Saddam's Terror Links

[thedrifter]

Saddam's Terror Links
March 24, 2008; Page A14

Five years on, few Iraq myths are as persistent as the notion that the Bush Administration invented a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet a new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.

Naturally, it's getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has let the study's revelations float by. But that doesn't make the facts any less notable or true.

The redacted version of "Saddam and Terrorism" is the most definitive public assessment to date from the Harmony program, the trove of "exploitable" documents, audio and video records, and computer files captured in Iraq. On the basis of about 600,000 items, the report lays out Saddam's willingness to use terrorism against American and other international targets, as well as his larger state sponsorship of terror, which included harboring, training and equipping jihadis throughout the Middle East.

"The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam's 'coercion' toolbox, not only cost effective but a formal instrument of state power," the authors conclude. Throughout the 1990s, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) cooperated with Hamas; the Palestine Liberation Front, which maintained a Baghdad office; Force 17, Yasser Arafat's private army; and others. The IIS gave commando training for members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the organization that assassinated Anwar Sadat and whose "emir" was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became Osama bin Laden's second-in-command when the group merged with al Qaeda in 1998.

At the very least the report should dispel the notion that outwardly "secular" Saddam would never consort with religious types like al Qaeda. A pan-Arab nationalist, Saddam viewed radical Islamists as potential allies, and they likewise. According to a 1993 memo, Saddam decided to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia," where al Qaeda was then working with warlords against U.S. humanitarian forces. Saddam also trained Sudanese fighters in Iraq.

The Pentagon report cites this as "a tactical example" of their cooperation. When Saddam "was ordering action in Somalia aimed at the American presence, Osama bin Laden was doing the same thing." Saddam took an interest in "far-flung terrorist groups . . . to locate any organization whose services he might use in the future." The Harmony 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 version."

For 20 years, such "support" included using Fedayeen Saddam training camps to school terrorists, especially Palestinians but also non-Iraqis "directly associated" with al Qaeda, continuing up to the fall of Baghdad. Saddam also provided financial support and weapons, amounting to "a state-directed program of significant scale." In July 2001, the regime began patronizing a terror cartel in Bahrain calling itself the Army of Muhammad, which, according to an Iraqi memo, "is under the wings of bin Laden."

It's true that the Pentagon report found no "smoking gun," i.e., a direct connection on a joint Iraq-al Qaeda operation. Supposedly this vindicates the view that Iraq's liberation was launched on false premises. But the Administration was always cautious, with Colin Powell alleging merely a "sinister nexus" in his 2003 U.N. speech. If anything, sinister is an understatement. The main Iraq intelligence failure was over WMD, but the report indicates that the CIA also underestimated Saddam's ties to global terror cartels.

The Administration has always maintained that Iraq is just one front in the war on terror; and the report offers "evidence of logistical preparation for terrorist operations in other nations, including those in the West." In 2002, an IIS memo explained to Saddam that Iraqi embassies were stockpiling weapons, while many of the terrorists trained in Fedayeen camps were dispatched to London with counterfeit documents, where they circulated throughout Europe.

Around the same time, the IIS began to manufacture better improvised explosive devices "designed to be used in civilian areas," and the regime bureaucratized suicide operations, with local Baath Party leaders competing to provide recruits for Saddam as part of a "Martyrdom Project."

All of these are inconvenient facts for those who want to assert that somehow Saddam could have been easily contained and presented no threat to the U.S. The Harmony files buttress the case that the decision to oust Saddam was the right one -- which makes it all the more puzzling that the Bush Administration is mum. It isn't the first time the White House has ceded the Iraq debate to its opponents.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

March 24, 2008, 5:00 a.m.

Chilling Confirmation
Yes, Saddam Hussein was an Islamofascist threat.

By Deroy Murdock

As Operation Iraqi Freedom is now five years old, a new study confirms that ousting Saddam Hussein was justified and vital to U.S. national security. Though war critics hate to admit it, the Baathist dictator was up to his mustache in aid for Islamofascist terrorism.

As a report from the Institute for Defense Analyses explains, “captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.” IDA’s review of some 600,000 documents discovered in Iraq since Coalition forces liberated Baghdad indicates that “from 1991through 2003, the Saddam regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing, and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power.”

IDA presents chilling details:

A May 1999 memorandum to Fedayeen Saddam leader Uday Hussein — the despot’s elder son — outlined a bombing and assassination campaign called BLESSED JULY. Among “50 Fedayeen martyrs,” selected from an elite terrorist-training camp, “The top ten will work in the European field — London.” The memo continues: “After passing the final test the Fedayeen will be sent as undercover passengers, each one according to his work site.”

