Posted on 09/15/2006 1:54:26 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Connected
The ties that bind Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, and other Islamofascists.
By Deroy Murdock
Iraq-war critics are trumpeting a Sept. 8 Senate Intelligence Committee report that concludes Saddam Hussein knew nothing about the 9/11 attacks. Hence, the argument goes, he had no connection to al Qaeda, and, therefore, he lacked ties to Islamic terrorists. In short: “Bush lied, people died.”
Of course, none of these propositions necessarily yields the next. But if repeated often and quickly enough, and with little protest from the White House, they collectively begin to resemble the truth.
This seriously flawed report relies on unreliable witnesses, ignores potential and actual evidence of Hussein’s philanthropy of terror, and yet quietly acknowledges that he did in fact work with terrorists. If Saddam Hussein’s lawyers seek a clean bill of health for their client, this isn’t it.
For starters, the report’s sources include “debriefs of multiple detainees including Saddam Hussein and former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.” Both are on trial and could face severe punishment. Their exculpatory remarks should be highly suspect, but appear valid to Senate Intelligence staffers. On page 67, their report paraphrases Hussein’s statement that he eschewed al Qaeda’s anti-Americanism because “the United States was not Iraq’s enemy.” Perhaps he merely was being playful when he fired almost daily at U.S. aircraft patrolling the No-Fly Zone and attempted to assassinate President G .H. W. Bush in 1993. Indeed, on page 68, Aziz offers the FBI Hussein’s response to al Qaeda’s August 7, 1998, bombing of America’s Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies. Hussein “was pleased at the act of terrorism because the U.S. had bombed Iraq during the first Gulf War and tried to kill Saddam. Saddam thought that al Qaeda was an effective organization.”
The report also quotes captured Iraqi documents. Among some 120 million such papers, only 34 million have been “translated and summarized to some extent” to speed expert analysis. Nevertheless, with nearly 72 percent of these records still unusable, the report concludes: “While document exploitation continues, additional reviews of documents in Iraq are unlikely to provide information that would contradict the Committee’s findings or conclusions.” Or, in plain English: “Don’t confuse us with data. Trust us. We’re psychic.”
This report overlooks numerous indications, some firmer than others, that Hussein supported the 9/11 conspiracy specifically and al Qaeda broadly, among other Islamic terrorist groups. Consider:
The report disregards the May 7, 2003, decision of Clinton-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer, Jr. that Baghdad backed the 9/11 attack. Baer awarded $104 million in damages from the Baathist regime to the families of George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas, both killed at the World Trade Center. As Baer ruled: “I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, ‘by evidence satisfactory to the court,’ that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda.”
This federal court decision notwithstanding, Iraq did have links to al Qaeda. Perhaps, as the report contends, Iraq and al Qaeda lacked “an established formal relationship.” So what? Does the Cali drug cartel have “established formal relationships” with those who market its cocaine on U.S. streets? Are those contracts notarized, or merely stored in safe-deposit boxes? Equally ludicrous is the idea that a dictatorial regime and a shadowy terrorist network would arrange proper, Western-style agreements. The fact that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden never signed an accord in Geneva hardly precludes their plotting evil together.
The report misses the fact that 1993 WTC-attack architect Ramzi Yousef — nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed — landed in America on an Iraqi passport. Nor does it mention Indiana-born, Iraqi-bred Abdul Rahman Yasin, the al Qaeda operative who built the 1993 WTC bomb that killed six and injured 1,040. He fled to Iraq and, documents show, received a house and salary from Hussein’s regime. As Sheila MacVicar reported for ABC News on July 27, 1994: “Last week, [television program] Day One confirmed [Yasin] is in Baghdad. . . . Just a few days ago, he was seen at [his father’s] house by ABC News. Neighbors told us Yasin comes and goes freely.”
The report forgets that President Clinton’s State Department designated Iraq a state sponsor of terrorism as early as 1993. “Iraq continued to plan and sponsor international terrorism in 1999,” State later declared. Baghdad “continued to provide safe haven and support to various terrorist groups.”
Among Hussein’s guests was Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas, ringleader of the 1985 Achille Lauro luxury-liner hijacking in which four Muslim fanatics wounded passengers, then shot wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish retiree from New York City, and flung his corpse into the Mediterranean. Abu Nidal, another terror master, also lived in comfort under Hussein. Nidal and his group injured an estimated 788 innocents and murdered 407 others, including at least 17 Americans.
