phyzix525

Why have I not heard more about this? I know these stories are a bit old, but they seem pretty damn important to me.

http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.sh...002/8/13/95502

For those against anything Newsmax...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/wo...salman_pak.htm

And even a picture

http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea...3/0406sun3.htm

Seems like pretty good proof that Iraq was working with Al Qaeda to me. Again I don't see how this has not even been mention on the TFP (searched for salman pak)

Lebell

Please post content, not just links if possible.

Thanks!

-------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2002 10:55 a.m. EDT

Salman Pak: Iraq's Smoking Gun Link to 9/11?

With all the talk about how little evidence the Bush administration has tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, we're more than a little surprised at how quickly reporters, not to mention the White House, seem to have forgotten about Salman Pak.

That's the name of the Iraqi training camp located south of Baghdad where, according to the accounts of at least two Iraqi defectors quoted in the New York Times last November, terrorists from around the world rehearsed airline hijackings aboard a parked Boeing 707 that bore an eerie resemblance to what transpired on 9/11.

"We could see them train around the fuselage," one of the defectors, a five-year veteran of the camp, told the paper. "We could see them practice taking over the plane."

And that's not all.

A few days before the Times report, the London Observer revealed that one of the defectors, a colonel with the Iraqi intelligence service, Mukhabarat, had drawn an even more direct link to 9/11.

The former Iraqi agent, codenamed Zeinab, told the paper that one of the highlights of Salman Pak's six-month curriculum was training to hijack aircraft using only knives or bare hands. Like the Sept. 11 hijackers, the students worked in groups of four or five, he explained.

Zeinab's story has since been corroborated by Charles Duelfer, the former vice chairman of UNSCOM, the U.N. weapons inspection team, which actually visited the Salman Pak camp several times.

"He saw the 707, in exactly the place described by the defectors," the Observer reported. "The Iraqis, he said, told UNSCOM it was used by police for counterterrorist training."

"Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter'," Duelfer explained. "I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. Like, derrrrrr! I mean, what, actually, do you expect?"

Unlike the other parts of Salman Pak, Zeinab told the Observer that there was a foreigners' camp that was controlled directly by Saddam Hussein.

"It was a nightmare! A very strange experience," the Iraqi agent said. "These guys would stop and insist on praying to Allah five times a day when we had training to do. The instructors wouldn't get home till late at night, just because of all this praying."

A second defector said that conversations with the hijacker-trainees made it clear they came from a variety of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco.

"We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States," he added chillingly. "The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this."

Though the Bush administration has been largely silent about Salman Pak, former CIA Director James Woolsey is apparently convinced it was used to rehearse Sept. 11-style hijackings.

In late November he told Fox News Channel's Laurie Dhue:

"We know that at Salman Pak, on the southern edge of Baghdad, five different eyewitnesses - three Iraqi defectors and two American U.N. inspectors - have said - and now there are aerial photographs to show it - a Boeing 707 that was used for training of hijackers, including non-Iraqi hijackers trained very secretly to take over airplanes with knives."

Another intriguing coincidence: Salman Pak's hijacking school reportedly opened for business in 1995, the same year al-Qaeda agents in the Philippines hatched a plot to hijack 12 airliners and slam some of them into U.S. landmarks.

If America's press is looking for smoking-gun evidence tying Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, Saddam Hussein's hijack school for Islamic terrorists is as good as it's likely to get.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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tecoyah

I think it has been mostly ignored because......it is inconclusive,used unreliable sources and would do little to prove the link. I would place this in the smouldering leaf category, rather than smoking gun.

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

phyzix525

How can you say this is just a coincodence? they had a plane that they were training hijackings with small knives in groups of five. This sounds a bit familiar to me.

Sparhawk

I think the problem is that a lot of the defectors since the first Gulf War have fallen into the I'll-tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear-so-you'll-give-me-more-money camp. Unfortunately, as we've seen regarding the Iraqi weapons program (or lack thereof), these people can't be relied on.

__________________
"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."

phyzix525

Yeah I can imagine that would be a pretty big problem, but look at the picture, its certainly a commercial plane. In the location they said it would be.

