Iraq Is the War on Terror

National Review ^ | 4/17/06 | Andrew C. McCarthy

[april15Bendovr]

Iraq Is the War on Terror As the administration stays curiously mum, the evidence that it was right mounts.

The Bush administration evidently believes revisiting the case for toppling Saddam Hussein is a political loser. That this conclusion — which, of course, has played in the media like a tacit admission of guilt — is a terrible miscalculation becomes clearer with each passing day. As journalists, scholars, and analysts pore over more of the intelligence haul seized when U.S. forces toppled the Iraqi regime, the case for removing an America-hating terror-monger responsible for the brutal torture and murder of — literally — tens of thousands of people looks better and better. Still, the administration maddeningly refuses to go on offense in its defense.

This is at least the second occasion of this politically suicidal default. Top administration officials also gratuitously handed their critics a cudgel when, for reasons still explicable only by panic, they retracted — and, indeed, apologized for — an entirely accurate assertion in the president's 2003 State of the Union Address.

As Michael Ledeen recounted here on NRO a few days ago, President Bush's claim that the Iraqi regime had sought uranium in Africa was not only true and, as the British parliamentary investigation later concluded, "well-founded"; it was probably an understatement. Christopher Hitchens observes — based on the Duelfer Report — that Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium from Niger stretch back a quarter century. Unless you are inclined to believe Saddam was interested in procuring goats in 1999 when he dispatched a high-ranking emissary to that cash-starved but uranium-rich African nation — a nation with which he had previously done uranium business — there can be little doubt that nuclear-weapons development was the impetus.

Now, onto suicidal default, chapter two. The president's poll numbers are plummeting, largely due to the success the opposition has had in portraying Iraq as a misadventure — a diversion from the "real" war on terror, disintegrating into a chaotic mess of dubious nation-building. Why? Because the administration put most of its eggs in a shaky WMD basket; failed to make and sustain the case — i.e., the abundantly supportable case — that Saddam was both a committed terrorist and terrorist-abettor; and has since allowed Iraq to be etched as the test-case for its Middle East democracy project rather than as a logical phase of the war on terror. Even today, if you ask most Americans, "What does Iraq have to do with the war on terror?" you'll get a blank stare — if not a curt "Nothing." Why should it be otherwise? That, effectively, has been the administration's own answer.

All the while, the evidence continues to mount that Saddam was a gathering threat against the United States — just as the president said he was. And the mounting has now been accelerated by the recent public availability of intelligence files — which the administration, for some reason, refused for years either to make available or to use in its own much needed defense.

Already, thanks to diligent work by the likes of Steve Hayes of The Weekly Standard (author of The Connection and numerous articles about Iraq and al Qaeda), Tom Joscelyn (find his website here), Ed Morrissey (of Captain's Quarters), and Edward Jay Epstein (find his website here) we have seen, among other things:

direct contacts between high-ranking Iraqi regime officials and both Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri (bin Laden's top deputy);

an apparent payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars by Iraq to Zawahiri in 1998;

elaborate mentions of Iraq in bin Laden's infamous 1998 fatwa calling for the murder of all Americans, anywhere they could be found — the fatwa that presaged the bombing of the U.S. embassies five months later;

an Iraqi al Qaeda member held in Guantanamo Bay, charged with traveling to Pakistan with an Iraqi Intelligence official in August 1998 (the same month the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed) to study the possibility of bombing the American and British embassies there;

the attempt by Iraq to recruit jihadists in the late 1990s to bomb an American target, Radio Free Europe, in Prague;

the continued insistence to the 9/11 Commission by top Clinton officials (including President Clinton himself) that the retaliatory strike against the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan following the embassy bombings was justified by intelligence indicating that the target was home to a joint chemical weapons venture of Iraq, al Qaeda and Sudan;

the Clinton administration so convinced of an asylum arrangement between Iraq and al Qaeda that its top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke, opined to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in 1999 that bin Laden would "boogie to Baghdad" if things became too hot for him in Afghanistan (it wouldn't, after all, have been a first: Saddam was already harboring one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers);

the still open allegation that Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001, during the plotting stages of the 9/11 attacks;

the still unexplained presence of an Iraqi intelligence operative, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, at the initial January 2000 planning meetings in Kuala Lampur for the 9/11 attacks;

the recent revelation that Saddam's regime was, since at least 1994, conducting training for thousands of terrorists — training which, from 1998 forward, drew in thousands of jihadists from outside Iraq;

the recent revelation that Saddam's son Uday ordered preparations in 1999 for a wave of "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]"; and

the exercises in January 2003 — on the eve of the U.S. invasion — known as "the "Heroes' attack," which was designed to prepare regional terror units to fight exactly the kind of insurgency war that has been waged against coalition forces for the last three years.

