Against Selected Enemies (Richard Miniter on Clarke)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | April 1, 2004 | RICHARD MINITER

[neverdem]

A year ago, I thought Richard A. Clarke, President Clinton's counterterror czar, was a hero. He and his small band of officials fought a long battle to focus the bureaucracy on stopping Osama bin Laden long before 9/11. For my own book, I interviewed Mr. Clarke extensively and found him to be blunt and forthright. He remembered whole conversations from inside the Situation Room.

[jwalsh07]

Certainly.

[cyncooper]

Howlin, I have never asked you to utilize your ping list before, but I think there are many freepers who cite the Miniter book and would be greatly interested in his column about his thoughts on Clarke.

Could you, please, send out the word?

[Howlin]

Be glad to.

Special request ping for Miniter fans!!!!

[cyncooper]

Thanks and BUMP

[Gritty]

Why did Clarke decide to blame the Bush Administration and lie throughout?

Simple. Follow the money trail.

Millions for his book.

Plus, a cushy and well-paying job in some Saudi-related think tank or "consultant" role. This is yet to come, but I would bet 10-1 it happens within the year. Bank on it. As it is, he now has a cushy teaching job in Liberal academia and the accolades of an adoring Media in addition to paid gigs on CNN, rather than the "Gary Aldrich Treatment" of abuse and obscurity.

Don't think for a moment the clintons and their allies don't still know how to take care of their friends and punish their enemies.

Clarke is just another in a long line of clinton whores.

[firebrand]

voila

[Howlin]

But Mr. Clarke was not a Bush insider. When he lost his right to brief the Cabinet, he also lost his ringside seat on presidential decision-making.

[cyncooper]

Check out my post #19. Clarke actually lied in his book to make Saddam Hussein look good.

Un-Kerry-believable

[Citizen Soldier]

Bob Kerrey on Fox and Friends, said that the committee has a list of questions from "the families" that have to be answered.

I read yesterday that Bob Kerry was going to ask clinton some tough questions when he meets with the commision. Clinton will activate Kerry's old files when he tried to run for president in 2000 - like his acts in Vietnam that took him out of the race early!

I know this sounds heartless, but I am getting tired of the "families" of 9/11 dictating this arena on what and who gets blamed. Sept. 11th had a major effect on all of us, some more than others. I know I didn't lose a loved one, and I cannot imagine what they went through, but they are not the sole ownership of grief over the attacks. Am I the only one who feels this way?

[Citizen Soldier]

Bob Kerrey on Fox and Friends, said that the committee has a list of questions from "the families" that have to be answered.

I read yesterday that Bob Kerry was going to ask clinton some tough questions when he meets with the commision. Clinton will activate Kerry's old files when he tried to run for president in 2000 - like his acts in Vietnam that took him out of the race early!

I know this sounds heartless, but I am getting tired of the "families" of 9/11 dictating this arena on what and who gets blamed. Sept. 11th had a major effect on all of us, some more than others. I know I didn't lose a loved one, and I cannot imagine what they went through, but they are not the sole ownership of grief over the attacks. Am I the only one who feels this way?

[kcvl]

the FBI, under Mr. Clinton, paid an informant who turned out to be a double agent working on behalf of al Qaeda.

In 1998, the Clinton administration alerted Pakistan to our imminent missile strikes in Afghanistan

[InterceptPoint]

South of Baghdad, satellite photos pinpointed a Boeing 707 parked at a camp where terrorists learned to take over planes. When U.S. forces captured the camp, its commander confirmed that al Qaeda had trained there as early as 1997. Mr. Clarke does not take up any of this.

Salmon Pak.

Has anyone seen any factual data that would either prove or disprove that some of the 911 terrorists trained at Salmon Pak? It would seem that we should know the answer to that very key question by now.

[neverdem]

Am I the only one who feels this way?

No, and I only eyeballed the burning WTC from the Bronx. I only had one wake to attend for the only child of a classmate from grammar school.

[Willing To Listen]

Neverdem,

I don't know if you had an opportunity to see Meet The Press on Sunday when Tim Russert asked Richard Clarke what he thought were the goals of Al Qaeda. Clarke immediately went into briefing mode and basically said the following:

1. Al Qaeda is a world wide network of terrorist cells.

2. Al Qaeda wants to kill as many Americans as they can.

3. Al Qaeda is looking to establish radical Islamic States.

My wish is that Tim Russert would have asked Richard Clarke the following question:

How can you state that Iraq is a diversion when:


A. Appeasement and concern about creating more hatred against the U.S. was there before any reaction on our part and the argument that we should waver from our mission is just a “straw man” ----- we are at war. Al Qaeda is relentless and they are not going away.