__________________
It's hard to remember we're alive for the first time
It's hard to remember we're alive for the last time
It's hard to remember to live before you die
It's hard to remember that our lives are such a short time
It's hard to remember when it takes such a long time

Billy Ocean

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,103176,00.html


This story is very long.

Weekly Standard: Intel Report Links Saddam, Usama

Saturday, November 15, 2003

by Stephen F. Hayes



Usama bin Laden (search) and Saddam Hussein (search) had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, Al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for Al Qaeda - perhaps even for Mohamed Atta - according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith (search) to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level Al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo, which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points, Iraq-Al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War. According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in 1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to establish links to Al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions. According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the Al Qaeda-affiliated National Islamic Front (search). Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-Al Qaeda relationship. The defector said Iraq sought Al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided Al Qaeda with training and instructors."

One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details:

4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad , and later with Al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and Al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior Al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting - the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of Al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with Al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9/11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes.

A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993, when bin Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam.

5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an "understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S. court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade Al Qaeda operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.

Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden¹s "best friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with Saddam's regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction for Al Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime before mid-1995 he went on an Al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified cooperation with the Iraqi government."

Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the mid-1990s comes from a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and his dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq.

This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the substantive talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided a "window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily involved with Iraq (and Iran).

Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy, though multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri (search), bin Laden's current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting gets much more specific in the mid-1990s:

8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti.

9 . . . Bin Laden visited Doha, Qatar (17-19 Jan. 1996), staying at the residence of a member of the Qatari ruling family. He discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and operations targeted against U.S. and U.K. interests in Dammam, Dharan, and Khobar, using clandestine Al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. Upon his return, bin Laden met with Hijazi and Turabi, among others.

And later more reporting, from the same "well placed" source:

10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS officers met at bin Laden¹s farm and discussed bin Laden¹s request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives maker‹especially skilled in making car bombs‹remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.

The analysis of those events follows:

The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials explicitly threatened retaliation.

In addition to the contacts clustered in the mid-1990s, intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that "the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of contact with Al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998 and met with Tariq Aziz."

11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to meet with bin Laden at least twice, first in Sudan and later in Afghanistan in 1999. . . .

14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a "regular and reliable source," [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior Al Qaeda operative, visited Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of Abdul Aziz.

That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of the U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire agreement following the Gulf War. UNSCOM (search) demanded access to Saddam's presidential palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions mounted, President Bill Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the nation for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals" and said "there is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed in April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Saddam's intelligence service wrote a memo detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that, when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq 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 document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The Al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might provide "a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the Arabic-language daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "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." Bin Laden urged his followers to act: "The ruling to kill all 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."

Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal brokered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox (search), a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998.

According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this meeting and relates two others.

15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden in Afghanistan.

16. According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.

17. . . . Iraq sent an intelligence officer to Afghanistan to seek closer ties to bin Laden and the Taliban in late 1998. The source reported that the Iraqi regime was trying to broaden its cooperation with Al Qaeda. Iraq was looking to recruit Muslim "elements" to sabotage U.S. and U.K. interests. After a senior Iraqi intelligence officer met with Taliban leader [Mullah] Omar, arrangements were made for a series of meetings between the Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in Pakistan. The source noted Faruq Hijazi was in Afghanistan in late 1998.

18. . . . Faruq Hijazi went to Afghanistan in 1999 along with several other Iraqi officials to meet with bin Laden. The source claimed that Hijazi would have met bin Laden only at Saddam¹s explicit direction.

An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and an explanation of these reports:

Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between Al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.

Information about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq was so widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press. A January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam + Bin Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source" with knowledge of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued, indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if formally."

Intelligence reports about the nature of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, "said that the last contact between the IIS and Al Qaeda was in July 1999. Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back from Saddam¹s office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any further contact with bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The source opined that Saddam wanted to distance himself from Al Qaeda."

The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this claim. One report states that "in late 1999" Al Qaeda set up a training camp in northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin Laden throughout 1999.

23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering offering safe haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of Iraqi intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in frequent contact and had good relations with bin Laden.

Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named Ahmed Hikmat Shakir:

24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting indicates Shakir¹s travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network of terrorists, including Al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur airport‹a job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee.

One of the men at that Al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole.

25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 by Al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement."

26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior Al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an Al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two Al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was "encouraged" after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training.

The analysis of this report follows.

CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons."

Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that relations between Iraq and Al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999:

27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after learning Saddam agreed to assist Al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia.

And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting on those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What¹s more, the memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by Iraqi intelligence.

The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.

And the commentary:

CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague‹in Dec. 1994 and in June 2000; data surrounding the other two, on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April 2001, is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross continues to stand by his information.

It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press attention ,April 9, 2001, is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness that doesn¹t fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-Al Qaeda contacts.

Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead hijacker's determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the spring of 2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that the funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested the transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than simply return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused entry the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork, and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day after arriving in Prague for the second time.

Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks:

31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said Al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to Al Qaeda members and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a large number of Al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that Al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for Al Qaeda had been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for Al Qaeda personnel.

The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the report fits the pattern of Iraq-Al Qaeda collaboration:

References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained that Iraqi support for Al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by including weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of 9-11.

Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N. Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Reporting in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain some of the resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq.

37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and close Al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S. occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi¹s procurements from the Iraqis also could support Al Qaeda operations against the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.

38. According to sensitive reporting, a contact with good access who does not have an established reporting record: An Iraqi intelligence service officer said that as of mid-March the IIS was providing weapons to Al Qaeda members located in northern Iraq, including rocket propelled grenade (RPG)-18 launchers. According to IIS information, northern Iraq-based Al Qaeda members believed that the U.S. intended to strike Al Qaeda targets during an anticipated assault against Ansar al-Islam positions.

The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which "claimed that an Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it with $100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance."

Critics of the Bush administration have complained that Iraq-Al Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that links between Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden have been routinely "exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public.

Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on Fox News Sunday. Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to look at the administration¹s "exaggeration of intelligence."

Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a connection between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis for that?"

There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not that you would know this from Al Gore¹s recent public statements. Indeed, the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Usama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction." Really?

One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually be available to document the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. For one thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links. There is no Iraq-Al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be a slow process.

So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best viewed as sort of a "Cliff¹s Notes" version of the relationship. It contains the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.

One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have extensive reporting on his activities before and after the September 11 hijacking. That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo, extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-Al Qaeda connections.

Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one but two September 11 hijackers - Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi - through the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to work on January 9 and January 10, and never again.

Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged "diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his employer, controlled Shakir¹s schedule. He was detained in Qatar on September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact information for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 `ck on the USS Cole, and the September 11 hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been plotted.

The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On October 21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a flight to Baghdad. He didn¹t make that flight. Shakir was detained in Jordan for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His interrogators concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained, according to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to "pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same time, Amnesty International complained that Shakir was being held without charge. The Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he is believed to have fled back to Iraq.

Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11? We don¹t know. We may someday find out.

But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to plot against Americans.

__________________
"To live outside the law you must be honest." - Bob Dylan

mml

Chris Mathews did an interview with Rumsfeld in which the Secretary of Defense denies, after several queries, that there was no link between Iraq and 9/11.

Here is the link to the transcript:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4865948/

Here are the pertinent parts:

MATTHEWS: You know, when you watch the culture of the country, there’s a great sense in country music, you remember how you felt. You’ve heard these songs. They’re so American. And they talk about the war in Iraq as being some kind of payback or justice for what happened to us on 9/11.

Do you think that’s a fair way to look at it morally and sort of sentimentally, the idea that we’re getting back at the people that hit us?

I mean, the soldiers are, maybe—probably think that. I’m just guessing. They think, “We’ve got to go back and hit them. They hit us.” Like Pearl Harbor. They hit us; we’re hitting them back.

Is that accurate in history?

RUMSFELD: I guess in life, things are never quite as simple as they seem. There’s no doubt but that we’re fighting terrorists in Iraq, there, and it’s part of the global war on terror. The direct connection between 9/11 and...

