[...] knew Saddam had ties to terror groups. we know from Clinton Administration claims, from captured documents, from pre-war and post-war [...]

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Gaffa’s proof that Al Qaeda was at war with Saddam is based on Bin Laden’s offer to help kick out Saddam from Kuwait. That is enough evidence for a leftist or paleoconservative, actual fighting or violence between the two is not necessary…

Just like the evidence provided to prove that Saddam and Al Qaeda couldnt get along… “Saddam was secular so Al Qaeda couldnt work with him, bla, bla, bla…”

Hmmm… while Saddam was once a more secular leader, during the sanctions he began a “Faith Campaign” to booster his Islamic credentials. He banned alcohol, built many mosques like the Mother of All Battles Mosque and CALLED FOR A JIHAD AGAINST THE UNITED STATES. During his trial he often brought a Koran and lectured about Islam, but dont let evidence dissuade you.

(“SADDAM HUSSEIN has unveiled the latest weapon in his cynical campaign to use religion to bolster his dictatorship: the Mother of all Battles mosque.”:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1335735/Iraq-builds-Mother-of-all-Battles-mosque-in-praise-of-Saddam.html )

Using leftwing/paleobat logic the U.S. never could ally itself with the Soviet Union because it was anti-Communist!!!!! Hitler could never ally itself with the Soviet Union either, it was also anti-Communist, but the evidence says otherwise.

In any case, Al Qaeda operated both in Northern Iraq and Saddam’s Iraq.

The only time that Saddam’s government interfered with Al Qaeda was when low-level Iraqi intelligence officers arrested an Al Qaeda operative (Abu Yasim Sayyem) AT JORDAN’S REQUEST. Saddam personally intervened to free the Al Qaeda operative.

That was the extent of Gaffa’s war between Saddam and Al Qaeda. As always, no evidence is needed for leftwing/paleobat activists.

The media continually ignored Jordan’s insistence that the Iraqi government knew where Al Qaeda operatives were, but did nothing to arrest them. The King of Jordan complained that they requested the arrest of Al Qaeda operatives, but Saddam’s government did not comply and often ignored them. INSTEAD THEY FOCUS ON ANTI-AMERICAN JORDANIAN LAWMAKERS WHO SAY WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR.

It requires a suspension of disbelief to view how Saddam regime elements cooperated with Al Qaeda after the removal of the dictatorship and believe that it was impossible for there to be any cooperation before the liberation. This is solely due to the effects of partisan politics.

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@Missy:

Shhhh….the “Blunder from down Under” sleeps quietly in his very own corner of his rather colorful alternate reality.

Let’s not disturb him with facts since he will just ignore them anyway.

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@GaffaUK:

bin Laden at war with Saddam? Let’s see, al Qaeda attacks in Riyadh, Mogadishu, two embassies in Africa, Spain, Great Britain, Bali and the US, etc., but, nothing against Saddam in Iraq…..ever.

You can’t look at the characters in power in SA as a lock step group and make blanket statements about how the country deals with the US, bin Laden, al Qeada or the Taliban. They are divided, have always been.

Journalists and think tanks started writing about the division shortly after 911, here are a few sites that can give you an idea of what’s been happening within that country.

The Split in the Saudi Royal Family
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Thursday, September 12, 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/12/opinion/12SAFI.html

Saudi Arabia and the Future of Afghanistan
Author: Greg Bruno, Staff Writer
December 11,2008

http://www.cfr.org/publication/17964/

Who pays for struggle for power in Saudi Arabia?
September 14, 2009

http://www.arabwashingtonian.org/english/article.php?articleID=766

And, last but not least:

Saudi prince escapes assassination attempt
August 28, 2009

A Saudi prince tasked with heading his country’s anti-terrorism campaign was wounded on Thursday night when a wanted militant blew himself up in an apparent assassination attempt.

It was the first apparent retaliation since the kingdom began a crackdown on al-Qaeda affiliated groups eight years ago

.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6813107.ece

Interesting? Yes?

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If you want to point to a government that has connections with our enemies, then Pakistan and Yemen are the worst. Pakistan’s intelligence services are completely infiltrated and Yemen openly allies itself with Al Qaeda linked groups.

Al Qaeda’s main grievance was the U.S. occupation of Saudi Arabia, which was bogged down in an endless containment of Saddam Hussein.

One million Iraqis died during the sanctions and 100s of thousands died in Saddam’s wars. We have installed the first truly democratic government in Iraqi history, one that will no longer invade its neighbors. Please support democracy. Obama won’t do that even in Iran. Its a crying shame…

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@Wordsmith & Missy

Let’s remember it was the US and it’s allies who saved Saudi Arabia’s ass back in the Gulf War when Saddam could of kept going and invaded their under-populated country. How does Saudi Arabia thank the US? By allowing the continued funding of Al Qaeda – before and after 9/11 – a terrorist organisation aimed at getting the US out of the middle east. And Al Qaeda wasn’t created because of US troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia – it was formed before the Gulf War. And no doubt if the Gulf War hadn’t of happened I suspect Bin Laden would just centered on the Israeli-Palestanian conflict and still blamed the US for that.

