"Of course, we now know that there was no Iraq-al Qaeda connection," has now become, for war critics, a starting assumption and casually repeated refrain in print and blog alike. Ironically it was the 9/11 Commission Report's release last summer that provided a great amount of the impetus for this astonishing misrepresentation of the facts. Helped along by a willing mainstream press, nuanced statements in the report regarding the lack of evidence for Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration on the 9/11 attack were morphed into the black-and-white assertion that there was no relationship at all. Commenting on the report's findings, a June 17, 2004 front-page Washington Post headline declared "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Dismissed." "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie," read the New York Times headline on the same day. Al Gore now likes to refer to the "invented connection between al Qaeda and Iraq" and how it all amounts to a "big, flamboyant lie." Yes, according to the critics, Iraq-al Qaeda connections were just a fantasy, conjured up by White House warmongers. Some revisionists even claim that Iraq had very little if any meaningful links to terrorism at all.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Just for starters, the 9/11 Commission Report "qualifies the finding of no 'collaborative relationship'--claiming only that there was no collaborative operational relationship for carrying out attacks against the United States."(James Thompson, commission member) Commission co-chairman, Thomas Kean, at a press conference on July 22, 2004: "There was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." And the commission's final report clearly reflects this reality, detailing numerous friendly contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda.
The political motivation behind much of this is transparent. After all, it's not as if we were in the middle of a hard-fought presidential race where the administration's rationale for war was a primary target. And witness Wesley Clark's campaign trail conversion to the "no connection" crowd. In an October 2002 news conference in which he endorsed a New Hampshire Democrat for Congress, Clark said, "Certainly there's a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda." But once it became politically expedient, Clark the candidate suddenly changed his position to: "No hard evidence was ever distributed that linked Saddam with Al Qaeda." In a perfect world one would hope for at least some return to levelheadedness once the pressures of the campaign have passed, but instead the hyperbole has been codified.
Well, here's my small contribution toward setting the record straight. I first run down Iraq's terrorism rap sheet, and then the ample evidence of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda. It's instructive to keep in mind the warning stated in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-Iraq war intelligence: "Any indication of a relationship between these two hostile elements could carry great dangers to the United States."
IRAQ & TERRORISM
1) Iraq has been a regular on the U.S. State Department’s annual global terror report since it was first created almost 25 years ago.
2) International recognition of Iraq’s ongoing terrorist connections is evidenced by U.N. Security Council Resolutions, such as 687 (issued in 1991) and 1373 (2001), which prohibited Saddam Hussein from supporting terrorism or allowing terrorist cells and organizations to operate within the boundaries of Iraq.
3) Safe haven and support had been given by Saddam’s government for many years to radical Palestinian groups, including the one led by Abu Nidal. Throughout the 1970’s and 80’s, Abu Nidal ranked among the world’s most wanted terrorists, whose gang murdered 407 people (including ten Americans) and maimed 788 more in attacks in 20 countries. One of the Abu Nidal Organization’s attacks included the bombing over the Ionian Sea of a TWA airliner flying from Israel to Greece in 1974 which killed all 88 people on board. His group was also famous for attacking a TWA ticket counter at Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci airport in 1986 and targeting Lt. Col. Oliver North for death in the mid-1980s. According to an August 25, 2002 report in the
Sunday Times of London, Nidal furnished Libyan agents the Semtex (plastic explosive) bomb that destroyed Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988. Among the 259 persons killed in the air and 11 killed on the ground were 35 American college students. From 1999 until his death in 2002, Abu Nidal had taken refuge in Iraq where his organization became a wing of the Iraqi Baath Party. A representative of Abu Nidal’s organization from the Lebanese office stated that Abu Nidal went to Baghdad “with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities.”
4) Abu Abbas, Leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front, masterminded the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985 and killed the American passenger Leon Klinghoffer. Abbas was traveling on an Iraqi diplomatic passport and was granted safe haven by Saddam’s regime until he was captured in Baghdad by U.S. forces in April 2003.
5) In 1991 following the Gulf War, Saddam sent dozens of two-man teams--consisting of one Iraqi intelligence officer teamed up with a member of the Baghdad-supported Arab Liberation Front--throughout the world to strike at U.S. and Western targets. Among their attempted targets were the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Jakarta, Indonesia, a U.S. government building in Manilla, the U.S. ambassador to Uganda, and numerous American and British banks.
