All the liberal linguini's would have us believe Iraq was never a threat and therefor we should never have invaded. Heh...the Rooskies think otherwise:
"After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services ... received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests," Putin said.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040618/D839IUM80.html
Iraq not a credible threat
Moderators: Tunnelcat, Jeff250
Oh, so now the ex-Communists are totally credible now. Alright. *keeps score*
I love how the right can bash the "Rooskies" one minute, and then turn around and align themselves with them as soon as they confirm their point, without even questioning the source.
But it probably is the case that Russia would know something we don't. Bush's administration and even the Department of Homeland Security have been rarely upfront with specific details. It's a difficult balancing act between hoping for good faith acceptance of what you say, and the boy who cried wolf.
I love how the right can bash the "Rooskies" one minute, and then turn around and align themselves with them as soon as they confirm their point, without even questioning the source.
But it probably is the case that Russia would know something we don't. Bush's administration and even the Department of Homeland Security have been rarely upfront with specific details. It's a difficult balancing act between hoping for good faith acceptance of what you say, and the boy who cried wolf.
Actually it's in our nature to constantly bicker and point fingers until a temporary equilibrium is established. No one "side" is more or less guilty of this. Once you realize that you'll be better suited to a true peace of mind. ie: it's pointless to ★■◆● about person a and person b bitching, cause they're gonna do it anyway.Kyouryuu wrote:I love how the right can bash the "Rooskies" one minute, and then turn around and align themselves with them as soon as they confirm their point, without even questioning the source.
How's that for 2 and 3/4 cents? (spare me I really don't care
)
Could one of you damned right-wingers get off your soap boxes just long enough to walk a straight line for once? Or are you all too drunk with the hypocracy that comes from fairweather alliances to keep from conveniently pointing out things that shakily add credibility to your already flaky arguments that make a block of swiss cheese resemble concrete?
"But BILLY said it's cool!" "If Billy jumped off a bridge would you do it too?"
You make me sick. Brainwashed zombies.
"But BILLY said it's cool!" "If Billy jumped off a bridge would you do it too?"
You make me sick. Brainwashed zombies.
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CUDA
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ah yes here it is us rightwingers will do anything to justify the war in Iraq. well even align our selves with our own enemy. you lefties are so full of BS, we have told you all along that Iraq was a treat and was aligning itself with terrorists, you focus on the WMD theory as proof of why we should not have gone to war, granted the Bush administration probably shouldnt have used that as if focal point for the war but it did. but there were many other factors in our decision one was and is the terrorist threat, which has now been confirmed by Putin and Russia ( our enemy for 50 years during the cold war ) but is that good enough for you NOOOOOOOOOOO you still walk around with your blinders on and WILL NOT ACCEPT FACTS. even the ( political ) 9-11 commission refuses to listen to the FACT that Iraq and Al-Queda did have ties. you call us brainwashed Zomies and say how we should have open minds. well at least our minds arent so open that everything has fallen out, when will you lefties stop your kissy kissy lets all be friends BS and realise that this is a dangerous place, that there are ppl out there that will hate you just because you are not what they think you should be. pull your heads out of the sand and come into the real world like most of us 
This statement puzzled me, but then again I realized that Russia was the least vocal of the big-three anti-war UN members. I guess they had the least to lose, and now they're trying to shore up U.S. support, or maybe for internal political reasons (when's the next Russian election?).
I don't believe it either way. It's a vague statement that came seemingly out of the blue.
I don't believe it either way. It's a vague statement that came seemingly out of the blue.
