Free Republic

History-like hindsight-is supposed to be 20:20, but the deliberate partisan, political divide regarding the invasion of Iraq makes that hard. It's not a new phenomenon. Long ago it was said that the true story of a war can't be told until the last of its veterans has passed away, and only a few months ago did the last World War One veteran go to his great reward. For decades after the Civil War (and some would argue even today) the debate raged on, and the healing of Southern Reconstruction didn't really start culturally until the unity of the Spanish-American War...

Newly released police testimony of al-Qaeda member Louai Sakka found in case records has come the fore. In Sakka’s statements it is written that he is the one who provided two terrorists with a passport before they organized the September 11 attacks. Sakka's testimony also gives us some clues that Murat Yuce, the Turkish driver kidnapped in Iraq, was killed by a terrorist of Sakka's choice. There were also some Turkish people who took part in the execution of Yuce. The following was the structure of al-Qaeda, according to Sakka: Leader Osama bin Laden, His assistants: Mohammed Atef (Abu Hafs...

A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told US interrogators the meeting never happened, according to US officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the US in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague in the Czech Republic, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. US officials caution that Ani may have been lying...

Saddam Hussein's son Uday planned to carry out an attack in London to assassinate the leader of an Iraqi opposition group in April 2000, it is being reported. According to the U.K.'s Times of London newspaper, a new Pentagon study based on documents seized during the Iraq war reveal an aborted plot by Uday Hussein's elite paramilitary group — the Fedayeen — to kill London-based Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. Documents show that Fedayeen's orders were to carry out assassinations and bombings in London, the Times reported. While the study showed no link between Saddam Hussein's regime...

A NEWSWEEK article by investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball about the memo linking Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein dismisses a recent WEEKLY STANDARD report as "hype" and concludes, the "tangled tale of the memo suggests that the case of whether there has been Iraqi-al Qaeda complicity is far from closed." While it's refreshing to see the establishment media pick up the story, the Newsweek article is less than authoritative. The authors write: "The Pentagon memo pointedly omits any reference to the interrogations of a host of other high-level al Qaeda and Iraqi detainees--including such notables as Khalid...

A US-led coalition air strike killed a chemical weapons specialist with the Islamic State group in Iraq who once worked for Saddam Hussein, US military officers said on Friday. The air raid carried out last Saturday near Mosul took out Abu Malik, whose training "provided the terrorist group with expertise to pursue a chemical weapons capability," the military said in a statement. Malik had worked at a chemical weapons production plant under Saddam's regime and later forged an affiliation with al Qaeda in Iraq in 2005, before joining the extremist IS group, according to Central Command. "His death is expected...

An ISIS chemical weapons expert was killed in an airstrike on Saturday near Mosul, Iraq, U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Friday. Abu Malik worked in a chemical weapons production facility under Saddam Hussein before joining al Qaeda in Iraq in 2005, Central Command said. He then joined ISIS, allowing the terrorist group to make use of his experience in chemical weapons capabilities, according to Central Command. "His death is expected to temporarily degrade and disrupt the terrorist network and diminish ISIL's (ISIS') ability to potentially produce and use chemical weapons against innocent people," the statement said. The...

How many times have we heard members of the media say, “We know now that there were no ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda”? Typically, people make this claim based on any combination of four sources: President Bush’s 9/17/03 statement, Sec. Powell’s 1/8/04 statement, the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report of 7/22/04 or the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) report on Pre-war Iraq intelligence reports: 7/7/04. Yet, in each of these cases, the very quotations that opponents of the war in Iraq point towards as definitive claims of “no ties” are only half quotes. When they refer to President Bush’s...

As soldiers and Marines by the hundreds of thousands return home from Iraq they are telling their stories. They are telling family and friends of what they saw and of who they fought. They are writing books that tell of their experiences. Amazon.com is full of them. They have fought and lived through a dramatic and on-going historical event. To them it is real-not politics and so they tell the truth. They describe an invasion and an occupation where Islamic extremists and Iraqi thugs are the enemy. They tell tales of a fight against terrorists; people who rammed cars filled...

Many of the quasi-conclusions are based largely on claims of innocence from Saddam Hussein, “a top official in Saddam’s government, Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Kattab al-Tikriti,” Tariq Aziz and Faruq Hijazi. These are 4/7 of the primary players in any involvement or potential involvement between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda. The other 3 primary players are Mohammed al-Douri (He is Saddam’s VP/muscle man/Thug-In-Charge who remains at large. He is also suspected of being the primary source for most of a large portion of the insurgency and most reports place him as directing operations from inside Syria). The last 2 primary players...