MATTHEWS: You feel there’s a connection?

RUMSFELD: There’s a different one. No.

MATTHEWS: You see one?

RUMSFELD: No.

MATTHEWS: You don’t see an al Qaeda-Iraq connection before 9/11?

RUMSFELD: Well, It’s not a matter for me to see it, but the—the Central Intelligence Agency and the director of central intelligence has testified to the relationships between Iraq and terrorists.

We know he would spend $25,000 to suicide bombers.

MATTHEWS: Sure. For the ones in Israel. Sure, those people.

RUMSFELD: Yes.

MATTHEWS: But in terms of 9/11, there’s no connection?

RUMSFELD: Is it?

MATTHEWS: Between Iraq and 9/11?

RUMSFELD: It’s too complex a subject for me to answer yes or no. George Tenet has testified publicly and privately on that subject before Congress, and that is the official position of the United States government.

MATTHEWS: Which one? There’s no connection?

RUMSFELD: No. You have to (UNINTELLIGIBLE), because it is a complex set of issues and implicit intelligence facts.

MATTHEWS: But the president said recently, when he was asked—it was with Tony Blair that time, the prime minister of Great Britain. And he said there’s no connection between 9/11 and Iraq.

RUMSFELD: If you’re asking whether Iraqis, who were (UNINTELLIGIBLE) people engaged in 9/11, the answer is no.

MATTHEWS: You believe there’s still a possibility that the Iraqi government had something to do with planning the attack on us, 9/11?

RUMSFELD: Not to my knowledge.

MATTHEWS: Therefore, this war is not payback? There was no direct 9/11?

RUMSFELD: The...

MATTHEWS: The Iraqi war is not getting even with the people that hit us 9/11?

RUMSFELD: No. I see your point.

MATTHEWS: Is that the case? It’s not...

RUMSFELD: It is, but in a different way.

MATTHEWS: Let me try, correctly. Is this payback—is this war, in the line—in the sentiments of the music, in the culture of that country, many people’s minds, this is somehow justice for what happened to us 9/11. Is it? Or is it unrelated? Or is it not directly related? How would you connect the two?

If you were hit in the Pentagon, we’re hitting them in Iraq, is that connected?

RUMSFELD: If you’re asking if there’s a direct link between 9/11 and Iraq, the answer is no. If you’re asking, is the United—the threat (ph) of the United States from terror that exists and that was demonstrated on 9/11, in that manifestation, but exists in a variety of manifestations, and is what we’re doing in Iraq today a part of that effort against terrorists, no, certainly it is.

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Mojo_PeiPei

Alright, there was no link between Iraq and 9/11. Does that mean that there was absolutely no collaberation between the two parties?

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losthellhound

Osama - ultra religeous
Sadam - ultra nationalist

those two ideals dont get along

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mml

I honestly cannot say for sure, but do I think they might have worked with each other for their common goal of harming the United States - it certainly is possible. All the more reason to finish our job in Afganistan and put the maximum effort into tracking down all members of Al-Qaeda before sending troops into Iraq. Let the inspections continue and work with the international community to develop a true coalition that would act in the event we determined that Iraq was actually a threat. The disturbing part about the invasion of Iraq is that our reason for going to war has changed over and over again as the previous reason is deemed to be incorrect. I just wish the Bush Administration would simply admit they were looking to take out Saddam even before they got into office. At least it would be an honest answer.

HarmlessRabbit

No. But there is a stronger link between Osama Bin Laden and the USA than there is between Osama Bin Laden and Iraq, frankly. So if you're going to consider any collaboration to be a connection, that goes for all countries involved.

Rumsfeld said it quite clearly. He believes there is no link between 9/11 and Iraq.

Fireshiru1

There is no definate link between al-Qaeda and the former Iraqi government. Osama Bin-Laden has been noted to have called Saddam Hussei a "bad muslim." Clearly the time between Osama's reign on al-Qaeda and Saddam's reign on Iraq fits the time frame. So why on earth would Saddam, having been called a "bad muslim," ever help out the BinLaden led al-Qaed. The only reason I can come up with is basically for a greated hate of America and I'm not quite sure on that one.