No matter how many peoples heads Saudi Arabia chops off – they haven’t bent over backwards to help the US over 9/11. Indeed instead of parroting the very dubious and discredited theories about Atta meeting Iraqi agent in Prague in April and going to Baghdad – as some have on here – they should stop drinking Cheney’s Kool-Aid and start looking at the real connections and funding of the 9/11 plotters. There was a Saudi Agent in San Diego, al-Bayoumi in contact with two of the 9/11 hijackers! Funny how the last US admin was desperate to show, highlight and declassify any intel of any relationship with Iraq but yet seems to keep links with Saudi Arabia hidden.

Yes Osama was at war with the royalty of Saudi Arabia but he was also at war with Saddam. That doesn’t mean that Osama didn’t get help from people very high up in Saudi Arabia’s government/royalty in the same way it doesn’t negate that Saddam tried to reach out to Bin Laden. However the links with Saudi Arabia to 9/11 are by far deeper than they are in Iraq. Bin Laden wanted to fight with Saudi Arabia against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. It was clear enough in the 90s that he was targetting the US by his actions and rhetoric and yet Saudi Arabia still didn’t clamp down nearly enough. In fact what they did in one hand was contradicted by what the other hand did. I’m not saying that the whole Saudi Arabian government was behind the 9/11 plot – but the links to some of it’s people within it’s government & royalty and it’s dealings with Al Qaeda don’t seem to be fullt investigated or brought to light – to those families of the 9/11 victims – who deserve the full truth – compared to the thorough investigation and distorted spin we have got from the tenative connections with Iraq.

I think that is a lot more than ‘troubling’

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Going along with Missy,

There is also a difference between Saddam and the Saudi government: The former offered not one act of cooperation in the war on terror; the Saudis have. They are a target of al Qaeda plots; and in return, the Saudi government has been fighting for its own survival against Islamic terror, killing and capturing al Qaeda operatives and arresting and convicting thousands without trial.

From your NYTimes link:

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

That is troubling; wahhabism has strong roots in Saudi Arabia, and you have appeasers and sympathizers to the extremists; but it also remains true that the Saudis have also aligned with the U.S. against the common threat of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. This is also happening and this.

The Saudis through the 80′s appeased jihad extremists through funding, so long as their attention was turned away from attacking Saudi Arabia. Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars:

Prince Turki and other liberal princes found it easier to appease their domestic Islamic rivals by allowing them to proselytize and make mischief abroad than to confront and resolve these tensions at home.

Support pretty much ended for bin Laden’s group (at least officially) once bin Laden began ranting against the United States and its presence on the Arabian peninsula (he was snubbed by the Saudi government from helping evict Saddam out of Kuwait and told foreign presence would leave soon after). He began funding Saudi dissidents. The Saudis stripped bin Laden of his citizenship in 1994 and seized bin Laden’s personal fortune.

bin Laden is at war with the House of Saud.

More from your NYTimes piece, highlighting what I find relevant in terms of timeline:

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants’ activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.

The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda.

Only a fraction of the documents have been entered into the court record, and much of the new material is unknown even to the Saudi lawyers in the case.

The documents provide no smoking gun connecting the royal family to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. And the broader links rely at times on a circumstantial, connect-the-dots approach to tie together Saudi princes, Middle Eastern charities, suspicious transactions and terrorist groups.

Saudi lawyers and supporters say that the links are flimsy and exploit stereotypes about terrorism, and that the country is being sued because it has deep pockets and was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers.

“In looking at all the evidence the families brought together, I have not seen one iota of evidence that Saudi Arabia had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks,” Michael Kellogg, a Washington lawyer representing Prince Muhammad al-Faisal al-Saud in the lawsuit, said in an interview.

He and other defense lawyers said that rather than supporting Al Qaeda, the Saudis were sworn enemies of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was exiled from Saudi Arabia, his native country, in 1996. “It’s an absolute tragedy what happened to them, and I understand their anger,” Mr. Kellogg said of the victims’ families. “They want to find those responsible, but I think they’ve been disserved by their lawyers by bringing claims without any merit against the wrong people.”

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@GaffaUK:

The Saudi royals number in the thousands, I had read that about half are pro-America and half are rabidly anti-America, that half being those that support radical Wahabism, fund the radical charities and terrorist organizations. The reason why all our administrations walk a fine line is because they support the present pro-American Saudis in power, those being the ones that have cracked down on the terrorists within the country and have made efforts to modernize.

The clips you included do not mention what faction of the Saudi royals urged the report to be made public or supported the charity. Perhaps President Bush was in consultation with those in power and was advised against making the report public. Being as though all family members are in the Saudi government, it is my opinion that American cooperation with the present rulers is the wiser road to travel.

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Iraq? Try Saudi Arabia for significantly closer links with Al-Qaeda including 9/11

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006

One is a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. The secret section is believed to discuss intelligence on Saudi financial links to two hijackers, and the Saudis themselves urged at the time that it be made public. President George W. Bush declined to do so

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24saudi.html

Strange how these links don’t appear to be so well known or investigated….

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There certainly IS a connection. Good article Scott. Thank you

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