<p>WASHINGTON — A 7-pound block of cyanide salt (search) was discovered by U.S. troops in Baghdad at the end of January, officials confirmed to Fox News.</p> <p>The potentially lethal compound was located in what was believed to be the safe house of Abu Musab Zarqawi (search), a poisons specialist described by some U.S. intelligence officials as having been a key link between deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda (search) terror network.</p>

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A former Iraqi general, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, is reported to be coordinating attacks in Iraq by foreign fighters and Iraqi regime loyalists, a US defense official said. "There are reports that the al-Douri is coordinating the attacks," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The reports in military channels fingering al-Douri as the coordinator of the attacks probably came from the recent capture in Mosul of a former secretary of al-Douri and two senior members of Ansar al-Islam who were close to the general, the official said. Number six on the US list of 55...

LONDON [MENL] -- Aides of deposed President Saddam Hussein, under the guise of Al Qaida fighters, have been leading the insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. Islamic sources said many of the Al Qaida-aligned cells that have appeared over the last two years stemmed from units in the Saddam military. The sources said Baathist operatives have adopted Islamic identities to exploit support among Muslims for Al Qaida. The Baathist strategy was formed during Saddam's rule, the sources said. They pointed to the "Return to Faith Campaign" directed by then-Iraqi Vice President Izzat Ibrahim Al Douri, which sought to curry...

Venezuela’s Tarek El-Aissami The Americas Report | Oct 03, 2008  By Nicole Ferrand [...] Mr. El - Aissami is a Venezuelan national of Syrian descent who, before becoming Minster of Interior and Justice, occupied the position of Deputy Interior Minister for Public Security. His father, Carlos Aissami, is the head of the Venezuelan branch of the Iraqi Baath political party. Before the invasion of Iraq, he held a press conference in which he described himself as a Taliban and called Osama Bin Laden, "the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden." Tarek's great-uncle Shibli el-Aissami was a prominent ideologist and...

Sunni militants on Tuesday seized control of military bases and the provincial governor’s building in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, as police officers and army soldiers abandoned the town and left weapons, vehicles and even their uniforms to the gunmen. By midday, the militants, believed to belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an extremist group, were in control of much of central and southern Mosul, according to witnesses and local officials. Soldiers who fled the city said the militants had seized a jail, freeing the inmates. “They took control of everything, and they are everywhere,” said one soldier...

On January 3, extremists affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq declared an Islamic state over Iraq’s Anbar province — the group now controls territory reaching from western Iraq all the way across Syria. The Iraqi government has since deployed troops to Fallujah, as Prime Minister Maliki vowed to remove al-Qaeda from the country and retake the embattled city.Western Iraq — destabilized by the civil war in neighboring Syria — threatens to be thrust further into sectarian conflict, and violence throughout the struggling, young democracy is at the highest level since before the U.S. surge. Al-Qaeda, through its Iraqi branch, now controls more territory than ever...

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, an al Qaeda branch in the Middle East, killed 21 people in a suicide attack at a military recruiting center in Baghdad today. The attack was launched as the ISIS continues to control Fallujah, parts of Ramadi, and other areas in Anbar province. The suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives outside the Iraqi Army recruitment center at the Muthanna airport in Baghdad, according to the National Iraqi News Agency. Iraqi officials reported that 21 Iraqis, including four soldiers protecting the center, were killed and 35 more were wounded in the...

Iraq: Late reporting indicates that al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters have begun withdrawing from Fallujah to the suburbs. This report has not been confirmed. The government announced that it would not attack Fallujah for now in order to minimize civilian casualties. At least one source in Iraq, however, reported that government forces have low morale because they lack the supplies and equipment to mount an operation that has any prospect of success. Meanwhile in Ramadi, also west of Baghdad, a government and tribal night operation on 6 January failed to oust Islamists from southern Ramadi, according...

Two years after Obama declared that the administration has decimated Al Qaeda worldwide, Al Qaeda has delivered the most devastating blow to the United States since the 9/11 attacks that precipitated America’s war on Islamic terrorism. The fall of the Iraqi Anbar province towns of Ramadi and Fallujah recently to foreign fighters under control of Al Qaeda, called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, represents not just a tactical defeat in Obama’s “Smart Power” strategy, but a strategic surrender of the entire U.S. foreign policy conception for the last 50 years. “US policies and leaders in three...

Republican senators on Saturday blamed the Obama administration for Al Qaeda affiliates over-running parts of Iraq, including the city of Fallujah, which the United States secured before President Obama removed all U.S. forces from that country in 2011. Sen. John McCain, Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, called the recent turn of events “as tragic as they were predictable” and suggested Obama misled Americans into believing that Iraqi leaders wanted U.S. forces out of their country. “While many Iraqis are responsible for this strategic disaster, the administration cannot escape its share of the blame,” the senators said in a joint...