Evidence/Source: http://slate.msn.com/id/2060074/

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Billy Ocean

Al-Queda means "The Base" and it's a very fragmented group in the sense that it is a combination of several groups. The fact that Bin Laden didn't support Saddam's beliefs doesn't mean that the two groups could not have an operational relationship. The terrorist that were recently cought in an attempt to kill 80,000 in Jordan were Al-Queda op's that confessed plotting and training for this attack in pre-war Iraq.

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Publius

It seems to me that, and I can't find a link to back any of this up right now so if anyone remembers what I'm talking about and can please do, before we invaded Iraq the Bush administration made a feeble attempt to make a connection between Osama and Sadam through a splinter group in Northern Iraq. Only real problem with all this is that group turned out to be Kurds and well we all know how the Kurds feel about working with Sadam what with him killing them all the time and all that. Once it became clear that this (lie) wasn’t going over to well with the American People it sort of fell off the chart and the focus was put more on all those WMD’s that Sadam had. Remember how that changed though too? First Sadam was suppose to have or be very very close to having Nukes, then it was just regular old biological weapons and now it appears that Sadam mostly just had oil which as we all know can be used to make fuel air bombs that have the yield of a small nuke and so for obvious reason we had to make sure we took this away from him ASAP.

Now as for this “supposed terrorist training facility”, its no big secret that Sadam supported terrorism against Israel and chances are that if anything that is what this facility was used for. However, to say that it was in anyway connected to 9/11 is a pretty big stretch, but Fox News and Newsmax are pretty good at making that sort of stretch so take it for what you will. However, there has yet to be any conclusive link between Sadam and 9/11 or al- Quida and I don’t think you are going to find one either.
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http://www.seacoastonline.com/2003ne...orld/39226.htm

Associated Press: Hussein link to al-Quida disputed
By Matt Kelley
Sunday July 13, 2003

WASHINGTON - As President Bush works to quiet a controversy over his discredited claim of Iraqi uranium shopping in Africa, another of his prewar assertions is coming under fire: the alleged link between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaida.

Before the war, Bush and members of his cabinet said Saddam was harboring top al-Qaida operatives and suggested Iraq could slip the terrorist network chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons.

Critics attacked those assertions from the beginning for being counter to the ideologies of Saddam and al-Qaida and short on corroborating evidence. Now, two former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking Saddam to the group responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was never more than sketchy at best.

"There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist operation," former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann said this week.

Intelligence agencies agreed on the "lack of a meaningful connection to al-Qaida" and said so to the White House and Congress, said Thielmann, who left State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research last September.

Another former Bush administration intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed there was no clear link between Saddam and al-Qaida.

"The relationships that were plotted were episodic, not continuous," the former official said.

A United Nations terrorism committee says it has no evidence - other than Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertions in his Feb. 5 U.N. speech - of any ties between al-Qaida and Iraq.

And U.S. officials say American forces searching in Iraq have found no significant evidence tying Saddam’s regime with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

"One of the things that concerns me is the continued reference to the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. There’s not much evidence to support that linkage," said Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a presidential candidate.

In the weeks and months before the war, Bush and administration officials repeatedly said Saddam had ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups which could provide a pathway for weapons of mass destruction to find their way to terrorists. U.S. forces have not found any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq so far.

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida," Bush said in his January State of the Union speech.

"Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own," Bush said.

At the time, many terrorism experts criticized the claim. They noted that Saddam’s secular regime was just the kind of Arab government bin Laden’s Islamic extremists want to replace. Critics also pointed out the lack of hard evidence of links between Saddam and bin Laden.

The administration’s case apparently was persuasive. In a poll conducted last month by Knowledge Networks, 52 percent of those questioned said they thought the United States found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam was working closely with al-Qaida - although no such evidence has been found.

"You see the polls - lots of Americans believe that there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaida despite the lack of intelligence evidence on that score," said Gregory Treverton, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council under President Clinton.

The administration’s key evidence of a link was an operative named Abu Musab Zarqawi, who got medical care in Baghdad in May 2002 after being wounded in Afghanistan. In his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, Powell called Zarqawi "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants."

