Saddam's Philippines Terror Connection(Yes, Saddam financially supported terrorists)

Weekly Standard ^ | 03/18/2006 | Stephen F. Hayes

[KCRW]

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.

The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.

[FreedomNeocon]

The fact that these documents were released has not been very well publicized. Do a search in Yahoo news for "documents". It appears there was a press release put out by someone. Note each of the articles hitting the same point, word for word: Documents released, dissension in Al Queda, etc. Nothing about anything else.

It is easy for the media to report from a press release. Some authority should be putting them out. I don't think the MSM is going to go through these and glean anything that would support the war or this administration.

Thats interesting... I was watching Hardball yesterday, Chrissy was saying that people are down on Iraq, down on the Economy, etc. The guest responded with how good the economy is, and of course chrissy comes back with "but the polls don't show that"

Anyway, it ended up with the guest explaining that Chrissy and the MSM aren't interested in reporting the good news on the economy, much like they aren't about Iraq.

Chrissy got all pissy and was yelling "at the half of the hour right there, we have stock and market updates so I don't see how you can say we don't report the good news that things are up and all"

TOTALLY missing the point (not uncommon for Chrissy). Like you said, sticking an up arrow on a scrolling graphic, or saying what the dow is at is one thing. Its TOTALLY different than a 'news cycle' where the 'motivation' is "lets do a story on what are the hot sectors for the new jobs" or a few puff tangent pieces or whatever.

Sadly, its that incidental media 'saturation' that influences half of Americans who aren't actively out LOOKING for the information in the first place.

Anyway, you made the same point here, and I totally agree.

[tallhappy]

O-klahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain....

[softwarecreator]

Yes, Saddam financially supported terrorists

SHHHH!  Come on, we all know "Bush Lied ... People Died!".

Just ask the MSM, lefties, democrats, the UN

Ya wanna make liers outta all those people?

[tallhappy]

Folks, there is no way the grinning liars on the left can spin this.

Yes they can and will because the Clinton administration was aware of this and put it in an indictment of bin Laden.

See this specific post and the whole thread.

This and a number of reports from the 1990's about bin Laden and Iraq were in Time, Newsweek, ABC the Guardian among others. The Clinton administration cited weapons development cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda in the bin Laden indictment.

But the MSM and libdems have never once commented on these sort of facts.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq.

Why weren't these documents released three years ago? < /shaking head in disbelief>

[Wristpin]

Clinton also Tomahawked the AL Shifa "Aspirin Factory" in Sudan because they had Intel that Iraqi scientists were delevoping WMD for Al Queda. Will Cohen (SECDEF) at the time, testified in front of the 911 Commission that he still believes the intel was solid.

The inept Republican PR machine will have to rewrite history now that the Dems have cast their lies in stone.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

now how do we convince the MSM to print these documents?

If they do print them, it will be like this:

Excerpt from documents...

MSM approved explanation to tell you what to think about the excerpt.

Excerpt from documents...

MSM approved explanation to tell you what to think about the excerpt.

Excerpt from documents...

MSM approved explanation to tell you what to think about the excerpt.

Etc.

[FreedomNeocon]

Why weren't these documents released three years ago?
/shaking head in disbelief

From last week or two:

---

On February 16, President George W. Bush assembled a small group of congressional Republicans for a briefing on Iraq.

"Yesterday, Mr. President, the war had its best night on the network news since the war ended," Pence said.

"Is this the tapes thing?" Bush asked

Pence framed his response as a question, quoting Abraham Lincoln: "One of your Republican predecessors said, 'Give the people the facts and the Republic will be saved.' There are 3,000 hours of Saddam tapes and millions of pages of other documents that we captured after the war. When will the American public get to see this information?"

Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents" and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.

Bush extended his arms in exasperation and worried aloud that people who see the documents in 10 years will wonder why they weren't released sooner. "If I knew then what I know now," Bush said in the voice of a war skeptic, "I would have been more supportive of the war."

Bush told Hadley to expedite the release of the Iraq documents. "This stuff ought to be out. Put this stuff out."

For months, Negroponte has argued privately that while the documents may be of historical interest, they are not particularly valuable as intelligence product. A statement by his office in response to the recordings aired by ABC said, "Analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that, while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq's weapons programs."

Officials involved with DOCEX--as the U.S. government's document exploitation project is known to insiders--tell The Weekly Standard that only some 3 percent of the 2 million captured documents have been fully translated and analyzed.

Perhaps anticipating the weakness of his "mere history" argument, Negroponte abruptly shifted his position last week. He still opposes releasing the documents, only now he claims that the information in these documents is so valuable that it cannot be made public. Negroponte gave a statement to Fox News responding to Hoekstra's call to release the captured documents. "These documents have provided, and continue to provide, actionable intelligence to ongoing operations. . . . It would be ill-advised to release these materials without careful screening because the material includes sensitive and potentially harmful information."

