Iraqi Weekly: Saddam Ordered Training of Al-Qa'ida Members

Oh are we talking about the article again?

I won't deny the stuff in this article. If this all pans out to be legit, then I will sleeping easier knowing that there was at least a little more justification for the invasion.

For now I will wait and see.

 

Here's a bit more for you to chew on:

Saddam's Terror Ties
Iraq-war critics ignore ample evidence
Deroy Murdock

As President Bush more robustly promotes his Iraq policy, he should confront directly those who dismiss Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism and, thus, belittle a key rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bush's critics employ a flimsy argument that nonetheless enjoys growing appeal among a largely hostile press corps. Since Hussein did not order the September 11 attacks — the fuzzy logic goes — he has no ties to terrorists, especially al Qaeda. Therefore, the Iraq war was bogus, and Bush should be defeated.

"Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorism. Our invasion has made it one," said Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) on October 16. "We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from al Qaeda. It was not...We should never have gone to war in Iraq when we did, in the way we did, for the false reasons we were given."

West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq's alleged al Qaeda ties were "tenuous at best and not compelling." In a September 16 editorial, the Times slammed Vice President Dick Cheney for making "sweeping, unproven claims about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism." On August 7, former vice president Al Gore stated reassuringly: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all."

Bush and his national-security team should repeatedly devote entire speeches and publications — complete with documents, names, and visuals, including photographs of terrorists and their innocent victims — to remind Americans and the world that Baathist Iraq was a general store for terrorists, complete with cash, training, lodging, and even medical attention.

The evidence for Hussein's cooperation with and support for global terrorists is abundant and increasing. Recall, for instance:

Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. "President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of the Palestinian political office, Faroq al-Kaddoumi, his decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000," Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, declared at a Baghdad meeting of Arab politicians and businessmen on March 11, 2002, Reuters reported two days later. Mahmoud Besharat, who the White House says dispensed these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said: "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue." Between Aziz's announcement and the March 20 launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and killed 223 more, including at least eight Americans.

According to the State Department's May 21, 2002 "Patterns of Global Terrorism," the Abu Nidal Organization, the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, the Kurdistan Worker's party, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization and the Palestinian Liberation Front all operated offices or bases in Hussein's Iraq. Hussein's hospitality towards these mass murderers placed him in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which prohibited him from giving safe harbor to or otherwise supporting terrorists.

Coalition forces have found alive and well key terrorists who enjoyed Hussein's hospitality. Among them was Abu Abbas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Manhattan retiree who Abbas's men rolled, wheelchair and all, into the Mediterranean. Khala Khadr al-Salahat, accused of designing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 (259 killed on board, 11 dead on the ground), also lived in Baathist Iraq.

Before fatally shooting himself four times in the head on August 16, 2002, as Baghdad claimed, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal had resided in Iraq since 1999. As the AP's Sameer N. Yacoub reported on August 21, 2002, the Beirut office of the Abu Nidal Organization said he entered Iraq "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities." Nidal's attacks in 20 countries killed at least 275 people and wounded some 625 others. Among other atrocities, ANO henchmen bombed a TWA airliner over the Aegean Sea in 1974, killing all 88 people on board.

Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps including a base near Baghdad called Salman Pak. It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where numerous Iraqi defectors reported that foreign terrorists were instructed how to hijack airliners with utensils. (The Bush administration should bus a few dozen foreign correspondents and their camera crews from the bar of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel to Salman Pak for a guided tour. Network news footage of that ought to open a few eyes.)

As for Hussein's supposedly imaginary ties to al Qaeda, consider these disturbing facts:

The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell-phone records indicate that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City. Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40. As Dan Murphy wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last February 26, those phone records bolster Sali's claim in a November 2002 TV interview that the Iraqi diplomat had offered these Muslim extremists Baghdad's help with joint missions.

Journalist Stephen F. Hayes reported in July that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper published by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, ran what it called a "List of Honor." The paper's November 14, 2002, edition gave the names and titles of 600 leading Iraqis, including this passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." That name, Hayes wrote, matches that of Iraq's then-ambassador to Islamabad.

Carter-appointed federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt discovered this document in Baghdad while helping Iraq rebuild its legal system. He wrote in the June 25 Tennessean that two of his Iraqi colleagues remember secret police agents removing that embarrassing edition from newsstands and confiscating copies of it from private homes. The paper was not published for the next ten days. Judge Merritt theorized that the "impulsive and somewhat unbalanced" Uday may have showcased these dedicated Baathists to "make them more loyal and supportive of the regime" as war loomed.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad. He then opened a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.

