Michelle Malkin Pummels Point Home On The View

@MataHarley

So taking a look at that Iraq Perspectives – and only 5% relates directly to Al Qaeda.

But the relationships between Iraq and the groups advocating radical pan-Islamic doctrines are much more complex. This study found no “smoking gun” (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda. Saddam’s interest in, and support for, non-state actors was spread across a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. Some in the regime recognized the potential high internal and external costs of maintaining relationships with radical Islamic groups, yet they concluded that in some cases, the benefits of association outweighed the risks.

Page 15

In the second memorandum, Saddam orders the IIS Director to revise a plan the IIS director had previously forwarded to include setting up operations inside Somalia.44 The overlap between bin Laden’s and Saddam’s interests in Somalia provides a tactical example of the parallel between Iraq and radical Islam: at the same time Saddam was ordering action in Somalia aimed at the American presence, Osama bin Laden was doing the same thing.

Page 18

When attacking Western interests, the competitive terror cartel came into play, particularly in the late 1990s. Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda – as long as that organization’s near-term goals supported Saddam’s long term vision. A directive (Extract 24) from the Director for International Intelligence in the IIS to an Iraqi operative in Bahrain orders him to investigate a particular terrorist group there, The Army of Muhammed.
Extract 24
[July 2001]
We have learned of a group calling themselves The Army of Muhammad…had threatened Kuwaiti authorities and plans to attack American and Western interests…We need detailed information about this group, their activities, their objectives, and their most distinguished leaders. We need to know [to] whom they belong and with whom they are connected. Give this subject you utmost attention.

Page 34

The agent reports (Extract 25) that The Army of Muhammad is working with Osama bin Laden.
Extract 25
[9 July 2001]
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…[83]
A later note [84] lists the group’s objectives, among them:
• Jihad in the name of God.
• Striking the embassies and other Jewish and American interest anywhere in the world.
• Attacking the American and British military bases in the Arab land.
• Striking American embassies and interests unless the Americans pull out their forces from the Arab lands and discontinue their support for Israel.
• Disrupting oil exports [to] the Americans from Arab countries and threatening tankers carrying oil to them.
A later memorandum from the same collection [85] to the Director of the IIS reports that the Army of Muhammad is endeavouring to receive assistance [from Iraq] to implement it’s objectives, and that the local IIS station has been told to deal with them in accordance with priorities established. The ISIS agent goes on to inform the Director that “this organization is and offshoot of bin Laden, but that their objectives are similar but with different names that can be a way of camouflaging the organization”.
An example of indirect cooperation is the movement lead by Osama bin Laden. During the 1990s, both Saddam and bin Laden wanted the West, particularly the United States, out of Muslim lands (or in the view of Saddam, the “Arab nation”). Both wanted to create a single powerful state that would take its place a global superpower.
But the similarities ended there: bin Laden wanted – and still wants – to restore 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-term compromise between them highly 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, Saddma and bin Laden often found a common enemy in the United States.
The Saddam regime was very concerned about the internal threat
posed by various Islamist movements. Crackdowns, arrests, and monitoring of
Islamic radical movements were common in Iraq. However, Saddam’s security
organizations and bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims, at
least for the short tenn. Considerable operational overlap was inevitable when
monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the regional groups involved in
terrorism. 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
demographic, spouting much the same rhetoric, and promoting a common historical
narrative that promised a return to a glorious past. That these movements (panArab
and pan-Islamic) had many similarities and strategic parallels does not mean
they saw themselves in that light. Nevertheless, these similarities created more
than just the appearance of cooperation. Common interests, even without common
cause, increased the aggregate terror threat.

B. The Terror “Business” Model of Saddam
Hussein
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 generally
shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives. 97

Saddam was a pragmatist when it came to personal and state relationships.
He and many members of his regime understood that whatever the
benefits of a relationship, there was always a potential for internal and external
costs for associating too closely with some of these groups. Saddam’s reaction to
this concern often swung like a pendulum, from arresting members of Wahabi
sects to “extending lines of relations” to a new radical Kurdish Islamic group. 98
In one case, Iraq’s ambassador in Switzerland, who was also
Saddam’s half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, recommended that the Director of the lIS
meet directly with an Egyptian who had strong connections to “Islamic parties
and anti-Western Islamic organizations,” and who was offering his assistance in
brokering an alliance. But the director of the lIS department responsible for Arab
issues did not concur with the ambassador’s recommendation and cautioned in an
internal memorandum that a meeting at such a level would “not serve the current
Iraqi situation… and will make us lose our main target.” He went on to note that
working with the religious parties was dangerous at this time because they were
“associated with the religious terror, which Hezbollah and Iran are practicing
…and it is provoking the West. .. ,
Some aspects of the indirect cooperation between Saddam’s regional
terror enterprise and al Qaeda’s more global one are somewhat analogous to the
Cali and Medellin drug cartels. Both drug cartels (actually loose collections of
families and criminal gangs) were serious national security concerns to the United
States. Both cartels competed for a share of the illegal drug market. However, neither
cartel was reluctant to cooperate with the other when it came to the pursuit of
a common objective-expanding and facilitating their illicit trade.