6) In a 1992 presidential campaign speech, Al Gore made more than a dozen specific references to Iraqi–sponsored terrorism and cited a RAND Corporation study that reported “an estimated 1400 terrorists that were operating openly out of Iraq.”
7) In 1993, Iraq sent a team of intelligence assets to Kuwait City to assassinate George H. W. Bush and the Emir of Kuwait. Clinton Defense Secretary Les Aspin stated: “The evidence is very conclusive that it was the work of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and is an action that would have had to have been approved by the highest levels of the Iraqi government.” In defending the retaliatory Tomahawk missile strike against the Iraqi Intelligence Service headquarters, Al Gore stated: “The suffering in Iraq can come to an end when Saddam Hussein’s regime is replaced…and I hope—and most of the world community hopes—that this regime based in terrorism and atrocities against his own people will be replaced. Over time, we hope to achieve that result.”
8) Iraq provided fake identity papers and safe haven to two of the key figures in the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York which killed six persons and wounded 1,042 others. Ramzi Yousef, the Iraqi architect of the 1993 WTC bombing, entered America on an Iraqi passport. According to the 9/11 Commission Report Yousef has admitted that he “had hoped to kill 250,000 people.” Abdul Rahman Yasin, indicted for mixing the chemicals in that WTC bombing, and still on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, fled to Baghdad after the attack and lived there for years afterwards. Richard Clarke, National Security Council Counterterrorism Coordinator for the Clinton administration, to the Sept. 11 Commission: "The Iraqi government didn't cooperate in turning Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the makers of the bomb that exploded at the World Trade Center, over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give sanctuary to other terrorists." Iraqi Intelligence Service documents, discovered in Tikrit following the 2003 invasion, indicate that Yasin had been living freely in Iraq, received regime-financed housing and a monthly living stipend. Another conspirator, Mohammed Salameh, made 46 calls to Iraq two months prior to the arrival in the U.S. of another conspirator from Baghdad; some of these calls were traced to a Baghdad-based intelligence operative for a neighboring country. Salameh drove the explosives-laden van and played a key role in obtaining the chemicals that made up the bomb. The late Jim Fox, head of the FBI’s New York office at the time of the 1993 bombing, and James Woolsey, CIA director under Clinton from 1993 to 1995, both concluded that the Iraqi government had a hand in the attack.
9) Iraq was host to numerous terrorist training camps, the most well-known of which was Salman Pak, 20 miles south of Baghdad. Sabah Khodada, a former captain in the Iraqi Army who worked at Salman Pak for 6 months in the mid-1990’s, states that this camp was run by a special operations division of Iraqi intelligence and that “non-Iraqi Arabs” were among those being trained there. Khobada also stated that at this camp “…training is majorly in terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism.” This camp was known by the UN weapons inspectors throughout the 1990s to house many of the Iraqi regime’s biological weapons research facilities. UN inspectors independently verified the existence of the training camps and the fuselage of an old airplane at Salman Pak. U.S. satellite imagery in 2002 confirmed the existence of an airplane, railroad cars and a double-decker bus at the facility. Following the invasion of Iraq, General Vincent Brooks, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, stated that coalition troops captured foreign fighters in the vicinity of the camp who spoke of being trained there. At an April 6, 2003 press briefing Brooks said that Salman Pak was just one of “a number of examples we found where there’s training activity happening inside Iraq.”
10) In 1998 Iraq attempted to recruit Islamic extremists to destroy the headquarters building of Radio Free Europe in Wenceslas Square in the historic center of Prague, a plot the U.S. State Department acknowledged in its annual global terror report.
11) Iraq has provided financial support for many Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Front, and the Arab Liberation Front. Over the years, Iraq has provided millions of dollars in subsidies for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. In March 2002, Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz announced publicly at a meeting in Baghdad that Saddam Hussein would raise the reward given to the families of Palestinian "martyrs" (i.e., suicide bombers) from $10,000 per family to $25,000. Between March 2002 and March 2003, 28 Palestinian suicide bombers killed 223 civilians including 12 Americans, and injured 1,209 others.
12) President Bill Clinton, on February 18, 1998, warned of "the predators of the 21st century…reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists." He warned that “They will be all more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them….There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of the region and security of the rest of us….In this century, we learned through harsh experience that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination and, when necessary, action. In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now—a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists…who travel the world unnoticed."
