Not Quite Peas and Carrots, But Pretty Darn Close

I knew when I saw this in the news the other day, there would be, as always, far more to the story than what the media was telling us. The Lefty blogs were all over the initial "no connection" spin, doing victory dances before anyone had a chance to read the report. I just finished reading the doc, and it is anything but what has been portrayed. The dude who wrote the linked article, in particular, is an untrustworthy hack. He writes, "As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq," as if anyone disputed that Al Qaeda is in Iraq now, regardless of pre-2003.



Anyway, the new study demonstrates beyond all doubt Saddam was a threat and needed to be dealt with. For example, his operations were slated for terror across the globe: "..top ten graduates of each Fedayeen Saddam class were specifically chosen for assignmentto London, from there to be ready to conduct operations anywhere inEurope."And.."..the Presidential Secretary informedthe council member of Saddam's decision to "form a group tostart hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia."And..."The IIS also provides a list of activities that it considered "exemplaryevents," for example:• Re-equipping and training Palestinian fighters In al-Quds trainingcamps [in Iraq].19The classification markings are original to the Iraqi documents and do not reflect current U.S. classification.• Establishing and activating a course to train Arab Liberation Frontfighters on martyrdom operations.• Establishing fighter schools50 for Arab volunteers and later Iraqi volunteers.• Re-establishing and re-equipping the military base of the Arab LiberationFront.• Training groups from the occupied territories [Palestine] on lightweapons and tanks in secret thirty-day courses."And..."Saddam's intelligence service was deliberately targetingWestern journalists for assassination. "Other passages detail his operations against Kuwaiti and Saudi officials.



But he wasn't a threat, right? Saddam also was a big supporter of Hamas, the kind of Islamist extremist organization the Left is always telling us would never associate with secular Baathists and vice versa: "After the September 11 th attacks on the United States, a Palestinian representativeinformed the Iraqis that Hamas had thirty-five armed terror cells aroundthe world, mingled with refugee populations." And so on.



The study also details how Saddam recognized the danger, but had no problem making common cause with Islamic extremists, at least temporarily: "A document written in late September 200 1 shows the Saddamregime trying to make common cause with Islamic radicals." Common cause? Gee, where have I heard that before?



But what about Al Qaeda? Well, on the one hand, the study says there was no "smoking gun," but on the other hand: "Captured documents reveal that theregime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of alQaeda-as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's longtermvision."Another memo from Saddam's intelligence organization discusses an Al Qaeda affiliate they worked with: "Information available to us is that the group is under the wings of bin Laden. They receive their directions from Yemen. Their objectives are the same as bin Laden..." And..."this organization is an offshoot of bin Laden, but that their objectives are similar but with different names that canbe a way of camouflaging the organization."So Saddam knew exactly who he was dealing with, but went ahead anyway even though he was an infidel and all that shit.

The authors of the study point out that long term cooperation was untenable due to different goals, but didn't rule out short term alliances for immediate objectives: " bin Laden wanted-and still wants torestore the Islamic caliphate while Saddam, despite his later Islamic rhetoric, dreamed more narrowly of being the secular ruler of a united Arab nation. These competing visions made any significant long-tenn compromise between themhighly unlikely. After all, to the fundamentalist leadership of al Qaeda, Saddam represented the worst kind of "apostate" regime-a secular police state well practiced in suppressing internal challenges. In pursuit of their own separate but surprisingly"parallel" visions, Saddam and bin Laden often found a common enemyin the United States."



And so there was at the very least an indirect cooperation: "Saddam's security organizations and bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims, atleast for the short tenn. Considerable operational overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the regional groups involved interrorism. Saddam provided training and motivation to revolutionary pan-Arab nationalists in the region. Osama bin Laden provided training and motivation for violent revolutionary Islamists in the region. They were recruiting within the same.."



The following passage clearly makes the contradictory "smoking gun" statement inexplicable: "Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-Iraqi non-state actors was spread across a wide variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. For years, Saddam maintained training camps for foreign"fighters" drawn from these diverse groups. In some cases, particularly for Palestinians, Saddam was also a strong financial supporter. Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad,led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generallyshared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."And yet jackass McClatchy says no link whatsoever!! Ayman Al Zawahari!

The report concludes: "Saddam nurtured this capability with an infrastructure supporting (1)his own particular brand of state terrorism against internal and external threats, (2)the state sponsorship of suicide operations, and (3) organizational relationships and "outreach programs" for terrorist groups. Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use ituntil the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces."



Clearly, the "no connection" meme should die a miserable death once and for all. Instead, expect the Left and the media to ignore the truth about the study they, just a few days ago, claimed vindicated their expert analyses, or say the report they originally celebrated has no credibility.