Now, the intelligence haul has produced another notable disclosure — which is startling only if you continue to gulp the popular Kool-aid that depicts Iraq as nothing more than a disastrous Bush blunder. About a week ago, Morrissey (crediting Iraq scholar Laurie Mylroie) published a striking memorandum, apparently authored by an Iraqi air-force general in March 2001. The memo, excerpted below (italics are mine), sought volunteers for suicide missions against American targets:

In the Name of God the Merciful The Compassionate Top Secret

The Command of Ali Bin Abi Taleb Air Force Base

No 3/6/104

Date 11 March 2001

To all the Units

Subject: Volunteer for Suicide Mission

The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of the military sector of Zi Kar on 8/3/2001 announced to us by the top secret letter 154 from the Command of Ali Military Division on 10/3/2001 we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests and according what is shown below to please review and inform us.

Air Brigadier General

Abdel Magid Hammot Ali

Commander of Ali Bin Abi Taleb Air Force Base

Air Colonel

Mohamad Majed Mohamadi.

Morrissey has now confirmed the translation through two experts, working independently. Assuming the document is authentic, it is a powerful confirmation of what was already palpable: The Iraqi dictator who attempted to murder a former U.S. president in 1993, who assiduously attacked the U.S. in his state-controlled media, who colluded with the terrorist network that attacked the U.S. throughout the 1990s, who defied sanctions and expelled weapons inspectors, who shot at U.S. planes in the no-fly zone throughout the 1990s, and who conducted frenetic terrorist training in preparation for a bloody, long-term insurgency against the U.S., was a threat to the United States.

The question lingers: Would an Iraqi air-force general in 2001 have had good reason to think he could get volunteers from within the Iraqi ranks for suicide missions?

There's good reason to think the answer to that question is "yes." As Tom Joscelyn points out to me, the new memorandum on which Morrissey has reported should be considered in conjunction with another piece of information that has attracted little media attention. This one comes from the December 2002 Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

One section of that Report (at pp. 209-13) studied what the U.S. intelligence community had, prior to 9/11, in the way of "Intelligence Information on Possible Terrorist Use of Airplanes as Weapons." Over a seven-year period, the joint inquiry found there were at least twelve such indications. Included among them was this one (p. 211):

In February 1999, the Intelligence Community obtained information that Iraq had formed a suicide pilot unit that it planned to use against British and U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf. The CIA commented that this was highly unlikely and probably disinformation.

The purpose here is not to take yet another shot at the intelligence community. As the joint inquiry observed, the sources for the twelve reports it outlined were believed to be dubious or to have provided sketchy information at best. The CIA did not have access to the files we are now, finally, scrutinizing.

Nevertheless, the new memo, coupled with the finding by the joint inquiry, does underscore that: (a) our intelligence in Iraq (and elsewhere) was very poor; (b) that intelligence was not sufficient for making categorical conclusions about Iraq's intentions (including the absurd claim, made by many in intelligence circles, that Saddam would never collaborate with jihadists); (c) it is wishful thinking to conclude, as do many Bush critics, that President Clinton intimidated Saddam into foreswearing attacks against the U.S. by a 1993 air strike against an empty Iraqi-government building (in "retaliation" for the attempt to murder the first President Bush); and (d) it is critical for the historical record and the legacy of American military operations in Iraq to continue translating and studying the intelligence trove we have seized.

Most important for present purposes: The evidence is there, as it has always been, to prove that removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power was a significant advance in the war on terror. But all the evidence in the world proves nothing unless the administration gets out and makes the case. Publicly. Those who have given their lives to a noble cause deserve nothing less.

[dfwgator]

Wrong. Iraq is a battle in the War on Terror.

[Jibaholic]

Wrong. There is no war on terror is really the war on Islam. We are in Iraq because we want to pretend the enemy is a few oppressive dictators rather than a billion Muslims.

[91B]

Iraq is now the key battle in the war on terror. If we fail to show resolve in Iraq, our enemies will be emboldened by what they will perceive as evidence that we are weak and they will increase their actions worldwide.

On the other hand, if we can demonstrate that we can transform troublemaker nations, like Iraq under Saddam, into stable democracies it will send a powerful message to "the arab street" as well as potentially terrorist friendly dictators. The Dhimmicrats and their media allies know this, but they value the chance to regain power more than victory in the war. Treason is too weak a word to describe their actions.

[april15Bendovr]

The article is stating the evidenced was always there but the Bush Administration just has to make it.