While Iraqi Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot, fled the U.S. on a Pakistani passport, he arrived here on an Iraqi passport.

Author Richard Miniter reported September 25 on TechCentralStation: "U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and a monthly salary." Indiana-born, Iraqi-reared al Qaeda member Abdul Rahman Yasin was indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that exploded beneath the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring some 1,000 New Yorkers.

Along Iraq's border with Syria, U.S. troops captured Farouk Hijazi, Hussein's former ambassador to Turkey and suspected liaison to al Qaeda. Under interrogation, Hijazi "admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994."

While sifting through the Mukhabarat's bombed ruins last April 26, the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, the London Daily Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore and their translator discovered a memo in the intelligence service's accounting department. Dated February 19, 1998 and marked "Top Secret and Urgent," it said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The memo's three references to bin Laden were obscured crudely with correction fluid.

Despite the White House's inexplicable insistence to the contrary, tantalizing clues suggest Saddam Hussein might not have shared the world's shock when fireballs erupted from the Twin Towers.

Recall that his Salman Pak terror camp taught terrorists air piracy on an actual jet fuselage.

On January 5, 2000, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir — an Iraqi airport greeter reportedly dispatched from Baghdad's embassy in Malaysia — welcomed Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to Kuala Lampur and escorted them to a local hotel where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared. He was arrested in Qatar on September 17, 2001, six days after al Midhar and al Hamzi slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 216 people. On his person and in his apartment, authorities discovered papers tying him to the 1993 WTC plot and "Operation Bojinka," al Qaeda's 1995 plan to blow up 12 jets over the Pacific at once.

The Czech Republic stands by its claim that 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim an-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat/intelligence agent. He was expelled two weeks after the suspected meeting with Atta for apparently hostile surveillance of Radio Free Europe's Prague headquarters, from which American broadcasts to Iraq emanate.

Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge Harold Baer ordered Hussein and his ousted regime to pay $104 million in damages to the families of George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas, both killed in the Twin Towers along with 2,790 others. "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," Baer ruled. An airtight case? No, but sufficient evidence tied Hussein to 9/11 and secured a May 7 federal judgment against him.

If one has the time or professional duty to connect these dots, a portrait emerges of Saddam Hussein as sugar daddy to global terrorists, including al Qaeda and perhaps the 9/11 conspirators. Why won't Team Bush paint this picture? One administration communications specialist told me the government is bashful on this front because these links are difficult to prove. Yes, but prosecuting the informational battle in the war on terror is not like prosecuting a Mafia don, with wiretaps, hidden cameras and deep-cover "stool pigeons." Evidence of terrorist ties can be even more shadowy than a Costa Nostra whack job. While this makes metaphysical proof elusive, the White House and relevant agencies owe it to America's national security to highlight what they know about Saddam Hussein and terrorism, even if some of the evidence against him is only circumstantial.

Assuming he wishes to sway domestic and global opinion, President Bush and his administration should guide Americans and the world through the sometimes-murky data and identify the patterns and conclusions that arise. While Saddam Hussein never may endure a courtroom cross-examination, plenty already exists in the public record (and surely more should be declassified) to confirm that his ouster, the liberation of Iraq and its current rehabilitation were and are necessary phases of the war on terror. The president and his top advisers should present the case, not haphazardly, but systematically and in as comprehensive, well-documented, and well-illustrated a fashion as their vast resources will allow.

http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200310210934.asp

Now, I realize that many of you will simply refuse to even read this, and merely resort to bashing the source. The rest of you will bash the source because you don't feel like trying to dispute the facts. So let's just get the source-bashing out of the way now, so that we can hopefully get a post or two later on that will attempt to either dispute or come to grips with the facts?

 

As far as I know the CIA has denied that they have found direct links between AlQaeda and Sadam's regime. Or we supposed to take at face value this purported translation a group long noted for being biased against Arabs?

As stated even if Sadam in the final moments before the US war finally began training Muhjadin types, it does show only that as the CIA feared the war would cause that link. This is true, deceptive-innocent remarks about two months, notwithstanding

Essentially calling the CIA soft on America's enemies is similar to what caused McCarthy's downfall-- geting carried away and calling top military people communist sympathizers, and if memory is correct, even implying Eisehauer was supect.

 

Forgive me if this has already been posted. This article seems appropriate for this thread.