Page 61 onwards

So nothing in there particuarly surprises me nor goes against what I currently believe – in that Saddam wasn’t behind 9/11 and that there may be ties with Al Qaeda (which I have said before) – they were primarily enemies and the ties were certainly not “very strong” ones as Neil states. If the ties were very strong then no doubt there would of been regular contact at the highest levels between Al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime, Saddam would of no doubt known and actively helped with 9/11. Instead we have what seems the majority of evidence – in regards to the small proportion relating to Al Qaeda – is of Saddam gathering intel on the various terrorist groups, some affiliated with Al Qaeda – particualarly when their goals coincide. Bush & Cheney spent a lot of time and money desperately trying to find a smoking gun of an impilicit and operational relationship between the two. As this report clearly states – they found no smoking gun. I suggest the US invades Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan & Egypt and spent more billions and go through millions of their internal documents – I’m sure they will find more than a handful of direct connections to Al Qaeda than they have here!

In fact – I wonder if everyone on here outrightly condemns countries sponsoring terrorism against other countries?

@GaffaUK:

Zarqawi contacts and cooperation with AQ predate 9-11.

From a WaPo article:

According to Jordanian officials and court testimony by jailed followers in Germany, Zarqawi met in Kandahar and Kabul with bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders. He asked them for assistance and money to set up his own training camp in Herat, near the Iranian border.

With al Qaeda’s support, the camp opened and soon served as a magnet for Jordanian militants. At a time when al Qaeda was immersed in planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Zarqawi had other targets in mind.

In mid-2001, he returned to Kandahar to ask al Qaeda for $35,000 to finance a plan for his fighters to infiltrate Israel, according to a U.S. Treasury Department report. In early September, a few days before the hijackings in the United States, he met in Iran with a Jordanian ally and ordered him to set up a cell in Germany to strike Jewish targets there, according to files compiled by German investigators. German police broke up the group before it could carry out any attacks.

Link to the story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2004/09/27/AR2005040209346_2.html

According to Mary Ann Weaver, author of “Inventing al-Zarqawi,” Atlantic Monthly (July/August 2006), Zarqawi “joined forces” with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in 2001 after the U.S. began its invasion of Afghanistan. She claims he fought at Herat and Kandahar.

The U.S. contends that he fled to Iraq where he received medical treatment in 2002. I think you know the story from there but it does sound to me if Zarqawi was lured by the belief that the health care is always greener on the other side of the fence. Or maybe he just needed a safe haven and the waiting list in Canada was too long.

@Aye

If you believe Saddam provided material to Al Qaeda who caused 9/11 – then therefore isn’t he also behind 9/11? Why so shy? lol And if there is any evidence that the US had any connection with OBL – then would the US also be guilty? Do you believe Al Qaeda aren’t a terrorist group but just a concept like MataHarley. And do you really believe in Laurie Mylroie’s theories?

The “few actual facts” Baer refers to have been debunked.

Furthermore, the 9/11 commission stated categorically that there is no evidence that Egyptian Mohamed Atta ever met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague; in fact, mobile phone records place him in the U.S. at the supposed date of the meeting.

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/57782/limit

The facility was discussed in the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a result of a campaign by Iraqi defectors associated with the Iraqi National Congress to assert that the facility was a terrorist training camp. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has since established that both the CIA and the DIA concluded that there was no evidence to support these claims. A DIA analyst told the Committee, “The Iraqi National Congress (INC) has been pushing information for a long time about Salman Pak and training of al-Qa’ida.” Knight Ridder reporters Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel noted in November 2005 that “After the war, U.S. officials determined that a facility in Salman Pak was used to train Iraqi anti-terrorist commandos.”[Seattle Times, 1 November 2005, p. A5]. And PBS Frontline – who originally carried many of the allegations of Iraqi defectors – similarly noted that “U.S. officials have now concluded that Salman Pak was most likely used to train Iraqi counter-terrorism units in anti-hijacking techniques

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Pak_facility

Tell me – do you believe Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi agent in Prague? Do you believe that Salman Pak was a terrorist training camp which trained Al-Qaeda?

As for Wikipedia – I find it generally more balanced with linked reference than the opinions expressed on here. Again what do you dispute as wholly inaccurate in the below?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations

@MataHarley

2: Mohammed Atta, who originally proposed the 911 plot in 1996, underwent training in Iraq, courtesy of Abu Nidal… who had been Saddam’s “guest” in Iraq since 1999 – even occupying a villa supplied by Saddam’s secret service

Here’s another wikipedia page for you to chew on…

Investigative journalist Michael Isikoff spoke with current and former US officials, including an Iraqi document expert who was at that time reviewing thousands of Operation Iraqi Freedom documents, all of whom deemed the letter a probable fabrication.[9] “The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta’s movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. Those records show Atta crisscrossing the United States during this period—making only one overseas trip, an 11-day visit to Spain that didn’t begin until six days after the date of the Iraqi memo.”