Current and former intelligence officials now say Zarqawi’s links to al-Qaida are more tenuous - the CIA now says Zarqawi considers himself independent of al-Qaida, for example. And while Zarqawi spent time in Iraq, it’s unclear whether Saddam’s regime simply allowed him to be there or actively tried to work with him.

"There was scant evidence there had been any other contacts between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden," Graham said in an interview Friday.

U.S. officials say a handful of suspected al-Qaida members have been captured in Iraq, but most are probably low-level operatives. The biggest catch was a man described as a midlevel terrorist operative who worked for Zarqawi, who was nabbed in April near Baghdad.

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said last week it’s still unclear how much support Zarqawi and his followers got from Saddam.

"That he (Saddam) was promoting al-Qaida is absurd," Cannistraro said. "That there was a tolerance for a Zarqawi network in Iraq seems clear."

High-level captives from both al-Qaida and Saddam’s regime also have denied any links between the two, U.S. officials say. They say al-Qaida leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubayda denied their network worked with the former Iraqi government.

Farouk Hijazi, a former Iraqi intelligence operative who U.S. officials allege met with al-Qaida operatives and perhaps bin Laden himself in the 1990s, also has denied any Iraq-al-Qaida ties, officials say

Billy Ocean

Publius time to catch up with current events. The splinter group you speak of is Ansar al-Islam, of which Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi is a member. They are associated with Bin Laden and have operated out of Northen Iraq for years. Ansar Islam has just had several of it's members arrested in Turkey when the Turks broke up a plot to bomb a Nato summit of World Leaders such as Bush, Blair, Chirac, ect... There's a link to the story. ----> http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/23733.htm

Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi is the person Bush built his case upon in connecting Iraq to the war on terror. It turns out not to be a lie at all. Two weeks ago Jordan broke up a bomb plot paid for by Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi that intended to use chemical WMD in the Capitol city to attack the US embassy and Jordanian Government builds. Estimates say the explosion and gas cloud could have killed up to 80,000 and political impact could have destroyed the government of Jordan. You can read about it here ---> http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...8527339.htm?1c

Still think he lied about a threat to US interests and our allies? Still think there were no WMD in Al-Queda hands in Iraq? These attacks would have made 9/11 look almost insignificant in terms of global impact.

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filtherton

Quick somebody e-mail the president!!!

Billy Ocean

Why bother, he's know this all along. It's the Lib's you need to e-mail.

__________________
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Publius

I never said that Bush lied about the threat, I only said that he lied about the connection between Osama and Sadam, especially pre- 9/11. I do not deny that Ansar al-Islam exists and is a considerable threat to national and global ssecurity. But the fact remains that there still is no real connection between this group and Saddam. (For a full breakdown on these Taliban like thugs check out http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/ansarbk020503.htm ). This is the very basis of the argument that Bush was making, that Saddam was supplying WMD to this group so that it could be transferred to al-Qaeda. Now what this assumes is that Saddam was crazy, which he is not, he is just evil. This group would just have likely used these weapons against Saddam as it would have used it against anyone else. Saddam may have made some dumb mistakes in his career but he isn’s stupid.

Just ask yourself this question, if you were Saddam in charge of running secular Iraq and knowing full well that the religious nuts would like nothing more then to see you (insert whatever means of torment you prefer), would you turn over control of weapons that could be used to bring you down? Yeh, me either. So unless you think that Saddam was completely mad please don’t go underestimating him.

Also, I fail to see the connection between Ansar al-Islam and 9/11 considering the group only formed on 9/8/01. Also, doesn’t it seem a little strange to you that this group would choose to form in the northern no fly zone where they could be reasonably sure that they were safe from attack by Saddam? In all actuality Saddam had very little control over this region after the first gulf war and it was felt to govern itself, for the most part, under US and British protection. So really you could say that we were the ones protecting these religious nuts from the strong arm of Saddam, who, without our protection, would probably have crushed them before they had much of a chance to form at all. But that, of course, assumes that Saddam is in fact an evil dictator who was willing to do almost anything to stay in power.