B. They have no desire to negotiate. Al Qaeda declared war on us and have delivered not one, but many provocations against us and will continue to do so.


C. In this war against Al Qaeda we need multiple bases of operations and Iraq happens to be strategically positioned right in the middle of the Al Qaeda breeding / recruitment grounds.

D. We initially went into Afghanistan and didn't divert to Iraq, but merely opened multiple fronts. We don't have the luxury of time to fight this war in a serial fashion.

E. Have you noticed that Colonel Muammar Qaddafi of Libya just folded his tent without our ever firing a shot? The "diversion of Iraq" spoke volumes to him and isn't it interesting that North Korea all of a sudden decided to start discussions about their nuclear weapons, when before our involvement in Iraq they were saber rattling every other day.

F. Al Qaeda is not just the person Usama Bin Laden or a single location like Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is pervasive.

Now Mr. Clarke, based on the above, would you still consider Iraq a diversion?

[kcvl]

Weekly Standard

Iraqi defectors had been saying for years that Saddam's regime trained "non-Iraqi Arab terrorists" at a camp in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. U.N. inspectors had confirmed the camp's existence, including the presence of a Boeing 707. Defectors say the plane was used to train hijackers; the Iraqi regime said it was used in counterterrorism training.

Sabah Khodada, a captain in the Iraqi Army, worked at Salman Pak. In October 2001, he told PBS's "Frontline" about what went on there. "Training is majorly on terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism. . . . All this training is directly toward attacking American targets, and American interests." But the Bush administration said little about Salman Pak as it demonstrated links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

According to administration sources, some detainees who provided credible evidence of other links between Iraq and al Qaeda, including training in terrorism and WMD, insist they have no knowledge of Salman Pak. Khodada, the Iraqi army captain, also professed ignorance of whether the trainees were members of al Qaeda. "Nobody came and told us, 'This is al Qaeda people,'" he explained, "but I know there were some Saudis, there were some Afghanis. There were some other people from other countries getting trained."

*****

Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992. He worked at what he describes as a highly secret terrorist training camp at Salman Pak

Frontline interview with Sabah Khodada

[kcvl]

"This camp is specialized in exporting terrorism to the whole world," former Iraqi army captain Sabah Khodada told PBS's Frontline in an October 14, 2001 interview. Khodada worked at Salman Pak. He said that instruction there was "all for the general concept of hitting and attacking American targets and American interests." He added: "We saw people getting trained to hijack airplanes...They are even trained how to use utensils for food, like forks and knives provided in the plane...They are trained how to plant horror within the passengers by doing such actions." A map of the camp Khodada drew for Frontline closely matches satellite photos of the base, thus bolstering his story.

"I was the security officer in charge of the unit," at Salman Pak, an ex-Iraqi lieutenant general told Frontline anonymously in a November 6, 2001 interview. "This unit was under the direct supervision and control of the Iraqi Intelligence Service," he added. "And the fact that the training was concentrated on a plane made it even stranger as far as I was concerned."

Also, according to the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism — 2001,"released May 21, 2002, "Iraq was the only Arab-Muslim country that did not condemn the September 11 attacks against the United States." That day, an official Iraqi broadcast said America was "...reaping the fruits of [its] crimes against humanity."

So why has the Bush administration not highlighted these ominous connections? One theory is that showcasing pre-9/11 evidence of Salman Pak might make people wonder why nothing was done about it before the atrocity. Another view is that federal officials who implemented President Clinton's light touch towards Iraq are in no hurry to remind Americans of how foolish their policy was.

****

As President Bush said in an address to Congress on September 20, 2001, "Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated."

[kcvl]

March 15, 2002 edition

Taliban-style group grows in Iraq

In the Kurdish north, a new Islamist group with ties to Al Qaeda has killed women without burqas, seized villages.

By Catherine Taylor | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

HALABJA, NORTHERN IRAQ – A radical Islamist group – with possible links to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein – is growing and threatening the stability of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

The group – Ansar al-Islam – emerged just days before the Sept. 11 attacks on the US. It delivered a fatwa, or manifesto, to the citizens in mountain villages against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society there, according to Kurdish party

Since, Ansar al-Islam has nearly doubled in size to 700, including Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians, and Afghans – a composition similar to the multinational Al Qaeda network. Villagers here claim it has ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the burqa. It has seized a Taliban-style enclave of 4,000 civilians and several villages near the Iran border.