13) Newsweek’s January 11, 1999 issue stated: “Here’s what is known so far: Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas—assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network.”
14) After September 11th, virtually every country in the world sent condolences, including longtime enemies—Castro’s Cuba, Libya’s Khadafi and the ruling Iranian mullahs. The one exception was Saddam Hussein's regime which publicly celebrated the terrorist attacks. Hussein commissioned murals for public display depicting airplanes exploding into the World Trade Center towers: one shows the planes painted in the colors of Iraqi airlines while Saddam's grinning portrait looms in the foreground in another. Footage of the airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center towers were played over and over again on Iraq’s state-run television with the song “Down with America” playing in the background.
15) In September of 2002, Senator John Kerry stated: "It is imperative that we issue an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, and that would require immediate and full compliance, and if Hussein doesn't comply, the United States must be prepared to go in and, if need be, largely alone remove Saddam Hussein from power. There is also no question that Saddam Hussein continues to pursue weapons of mass destruction, and his success can threaten both our interests in the region and our security at home. ...Saddam may even miscalculate and slide these WMD off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It's the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat." And on another occasion in 2002 Kerry said: "I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally. This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination. And I think the president has made that clear. I think we have made that clear. Terrorism is a global menace. It's a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue to combat terrorism, for instance, Saddam Hussein."
16) On Sept. 12, 2002 Senator John Edwards stated: "The terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam's arsenal, and there is every reason to believe that Saddam would turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of Sept. 11 had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them. On Sept. 12, 2002, we can hardly ignore the terrorist threat and the serious danger that Saddam would allow his arsenal to be used in aid of terror." Earlier in 2002 Edwards had stated on the Larry King show: “I mean, we have three different countries [Iraq, N. Korea, Iran] that, while they all present serious problems for the United States -- they're dictatorships, they're involved in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- you know, the most imminent, clear and present threat to our country is not the same from those three countries. I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country.”
17) June 18, 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated: "I can confirm that after the events of September 11, 2001, and up to the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received ...information that official organs of Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the United States and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations." He also asserted that President Bush had personally thanked the Russian intelligence services for the information.
18) Head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay: "I think . . . we'll paint a picture of Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we thought it was before the war. It was a system collapsing. It was a country that had the capability in weapons of mass destruction areas and in which terrorists, like ants to honey, were going after it."
19) From the CIA report, Iraqi Support for Terrorism, published in January 2003: "Iraq continues to be a safehaven, transit point, or operational node for groups and individuals who direct violence against the United States, Israel, and other allies. Iraq has a long history of supporting terrorism."
20) The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-Iraq war intelligence reports: "From 1996 to 2003, the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] focused its terrorist activities on western interests, particularly against the U.S. and Israel. The CIA summarized nearly 50 intelligence reports as examples, using language directly from the intelligence reports. Ten intelligence reports, [redacted] from multiple sources, indicated IIS "casing" operations against Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Prague began in 1998 and continued into early 2003. The CIA assessed, based on the Prague casings and a variety of other reporting, that throughout 2002, the IIS was becoming increasingly aggressive in planning attacks against U.S. interests. The CIA provided eight reports to support this assessment."
21) Iraqi Lieutenant General Riadh Abdallah defected to the U.S. in 1999 and has never been affiliated with the Iraqi National Congress or any other exile group. In 2003, three weeks before the Iraq war started when some in Congress scoffed at the assertion of the Iraqi regime’s support of international terrorism, Abdallah in bemused disbelief retorted that “Saddam is the father and the grandfather of terrorists.” Indeed.
