Judge Gilbert Merritt
The judge is on 90-day assignment in Iraq and his time is about up, so he has to come up with something to say.
Local Judge Chosen to Help Rebuild Iraqi Justice SystemA judge from Cincinnati is one of 13 legal experts chosen by the Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system.
Judge Gilbert Merritt is a senior judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Merritt will go to Fort Bliss, Texas, Sunday for orientation before flying to Baghdad for the 90 day assignment.
[snip]
The story Judge Merritt relates is similar to an account reported in The Weekly Standard last May. Splashed across the front page of the November 16, 2002, edition of Uday Hussein's Babil newspaper were two "honor" lists, one of which included Aswod (spelled "Aswad") and identified him as the "official in charge of regime's contacts with Osama bin Laden's group and currently the regime's representative in Pakistan."
I stumbled upon this passage doing research for another piece. So I brought the article to the attention of administration officials, who hadn't yet seen it, and asked for comment. Intelligence analysts were perplexed, particularly because of a passage in the text preceding the list. It read: "We publish this list of great men for the sons of our great people to see." And below that: "This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them. A list of the leaders of Saddam's regime, as well as their present and previous posts."
The second description was clearly hostile in tone--"henchmen of the regime" and "woe unto them." Analysts weren't sure what to make of the introduction or the list, but suggested Uday Hussein may have simply republished a list of "henchmen" distributed by an Iraqi opposition group without realizing he was publicly linking his father to Osama bin Laden.
That still seems like the most plausible explanation to me. (Although Judge Merritt's report that the front page of the four-page newspaper carried side-by-side photographs of bin Laden and Saddam is interesting.) Still, some intelligence officials believe that Aswad--who publicly raised doubts after September 11 about whether Osama bin Laden is a terrorist--was an important link between Iraq and al Qaeda
. If the newspaper reports are interesting but inconclusive, two other recent reports are more compelling. Jessica Stern, a Harvard professor and Clinton administration national security official, discusses the links in a fascinating and sober analysis of the Al Qaeda threat in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.
Under the subheading, "Friends of Convenience," she writes:
Meanwhile, the Bush administration's claims that al Qaeda was cooperating with the "infidel" (read: secular) Saddam Hussein while he was still in office are now also gaining support, and from a surprising source. Hamid Mir, bin Laden's "official biographer" and an analyst for al Jazeera, spent two weeks filming in Iraq during the war. Unlike most reporters, Mir wandered the country freely and was not embedded with U.S. troops. He reports that he has "personal knowledge" that one of Saddam's intelligence operatives, Farooq Hijazi, tried to contact bin Laden in Afghanistan as early as 1998. At that time, bin Laden was publicly still quite critical of the Iraqi leader, but he had become far more circumspect by November 2001, when Mir interviewed him for the third time.
Hijazi has acknowledged meeting with al Qaeda representatives, perhaps with bin Laden himself, even before the outreach in 1998. According to news reports and interviews with intelligence officials, Hijazi met with al Qaeda leaders in Sudan in 1994.
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the congressional commission investigating the September 11 attacks, added to the intrigue this week when he flatly declared, "there is evidence" of Iraq-al Qaeda links. Lehman has access to classified intelligence as a member of the commission, intelligence that has convinced him the links may have been even greater than the public pronouncements of the Bush administration might suggest. "There is no doubt in my mind that [Iraq] trained them in how to prepare and deliver anthrax and to use terror weapons."
The HitLIARy beast must be especially seething as she reads this paper with her morning breakfast. Her normal routine as she wonders the whereabouts of her husband and the song "Who's bed have your boots been under" runs through her head. She thinks "well, I'm back to 2008 at this point". Her next interview will state "I have no intentions of running for president".
Judge Gilbert Merritt
JMHO: We went into Iraq for a number of reasons, and there were a number of different "SMOKING GUNS" we were searching for. This coordination / alliance / cabal / brotherhood / syndiate / cartel / conspiracy / collusion (Dare I use the phrase "AXIS OF EVIL?) between the Sadaam/Baathist regime and the terrorist organization Al Qaeda constitutes a SMOKING GUN.
'Gag' Order Contradicts Value Iraqis Like
Don't know quite what to make of it.