CONNECTING THE DOTS: SADDAM HUSSEIN AND 9/11

Connecting the Dots: Saddam Hussein and 9/11 Gregory Borse October 18, 2004 - Let us stipulate that investigators in Iraq, whether under the auspices of the United Nations or the United States, have faced an uphill battle in getting accurate information regarding Saddam Hussein’s compliance with the resolutions imposed upon his regime following the Gulf War in 1991. The Duelfer Report has made clear that Hussein’s early efforts were to play hide-and-seek with weapons inspectors, in the belief that the sanctions would not last. By 1996 it seems to have become clear to the dictator that the sanctions were not going to go away as he had thought, so a new plan had to be implemented to protect what remained of his chemical, biological, and fledgling nuclear weapons development programs.

Thankfully, the United Nations obliged Saddam Hussein by offering him a means to re-invigorate his economy and regain the financial strength to bribe key members of the U.N. Security council: the Oil-for-Food program.

By means of this program, the Duelfer Report makes clear that Saddam Hussein was able to, as the President put it in last Friday’s debate, “game the system” through making available to those with whom he wished to curry favor authorized sales of cheap Iraqi crude, or by the direct bribing of individuals by giving them vouchers to trade for said oil, to be re-sold on the market for huge sums. The thousand page plus report identifies members of the press in France and Germany, government officials in those countries as well as in Russia, and even members of the United Nations itself as recipients of these vouchers.

At the least, these revelations confirm suspicions about the cause of European and U.N. ambivalence in the face of Saddam Hussein’s repeated violations of the terms of sanctions imposed upon Iraq and explain why countries like France, Germany, and Russia did not join the coalition to oust Saddam Hussein from power.

The mainstream media is mostly ignoring this aspect of the report—highlighting instead the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as proof that President Bush’s rationale for war was fundamentally flawed.

But WMD were only one of many reasons for recognizing Iraq as a central front in the War on Terror. Hussein’s support of terrorists was also cited. With the release of the Duelfer report, the Kerry-Edwards campaign continues to insist that there never were WMD in Iraq and that any connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists responsible for 9/11 is, as John Edwards said in the Vice-Presidential debate, “tenuous at best” (or non-existent, which he also said).

But in what ought to become the “October Surprise,” Cybercast News Service (CNS) last week published leaked documents from Iraq—not part of the Duelfer Report—that confirm not only a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, but direct corroboration between the Iraqi Regime and the terrorists who planned and executed the attacks against the United States.

According to a story published by World Magazine Online, (“Unmasked Men,” by Mindy Belz) the documents have been independently reviewed by middle-east terrorism experts for both CNS and World Magazine Online, and these experts agree that the they constitute a smoking gun in terms of the relationship between Saddam Hussein and the terror network. Walid Phares, a Middle-East scholar and senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, examined the documents for World Magazine Online and said they demonstrate “irreversible evidence that there were strategic relations between the Baathist Regime and Islamist groups that became Al Queda.” “In addition,” the story continues, the papers “link al-Zarqawi associated groups throughout the Middle East, including Al Queda, on Saddam’s payroll and acting under his direct authority.”

Former Clinton advisor Laurie Mylrorie examined the documents for CNS and described them as “the most complete set of documents relating Iraq to . . . Islamic terrorism.” The documents also show Saddam Hussein to have been in possession of both mustard gas and anthrax, the purchase of five kilograms of the former revealed to have taken place as late as August of 2000. Hussein apparently also purchased, in September of 2000, three vials of “malignant pustule, a term for anthrax” as well as “gas masks, filters, sterilization and decontamination equipment” according to World Magazine. As the Duelfer Report makes clear, the procurement of these banned biological weapons components was part of Saddam Hussein’s attitude about their effectiveness as weapons of mass destruction capable of stopping an enemy assault—as his experience with their use against Iran in the Iran/Iraq War to him proved. Indeed, his possession of biological weapons of mass destruction, the Duelfer Report concludes, convinced him that the United States stopped short of toppling his regime in the 1991 Gulf War for fear of their use against U.S. forces.

If the information in these leaked papers is confirmed by the thousands of documents seized by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq as a result of the defeat of Saddam Hussein in Operation Iraqi Freedom, then the connection between Saddam Hussein will perhaps finally be seen as undeniable.

Perhaps then John Kerry and John Edwards can re-think their foreign policy in terms of the War on Terror—especially in light of the fact that it was not a police action (ala U.N. weapons inspectors, or sweeps conducted by the police as if against prostitution or organized crime) that made this information available. It was the very military victory in Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein and the majority of his henchman in the Regime that made possible the discovery of the proof of the connection: a discovery that we would likely never had made following Kerry’s pre-9/11 attitude about how to address the “nuisance” of terrorism.

But these documents make that connection increasingly clear—vindicating the Bush Administration’s decision to fight the right war, at the right time, in the right place and, coupled with the Duelfer Report’s exposure of the complicity of some members of the U.N., and the French, German, and Russian governments in the Oil-for-Food scandal, sets Kerry’s “coalition of the bribed and coerced” on its head.

John Kerry said yesterday that as President he would roll back terrorism to its pre-9/11 status as a “nuisance.” Worse still, Kerry said that the expression “War on Terror” is a metaphor, like the “War on Poverty.” It should be comforting to our enemies, to our soldiers, to our coalition partners, and to the families who have lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania that a man who would be Commander in Chief apparently believes they their sacrifices have been for a figure of speech.

It’s not the terrorists who are going to turn out to be a “nuisance” to John Kerry. It’s those stubborn things that cannot be gamed away by political rhetoric—the facts. Comments: gregorbo@peoplepc.com

Anybody but Bush Funny!

To all concerned U. S. citizens, I am a senior citizen.

During the Clinton Administration I had an extremely good and well paying job. I took numerous vacations and had several vacation homes. Since President Bush took office, I have watched my entire life change for the worse.

I lost my job. I lost my two sons in that terrible Iraqi War. I lost my homes. I lost my health insurance. As a matter of fact I lost virtually everything and became homeless.

Adding insult to injury, when the authorities found me living like an animal, instead of helping me, they arrested me.

I will do anything that Senator Kerry wants to insure that a Democrat is back in the White House come next year.

Bush has to go.

Sincerely,

Saddam Hussein

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