In what way was it a conspiracy? What was being kept secret?
And even if you wish to describe this cooperation as a conspiracy for some reason, it was between BOTH secular Soviets and Islamic Arabs. So it would be both. Why do you suppose that any conspiracy or cooperation between disparate parties must be united on all points of ideology?
And no, every country involved was not controlled by a secular government; Hezballah and many of these organizations were FOUNDED by Islamists, run by Islamists, and they never renounced Islam even as some of them tentatively accepted socialism.
Saddam Hussein is probably the best example of a “secular” Arab leader who took aid from the Soviets. Yet he never renounced Islam, opened Mosques with his name on them, put a verse from the Quran on the Iraqi flag, supported Islamic terrorist movements including Al Queda, etc, etc.
I was speaking specifically to I posted by Gen. Pecepa in National Review. Every single government and terrorist organization mentioned was secular. So I ask you again:
It is you who must default to tin foil hat territory, because you are not morally or spiritually equipped to deal with the facts. Tell me Allmendream, does the following constitute a secular conspiracy, or an Islamic conspiracy?
“As chief of Romanian foreign intelligence, I worked closely with Libya’s Muammar Khaddafi before I became, in 1978, the highest-ranking spy from the Soviet bloc to defect to America. I was Khaddafi’s handler as he was gearing up these same weapons programs. Moscow had decided in 1972 to use three leftist Arab governments — Libya, Iraq, and Syria — plus Arafat’s PLO, to wreak terror against our prime enemy, “American imperial-Zionism.” Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB and soon to be the Soviet leader, assigned Libya to Romania because we already had close intelligence connections with Khaddafi, who, along with Kim Il Sung, had long been eager for chemical weapons, and to acquire Romanian technology for “dirty” suitcase-sized radioactive bombs. Moscow kept charge of Iraq for itself. Andropov told me then that Syria would be next, if our Libyan experiment proved successful; President Hafez Assad’s brother was already our well-paid agent.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200312290001.asp