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It gets disheartening defending the obvious pre-9/11 connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda when the White House seems unmotivated to do so, but Thomas Jocelyn and Andy McCarthy haven't been chased off the story by Senator Carl Levin and the Washington Post. When both asserted that no one had found connections between Saddam and AQ, they both reminded readers to follow the money:
But Levin's story, which was simply repeated without any real investigation by the Post or even the inspector general's office, relies on a false dichotomy. The senator now pretends that the CIA and other intelligence outfits had reached a rock-solid conclusion that there was no noteworthy relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in 2002, but Feith's shop improperly pressed on. The Post summarized the inspector general's report as saying: " the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups." This is simply revisionist history at its worst. Although there were certainly disagreements between the CIA and Feith's shop, both argued in 2002 that there was a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, stated the CIA's position quite clearly in an October 7, 2002 letter to then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL). Tenet explained, "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." Iraq and al Qaeda "have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression." Tenet warned, "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." And, "Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qaeda, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action."
This is simply revisionist history at its worst.
Although there were certainly disagreements between the CIA and Feith's shop, both argued in 2002 that there was a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, stated the CIA's position quite clearly in an October 7, 2002 letter to then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL). Tenet explained, "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." Iraq and al Qaeda "have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression." Tenet warned, "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." And, "Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qaeda, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action."
Andy picks up on one very important connection between Iraq and AQ -- money:
Forgetting all of these circumstances, among others, Tom also recalls, as Steve Hayes, myself, and others have for some time, that in 1998, "Ayman al-Zawahiri was in Baghdad ... and collected a check for $300,000 from the Iraqi regime." I would add, for context, that this was in the same time frame as bin Laden and Zawahiri's infamous fatwa calling for the murder of Americans ? which, if you read it, argues that American actions against Iraq are a big part of the justification. It also came just a few months before al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in east Africa, the Clinton administration bombed a Sudanese phramaceutical factory because intel indicated it was a joint Iraqi/Qaeda chemical weapons venture, and Clinton counter-terror honcho Richard Clarke fretted that "wily old Osama would boogie to Baghdad" ? of all places ? if the U.S. made things too hot for Qaeda in Afghanistan. Sure, maybe all this is just a big coincidence. But, given that al Qaeda is a 24/7 terror operation whose main target is the U.S., I've always wondered for what earthly purpose Senator Levin and other connection naysayers figure Saddam Hussein gave Ayman Zawahiri 300K?
Sure, maybe all this is just a big coincidence. But, given that al Qaeda is a 24/7 terror operation whose main target is the U.S., I've always wondered for what earthly purpose Senator Levin and other connection naysayers figure Saddam Hussein gave Ayman Zawahiri 300K?
More Connection -- the 1998 Fatwa [Andy McCarthy]
Can't help but belabor this point. Over the years, the media, the Intelligence Community, the Justice Department, the Congress and various investigative bodies like the 9/11 Commission have repeatedly pointed to Osama bin Laden & Co.'s infamous 1998 fatwa, the summons to "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," calling for the murder of all Americans, whether civilian or military, anywhere on earth where they are found. That, of course, is the command ? the direction about what is to be done. But very little has been said publicly about bin Laden's stated rationale for this command.
Below is al Qaeda's justification for the command to kill all Americans. As you read this ? recalling the meetings and exchanges of funds between Iraq and al Qaeda in 1998, the Clinton administration's retaliation against the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory (believed to be a joint Iraq/Qaeda weapons operation) that followed the embassy attacks, the Clinton administration's fear that bin Laden would move his operation to Baghdad ? note how focused bin Laden was on Iraq in the months before bombing our embassies. Note also his allusions to the "rulers" of countries in the Arabian Peninsula, including Iraq ? there is no trace of the hostility that the Intelligence Community often maintains was a constant between jihadist bin Laden and secular Saddam. All italics are mine:
No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone: First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula. All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries.... On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies ? civilians and military ? is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah."
No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries.... On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies ? civilians and military ? is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah."
So said Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri and their Sunni jihadist confederates, who, according to today's congressional leadership, had no real interest in Shiite-majority, secularly-ruled Iraq until the United States invaded five years later.
