Ha! We're on the same wavelength. See my link at #48 for media stories way back when. Gore knows they had intelligence at the time that Saddam and bin Laden were having talks. Nothing was said back then that the idea was outlandish and unthinkable. Only when the Bush administration speaks of it is the idea questioned.

Grrrrrrrrrrr

And I want to alert anyone who clicks my link in #48, in the posts made on that thread are more media stories and clicking them to read the whole article is most enlightening.

[cyncooper]

Correction: There were some questions advanced back then about the alliance forming, (I originally said it was not questioned at all), but note the tone was that it appeared intelligence tended to support it.

Now it seems our current intelligence and interrogations are serving to confirm rather than refute the older stories.

[Peach]

Thanks for mentioning your links - I'm going to take a look at them now. Hopefully when all this comes out the Rats will look even more misinformed (most people can't force themselves to admit it's deliberate, although we here at FR know better).

[Gritty]

The links I'm waiting to see confirmed are the links between Al Qaeda and the Democrats. It is only a matter of time, IMHO!

[okie01]

"For they don't need facts or proofs, they merely try to create an overall impression of chaos and lack of control and controversy. In other words, they only need to make the political environment nasty to turn people off and leave the field to their sycophants."

An astute observation, within a very astute analysis.

[okie01]

"And the Democrats never quail at being proved wrong, they merely move onto the next thing and demagogue that."

Worth a separate mention.

And how is it that they can get away with this kind of behavior? Because the mainstream media lets them. Indeed, encourages and abets them.

Fortunately, there is the internet and talk radio, where the liberals can be called on their despicable demagoguery. Eventually, someday, perhaps, they will be called to account...

[cyncooper]

I'd like to add my praise for your well articulated analysis.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

"Ownership" of the media is crucial (not coincidentally, this is Lenin's maxim) to demagoguery.

As much as we denigrate it and talk about the "new" means (like the Internet) of transmitting information, it is still the establishment media outlets that have the lion's share of impact on how our population thinks about events. That may have changed at the margins, but their impact is still greater than all other information sources combined.

It's why rebels and invading armies alike first get their hands on the TV and radio stations.

[okie01]

"It's why rebels and invading armies alike first get their hands on the TV and radio stations."

And it's why our own invading army, the left, "owns" ABCCBSNBCCNN, etc....

[driftless]

As obvious evidence of Al Qaeda terrorist acts in Iraq roll in, the Bush critics are down to saying that there was no connection before the war. Now even if that assertion were true, which as the evidence shows it is not, would not the present AQ terrorism in Iraq prove the administration's point anyway? How liberals can deny the complicity of the various anti-democratic terrorists groups in Iraq and around the world and keep a straight face is beyond me.

[RaceBannon]

Good find for facts in one spot.