I agree with Laurie Mylroie

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/8453

President Bush made a necessary and courageous decision for war with Iraq. He inherited from the Clinton administration a fatally flawed explanation for terrorism: the role of states in such attacks had been supplanted by shadowy networks, above all Al Qaeda. This view was articulated and maintained for nearly the entirety of Clinton's eight years in office. As so many people accepted, endorsed, and promulgated it, it has generated ferocious opposition to the notion that Saddam was involved in terrorism. Yet unless the White House itself takes a much bolder lead in presenting the ever-clearer picture of Iraq's ties with terrorists, the arguments regarding this war will remain hopelessly distorted.

[april15Bendovr]

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/8453

[cvq3842]

I really want the White House to come forward and talk about this!!!

[april15Bendovr]

"Most important for present purposes: The evidence is there, as it has always been, to prove that removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power was a significant advance in the war on terror. But all the evidence in the world proves nothing unless the administration gets out and makes the case. Publicly. Those who have given their lives to a noble cause deserve nothing less."

Not only is the onus on the President and his administration to make the case but it should also be the same for conservatives and Republicans to strengthen his case with the information out there. Many have become apathetic and lazy. Including Free Republic where many of these posts are getting fewer and fewer hits being held up by only a small % that still care.

[NutCrackerBoy]

All the evidence in the world proves nothing unless the administration gets out and makes the case. Publicly. Those who have given their lives to a noble cause deserve nothing less. -Andrew C. McCarthy

I suspect the Administration holds back in order to have a strategic reserve if critics ever go totally bold, e.g. impeachment. With the reserve, the Administration retains the ability to reverse the momentum at some key time. This strategy currently has lonely supporters in the alternate media twisting in the wind.

[april15Bendovr]

"Already, thanks to diligent work by the likes of Steve Hayes of The Weekly Standard (author of The Connection and numerous articles about Iraq and al Qaeda)"

The Docex Project and its release of documents was the administrations way of expediating more strength for their case. I remember Senator Torricelli and President Clinton implementing policy to decrease foreign intelligence before the war. If anyone has a hard time with bloggers such as FR's jveritas translating that info making discoveries than this should be addressed.

[april15Bendovr]

I dont know if people have noticed but the drive by media is calling the release of these documents a "document dump"

They could send tons of people to sift through boxes looking at hanging chads, loose chads and pregnant chads down in Florida after the 2000 Presidential election but I havent seen them assign one person to translate any of these documents?

[bnelson44]

The case cannot be made until Iraq has a free and stable government.

[neverdem]

This is something xsysmgr taught me, IIRC, in order to capture linked URLs for links and "blocked" quotations in a more readable format.

Look around the webpage for a "printer friendly" link, and then left click on it. It should change appearance, loose the advertizing, often opening up a new window. The "printer friendly" link is usually near functions such as "email this story." At National Review Online, you'll find them near the upper right corner.

Once you're on the "printer friendly" webpage, you 'right click' on your mouse. That's the important 'right click' which will give you a menu of choices, which with my computer setup, includes "View Source" a little below the middle of the menu. Right or left clicking on "View Source" will open up a notepad window with the source code, whether it's in HTML, Javascript, etc., for the printer friendly webpage.

Now right click on the notepad window. Click on "Select All," and then "copy." Now, you just paste it where you want the text, links, etc. to be written, like so.

	E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version

April 17, 2006, 6:40 a.m.
Iraq Is the War on Terror

As the administration stays curiously mum, the evidence that it was right mounts.

The Bush administration evidently believes revisiting the case for toppling Saddam Hussein is a political loser. That this conclusion — which, of course, has played in the media like a tacit admission of guilt — is a terrible miscalculation becomes clearer with each passing day. As journalists, scholars, and analysts pore over more of the intelligence haul seized when U.S. forces toppled the Iraqi regime, the case for removing an America-hating terror-monger responsible for the brutal torture and murder of — literally — tens of thousands of people looks better and better. Still, the administration maddeningly refuses to go on offense in its defense.

This is at least the second occasion of this politically suicidal default. Top administration officials also gratuitously handed their critics a cudgel when, for reasons still explicable only by panic, they retracted — and, indeed, apologized for — an entirely accurate assertion in the president's 2003 State of the Union Address.

As Michael Ledeen recounted here on NRO a few days ago, President Bush's claim that the Iraqi regime had sought uranium in Africa was not only true and, as the British parliamentary investigation later concluded, "well-founded"; it was probably an understatement. Christopher Hitchens observes — based on the Duelfer Report — that Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium from Niger stretch back a quarter century. Unless you are inclined to believe Saddam was interested in procuring goats in 1999 when he dispatched a high-ranking emissary to that cash-starved but uranium-rich African nation — a nation with which he had previously done uranium business — there can be little doubt that nuclear-weapons development was the impetus.

