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Luddite
I watch Fox News
Registered: 03/23/06
Posts: 2,946
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Saddam Hussein Al Qaeda link
#8187845 - 03/24/08 03:47 PM (16 years, 8 days ago) |
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Editorial: Earth to media: Saddam helped al Qaeda
Mar 24, 2008 4:00 AM (13 hrs ago) by The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper
BALTIMORE (Map, News) - In discussing last week’s fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, many mainstream media journalists were quick to tout a new Pentagon report supposedly proving there was “no connection” between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. Those journalists were dead wrong. The report actually shows many links between the two, plus abundant other examples of direct support from Saddam for a wide variety of international terrorists.
Credit for correcting the false media stories goes to Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard, who noted that the exhaustive review actually showed Saddam’s direct support — funding, training, equipping, arming — for a group called Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was led by bin Laden’s powerful and now-infamous deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
At other times, Saddam directly supported other terrorist organizations that “would work together [with al Qaeda] in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence.” And an official Iraqi document from 1993 reports years of “good relations” with the Afghan Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, for whom Saddam provided financial support. Who is Hekmatyar? He’s the man described by terrorism analyst Peter Bergen as bin Laden’s “alter ego,” who hosted al Qaeda’s terrorist training camps in the eastern part of Afghanistan.
And Hayes reports that one of the two main co-authors of the Pentagon study, a completely independent investigator named James Lacey, himself complained in writing to the Pentagon press office that “the document is being misrepresented” by the media.
To judge for yourself, the report can be viewed at http://a.abcnews.com/images/pdf/Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf . After the Executive Summary, note the very first sentence of the full report: “Under Saddam, the Iraqi regime used its paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam training camps to train terrorists for use inside and outside Iraq.” Page after page, all taken from internal Iraqi documents, detail direct support from Saddam to terrorist organizations and leaders. One set of documents shows high-level approval for providing support for The Army of Muhammad, which was identified by an Iraqi agent as “an offshoot of bin Laden” and “under the wings of bin Laden.”
In short, the only thing the media reports got right was that the Pentagon study showed no “smoking gun” of Saddam sitting down to dinner with bin Laden to plan 9/11. But there are numerous bull’s-eyes showing Saddam was an energetic supporter of terrorism, including terrorism he knew was carried out by bin Laden’s accomplices. And that was reason enough to sideline Saddam Hussein for good.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1297755~Earth_to_media__Saddam_helped_al_Qaeda.html
Edited by Luddite (03/24/08 03:48 PM)
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bigred
Registered: 02/05/08
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Loc: Latitude = 37.0954, Longi...
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Re: Saddam Hussein Al Qaeda link [Re: Luddite]
#8187980 - 03/24/08 04:17 PM (16 years, 8 days ago) |
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You cant understand how happy it makes me to see you post this kind of thing! So many people are blind to the truth and so fast to follow the lead of rags like the post. Thank you very much
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Rebirtha
I really like bread
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Re: Saddam Hussein Al Qaeda link [Re: Luddite]
#8188053 - 03/24/08 04:33 PM (16 years, 8 days ago) |
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I guess it depends on if you trust the Pentagon. This information would have been great 5 years ago too. I'm not denying that information though.
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Sage.Phish
Guerrilla Farmer
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Re: Saddam Hussein Al Qaeda link [Re: bigred]
#8188065 - 03/24/08 04:36 PM (16 years, 8 days ago) |
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that ought to teach us not to support dictators!.... or terrorist groups.
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AnonymousRabbit
Comrade
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Edited by AnonymousRabbit (05/19/22 01:12 AM)
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Sage.Phish
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Quote:
supernovasky said: Good try moron, but Egyptian Islamic Jihad merged with Al Queda about 10 years after Saddam last had links with them. Kind of destroys that argument. Furthermore, if all you've got is a 1993 connection between a terrorist group that later decided to join Al Qaeda to connect Saddam to Al Qaeda, your evidence is sorely lacking.
Quote:
But Pillar notes the Egyptian group—headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri—didn't merge with Al Qaeda until years later. "This is the same kind of word game they played before the war," Pillar says.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/128620
Saddam wouldn't support al-Qeada for the basic reason of being a dictator and a control freak, he wouldn't support a rogue group that threatened the Ba'ath's partys goals. not to mention that Saddam and Saudi Arabia hated each other, and Bin Laden was Saudi. Bin Laden offered Saudi Arabia his support/protection from Saddam during the Gulf War. But the US had a better deal and Operation: Desert Shield was launched.
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EntheogenicPeace
Scholar
Registered: 10/04/05
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Edited by EntheogenicPeace (02/13/21 05:11 PM)
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AnonymousRabbit
Comrade
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Last seen: 1 year, 6 months
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Edited by AnonymousRabbit (05/19/22 01:12 AM)
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EntheogenicPeace
Scholar
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Posts: 3,926
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Edited by EntheogenicPeace (02/13/21 05:12 PM)
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The_Red_Crayon
Exposer of Truth
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Re: Saddam Hussein Al Qaeda link [Re: Luddite]
#8188429 - 03/24/08 06:20 PM (16 years, 8 days ago) |
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I find it hard to believe Saddam would of supported Al Qaeda in anyway, they were ideological opposites. Theres more Al Qaeda involved with Iraq now then before Saddam.
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Luddite
I watch Fox News
Registered: 03/23/06
Posts: 2,946
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Re: Saddam Hussein Al Qaeda link [Re: Luddite]
#8192320 - 03/25/08 04:33 PM (16 years, 7 days ago) |
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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.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.
And add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120631495290958169.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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