IRAQ & AL QAEDA
“The ruling to kill all Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.” --Osama bin Laden, 1998 fatwa
"We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents…only between Muslims and nonbelievers. And the life of a non-believer has no value. There's no sanctity in it.... We assume the purpose is to kill as many people as possible, to spread the terror.... Terror is the language of the 21st century. If I want something, I terrorize you to achieve it." --Al Qaeda member, Omar Bakri Muhammad, interviewed in the July 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine
"...the general pattern that emerges is one of al Qaeda's enduring interest in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) expertise from Iraq." --Iraqi Support for Terrorism, CIA Report
1) Contrary to the conventional wisdom that Saddam remained an inveterate secularist and avowed enemy of the radical Islamists and therefore could never have collaborated with al Qaeda, the Iraqi leader undertook in the late 1980’s a wide-ranging public relations campaign to recast himself as an Islamic holy warrior. To counter the criticism that he was anti-Islam, Saddam started to adjust his rhetoric, inserting religious praise and invocations to Allah, and released prominent clerics who had been held by his regime. Iraq also began to support several Islamist Palestinian groups opposed to Israel. Additionally, beginning in June 1990, Saddam inaugurated a series of “Popular Islamic Conferences” in Baghdad. Attendees ranged from religious bureaucrats to members of a wide-variety of radical Islamists and terrorists who openly called for holy war against the U.S. At one such conference in January 26, 1993 one of Saddam’s top aides, Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, stated: “We are blessed in this country for having the Islamic holy warrior Saddam Hussein as a leader, who is guiding the country in a religious holy war against the infidels and unbelievers.” Another speaker praised “the mujahed Saddam Hussein, who is leading this nation against the nonbelievers. Everyone has a task to do, which is to go against the American state.” One day before the Allied bombing campaign began in January 1991, during the first Gulf War, Saddam added “God is Great” to the Iraqi national flag. In 1994, Saddam incorporated elements of Islamic law into Iraqi legal code, including Islamic punishments such as the death penalty for prostitution and the severing of hands for theft. He also initiated laws forbidding public consumption of alcohol, introduced compulsory study of the Koran at all educational levels, required all Baath party members to pass a religious exam and even included prayers in party meetings. When Saddam’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected in 1995 he stated that “the government of Iraq is instigating fundamentalism in the country.”
2) Shortly before the first Gulf War, bin Laden sent emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials.
3) Iraqi intelligence documents, obtained from the offices of the Iraqi intelligence Service in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion, list Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset in 1992. The documents comment that Osama bin Laden “is in good relationship with our section in Syria.”
3) Numerous sources have reported a 1993 nonaggression pact between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to U.S. court documents from the African embassy trial, bin Laden reached an understanding with Saddam under which he forbade al Qaeda operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.
4) According to the 9/11 Commission Report, a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. (Keep in mind that this is the report that the Times and Post headlined as proof of no Iraq-al Qaeda connection.)
5) The former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence now in U.S. custody, Faruq Hijazi, says that in 1994 bin Laden asked the Iraqi regime during a face-to-face meeting for assistance in acquiring Chinese-made anti-ship limpet mines and the establishment of al Qaeda training camps inside Iraq. U.S. intelligence documents refer to Faruq Hijazi as the “point man” in the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. Even if these requests weren’t fulfilled, bin Laden’s willingness to accept help from Saddam disproves the notion that he wouldn’t work with an infidel like Saddam and demonstrates his willingness to upgrade the relationship from the informal nonaggression pact reached in 1993 to active collaboration.
6) In 1994, Saddam and bin Laden shared a joint interest in an al Qaeda-linked Algerian terrorist organization, Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA). Stanley Bedlington, a former CIA senior counterterrorism analyst, stated: “There certainly is no doubt that Saddam Hussein had pretty strong ties to bin Laden while he was in Sudan, whether it was directly or through intermediaries. We traced considerable sums of money going from bin Laden to the GIA in Algeria. We believe some of the money came from Iraq.”
7) According to the 2002 CIA report, “Iraq and al Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship,” senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Hajer al Iraqi, went on an al Qaeda mission to Iraq to discuss cooperation with the Iraqi government in 1995.
8) Reporting from a foreign intelligence source disclosed that bin Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti. Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c) making false passports. Bin Laden specifically requested that Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.
9) The National Security Agency intercepted telephone conversations between al Qaeda-supported Sudanese military officials and the head of Iraq's chemical weapons program in 1996. The Sunday Times of London reported: “Bypassing the ban of weapons of mass destruction which the UN imposed on Baghdad after its defeat in the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein and the Islamic government of General Omar al Bashir in Khartoum are making and stockpiling mustard gas for their mutual benefit….the gas is being made at a factory at Wau, in southwest Sudan, and that the Sudanese regime has already used it twice against rebels. Production began in the autumn of 1995 under a clandestine deal between Khartoum and Baghdad to circumvent the UN’s military and trade embargo on Iraq. The deal followed the visit of a high-level Iraqi military delegation, led by the head of the chemical weapons directorate of the Iraqi defense military.” In a letter to Human Rights Watch, Mubarak al Madhi, the head of Sudan’s National Democratic Alliance, an umbrella group of opposition parties, reported that an engineer and an intelligence official, both Iraqi colonels, worked with twelve Sudanese chemical engineers to develop chemical weapons.