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CUDA
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- Joined: Thu Jun 07, 2001 2:01 am
- Location: A Conservative Man in the Liberal bastion of the Pacific Northwest. in Oregon City. Oregon
here are a few snippets that I located online, just some light reading
AQ being Al-Queda in the articles
*In 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) directed and pursued an attempt to assassinate, through the use of a powerful car bomb, former U.S. President George Bush and the Emir of Kuwait. Kuwaiti authorities thwarted the terrorist plot and arrested 16 suspects, led by two Iraqi nationals. [note: the Iraqi plan involved fronting the IIS agents as a Kuwaiti separatist group that had never been heard of before. Similar groups routinely threatened attacks on London-based newspapers that served as mouthpieces for AQ, and such threats were usually repeated on Iraqi state-controlled media just before an AQ attack. After an AQ attack said unheard of terrorist groups would often claim responsibility-Blackrain]
-US State Department
*Iraq shelters several prominent Palestinian terrorist organizations in Baghdad, including the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), which is known for aerial attacks against Israel and is headed by Abu Abbas, who carried out the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered U.S. citizen Leon Klinghoffer. [note: the PLF is responsible for several terrorist attacks against the US, and at least one of the 911 hijackers was reportedly tied to PLF as reported by former East German Stazi-BR]
-US State Department
*Iraq shelters the Abu Nidal Organization, an international terrorist organization that has carried out terrorist attacks in twenty countries, killing or injuring almost 900 people. Targets have included the United States and several other Western nations. Each of these groups have offices in Baghdad and receive training, logistical assistance, and financial aid from the government of Iraq. [note: the ANO is also responsible for several terrorist attacks against the US, and another of the 911 hijackers was reportedly tied to PLF as reported by former East German Stazi; Abu Zarquawi is also tied to the ANO-BR]
-US State Department
* Iraq, Syria, and Libya have all harbored the group and given it training, logistical support, and funding, often using the ANO as guns or hire. Abu Nidal began working with Iraqi intelligence while representing Fatah in Baghdad, experts say. He formed his organization with Iraq¡¦s help and began by attacking Syria and the PLO. In 1983, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein expelled Abu Nidal and his group in an attempt to win American military support for Iraq¡¦s 1980s war with neighboring Iran. Once the war ended, Iraq resumed its support of Abu Nidal. [note: US forces were prevented from securing the Baghdad Museum of antiquities when a large Fedayeen force was reported at Baghdad University. The fighting there continued for three straight days and was among the toughest in the war. When it was done, US forces found roughly 100 suicide bomber vests with sophisticated detonators very similar in design to those used in Israel-pics at CENTCOM website-BR]
-Council on Foreign Relations Ctr for Terrorism Research Studies
*¡¨¡K Ziad Jarrah, comrade of Mohamed Atta and pilot of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. In the heady news cycle following the attacks, details of family ties of the hijackers received little attention in the U.S. The son of a prominent Lebanese family, Jarrah--secular and fun-loving--came to Germany for college in 1996 and ended up in the terrorist cell run by Atta. A constant figure in Jarrah's life in Germany was his great-uncle, Assem Omar Jarrah. According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Assem Jarrah worked for a long time as an informer for the Stasi, the East German secret service, while maintaining connections to Nidal's terror group. According to Stasi files described by Der Spiegel last November, a note on the back of Assem Jarrah's file specified he had contacts with people in "Operation Trader"--Stasi code for the Abu Nidal group, which staged several operations in Germany and recruited agents among Arab students. The elder Jarrah, who allegedly also worked for Libya as a double agent, was among the students Nidal's men approached.¡¨
-Putting it All Together 8/12/02
*In April 2002, Saddam Hussein increased from $10,000 to $25,000 the money offered to families of Palestinian suicide/homicide bombers. The rules for rewarding suicide/homicide bombers are strict and insist that only someone who blows himself up with a belt of explosives gets the full payment. Payments are made on a strict scale, with different amounts for wounds, disablement, death as a "martyr" and $25,000 for a suicide bomber. Mahmoud Besharat, a representative on the West Bank who is handing out to families the money from Saddam, said, "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue."
-US State Department
*Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations. [note: US Marines found hundreds of suicide bomber vests at Salman Pak, at least 300,000 graves have been unearthed at the terrorist training camp, a lab where bio weapons were tested on humans was found, dual-use fermentation equipment was found at the terrorist training camp-capable of producing anthrax or botulinum material for weapons within hours of seed stock insertion, modified bio weapon/aerosol dispersion devices that Iraq had claimed did not exist were located at Salman Pak, an airliner was found in the desert where almost everyone believes hijackers were trained, and much much more-BR]
-US State Department
* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden's fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen [¡§Terrorists of Saddam-SP]. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad. At that vast compound run by Iraqi intelligence, Muslim militants trained to hijack planes with knives -- on a full-size Boeing 707. Col. Mohammed recalls his first visit to Salman Pak this way: "We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: 'You'll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden's group and the PKK and Mojahedin-e Khalq.'"