04/14 10:44 AM
On the Iraq/Qaeda Connection, It's Senator Levin, Not the (AWOL) Bush Administration, Who's Spinning the Intelligence [Andy McCarthy]
The invaluable terrorism researcher Tom Joscelyn had a devastating piece in yesterday's Daily Standard (on the Weekly Standard's website), demonstrating the lengths to which Senator Carl Levin and the Washington Post continue to go to bury and discredit solid evidence of a meaningful relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Levin's revisionist narrative that the connection was cooked up by neconservatives like former Defense under secretary Doug Feith, over the complete objection of the CIA, as a false justification for toppling the Iraqi regime is flat-out fantasy ? although fantasy with legs given the uncritical recitals it gets in the mainstream media and the inexplicable failure of the Bush administration to counter it with facts.
(Aside: This is one of the worst abdications in the Bush record ? the administration's insistence that it is "looking forward, not back," clearly motivated by fear that revisiting pre-war intelligence is a political loser given the unpopularity of the war. The administration has facts on its side on this critical issue, and the legacy of the war ? the crucial connection of Iraq to the overall war on terror ? depends on it. It is just reprehensible to shy from this debate.)
As Tom notes, Sen. Levin
now pretends that the CIA and other intelligence outfits had reached a rock-solid conclusion that there was no noteworthy relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in 2002, but Feith's shop improperly pressed on. The Post summarized the inspector general's report as saying: " the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups." This is simply revisionist history at its worst. Although there were certainly disagreements between the CIA and Feith's shop, both argued in 2002 that there was a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, stated the CIA's position quite clearly in an October 7, 2002 letter to then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL). Tenet explained, "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." Iraq and al Qaeda "have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression." Tenet warned, "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." And, "Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qaeda, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action." Tenet was far from alone in these assessments. Michael Scheuer, the one-time head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, also used to be certain that Iraq and al Qaeda were working together. Scheuer's first book on al Qaeda, Through Our Enemies' Eyes, which was published in 2002, went into elaborate detail about the support the Iraqi regime was providing to al Qaeda. Among the areas of concern was Iraq's ongoing support for al Qaeda's chemical weapons development projects in the Sudan. In 2004, after fashioning a career as a critic of the Bush administration, Scheuer did an about face. He suddenly claimed that there was no evidence of a relationship. He even decided to re-write history?literally. He revised Through Our Enemies' Eyes to be consistent with his newly formed opinion by claiming he was simply mistaken. The bottom line is that members of the CIA, including the Agency's director, certainly believed in 2002 that there was a relationship between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. And no matter what he says now, Senator Levin knows that. In a June 16, 2003 appearance on NewsHour, Senator Levin explained: "We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al-Qaida and Iraq, and there were real questions raised. And there are real questions raised about whether or not that link was such that the description by the intelligence community was accurate or whether or not they [note: "they" here refers to the intelligence community, not the Bush administration] stretched it." The idea that Feith's analysts cooked up the connection, while the CIA shunned the very notion, is pure fantasy?a fantasy dreamed up by Senator Levin and some former CIA members who have repeatedly made clear their disdain for the Bush administration.
now pretends that the CIA and other intelligence outfits had reached a rock-solid conclusion that there was no noteworthy relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in 2002, but Feith's shop improperly pressed on. The Post summarized the inspector general's report as saying: " the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups."
Tenet was far from alone in these assessments. Michael Scheuer, the one-time head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, also used to be certain that Iraq and al Qaeda were working together. Scheuer's first book on al Qaeda, Through Our Enemies' Eyes, which was published in 2002, went into elaborate detail about the support the Iraqi regime was providing to al Qaeda. Among the areas of concern was Iraq's ongoing support for al Qaeda's chemical weapons development projects in the Sudan.
In 2004, after fashioning a career as a critic of the Bush administration, Scheuer did an about face. He suddenly claimed that there was no evidence of a relationship. He even decided to re-write history?literally. He revised Through Our Enemies' Eyes to be consistent with his newly formed opinion by claiming he was simply mistaken.