Now, onto suicidal default, chapter two. The president's poll numbers are plummeting, largely due to the success the opposition has had in portraying Iraq as a misadventure — a diversion from the "real" war on terror, disintegrating into a chaotic mess of dubious nation-building. Why? Because the administration put most of its eggs in a shaky WMD basket; failed to make and sustain the case — i.e., the abundantly supportable case — that Saddam was both a committed terrorist and terrorist-abettor; and has since allowed Iraq to be etched as the test-case for its Middle East democracy project rather than as a logical phase of the war on terror. Even today, if you ask most Americans, "What does Iraq have to do with the war on terror?" you'll get a blank stare — if not a curt "Nothing." Why should it be otherwise? That, effectively, has been the administration's own answer.

All the while, the evidence continues to mount that Saddam was a gathering threat against the United States — just as the president said he was. And the mounting has now been accelerated by the recent public availability of intelligence files — which the administration, for some reason, refused for years either to make available or to use in its own much needed defense.

Already, thanks to diligent work by the likes of Steve Hayes of The Weekly Standard (author of The Connection and numerous articles about Iraq and al Qaeda), Tom Joscelyn (find his website here), Ed Morrissey (of Captain's Quarters), and Edward Jay Epstein (find his website here) we have seen, among other things:

direct contacts between high-ranking Iraqi regime officials and both Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri (bin Laden's top deputy);

an apparent payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars by Iraq to Zawahiri in 1998;

elaborate mentions of Iraq in bin Laden's infamous 1998 fatwa calling for the murder of all Americans, anywhere they could be found — the fatwa that presaged the bombing of the U.S. embassies five months later;

an Iraqi al Qaeda member held in Guantanamo Bay, charged with traveling to Pakistan with an Iraqi Intelligence official in August 1998 (the same month the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed) to study the possibility of bombing the American and British embassies there;

the attempt by Iraq to recruit jihadists in the late 1990s to bomb an American target, Radio Free Europe, in Prague;

the continued insistence to the 9/11 Commission by top Clinton officials (including President Clinton himself) that the retaliatory strike against the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan following the embassy bombings was justified by intelligence indicating that the target was home to a joint chemical weapons venture of Iraq, al Qaeda and Sudan;

the Clinton administration so convinced of an asylum arrangement between Iraq and al Qaeda that its top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke, opined to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in 1999 that bin Laden would "boogie to Baghdad" if things became too hot for him in Afghanistan (it wouldn't, after all, have been a first: Saddam was already harboring one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers);

the still open allegation that Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001, during the plotting stages of the 9/11 attacks;

the still unexplained presence of an Iraqi intelligence operative, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, at the initial January 2000 planning meetings in Kuala Lampur for the 9/11 attacks;

the recent revelation that Saddam's regime was, since at least 1994, conducting training for thousands of terrorists — training which, from 1998 forward, drew in thousands of jihadists from outside Iraq;

the recent revelation that Saddam's son Uday ordered preparations in 1999 for a wave of "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]"; and

the exercises in January 2003 — on the eve of the U.S. invasion — known as "the "Heroes' attack," which was designed to prepare regional terror units to fight exactly the kind of insurgency war that has been waged against coalition forces for the last three years.

Now, the intelligence haul has produced another notable disclosure — which is startling only if you continue to gulp the popular Kool-aid that depicts Iraq as nothing more than a disastrous Bush blunder. About a week ago, Morrissey (crediting Iraq scholar Laurie Mylroie) published a striking memorandum, apparently authored by an Iraqi air-force general in March 2001. The memo, excerpted below (italics are mine), sought volunteers for suicide missions against American targets:

In the Name of God the Merciful The Compassionate
Top Secret

The Command of Ali Bin Abi Taleb Air Force Base

No 3/6/104

Date 11 March 2001

To all the Units

Subject: Volunteer for Suicide Mission

The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of the military sector of Zi Kar on 8/3/2001 announced to us by the top secret letter 154 from the Command of Ali Military Division on 10/3/2001 we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests and according what is shown below to please review and inform us.

Air Brigadier General

Abdel Magid Hammot Ali

Commander of Ali Bin Abi Taleb Air Force Base

Air Colonel

Mohamad Majed Mohamadi.