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
*"Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. I learned of another possible connection early last year, while I was interviewing Al Qaeda operatives in a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya. There, a man whom Kurdish intelligence officials identified as a captured Iraqi agent told me that in 1992 he served as a bodyguard to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, when Zawahiri secretly visited Baghdad."
-The New Yorker, February 10, 2003
*Evidence of Iraq's involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States may have been available long before 9-11. Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack in the parking garage, first came to America on an Iraqi passport. Phone records showed calls by Yousef to Baghdad. [note: in fact Yousef, Yasin, and other conspirators phone bills skyrocketed as soon as the actual bomb plot was begun. Bills often went from $100-150 a month to in excess of $2300 a month. Yousef and Yasin both fled to Iraq after the bombing, and there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that Yousef was actually an Iraqi IIS operative.-BR]
- The Case That Wasn't Made, By Dave Franklin on 06/29/03
* 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. [note: Ramsi Yousef, Yasin, and most of the others in the 1993 plot to attack the WTC all came to the US on forged passports and/or Iraqi passports-BR]
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* A senior defector, one of Saddam's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to al-Qaida members on document forgery.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UNSC
*"American intelligence believes that Al Qaeda and Saddam reached a non-aggression agreement in 1993, and that the relationship deepened further in the mid-nineteen-nineties, when an Al Qaeda operative - a native-born Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi - was dispatched by bin Laden to ask the Iraqis for help in poison-gas training. Al-Iraqi's mission was successful, and an unknown number of trainers from an Iraqi secret-police organization called Unit 999 were dispatched to camps in Afghanistan to instruct Al Qaeda terrorists. (Training in hijacking techniques was also provided to foreign Islamist radicals inside Iraq, according to two Iraqi defectors quoted in a report in the Times in November of 2001.)" The parenthetic reference to a November 2001 NY Times article, which describes the Salman Pak terrorist training camp outside Baghdad, is notable. A ruling by a Federal Court against the Iraqi regime on behalf of two families of those who died on September 11, 2001 was based partially on that training. [note: the Senate Intel Com 9/11 report corroborates this as well as Newsweek reports from 1997¡Kthough I forget the specific issue/and will try to find it-BR]
-The New Yorker, February 10, 2003
*"Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. I learned of another possible connection early last year, while I was interviewing Al Qaeda operatives in a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya. There, a man whom Kurdish intelligence officials identified as a captured Iraqi agent told me that in 1992 he served as a bodyguard to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, when Zawahiri secretly visited Baghdad." [note: Ayman Al Zawahiri is similar to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramsi Yousef, Mohammed Atta, Abu Zaquawi, and other Bin Laden leaders who are terrorists first, and misguided Muslims second. They are killers bent on killing and reasons for their killing are often tertiary at best.-BR]
-The New Yorker, February 10, 2003
* As recently as 2001, Iraq's embassy in Pakistan was used as a "liaison" between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan -- who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks -- that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre," London's Independent reports.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam's son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
*The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri's bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time and was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Mr. Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda's global network.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* In 2001, an al Qaeda member "bragged that the situation in Iraq was 'good,'" according to intelligence made public by Mr. Powell.
* Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year, an al-Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was "good," that Baghdad could be transited quickly.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UN
* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
*Zarqawi met with military chief of al Qaeda, Mohammed Ibrahim Makwai (aka Saif al-Adel) in Iran in February 2003, according to intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* 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 Zarqawi's procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* ¡¨But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.