The Senate document concedes “Saddam’s record of support for secular terrorist organizations like the Palestinian Liberation Front,” but then breezes past his $10,000 and $25,000 reward checks to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Between the $15,000 boost in these bonuses on March 11, 2002, and the March 20, 2003, launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 such killers wounded 1,209 people and murdered 223 more, including at least eight Americans.
Intelligence Committee Democrats, in cahoots with Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, successfully voted to exclude from the report Vincent Brooks’s remarks about Salman Pak, a suspected Iraqi terror-training camp south of Baghdad. Brooks told reporters on April 6, 2003: “The nature of the work being done by some of those people that we captured, their inferences to the type of training that they received, all of these things give us the impression that there was terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak.”
Why was this deleted?
Melissa Merz, press secretary for Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, told me: “Sen. Wyden moved to strike the statement on the grounds that it was clearly a statement by a press spokesman and was not apparently based on any postwar intelligence finding. No other statements by press spokesmen were included in the report.”
But Vincent Brooks is no standard flack. He is a U.S. Army brigadier general and, at that rank, served as deputy director of operations during Iraq’s liberation. His opinions on Salman Pak should have remained in the report.
While Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have tried to answer this paper, President Bush himself should deliver several major addresses detailing Saddam Hussein’s extensive terror record. Educating the public with new, declassified information would help counteract the “Bush lied us into war” chorus. If this left-wing cantata goes unchallenged, it could cost Republicans control of Congress and expose Bush to greater indignities — including impeachment.
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— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Arlington, Va.
trolling?
I read this earlier today...great column.
This should be sent to Harry Reid!
I am sorry!
This makes too much sense to ever be seen in the MSM.
BFL
here is some video from abc linking Bin ladin to iraq pre 9-11
http://www.mediaresearch.org/rm/cyber/2004/binladen061704/segment1.ram
There is also a blog dedicated to those connections here: http://www.regimeofterror.com/
"Bin Ladin seemed willing to include in the confederation terrorists from almost every corner of the Muslim world. His vision mirrored that of Sudan's Islamist leader, Turabi, who convened a series of meetings under the label Popular Arab and Islamic Conference around the time of Bin Ladin's arrival in that country. Delegations of violent Islamist extremists came from all the groups represented in Bin Ladin's Islamic Army Shura. Representatives also came from organizations such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah.51"
"Turabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and join against the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support-even if only training-for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Ladin reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983.The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations. As will be described in chapter 7, al Qaeda contacts with Iran continued in ensuing years.52"
"Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda-save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against "Crusaders" during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.53"
"To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.54 "
"With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.55 As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections."
9-11 Commission Report, [ see 2.4 BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION, DECLARING WAR ON THE UNITED STATES (1992-1996) ]
And there's MORE!
Thank you for your superb post. This article, added to your post, is going to be great fodder for me...
WOW!
I would not have believed it if I did not the the ABC medalion for myself!
Everything we can read on linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein can be fond here: http://regimeofterror.com/
This blog will quite literally blow your mind, and puts the lie to the Senate in their "supposed" release of their "study."
The author of the blog is a FReeper, ikez78.
How kind of you to plug my site.
thanks
Everyone PLEASE contact these members of the Senate intel committee and let them know what they missed on this report.
Pat Roberts
Washington D.C. Office:
109 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-1605
Phone: 202-224-4774
Fax: 202-224-3514
Orrin Hatch
Washington DC Office
104 Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: (202) 224-5251
Fax: (202) 224-6331
Mike Dewine
Washington, D.C. Office
140 Russell Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2315
Fax: (202) 224-6519
TDD: (202) 224-9921
Kit Bond
Washington, DC Office:
274 Russell Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
(202)224-5721
Trent Lott
Phone: (202) 224-6253
Fax: (202) 224-2262
Olympia Snowe
Toll free in Maine: (800) 432-1599
TDD - Maine Relay Service: 1-955-3323
Chuck Hagel
Washington, D.C. Office
248 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: (202) 224-4224
Fax: (202) 224-5213
Senator Saxby Chambliss
Republican - Georgia United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-3521
Evan Bayh
463 Russell Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-5623
(202) 228-1377 fax
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