Al-Qaida Planned, Executed Baghdad Bombing
October 30, 2003
United Press International
Richard Sale
The United States has strong evidence that members of al- Qaida, assisted by Iranian hard-liners, was responsible for Monday's horrific series of suicide bombings in downtown Baghdad that killed about 40 people and wounded more than 200. Several serving and former U.S. intelligence officials say this is further evidence that terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden is poised to turn Iraq into a major theater of terrorist operations against the United States.
Within a 45-minute burst of coordinated savagery, four suicide bombers hit soft targets that included the headquarters of the International Red Cross and four Iraqi police stations at sites 10 miles apart, according to various U.S. officials interviewed by United Press International.
A fifth suicide bomber attempted to blow up a police station but was shot by an Iraqi policeman before he could detonate his vehicle, U.S. officials said.
"Do these latest attacks in Iraq remind you of anything?" said one former very senior CIA official. "Look at the Sept. 11 attacks -- in forty five minutes, the bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon brought the entire American continent to a standstill, the president stranded in the air on Air Force One, U.S. fighters aloft with orders to shoot down any commercial airliners that strayed from their paths, the vice president sheltering in a bomb-proof cave below the White House."
The naming by U.S. intelligence officials of al-Qaida and its sympathizers as the force behind Monday's bombings contradicted statements made Monday to another news agency by Pentagon officials who said they believed loyalists of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were responsible.
As UPI reported exclusively in August, members of al-Qaida along with Iraqi nationalists has joined former Baathists in a guerrilla war that was described by one administration official as "gaining in breath of personnel, sophistication of tactics, and supplies of weapons."
According to the most current CIA estimates, the core of al-Qaida/foreign fighters now totals between 1,000 and 3,000 operatives, according to another former senior CIA official.
The al-Qaida operatives come from Egypt, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and even Albania, U.S. intelligence officials said.
Many of them are coming over the border of Iran "in a flood," according to one administration analyst.
U.S. intelligence officials told UPI that the attacks were two to three months in the planning and displayed a high degree of coordination, a superb sense of targeting, and the ability to inflict mass casualties against U.S. allies at will.
One senior administration drew a dark picture and warned: "The White House had better begin to see these attacks for what they are -- extremely canny, shrewd, sophisticated, almost impossible to defend against. This is a sustained, calculated offensive being waged against us."
The attack on the International Red Cross was done by the same terrorists who on Aug. 19 bombed U.N. headquarters, causing many casualties, he said.
The Monday attacks involved advanced reconnaissance, planning, and organization of support infrastructure that probably involved Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish movement, based in the north of Iraq and supported by Iran, which has alleged ties to al-Qaida and which is now known to be in the Baghdad area, U.S. intelligence experts said.
"The problem is that al-Qaida members coming in from third countries are forging all sorts of tactical alliances with Baathists, Iraq nationalists and other groups," said former CIA counterterrorism chief, Vince Cannistraro.
One administration official said not only was Ansar al-Islam providing infrastructure support, but it was also helping to provide operational security for the attacks.
"The support system probably began running in the early spring or summer," he said.
One U.S. government analyst speculated there were probably two networks of terrorists involved using about a dozen operatives. One would have been made up of explosives experts, the other of the perpetrators. For security purposes, they would have had little contact with each other, he said.
The Defense Intelligence Agency officials said that military officials on the ground in Iraq had reports that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, working with explosives experts from Hizbollah, may have assisted al-Qaida.
Several CIA officials expressed skepticism at this saying that Hizbollah was not widely active in Iraq, but a DIA official disputed this saying: "There is a lot of indications of Iranian activity in Baghdad."
From assessing the damage, administration officials said that the bombs were expertly built. One U.S. official said: "It looks as though you had shaped charges mixed with incendiary and other accelerants that detonate right after the main blast to cause additional damage."
Another U.S. official said that the fuses of the bombs appeared to have been "very sophisticated." He added that the attack last weekend on the Al Rashid hotel displayed none of al-Qaida's characteristic expertise: "The attack on the Al-Rashid hotel was a plain old attack by former Baathist operatives with military training," he said.
Serving and former CIA officials warned that they have evidence that business contractors are slated to be the next targets of al-Qaida attacks. "The purpose of these attacks is to collapse the U.S.-led effort to rebuild Iraq.
Anyone -- Iraqis who are cooperating, businessmen -- they are all fair game."
A State Department official agreed: "Perhaps the greatest damage inflicted has been psychological. Our major goal has got to be to convince the Iraqi populace that we have the means to assure their protection and restore to them a normal, secure life. Attacks like Monday's undermine those claims, increase U.S. unpopularity and are sure to slow reconstruction."
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031030-112603-2963r