Zarqawi, Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties, and one of the specialties of this camp, is poisons.¡¨
¡§When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp. The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch -- imagine a pinch of salt -- less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote. There is no cure. It is fatal.¡¨
¡§Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept al-Qaida from Afghanistan, some of those members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today. ¡§
¡§Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of northeast Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May of 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day. During his stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These al-Qaida affiliates based in Baghdad now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.¡¨
¡§We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain, even today, in regular contact with his direct subordinates, include the poison cell plotters. And they are involved in moving more than money and materiel. Last year, two suspected al-Qaida operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to associates of the Baghdad cell and one of them received training in Afghanistan on how to use cyanide.¡¨
¡§From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond. We in the United States, all of us, the State Department and the Agency for International Development, we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan, last October. A despicable act was committed that day, the assassination of an individual whose sole mission was to assist the people of Jordan. The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder. After the attack, an associate of the assassin left Jordan to go to Iraq to obtain weapons and explosives for further operations. Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates. Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi's activities in Baghdad. I described them earlier. ¡§
¡§Now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large, to come and go.¡¨
¡§As my colleagues around this table and as the citizens they represent in Europe know, Zarqawi's terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia. According to detainees Abu Atiya, who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasked at least nine North African extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks. ¡§
¡§Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested. The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe. ¡§
¡§We know about this European network and we know about its links to Zarqawi because the detainees who provided the information about the targets also provided the names of members of the network. Three of those he identified by name were arrested in France last December. In the apartments of the terrorists, authorities found circuits for explosive devices and a list of ingredients to make toxins.¡¨
¡§The detainee who helped piece this together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence again proved him right. When the British unearthed the cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the destruction of the cell. ¡§
¡§We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi's network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.¡¨ [note: today, Zarqawi is the most wanted man in Iraq. His second in command was captured in 2/04, but he remains at large. The pre and post war ties between Zarqawi (AQ¡¦s WMD specialist) and his proven activities in Iraq completely validate this particular administration claim. More importantly, the claim that there might be a Nexus of Evil between AQ and WMD (particularly Iraq¡¦s WMD) is the primary reason for the war. Post war investigations by the ISG found that the situation in Iraq was less likely than expected to instantly hand over WMD to any terrorists, but far more likely to do so through sales or illicit manufacture outside the control of the regime. In fact, it is the lack of control that Iraq had over its WMD infrastructure that makes the invasion clearly justified-NOT the suggestions by the UN and the Bush Administration that Iraq had not accounted for the WMD it had freely declared earlier-BR]
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UN
* Mohammad Atef, the head of al Qaeda's military wing until the U.S. killed him in Afghanistan in November 2001, told a senior al Qaeda member now in U.S. custody that the terror network needed labs outside of Afghanistan to manufacture chemical weapons, Mr. Powell said. "Where did they go, where did they look?" said the secretary. "They went to Iraq."
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* This senior al-Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of al-Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan. His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al-Qaida. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al-Qaida leader Muhammad Atif, did not believe that al-Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq. The support that this detainee describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abdallah al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gasses. Abdallah al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UNSC
* Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden to purchase poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000. He called his relationship with Saddam's regime "successful," Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* Mohamed Mansour Shahab, a smuggler hired by Iraq to transport weapons to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces in May, 2000. He later told his story to American intelligence and a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London's Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" to be established in Baghdad.
* Mullah Melan Krekar, ran a terror group (the Ansar al-Islam) linked to both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Krekar admitted to a Kurdish newspaper that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan and other senior al Qaeda officials. His acknowledged meetings with bin Laden go back to 1988. When he organized Ansar al Islam in 2001 to conduct suicide attacks on Americans, "three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 'to undertake jihad,'" Newsday reported. Mr. Krekar is now in custody in the Netherlands. His group operated in portion of northern Iraq loyal to Saddam Hussein -- and attacked independent Kurdish groups hostile to Saddam. A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told a United Press International correspondent that Mr. Krekar's group was funded by "Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad."
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* After October 2001, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have holed up in the Ansar al-Islam's strongholds inside northern Iraq.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* On two separate occasions, Atta--not a man given to the earthly pleasures of sightseeing--traveled to Prague to meet Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi agent later expelled from the Czech Republic as a spy. Since the information surfaced last fall, there have been numerous efforts to bury the story--the most tangible evidence linking Sept. 11 to Baghdad. The Czech government, however, had little reason to question its own intelligence on the Atta trips and stood by the story. Last month, a high-ranking White House official confirmed the meeting.
-Putting it All Together 8/21/02
* 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.
