The Mother of All Connections..

[Dieval]

I ran across this article about the Iraq - al qeada connection and where is has come from since the 9/11 commission put out their (in)famous line about Iraq and al qeada "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship".

This is a pretty good sized article(2 seperate pages) and I recommend reading it for anyone who continues to believe that Iraq and al qeada had no connections.

Mother of All Connections

Here are some highlights -

FOR MANY, the debate over the former Iraqi regime's ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States" and ran blaring headlines like the one on the June 17, 2004, front page of the New York Times: "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie." But this was woefully imprecise. It assumed, not unreasonably, that the 9/11 Commission's conclusion was based on a firm foundation of intelligence reporting, that the intelligence community had the type of human intelligence and other reporting that would allow senior-level analysts to draw reasonable conclusions. We know now that was not the case. John Lehman, a 9/11 commissioner, spoke to The Weekly Standard at the time the report was released. "There may well be--and probably will be--additional intelligence coming in from interrogations and from analysis of captured records and so forth which will fill out the intelligence picture. This is not phrased as--nor meant to be--the definitive word on Iraqi Intelligence activities." .... THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY was apparently not much concerned by Iraqi support for terrorism in the 13 years between the Gulf war and the Iraq war. To students of Iraq-U.S. relations that might seem bizarre. Saddam Hussein had used such asymmetric warfare for decades, against enemies foreign and domestic, real and imagined. What's more, he had demonstrated his willingness to use terrorism and terrorist surrogates against his enemies when confronted by superior conventional military forces during the Gulf war. By some accounts, more than 1,400 terrorists made their way to Baghdad in the final months of 1990 as he prepared to face the coalition assembled by the United States to oust him from Kuwait. He dispatched others to attack U.S. interests around the world. On January 18, 1991, one day after the Gulf war began, an Iraqi terrorist posing as a day laborer managed to plant 26 sticks of TNT in a flower box below a window of the U.S. ambassador's residence in Jakarta, Indonesia. The dynamite wasn't completely buried, and a gardener found it before the bomb exploded. The following day in the Philippines, two Iraqis blew themselves up in a plot known to CIA veterans as Operation Dogmeat, a botched attempt to bomb the U.S. Information Service headquarters at the Thomas Jefferson Cultural Center in Manila. The failed attack on the U.S. government-run center received the active support of the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines. Saddam Hussein openly encouraged these attacks. "It remains for us to tell all Arabs, all militant believers . . . wherever they may be that it is your duty to embark on holy war. You should target their interests wherever they may be," he said on January 20, 1991. Iraq's use of terrorism was so widespread, in fact, that it became an issue in the 1992 presidential campaign, when Al Gore accused the first Bush administration of a "blatant disregard for brutal terrorism" practiced by Hussein and ignoring Iraq's "extensive terrorism activities." .... Immediately after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, bin Laden approached the Saudi regime and offered to lead Muslim forces in driving Saddam out of Kuwait. Many who downplay the relationship between the former Iraqi regime and al Qaeda point to this as an example of the hostility between Hussein and bin Laden. But Osama's spurned offer is only part of the story. While bin Laden's first instinct may have been to oppose the secular tyrant, his soon-to-be host in Sudan did not share these sentiments. According to an interview at the time with Turabi's cousin, Mudawi Turabi, the Sudanese leader met twice with Saddam Hussein before the Gulf war and "had appeared to be designing his own Islamic empire even then." ... An internal Iraqi Intelligence memo dated March 28, 1992, lists individuals Hussein's regime considered assets of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Osama bin Laden is listed on page 14. The Iraqis describe him as a Saudi businessman who "is in good relationship with our section in Syria." ... In 1993, at Turabi's urging, bin Laden came to an "understanding" with Saddam Hussein that the al Qaeda leader and his followers would not engage in any anti-Hussein activities. The Clinton administration later included this development in its sealed indictment of bin Laden in 1998. According to the indictment: "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." .... "Cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement." Internal Iraqi Intelligence memo on Iraq-al Qaeda cooperation, June 25, 2004, New York Times ..... "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." Internal Iraqi Intelligence memo describing the goal of meetings with an al Qaeda envoy, February 19, 1998 ..... "The consistent stream of intelligence at that time said it wasn't just al Shifa. There were three different [chemical weapons] structures in the Sudan. There was the hiring of Iraqis. There was no question that the Iraqis were there." Interview with John Gannon, former chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council, October 25, 2004 .... "Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden have sealed a pact." Milan's Corriere della Sera, December 28, 1998, as cited in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, p. 328 .... "Following the expulsion of al Qaeda from Afghanistan and their arrival in northern Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi (a senior al Qaeda figure) was relatively free to travel within Iraq proper and to stay in Baghdad for some time. Several of his colleagues visited him there." The Butler Report, July 14, 2004 .... Further, Saddam had proven his willingness to use asymmetric means of retaliation time and again. He attempted to use his own intelligence service and terrorist surrogates against the United States during the first Gulf war. He assisted a fugitive from the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. He attempted to assassinate George H.W. Bush. He sought to blow up the U.S. government's Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headquarters. He openly supported terrorist activity in the region. "From 1996 to 2003," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, "the IIS focused its terrorist activities on western interests, particularly against the U.S. and Israel." We know that in the context of a decade-long confrontation with the United States, Saddam reached out to al Qaeda on numerous occasions. We know that the leadership of al Qaeda reciprocated, requesting assistance in its endeavors. We know that reports of meetings, offers of safe haven, and collaboration persisted. What we do not know is the full extent of the relationship. But we know enough to know that there was one. And we know enough to know it was a threat.

Very insteresting read...the article clearly states that we don't know all the answers, but to say that they had no connections at all is quite far from reality.