Saddam's Al-Qaeda Connection
By Christian Lowe
Weekly Standard | October 1, 2003
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10102

U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ trying to lock down security in Iraq's "Sunni Triangle" are battling enemies beyond disgruntled Baathist and unemployed Fedayeen. The triangle--the region around Baghdad and west to Ramadhi, then north to Saddam Hussein's ancestral hometown of Tikrit (and sometimes as far north as Mosul)--has become a hotbed for foreign fighters eager to spill American blood.

President Bush stated in a September 7 speech to the nation that Iraq has become the central front in the war on terrorism and that terrorists aligned with Osama bin Laden and others like al Qaeda have crossed Iraq's borders.

Paul Bremer, the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority that oversees reconstruction in Iraq, buttressed Bush's claims, saying at a September 26 Pentagon briefing that "we do have almost 300 foreign--non-Iraqi detainees--third-country nationals in detention now, some of whom are terrorists, some of whom maybe just came as mercenaries."

While the influence of foreign fighters has become a problem during America's occupation of Iraq, it's not a new one. One of the Bush team's arguments for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein was the presence of the Ansar al Islam group, who dominated a region in northeastern Iraq near the town of Halabja, by the Iranian border. And Ansar was a problem. During the war, teams from the 3rd Army Special Forces group fought pitched battles against Ansar, destroying their terrorist training camp after four days of fighting.

But this wasn't the only group of terrorists lurking in Iraq. From early April until mid-May, coalition special operations forces operated out of a compound called H-1 on the grounds of a captured Iraqi air base in western Iraq. The base was captured early in the war by Army Rangers who parachuted onto its runways and wiped out Iraqi resistance. Once secured, the commandos swept in and turned the base into an outpost, using H-1 as a resupply point and staging a quick reaction force there to fly in and pull the commando teams out of a pinch if things got too hot.

They also turned H-1 into a POW camp. For one month, commando teams from the 5th Special Forces group, British and Australian Special Air Service, and CIA special tactics teams went out on raids designed to capture high-value human targets in the western desert along Highway12, the main road between Baghdad and Syria. And they didn't come back empty handed. According to Army soldiers who administered the camp for the commandos, the prison held as many as 250 captives--nearly all of them foreign terrorists. They came from Iran, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries and hailed from groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. The soldiers even reported capturing al Qaeda members.


INITIALLY, some observers believed that the H-1 soldiers were mistaking Ansar captives for al Qaeda. But at the September 26 briefing, Bremer, for the first time, revealed that American forces had indeed captured "two dozen" al Qaeda in Iraq.

During their detention at H-1, these prisoners were interrogated by Defense Intelligence Agency operatives and then shipped out of the country (via Saudi Arabia) to either Kuwait or Guantanamo Bay for further questioning.

The ties between Saddam and terrorist groups can be seen all over Iraq. One camp used by soldiers outside the northern city of Balad displays Iraqi and Palestinian flags side by side in the arched entrance. Inside the barracks-like buildings, Arabic writing on the walls teaches would-be terrorists how to aim rockets at tanks and implores them to kill infidels. This one-time training camp is set up just yards from one of the town's biggest Sunni mosques.

Evidence that Iraq is the central battleground in the war on terrorism is beginning to trickle out, with reports of increased infiltration along the Syrian border and a surge in activity from a reconstituted Ansar al Islam. But many of these groups were already well established in Iraq before the war.

Christian Lowe is a staff writer for Army Times Publishing Company and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard. He spent six weeks on assignment in Iraq this summer.

 

Well the facts in this piece are only half there or are wrong to begin with.

I only have time right now to remark on one, but maybe I'll be able to handle the others later.

The Czech Republic does not stand by it's claim as the author says. There are members who are lower ranking that still stand by it. The top officials and seniors of the Czech Republic say that Atta wasn't there, as do the American Intel agencies.

The article is full of other equally inaccurate claims. I've posted numerous links contradicting the Czech claim in past threads. I can't believe people still try and bring it up.

 

FB, let me play devil's (treeman's ... *shudder*) advocate here.

Don't do what we always rail against: pick out one argument that stinks and shoot down the whole article. Toss away the dumb Czech thing. You're correct: that is some flimsy crap. And some of the other bits are flimsy crap. But is it all flimsy crap?

I believe that Saddam has given cash to the families of suicide bombers. That's been confirmed in Palestine, has it not? Please correct me if I've been duped.

And I believe this Merritt guy until I see contradictory evidence. That story (links posted by treeman, and another link about the gag order, posted by me).

I know I'm playing a dangerous game, because some of these numbnuts will say "see! B-Bob thinks the war was justified!" That is absolutely false. But I have never been persuaded that Saddam had no links to terror or no links whatsoever to extremist groups like Al Qaeda, if not Al Q itself.