With the US dedicated to rooting out Al Qaeda's influence wherever it surfaces in the world, a group of Islamic extremists in northern Iraq with even loose ties to Al Qaeda could complicate further any Iraq intervention. Already the US is in a delicate dance with allies over how to handle Iraq, with many warning that the US must consider the implications of possible instability that a move to topple Hussein could cause.

The emergence of the group comes as the US ramps up pressure on the Hussein regime in Iraq over weapons development. In a White House press conference on Wednesday, President Bush said Hussein "is a problem, and we're going to deal with him."

The State Department did not have extensive information on Ansar al-Islam, but one official there said he was aware of its existence and connection to Al Qaeda.

Ansar al-Islam's leaders

Kurdish military sources say that Ansar al-Islam's Mr. Kreker is a former member of a Kurdish Islamic party who joined Ansar al-Islam after its formation in September. Kreker replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae – an Iraqi Kurd who trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years – and changed his name from Warya Holery. Mr. Shafae is now Ansar al-Islam's deputy.

Another of the group's leaders, Abu Abdul Rahman – who, the Kurds claim, was sent to northern Iraq by bin Laden – was killed in fighting in October.

Commander Qada also claims that Ansar al-Islam has ties to agents of Saddam Hussein operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and [Ansar] al-Islam," he says from his military base in Halabja. "I believe that Iraq is also funding [Ansar] al-Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."

Barhim Salih, a PUK leader, says a second group affiliated with Ansar al-Islam is working from the Baghdad-controlled city of Mosul.

[rwfromkansas]

bump

[kcvl]

Northern Iraq's al-Qaeda

In August 2001, leaders of several Kurdish Islamist factions reportedly visited the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan with the goal of creating an alternate base for the organization in northern Iraq. Their intentions were echoed in a document found in an al-Qaeda guest house in Afghanistan vowing to "expel those Jews and Christians from Kurdistan and join the way of Jihad, [and] rule every piece of land . . . with the Islamic Shari'a rule." Soon thereafter, Ansar al-Islam was created using $300,000 to $600,000 in al-Qaeda seed money, in addition to funds from Saudi Arabia.

Today, Ansar operates in fortified mountain positions along the Iran-Iraq border known as "Little Tora Bora" (after the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan). There, the group's Kurdish, Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian, Moroccan, Syrian, Palestinian, and Afghan members train in a wide array of guerrilla tactics. Approximately 30 al-Qaeda members reportedly joined Ansar upon the group's inception in 2001; that number is now as high as 120. Armed with heavy machine guns, mortars, and antiaircraft weaponry, the group fulfills al-Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri's vision of a global jihad. Ansar's goal is to disrupt civil society and create a Taliban-like regime in northern Iraq. To that end, it has already banned music, alcohol, photographs, and advertising in its stronghold. Girls are prevented from studying; men must grow beards and pray five times daily.


Links to Saddam

Bush administration and PUK officials have also speculated that Ansar may be working with Saddam through a man named Abu Wa'il, reportedly an al-Qaeda operative on Saddam's payroll. Kurdish explosives experts also claim that TNT seized from Ansar was produced by the Iraqi military, and that arms are sent to the group from areas controlled by Saddam. Iraqi officials deny all such ties, yet Saddam clearly profits from Ansar's activities, which keep Kurdish opposition forces tied up on the border and away from Saddam. Indeed, support for Ansar is not unlike the money Saddam gives to families of Palestinian suicide bombers; turning up the heat in Kurdistan and the Palestinian territories takes heat off Saddam as a crisis looms.

Currently, Kurdish and international sources are accumulating evidence they say could soon present a clearer picture of Saddam's cooperation with al-Qaeda.

Links to Iran

Iran supports Ansar by allowing it to operate along its borders. Iran may also provide logistical support by permitting the flow of goods and weapons and providing a safe area beyond the front. The Turkish daily Milliyet has noted that Ansar militants check cars leaving their stronghold en route to Iran, indicating coordination with the Islamic republic. Moreover, the recently apprehended Mullah Krekar spent many years in Iran and was arrested in Amsterdam after a flight from Tehran.

Iran has several possible reasons for supporting Ansar. For one, having a democratic proto-state on its borders threatens the very nature of the Islamic republic. Thus, continued guerrilla activity benefits Tehran, as does any movement designed to spread Islamism in Kurdistan. Furthermore, by supporting Ansar and other Islamist groups in Iraq, Tehran may attempt to gain influence among the various factions that could contribute to a new Iraqi government if Saddam's regime is overthrown.

[BigSkyFreeper]

without the web, most of us would be in the dark about the slimy ways of Clarke and Klinton.

Every time I read something a slimy Democrat or Democrat shill says or does, I thank Al Gore for this invention we call the internet.