Isikoff continued: “Ironically, even the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi, which has been vocal in claiming ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime, was dismissive of the new Telegraph story. ‘The memo is clearly nonsense,’ an INC spokesman told Newsweek.”

I know you have a vastly superior understanding than me – but do you REALLY believe that Atta was in Iraq being funded by Nidal? Are you just basing that on this discredited handwritten letter or do you have collaborative evidence to back this up?

btw…where did I state that there were no ties between Saddam & Al Qaeda?

@MataHarley

lol – you focus on the if any but you fail to take in the rest of the sentence I used – notably ‘HARD’ evidence and ‘STRONG’ connection.

In regards to the Habbush letter or memo (not sure why you are splitting hairs as it’s often refered to as a letter) – have it look at it – as it also talks about uranium shipment from Niger. Remember those other forged letters about yellowcake?

And don’t you smell a rat when an anonymous ‘leading member of Iraq’s governing council’ verifies the authenicity yet wont ‘reveal where and how they obtained it.’? Even Coughlin doesn’t know if it’s legitimate or a fake. lol. Isn’t it odd that this flimsy, most likely to be fake piece of ‘evidence’ is all there is? No photos, no flight info etc etc to link Atta being in Iraq. I’m sure you have read more on 9/11 than me – but the more I look into it – the more I find that the ‘experts’ like yourself treat dodgy disinformation like this as FACT.

As for Atta being in Prague in early April – well it could be possible that Atta used an alias, that he travelled internationally but his phone didn’t work internationally, that he gave his phone to someone else to use etc etc. But that’s not proof! That common old supposition. Lots of things COULD be possible. Bin Laden COULD have flown over himself to Prague that April, stripped naked and done a jig in Wenceslas Square at midnight as a part of a circus troupe. Doesn’t make it true. Or it could have been that the Czech security person was mistaken. Is every sighting of Atta, Bin Laden & Elvis true? Unlikely – so hence why collaborative evidence is so important. Again I’m surprise you spend anytime on such fluff. Do you really believe this to be true???

The burden of proof lies with those making such positive allegations. In the same way, the likelihood is that the Habbush Letter is faked unless there is convincing evidence otherwise – whether or not it was faked by the CIA on the orders of the White House as claimed by Ron Suskind is therefore up to Suskind to prove. Note I didn’t even bring up Susking until you did – as I’m yet to be convinced. Already ‘Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi alleged that the Pentagon was behind the forgery.’ but either way this isn’t enough proof.

@MataHarley

Gaffa, were there “hard” and “strong” evidence… aka a smoking gun… there would be no need for debate or dissent. I did not “fail to take in the rest of your sentence”. I gave you the benefit of the doubt you weren’t that unbelievably stupid.

Leaving aside the stupid & the duh moments which add nothing to the debate…I believe there is plenty of debate over smoking guns or hard evidence. For instance I believe there is enough hard evidence to say that Al Qaeda caused 9/11 and yet there are plenty of people who believe that is what either caused by Bush or by Saddam!

Don’t care about Atta in Prague, nor was my intent to cast doubt on whether he was in Prague or not. What I find more interesting was his relationship with Abu Nidal and his terrorist organization.

Possibly but Abu Nidal is a sideshow – he isn’t part of Al Qaeda and I haven’t seen any decent evidence to connect him with Mohammed Atta.

First of all, IMHO, I find great differences between a “letter”… ala voluntary correspondence between individuals… and a “memo”… intra-agency communiques for business purposes. But perhaps that’s another of those “Queen’s English” moments….

Type in Habbush Letter and then type in Habbish Memo into Google – or your favourite search engine and you will see the hit rate is pretty much the same. I’m sure business and government can communicate via letter. To me that semantics and pretty much irrelevant. Main thing is that it is probably fake.

And surely you don’t believe that I’ve never seen this memo, nor explored this in the past… or even in the recent conversations. It’s not like it didn’t make the news, and I don’t have my archived bookmarks

lol – I was giving you the benefit of the doubt – I hoping that maybe you weren’t so naive to know all the info about this letter/memo and then come to the conclusion that it’s a fact.

Comparisons of national security and assessing intel… where there is rarely a smoking gun… with criminal lawsuits and evidence in a US court of law is so amazingly anal that I have no idea where to start… so I won’t. Were national security for any country to pivot on the “burden of proof” required by the US judicial system, we wouldn’t have make it past WWII.

In this regards I’m not talking about US court of law (we are not dealing with people being locked up without trial here) – but what you and I consider what evidence is likely to be true and verified by reputable sources and cross checked with collobrative evidence. It appears your threshold for beliving certain evidence as fact is pretty low – or at least when it comes to evidence which support your world view;)