A July 2002 weapons inventory of 12 Iraqi embassies, written just eight months before the American-led invasion of Iraq, found them far better armed than diplomatic security requires: “Vienna — Explosive charges, rifles with silencers, hand grenades, and Kalashnikov rifles. Pakistan — Explosive materials of TNT. . . . Thailand — Plastic explosive charges and booby-trapped suitcases. . . . Turkey — Missile launcher, missile, and pistols with silencers.” This document adds: “Between the year [sic] 2000 and 2002 . . . explosive materials were transported to the embassies outside Iraq for special work, upon the approval of the Director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service [IIS].”

Building car bombs became a bureaucratized task, as a summarized September 4, 1999, document illustrates.

“An approval memorandum from IIS Directorate 4 to Section 27 to load a vehicle with 50 to 75 kilograms [110 to 165 pounds] of explosive material and provide to the At Ta’mim Intelligence Branch [M52] for a ‘special duty.’” Further, an “Inspection Certificate Form” should verify the car bomb’s compliance with chemical, electrical, and mechanical standards. It also recommends using a Duracell battery given “the importance of the duty.”

A September 2001 Iraqi military-intelligence letter says “the Division Commands should launch a campaign among their members, supporters, and backers of the Party encouraging them to volunteer in suicide operations, and have them write volunteer statements, preferably in their blood.” It lists 43 such “suicide volunteers.”

The Fedayeen Saddam forwarded Uday Hussein a letter from Nazah, a widow requesting assistance with her husband’s pension. She recalls that “he carried out a suicide mission on 19 July 2000, and exploded himself at the [apparently Kurdistani] Ibn Sina Hotel during the presence of US and UK citizens. . . . ” She also mentions that he “Detonated a car [bomb] during the convoy of [former French first lady] Danielle Mitterrand in Halsabajah City, which killed forty enemies.”



A March 18, 1993 IIS memo to Saddam Hussein reads, “We list herein the organizations that our agency cooperates with. . . . ” Among nine terrorist groups, it cites Egyptian Islamic Jihad (“It carried out numerous successful operations, including the assassination of Sadat”), Abu Nidal’s Fatah — which killed at least 407 innocents, including 10 Americans — (“We have been in contact with the organization since 1973 and have provided financial and logistical support, such as vehicles” ), and the Palestine Liberation Front, whose terrorists murdered wheelchair-bound American retiree Leon Klinghoffer aboard the hijacked Achille Lauro ocean liner in October 1985. “Currently has an office in Baghdad,” the memo states. “They were assigned and carried out commando operations for us against American interests in the [1991] war.”

A July 28, 1998 letter specified three such missions:

-“Burning the American Airlines office in the Philippines.”
-“Placing an explosive device near an American base in Izmir [Turkey].”
-“Placing an explosive device on the pipe lines that carry oil to an American base in southern Spain.”

A January 1993 memo recorded Saddam Hussein’s decision to “form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia.”

Especially revolting were Baathist attacks on Westerners providing humanitarian assistance to Iraqi Kurds. A May 16, 1993, IIS letter to Iraq’s defense ministry notes that, “Since the beginning of the current year until now there have been four workers from non-governmental organizations killed, (two Kurds, one Belgian, one Australian), a hospital bombed, and dynamite exploded in trailers bringing aid to the Kurds. The deteriorating conditions forced the [Nobel Peace Prize-winning] Doctors Without Borders organization to leave the area at the end of April. . . . The operations referred to in the news above were executed by our Directorate in fulfillment of your excellent direction through some of the cooperatives and the National Defense battalions. . . . ” The aforementioned Belgian appears to have led Handicap International’s assistance to Chamchamal’s Prosthesis Hospital.

Uday Hussein writes his father in 2001 about “attacking the new Land Cruiser vehicle with the UN symbol. . . . There were four American citizens including one female in the vehicle.” After that February 19 Baathist bombing, Uday continues, “The results of the mission were the destruction of the above mentioned vehicle, the death of the head of the organization and the serious injury of the other three, including the woman.”

A December 8, 2001, Fedayeen Saddam letter reveals Uday’s Yuletide spirit towards relief workers in Kurdistan:
Your Excellency [Uday Hussein] ordered striking the dens and concentrating on the foreigners who work in the Northern Zone to frustrate their planning and their disgraced action. Two targets that are over populated with foreigners were specified; one of them will be done on Christmas night, and the other one will be done several days after the first.

Iraq-war critics dismiss all this and focus on one sentence in this 94-page paper: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.”

They also overlook this contradictory passage: “In pursuit of their own separate but surprisingly ‘parallel’ visions, Saddam and [Osama] bin Laden often found a common enemy in the United States. . . . 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.”

While Saddam Hussein may not have been Islamic terrorism’s Meyer Lansky, he was its Al Capone — a resourceful, cunning, and deadly gangster who America had every right, and indeed a vital obligation, to topple.

Ellie