10) An internal Iraqi Intelligence document, authenticated by U.S. intelligence and first reported on June 25, 2004, in the New York Times employs the term "relationship" to describe Iraq-al Qaeda contacts. Given bin Laden's 1996 move from Sudan to Afghanistan, this document states that "...cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."
11) An indictment from the Clinton-era Justice Department cited Iraqi assistance on al Qaeda "weapons development" in 1998: “In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.”
12) Based on information provided by the key accomplice witness at the 1998 embassy bombing trial, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, the al Qaeda liaison for Iraq relations was an Iraqi named Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim, one of bin Laden's closest friends.
13) In December 1998, President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998. According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in a memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee confirms this meeting and relates two others. Washington Post on February 14, 1999: “The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers.” The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-Iraq war intelligence: the CIA's counterterrorism center cited four "intelligence reports mentioning Saddam Hussein's standing offer of safe haven to Osama bin Laden."
14) A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that "the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of contact with al Qaeda.” He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998 and met with Tariq Aziz. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden in Afghanistan.
15) Ayman al Zawahiri, one of bin Laden’s top deputies, visited Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah, al-Falluja and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of Abdul Aziz. This visit coincided with a payment of $300,000 from Iraqi
intelligence to Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which merged with al Qaeda later that year.
16) In April 1998 a small band of al Qaeda leaders traveled to Baghdad to celebrate Saddam’s birthday. While there, the al Qaeda visitors accompanied their hosts, Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s sons to an extravagant celebration in Tikrit.
17) According to the 9/11 Commission Report: In February 1999 the Clinton administration considered flying U-2 missions over Afghanistan to gather additional intelligence on al Qaeda. Richard Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. Other National Security Council staff also stated that Saddam Hussein wanted Bin Ladin in Baghdad. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared. Even one U-2 flight, Clarke argued, would require Pakistani approval, and if Pakistani elements friendly to Bin Ladin warned him “old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad." (Remember, according to the Washington Post the 9/11 Commission Report demonstrated "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Dismissed.")
18) Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi diplomat and VIP airport greeter employed by the Iraqi embassy in Malaysia, was photographed on January 5, 2000 by Malaysian intelligence escorting September 11 terrorist Khalid al Mihdhar—one of the hijackers of AA flight 77 that struck the Pentagon--from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport to the residence of al Qaeda operative, Yazid Sufaat. Sufaat’s condominium was the site of a 3-day planning meeting, from January 5-8, 2000, for the bombing of the USS Cole and the September 11 attacks. This meeting was attended by 9 top al Qaeda terrorists, including Ramzi bin al Shibh, who has boasted of his role as the “coordinator of the Holy Tuesday operation” (the 9/11 attacks) and Nawaz al Hanzi, one of the hijackers who piloted AA flight 77. Shakir was found in Qatar six days after 9/11 with contact information for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, the September 11 hijackings, and bin Laden's close friend and confidant, Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim, the al Qaeda liaison for Iraq relations. He also had information pertaining to a 1995 al Qaeda plot to blow up a dozen airliners over the Pacific. CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been plotted.
19) Bin Laden has said that acquiring weapons of mass destruction is the “religious duty” of Muslims. Not surprisingly, al Qaeda worked for years to develop WMD in both Sudan and Afghanistan. But frustrated by their lack of progress, bin Laden and his deputy Mohammed Atef decided to seek help from Iraq, a country with a 30-year history of WMD programs. Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for chemical and biological weapons training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training. Recovered al Qaeda documents from the fall of 2001 contain formulas for sarin, a deadly chemical agent. A 64-tape al Qaeda library, recovered in 2002 by CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson from an Afghan house where bin Laden had stayed, includes footage of chemical weapons being tested on dogs. Dead dogs and other animals have frequently been seen in past satellite images of al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Ahmed Ressam, a man trained by al Qaeda and convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, testified in court about al Qaeda tests using cyanide to kill dogs. Richard Clarke, the senior Clinton administration counterterrorism official, told the Washington Post in 1999 that the U.S. government was "sure" Iraq had supported al Qaeda chemical weapons programs. The Senate Intelligence Committee's July 2004 report on pre-Iraq war intelligence cites "twelve reports received from sources the CIA described as having varying reliability" that pointed to "Iraq or Iraqi national involvement in al Qaeda's CBW [chemical/biological weapons] efforts."