This new position raises two obvious questions: If the documents have provided actionable intelligence, why has the intelligence community exploited so few of them? And why hasn't Negroponte demanded more money and manpower for the DOCEX program?

Sadly, these obvious questions have an obvious answer. The intelligence community is not interested in releasing documents captured in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Why this is we can't be sure. But Pete Hoekstra offers one distinct possibility.

"They are State Department people who want to make no waves and don't want to do anything that would upset anyone," he says.

This is not idle speculation. In meetings with Hoekstra, Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies.

Although Negroponte continues to argue against releasing the documents in internal discussions, on March 9, he approached Hoekstra with a counterproposal. Negroponte offered to release some documents labeled "No Intelligence Value," and indicated his willingness to review other documents for potential release, subject to a scrub for sensitive material.

And there, of course, is the potential problem. Negroponte could have been releasing this information all along, but chose not to. So, in a way, nothing really changes. Hoekstra is not going away. "We're going to ride herd on this. This is a step in the right direction, but I am in no way claiming victory. I want these documents out."

So does President Bush. You'd think that would settle it.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

I think the libs must be noticing this trend of translations of documents showing that Saddam wanted WMD's and that he had connections with Al Qaeda. They won't admit it yet, of course. But, the facts must be gnawing away at the neatly arranged anti-war arguments in their tiny, tiny minds.

Here's the scene over at DU:

[shield]

I don't know about you....but why can't we could have a link to all these articles being posted on the translation of the docs at the top as you open FR page to browse articles?

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

This is going to get better every day. Can't wait for the movie.

Paging Woodward and Bernstein...

[syriacus]

LOL. I especially like the guy who has no eye holes in the paper bag. Maybe he has his head screwed on backwards.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

This and a number of reports from the 1990's about bin Laden and Iraq were in Time, Newsweek, ABC the Guardian among others. The Clinton administration cited weapons development cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda in the bin Laden indictment.

The Marxist Media isn't in the business of reporting. It's in the business of controlling.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Yes, I saw that transcript. "Negroponte could have been releasing this information all along, but chose not to.". Looks like GW had a little chat with Negroponte. Probably went something like this: "You have 24 hours to release these documents or clear out your desk."

[Admin Moderator]

but why can't we could have a link to all these articles being posted on the translation of the docs at the top as you open FR page to browse articles?

Why don't you try clicking on the keyword prewardocs.

[Elsiejay]

A recent gleaning, of relevance here:

Al-Qaeda Kingpin Ayman Al-Zawahiri Approves OKC Bombing

By Jayna Davis, author, The Third Terrorist

14 March 2006: I would not complete the flow chart of low-level button pushers (Iraqi soldiers) and Al-Qaeda chieftains who orchestrated the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing until months after the 2004 publication of The Third Terrorist. During this time frame, Richard Clarke, President Bill Clinton’s terrorism czar, made the stunning disclosure that "Al-Qaeda operatives had attended a radical Islamic conference . . . in, of all places, Oklahoma City." This high-level acknowledgement of Middle Eastern terrorist activity in the heart of the U.S. spurred deeper examination. Yossef Bodansky, then acting director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, provided even more disturbing revelations regarding the Al-Qaeda conventions held in my hometown. What I discovered next transformed the April 19 massacre from a decade-old act of "domestic" terrorism into the split-second explosion that would resound forevermore in our international war on terror. More...

To my amazement, Bodansky had confirmed, of late, that Osama bin Laden’s No. 2 man, the notorious Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, served as the Al-Qaeda field commander who directed the Iraqi ex-military assets in the heartland attack. Intelligence data, which Bodansky had scrupulously authenticated, revealed that the Egyptian physician personally traveled to Oklahoma City in the spring of 1995.

[World'sGoneInsane]

Sadly, its that incidental media 'saturation' that influences half of Americans who aren't actively out LOOKING for the information in the first place.

You're right. Most people don't go looking. BTW, Why would you watch "Herdball"? That would give me an ulcer.

[DoughtyOne]

It would sure please me to find Terry Nichols name and contacts mentioned on some of those documents. I don't think we'll ever see that, but I have felt there was more to the OKC bombing than met the eye.

[driftless]

"grinning liars"

You are so correct. Big Media is nervously piecing together its answer to this evidence. They'll think of something.

Alright all you libs and sundry Bush-haters out there. The massive evidence coming in (but what we mostly knew anyway) has confirmed the existence of Hussein's vast terror ties including the one with Al-Qaeda and Bin-Ladin. Time to just stick your heads further down into the sand and utter to yourselves "Saddam was a kindly ruler of a peaceful Mideast country who bore no ill will towards anyone. Why the women of Iraq didn't have to wear burkas. Anyway Bush is evil". Just keep muttering those words to yourselves, and you might not lose your sanity. Just your credibility...which was meager before the war.