The bottom line is that members of the CIA, including the Agency's director, certainly believed in 2002 that there was a relationship between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. And no matter what he says now, Senator Levin knows that. In a June 16, 2003 appearance on NewsHour, Senator Levin explained:
"We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al-Qaida and Iraq, and there were real questions raised. And there are real questions raised about whether or not that link was such that the description by the intelligence community was accurate or whether or not they [note: "they" here refers to the intelligence community, not the Bush administration] stretched it."
The idea that Feith's analysts cooked up the connection, while the CIA shunned the very notion, is pure fantasy?a fantasy dreamed up by Senator Levin and some former CIA members who have repeatedly made clear their disdain for the Bush administration.
Tom also sorts through just some of what is known from the haul of Iraqi intelligence documents recovered after the U.S. invasion. (And here, it is worth noting that the Bush administration has, for some reason, allowed the shut down by the Intelligence Community of a project to make these documents publicly available for analysts ? the government itself plainly did not make reconstructing the workings of Saddam's regime a priority, and the IC is clearly content that we remain ignorant.) Here's some of what Tom notes the known intel (which is but a fraction of the total) tells us:
Forgetting all of these circumstances, among others, Tom also recalls, as Steve Hayes, myself, and others have for some time, that in 1998, "Ayman al-Zawahiri was in Baghdad ... and collected a check for $300,000 from the Iraqi regime." I would add, for context, that this was in the same time frame as bin Laden and Zawahiri's infamous fatwa calling for the murder of Americans ? which, if you read it, argues that American actions against Iraq are a big part of the justification. It also came just a few months before al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in east Africa, the Clinton administration bombed a Sudanese phramaceutical factory because intel indicated it was a joint Iraqi/Qaeda chemical weapons venture, and Clinton counter-terror honcho Richard Clarke fretted that "wily old Osama would boogie to Baghdad" ? of all places ? if the U.S. made things too hot for Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Andy McCarthy and others have constantly pointed out the mountains of evidence showing al Qaeda's long-standing and extensive working relations with Saddam's Iraq. Tom Joscelyn has recently written a marvelous essay doing the same on the relations between al Qaeda and Iran. I borrow extensively from that material?which should be published shortly by Claremont?in a book on Iran I have just finished and submitted to the green eye shade crowd at St Martins Press, but suffice to say that it's very compelling.
Saddam & 9/11 [Andy McCarthy]
For the record, I continue not to understand why people are so quick to absolve Saddam of any involvement in 9/11.
To be clear, I don't understand Jonah to be saying anything other than that no connection has been proved, and assuming that's what he's saying, I agree. But there is a big difference between saying no connection has been proved and saying no connection is likely, or at least conceivable. The debate on this has become so perverted by those hell-bent on discrediting the American invasion of Iraq (aided and abetted by the administration's infuriating failure to defend itself), that it seems people feel compelled to make an opening concession that there is no connection between Iraq and 9/11 in order to be taken seriously in arguing that there is a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. But it would be more accurate to say that the evidence of connection between Iraq and al Qaeda is extensive, and there is enough troubling circumstantial evidence of Iraqi ties to central 9/11 players that Iraq's participation in 9/11 cannot be discounted.
First, contrary to the myth tirelessly repeated by the "no connection" crowd, it has never been established that Mohamed Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. Czech intelligence has not recanted its spotter's the identification of Atta, and, mightily as it tried to help the CIA naysayers, the 9/11 Commission could not establish Atta's whereabouts between April 4 and April 11, 2001 ? the week in which the meeting was said to take place.
Second, no one has ever explained Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi intelligence operative who escorted 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Midhar through through the Malaysia airport and then attended, with al-Midhar and 9/11 hijacker Nawaf al-Hamzi, among other Qaeda figures, the Kuala Lampur meeting in January 2000 that is generally thought to be one of the initial meetings about the 9/11 operation (as well, more than likely, as covering the plot that ultimately led to the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole). About two years ago, I posted this on the Corner, regarding the 9/11 Commission's laughable straw-man attempt to dismiss Shakir in a footnote to its final report, and I've also discussed the intriguing Shakir facts here and here, for example.
Al Qaeda & Saddam [Jonah Gold