20) The Saudi National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia.
21) Following Hafez al Assad’s crackdown on the radical Islamic group, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, many of the radicals were provided safe-haven in Iraq and trained with Iraqis at the al Rashdiya camp outside Baghdad. One of the Syrians who spent time at the Iraqi camp was Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas. Yarkis, captured in Madrid in November 2001, was leader of al Qaeda’s Spain operation. (He was also the roommate of lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and was directly involved in planning and financing the 9/11 attacks.) Among the documents Spanish authorities seized from the Spanish al Qaeda cell in November 2001 was an invitation to a party at the residence of the Iraqi ambassador to Spain.
22) Mohamed Atta, leader of the September 11 hijackers, piloted American Airlines flight 11 that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The Czech intelligence service reports that Ahmed al Ani, a consul at the Iraqi embassy and senior Iraqi intelligence agent, “ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) finance officer to issue Atta funds from the IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.” On April 22, 2001, Ahmed al Ani was expelled from The Czech Republic for spy-related activities.
23) Satellite photographs showed al Qaeda members in 2001 traveling en masse to a compound in northern Iraq financed, in part, by the Iraqi regime.
24) CIA Director, George Tenet, provided the Senate Intelligence Committee this assessment in a closed session on September 17, 2002: "There is evidence that Iraq provided al Qaeda with various kinds of training--combat, bomb-making, [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] CBRN. Although Saddam did not endorse al Qaeda's overall agenda and was suspicious of Islamist movements in general, he was apparently not averse, under certain circumstances, to enhancing bin Laden's operational capabilities."
25) In Sept. 2002, an al Qaeda affiliate group in the Philippines founded by bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Abu Sayyaf, announced a campaign of terror aimed at the “enemies of Islam”—westerners and Filipinos who make common cause with them. On Oct. 2, 2002 Abu Sayyaf bombed a café in Zamboanga City frequented by American soldiers. One week later Filipino authorities found an unexploded bomb on the playground of the San Rogue Elementary School in Zamboanga City; the bomb was to have been detonated by cell phone. Analysis of the cell phone’s call activity included several calls to and from known Abu Sayyaf leaders. One call, placed seventeen hours before the café bombing, was made to Hisham Hussein, an Iraqi intelligence agent who was working as the second secretary at the Iraqi embassy in Manilla. A subsequent analysis of embassy phone records revealed that Hussein had been in regular contact with Abu Sayyaf leaders both before and after the Zamboanga City bombing. On February 14, 2003, Hisham Hussein was expelled from the Philippines for spy-related activities. According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, an Abu Sayyaf leader who planned the attack bragged on television a month after the bombing that Iraq had contacted him about conducting joint operations. Hamsinaji Sali, an Abu Sayyaf leader, has revealed that Iraq had provided the terrorist group with 1 million pesos and arms each year since 2000.
26) In October 2002 during a Senate floor speech after having voted to authorize an invasion of Iraq, Senator Hillary Clinton stated that Saddam had given “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members.”
27) Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a senior al Qaeda associate who previously ran an al Qaeda affiliated training camp in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq shortly after the Taliban fell and received medical attention at a regime-supported hospital in Baghdad in 2002. Al Zarqawi didn’t check into just any medical facility; his leg was amputated and he was fitted for a prosthetic device at Baghdad’s Olympic Hospital which catered to Baathist elites, including many high-ranking regime officials. The hospital’s director was Saddam’s eldest son, Uday Hussein. During his convalescence, dozens of al Zarqawi associates converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there, coordinating the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network. After his recovery, Al Zarqawi maintained an operational alliance with Iraqi officials. He opened a terrorist camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of US diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to the CIA report called Iraqi Support for Terrorism, the Iraqi regime "certainly" had knowledge that Abu Musab al Zarqawi--described in the report as "a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner"--was operating in Baghdad and northern Iraq. Al Zarqawi had also been engaged in setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S. occupation of the city, including IIS provision of secure operating bases and steady access to arms and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. He has since been linked to numerous terror attacks against American and coalition troops in Iraq, as well as Iraqis working with the interim government, and is the official leader of "al Qaeda in Iraq."
28) According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former Iraqi intelligence deputy director, Faruq Hijazi, and senior al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claims that Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9/11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes.