¡K
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. [NOTE: much has been said about the reports of the meetings between these two men. The US maintains that the meetings never occurred, but since the arrest of Al-Ani, there have been no more denials, and my requests for confirmation have been blatantly avoided. What is certain is that the two men met at least twice, and COULD have met two more times. The US had presumed that Atta could not have met with Al-Ani just before 911 as there were no receipts for travel found at Atta¡¦s apt after the attack that might have corroborated this. However, there are records of Atta renting a car from Austria (right by Czechoslovakia to Spain (where the recon footage for the 911 attacks was found later). This makes the meeting possible. There are other aspects to the meeting that neither the Czechs nor the US want to discuss as they are potentially embarrassing and relate to currently actionable intel. They may have or may not have met before the attack, but they did meet two other times, and it¡¦s unlikely that they talked about the funny papers. People of similar orientation tend to discuss their commonalities, and their commonalities were covert action, a disdain for the US, and a willingness to take part in attacking the US-BR]
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary. [note: Lesley Stahl of CBS actually went to Baghdad and interviewed him. Upon hearing of her trip, Yasin was arrested, and I haven¡¦t been able to find him since.-BR]
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections
* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam's mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.
-Richard Miniter Losing Bin Laden
* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to UNSC
* 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 Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Sen. Pat Roberts and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the Guardian reported.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* ¡§Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials.
The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq.¡¨
[NOTE: this report came before President Bush was even running for President. It is extremely suspicious that the head of the IIS traveled all the way into Afghanistan to meet with Bin Laden. It¡¦s not a 911 smoking gun, but if Director Tenet did so, and Bin Laden was then tied to attacks on Bejing, does anyone think that the PRC wouldn¡¦t hold the US responsible or at least look suspiciously at the US?-BR]
-The Guardian 2/6/99
* 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. . . .
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* "I noticed on some of the documents there were some marks erased out... we scraped away with a razor and underneath we found the name Bin Laden three times and obviously realised this was highly significant. ¡K
These documents explain that an envoy from Bin Laden came to Iraq in March 1998 to discuss contact between al-Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence.
¡K
It also talks about sending an oral message back to Bin Laden and it furthermore discuss the idea of setting up a direct meeting with Bin Laden himself."
-Iraq Files Show ¡¥Al Queda Link¡¦-BBC News 4/23/02, Inigo Gilmore
* ¡§We suggest permission to call the Khartoum station [Iraq's intelligence office in Sudan] to facilitate the travel arrangements for the above-mentioned person to Iraq.
And that our body carry 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¡¨
-text of document found at Iraqi IIS HQ in Baghdad, -Iraq Files Show ¡¥Al Queda Link¡¦-BBC News 4/23/02, Inigo Gilmore
* . . . . 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 Saddam's explicit direction.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane's Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane's reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 2 man.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* Iraqis continue to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UN
* 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* . . . . 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* Just before the outbreak of war [in 1991] Iraq sent hit squads around the world to attack diplomats and government officials of Coalition nations. Western intelligence agencies and their collaborators picked this up, and as ambassador I¡¦d seen reports about this in Bangkok.
¡K
I went to my office, where I was handed urgent papers from a collectivity of intelligence organizations. They revealed that an Iraqi terrorist group had assembled in Bangkok with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and an array of other weapons, with which they planned to attack the U.S., Israeli, and Australian embassies.
¡K
Later there were some arrests of Iraqis in Thailand, and caches of arms were found. So the terrorist threat was real, not imaginary.
-Australian Ambassador Richard Butler, fmr head of UNSCOM, The Greatest Threat, Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Growing Crisis of Global Security
* Two days after the start of the last war against Iraq in 1991, Iraqi agents tried to blow up a U.S. government cultural center in the Philippines. The bomb detonated prematurely, killing one Iraqi and severely injuring another.
In the aftermath, the United States discovered more than two dozen Iraqi agents throughout the region.
-ABC News 3/6/03
*"In recent days, we received information regarding specific terrorist plots in two countries involving Iraqi intelligence officers. In both cases, operatives were arrested and terrorist material confiscated,"
-State Department spokesman Richard Boucher
*Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he believes there is a definite threat ¡X of increasing magnitude ¡X from Iraqi agents overseas. "It is more likely that something will take place in another nation involving Americans or American institutions than in this country," said Rockefeller, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I will say this, that our agencies are on top of it."