 

Don't really have a long time to deal with this, T_J, as am dealing with a death in the family, but quickly;

* Bush lying has already been established, in that the lies were about what he said we knew, as opposed to thought, what he said our intel was saying, and the difference between a probability and a conclusion...I have said this since day one, as even tree will attest.

* Re: this article, haven't really had time to go over it...will do so later...but as far as I saw at first glane, there doesn't seem to be anything all that new here. If that's a false impression, I'll correct it later. Again, am sort of dealing with a lot right now, but will get back to it when I can. If it does turn out that Saddam was behind 9-11, in my mind,we're in an interesting position, in that Bush lied ( established...like a cop thinking a house probably has drugs, telling a judge he saw drugs being taken in)...but on the other hand if Saddam was behind 9-11, I fully support the invasion, if not the lies. It would be an odd situation where the means would have to be punished, even if the end was necessary. Got to go for now...

 

B-Bob actually said pretty much about what I was going to. I also think that a couple of these are either bunk or have too little to support them (the Czech thing is arguable, and the Mukhabarat find is suspect), but can they all be discarded? That is the problem - they cannot. Many of then cannot be even doubted, as they are matters of historical fact and public record.

glynch:

When? They haven't really commented on it in quite a while.

And what group would that be, glynch? These "neocons" you're always getting hysterical about? The NRO editorial staff? Who? And when was it shown or noted that this group had a bias against Arabs? Please explain this one, or stop throwing the slurs around.

And what if that training started before 9/11? As stated in the article?

You haven't read a single article posted in this thread.

Ah, so... Osama is responsible for that link? Since the training began before 9/11, and Osama started the war that began on that date, and the CIA says that the link was only there because of the war...

Glynch, you need to read the fu*king article. How could that link have been forged because of our impending invasion of Iraq if the training was going on before 9/11? Explain that, please.

Well, since you believe that our enemies have time travel technologies (as evidenced in the Saudi-Pak thread, that is apparently what you believe), I can see how this would make sense to you:

Osama and Saddam, having both been attacked by the US, decide to forge a union against us. Only problem is, they don't really have their sh*t together yet, so they send back minions in their time machines to warn their past-selves about the impending war. The past-selves take the advice to heart, and they forge a bond sooner than expected (starting around 1994), and begin training for terrorist operations at Salman Pak. In 2001 they decide to preempt the US by attacking first.

Yes, I can see how this makes sense. And I can see how in this scenario, one could get the impression tht it was all the US's fault that Saddam and Al Qaeda formed a relationship before 9/11. Makes perfect sense.

Only problem is that they don't have any fu*king time machines!!!

 

B-Bob, I mentioned trying to get to the other arguments presented. As of now I'm not arguing the original piece in the thread. Or at least all of it.

The Czech thing we agree on.

The Palestinian thing is only a half truth. It is true that he paid the families of suicide bombers, but that was in a fund that was to go to all 'martyrs' not just suicide bombers. Families who lost members to Israeli missle attacks that had nothing to do with suicide bombers also received the same reward money from the same Saddam program. So innocent Palestinians who died at the hands of Israelis also revieved from that same fund. It wasn't a program set up for Palestinian suicide bombers. They were a part of the group that got money. I'm not saying that any plan that rewards suicide bombers is a good one, only that it wasn't set up specifically to reward suicide bombers. So I wouldn't say that you were wrong about Saddam and the suicide bombers only that it's just half the story. The reporting is slanted and it should be pointed out.

So it wasn't just the Czech story that was wrong with the article. I'm sorry if I made it seem as if I was just dismissing the whole article because the author chose to use invalid information for one argument.

 

B-Bob, I have always thought this was the most damning thing we had on Saddam and never understood why the war wasn't sold in large part on that basis. It might have been a tough sell, but the evidence is irrefutable. Why they felt they had to delude the American public instead is beyond me.

And, we should have waited. To make sure North Korea was not going to blow up in our faces and to use diplomacy to share the burden that has fallen so heavily on the US, UK and the few who are helping us. It didn't have to go down this way.

 

FB,
Thanks for the clarification. It's interesting, but I don't know that I'd call it a "half truth" to say Saddam's regime gave cash to the families of suicide bombers, because that is the really disturbing half, the half that a civilized regime would not do. Anyway, I see your point.

I can't believe that treeman said that I said pretty much what he wanted to say. What is happening?

Deckard,
I still agree with the bottom line there. I hate how this thing was handled (even though I acknowledge it was non-trivial).