Morrissey has now confirmed the translation through two experts, working independently. Assuming the document is authentic, it is a powerful confirmation of what was already palpable: The Iraqi dictator who attempted to murder a former U.S. president in 1993, who assiduously attacked the U.S. in his state-controlled media, who colluded with the terrorist network that attacked the U.S. throughout the 1990s, who defied sanctions and expelled weapons inspectors, who shot at U.S. planes in the no-fly zone throughout the 1990s, and who conducted frenetic terrorist training in preparation for a bloody, long-term insurgency against the U.S., was a threat to the United States.

The question lingers: Would an Iraqi air-force general in 2001 have had good reason to think he could get volunteers from within the Iraqi ranks for suicide missions?

There's good reason to think the answer to that question is "yes." As Tom Joscelyn points out to me, the new memorandum on which Morrissey has reported should be considered in conjunction with another piece of information that has attracted little media attention. This one comes from the December 2002 Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

One section of that Report (at pp. 209-13) studied what the U.S. intelligence community had, prior to 9/11, in the way of "Intelligence Information on Possible Terrorist Use of Airplanes as Weapons." Over a seven-year period, the joint inquiry found there were at least twelve such indications. Included among them was this one (p. 211):

In February 1999, the Intelligence Community obtained information that Iraq had formed a suicide pilot unit that it planned to use against British and U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf. The CIA commented that this was highly unlikely and probably disinformation.

The purpose here is not to take yet another shot at the intelligence community. As the joint inquiry observed, the sources for the twelve reports it outlined were believed to be dubious or to have provided sketchy information at best. The CIA did not have access to the files we are now, finally, scrutinizing.

Nevertheless, the new memo, coupled with the finding by the joint inquiry, does underscore that: (a) our intelligence in Iraq (and elsewhere) was very poor; (b) that intelligence was not sufficient for making categorical conclusions about Iraq's intentions (including the absurd claim, made by many in intelligence circles, that Saddam would never collaborate with jihadists); (c) it is wishful thinking to conclude, as do many Bush critics, that President Clinton intimidated Saddam into foreswearing attacks against the U.S. by a 1993 air strike against an empty Iraqi-government building (in "retaliation" for the attempt to murder the first President Bush); and (d) it is critical for the historical record and the legacy of American military operations in Iraq to continue translating and studying the intelligence trove we have seized.

Most important for present purposes: The evidence is there, as it has always been, to prove that removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power was a significant advance in the war on terror. But all the evidence in the world proves nothing unless the administration gets out and makes the case. Publicly. Those who have given their lives to a noble cause deserve nothing less.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

	http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200604170640.asp

It may not do complete justice to the formatting because the lines are too short. It often seems to only get the first line of a 'blockquote' or 'center' command correctly, but you do get the links.

[neverdem]

ping

[eyespysomething]

Thanks for the ping neverdem!

Iraq Is the War on Terror

Release/Translation of Classified PreWar Docs ping. If you want to be added or removed to the ping list, please Freepmail me.

Please add the keyword prewardocs to any articles pertaining to this subject.

Operation Get The Truth Out

Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents

Documents from the Harmony Database

jveritas’s blog

Ray Robison’s blog

[SittinYonder]

You said quite clearly and convincingly in your speech the weekend before the invasion that Iraq was the next place to go. I have never once questioned whether or not you, the President and our military leaders were right on that point.

I suspect that at some point between now and November (prolly right after the primaries) Bush and the Republicans are going to start talking up these documents pretty big.

I wouldn't be surprised if everyone who pays even a little attention knows by November what the Freepers know now (thanks to jveritas).

[SittinYonder]

The case cannot be made until Iraq has a free and stable government.

If Iraq doesn't have a free and stable government by ... September, then the case is going to have to be made.

If Iraq was free and stable no one would care anymore, but if there's still unrest going on then it has to be shown that Iraq was the right place for the WOT to continue.

[avacado]

How come "jveritas" is not being mentioned? That document was translated 3 times and the one in the article is his translation.

Anyway, I agree with the last line in the article that the Bush Admin owes the soldiers and those killed and their families to make the case before the public!

[pissant]

"As the administration stays curiously mum, the evidence that it was right mounts".

President Bush has said repeatedly that Iraq is the central front on the war on terror. He has NEVER wavered from that argument.

[jveritas]

About a week ago, Morrissey (crediting Iraq scholar Laurie Mylroie) published a striking memorandum, apparently authored by an Iraqi air-force general in March 2001.

Really?! :) Anyway as long as the word get out about the important facts and truth in these documents it is OK with me, however I would like this great Free Republic forum to get the credit.

PS: They are still using my translation that has some spelling error, per my request to the Admin Moderator the FR latest version of this translation has those errors fixed :)