-ABC News 3/6/03
If anyone has any questions or comments I might be able to elaborate on some of these.
-thanks BR
Oh, and by the way, did anyone notice that every major AQ attack happened on the anniversary of a Gulf War date. For example, 91191 was the day that President Bush Sr addresses Congress, announced the New World Order, and declared that Saddam Hussein's aggression would not stand (that's about as close as a declaration of war as it gets when only 1/5 of your forces are deployed).
is this enough for ya birds?
AQ being Al-Queda in the articles
*In 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) directed and pursued an attempt to assassinate, through the use of a powerful car bomb, former U.S. President George Bush and the Emir of Kuwait. Kuwaiti authorities thwarted the terrorist plot and arrested 16 suspects, led by two Iraqi nationals. [note: the Iraqi plan involved fronting the IIS agents as a Kuwaiti separatist group that had never been heard of before. Similar groups routinely threatened attacks on London-based newspapers that served as mouthpieces for AQ, and such threats were usually repeated on Iraqi state-controlled media just before an AQ attack. After an AQ attack said unheard of terrorist groups would often claim responsibility-Blackrain]
-US State Department
*Iraq shelters several prominent Palestinian terrorist organizations in Baghdad, including the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), which is known for aerial attacks against Israel and is headed by Abu Abbas, who carried out the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered U.S. citizen Leon Klinghoffer. [note: the PLF is responsible for several terrorist attacks against the US, and at least one of the 911 hijackers was reportedly tied to PLF as reported by former East German Stazi-BR]
-US State Department
*Iraq shelters the Abu Nidal Organization, an international terrorist organization that has carried out terrorist attacks in twenty countries, killing or injuring almost 900 people. Targets have included the United States and several other Western nations. Each of these groups have offices in Baghdad and receive training, logistical assistance, and financial aid from the government of Iraq. [note: the ANO is also responsible for several terrorist attacks against the US, and another of the 911 hijackers was reportedly tied to PLF as reported by former East German Stazi; Abu Zarquawi is also tied to the ANO-BR]
-US State Department
* Iraq, Syria, and Libya have all harbored the group and given it training, logistical support, and funding, often using the ANO as guns or hire. Abu Nidal began working with Iraqi intelligence while representing Fatah in Baghdad, experts say. He formed his organization with Iraq¡¦s help and began by attacking Syria and the PLO. In 1983, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein expelled Abu Nidal and his group in an attempt to win American military support for Iraq¡¦s 1980s war with neighboring Iran. Once the war ended, Iraq resumed its support of Abu Nidal. [note: US forces were prevented from securing the Baghdad Museum of antiquities when a large Fedayeen force was reported at Baghdad University. The fighting there continued for three straight days and was among the toughest in the war. When it was done, US forces found roughly 100 suicide bomber vests with sophisticated detonators very similar in design to those used in Israel-pics at CENTCOM website-BR]
-Council on Foreign Relations Ctr for Terrorism Research Studies
*¡¨¡K Ziad Jarrah, comrade of Mohamed Atta and pilot of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. In the heady news cycle following the attacks, details of family ties of the hijackers received little attention in the U.S. The son of a prominent Lebanese family, Jarrah--secular and fun-loving--came to Germany for college in 1996 and ended up in the terrorist cell run by Atta. A constant figure in Jarrah's life in Germany was his great-uncle, Assem Omar Jarrah. According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Assem Jarrah worked for a long time as an informer for the Stasi, the East German secret service, while maintaining connections to Nidal's terror group. According to Stasi files described by Der Spiegel last November, a note on the back of Assem Jarrah's file specified he had contacts with people in "Operation Trader"--Stasi code for the Abu Nidal group, which staged several operations in Germany and recruited agents among Arab students. The elder Jarrah, who allegedly also worked for Libya as a double agent, was among the students Nidal's men approached.¡¨
-Putting it All Together 8/12/02
*In April 2002, Saddam Hussein increased from $10,000 to $25,000 the money offered to families of Palestinian suicide/homicide bombers. The rules for rewarding suicide/homicide bombers are strict and insist that only someone who blows himself up with a belt of explosives gets the full payment. Payments are made on a strict scale, with different amounts for wounds, disablement, death as a "martyr" and $25,000 for a suicide bomber. Mahmoud Besharat, a representative on the West Bank who is handing out to families the money from Saddam, said, "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue."