29) According to documents unearthed in April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star and Inigo Gilmore of the London Telegraph, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a 3-page memo—each marked “Top Secret and Urgent”—detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that, when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel and hotel costs 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 document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The document was passed along to the deputy director of Iraqi intelligence, with the recommendation that "the deputy director general may bring the envoy to Iraq because we may find in this envoy a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden.” Handwritten notes on the third page of the memo indicate that the envoy arrived on March 5, 1998, and stayed as a guest of the Iraqi regime at Baghdad’s Mansur Melia Hotel. Additional margin notes indicate that the meetings were extended by a week—for a total of sixteen days. The memo also warns against communicating in writing. Aside from the significance of confirming high-level friendly contacts between Iraq intelligence and al Qaeda officials, this memo sheds light on the great lengths to which the Iraqi intelligence went to keep this relationship secret.
30) In May 2003, Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge, Harold Baer, ordered Saddam Hussein, his ousted regime, Osama bin Laden, and others to pay $104 million in damages to the families of the 2,750 victims of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. He found “by evidence satisfactory to the court, that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda.”
CONCLUSION:
Let's review the situation right before the war with Iraq:
--Iraq had engaged in numerous high-level, friendly contacts with al Qaeda dating back over a decade
--from 1996 to 2003 the Iraqi Intelligence service had focused its terrorist activity on Western interests, including the United States
--throughout 2002, the IIS was becoming increasingly aggressive in planning attacks against U.S. interests
--Iraq was open to "enhancing bin Laden's operational capability"
--al Qaeda had made direct and specific requests for Iraqi assistance
--Iraq had provided training to al Qaeda
--Saddam Hussein had made a standing offer to Osama bin Laden for safe haven in Iraq.
--al Qaeda had demonstrated an "enduring interest" in WMD expertise from Iraq
--the Iraqi regime certainly knew that al Qaeda agents were operating in Baghdad and northern Iraq
From Saddam’s perspective the war with the US didn’t end with the signing of the ceasefire following Gulf War I. Unable to strike back at the US through conventional means, Saddam turned to international terrorism. In effect terrorist organizations, such as al Qaeda, became his weapons delivery system.
Al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to planning and conducting terrorist attacks to reach its goals, a primary one of which is the murder of as many Americans as possible. Thus, if a country assists or works with al Qaeda in any way, it is cooperating in terrorism and directly threatening the US. All of the debate about the exact nature of this relationship is a usefull exercise, but we already know enough to know that the Iraq-al Qaeda nexus passed the "danger-to-America" threshold.
Any state cooperation with al Qaeda should be considered a grave threat to US security because a deadly synergy is created when a hostile state and non-state agents who have declared war on the US conspire. States have resources--including territory, finances, an international diplomatic presence, and trade--that non-state actors do not have. On the other hand, non-state actors are able to operate globally and can act largely undetected.
"Imagine for a moment that we had not gone to war in Iraq in March 2003. And that Washington, D.C., had been attacked using five pounds of Iraqi anthrax--a development that William Cohen, Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, said would "destroy at least half the population" of the city. Imagine, too, that Iraq had supplied the deadly substance to al Qaeda terrorists, the kind of collaboration a 1999 Congressional Research Service study called "likely" if Saddam were to attempt a strike inside the United States. That report, some readers may recall, also presented a scenario eerily similar to the September 11 attacks. Democrats and journalists used the report to suggest the Bush administration had done too little to prevent those attacks." (Stephen F. Hayes)
"Rather than speeches about a needless war to counter an exaggerated threat, we would almost certainly be hearing something like this: This administration had 12 separate reports that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al Qaeda. Yet it refused to act. This administration knew of numerous high-level meetings between Iraqi Intelligence and Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. Yet it refused to act. This administration had been told by the CIA that Iraqi Intelligence had become increasingly aggressive throughout 2002 in targeting U.S. interests. Yet it refused to act. This administration knew that Saddam Hussein had made Osama bin Laden a standing offer of safe haven. Yet it refused to act." (Stephen F. Hayes)
Fortunately, the Bush administration did act. And despite misreporting from the mainstream media and the demagoguery of war critics, the war was both necessary and justified. When any nation that is overtly hostile to America is developing WMD, has a history of using terrorists to attack US and western targets, and intelligence data give reason to believe that continued attacks against the US are imminent, the threshold of the United States' right to invoke a response based on anticipatory self-defense has clearly been passed.