-US State Department
*Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations. [note: US Marines found hundreds of suicide bomber vests at Salman Pak, at least 300,000 graves have been unearthed at the terrorist training camp, a lab where bio weapons were tested on humans was found, dual-use fermentation equipment was found at the terrorist training camp-capable of producing anthrax or botulinum material for weapons within hours of seed stock insertion, modified bio weapon/aerosol dispersion devices that Iraq had claimed did not exist were located at Salman Pak, an airliner was found in the desert where almost everyone believes hijackers were trained, and much much more-BR]
-US State Department
* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden's fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen [¡§Terrorists of Saddam-SP]. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad. At that vast compound run by Iraqi intelligence, Muslim militants trained to hijack planes with knives -- on a full-size Boeing 707. Col. Mohammed recalls his first visit to Salman Pak this way: "We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: 'You'll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden's group and the PKK and Mojahedin-e Khalq.'"
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
*"Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. I learned of another possible connection early last year, while I was interviewing Al Qaeda operatives in a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya. There, a man whom Kurdish intelligence officials identified as a captured Iraqi agent told me that in 1992 he served as a bodyguard to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, when Zawahiri secretly visited Baghdad."
-The New Yorker, February 10, 2003
*Evidence of Iraq's involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States may have been available long before 9-11. Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack in the parking garage, first came to America on an Iraqi passport. Phone records showed calls by Yousef to Baghdad. [note: in fact Yousef, Yasin, and other conspirators phone bills skyrocketed as soon as the actual bomb plot was begun. Bills often went from $100-150 a month to in excess of $2300 a month. Yousef and Yasin both fled to Iraq after the bombing, and there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that Yousef was actually an Iraqi IIS operative.-BR]
- The Case That Wasn't Made, By Dave Franklin on 06/29/03
* 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. [note: Ramsi Yousef, Yasin, and most of the others in the 1993 plot to attack the WTC all came to the US on forged passports and/or Iraqi passports-BR]
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* A senior defector, one of Saddam's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to al-Qaida members on document forgery.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UNSC
*"American intelligence believes that Al Qaeda and Saddam reached a non-aggression agreement in 1993, and that the relationship deepened further in the mid-nineteen-nineties, when an Al Qaeda operative - a native-born Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi - was dispatched by bin Laden to ask the Iraqis for help in poison-gas training. Al-Iraqi's mission was successful, and an unknown number of trainers from an Iraqi secret-police organization called Unit 999 were dispatched to camps in Afghanistan to instruct Al Qaeda terrorists. (Training in hijacking techniques was also provided to foreign Islamist radicals inside Iraq, according to two Iraqi defectors quoted in a report in the Times in November of 2001.)" The parenthetic reference to a November 2001 NY Times article, which describes the Salman Pak terrorist training camp outside Baghdad, is notable. A ruling by a Federal Court against the Iraqi regime on behalf of two families of those who died on September 11, 2001 was based partially on that training. [note: the Senate Intel Com 9/11 report corroborates this as well as Newsweek reports from 1997¡Kthough I forget the specific issue/and will try to find it-BR]
-The New Yorker, February 10, 2003
*"Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. I learned of another possible connection early last year, while I was interviewing Al Qaeda operatives in a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya. There, a man whom Kurdish intelligence officials identified as a captured Iraqi agent told me that in 1992 he served as a bodyguard to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, when Zawahiri secretly visited Baghdad." [note: Ayman Al Zawahiri is similar to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramsi Yousef, Mohammed Atta, Abu Zaquawi, and other Bin Laden leaders who are terrorists first, and misguided Muslims second. They are killers bent on killing and reasons for their killing are often tertiary at best.-BR]
-The New Yorker, February 10, 2003
* As recently as 2001, Iraq's embassy in Pakistan was used as a "liaison" between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan -- who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks -- that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre," London's Independent reports.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam's son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
*The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri's bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time and was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Mr. Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda's global network.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* In 2001, an al Qaeda member "bragged that the situation in Iraq was 'good,'" according to intelligence made public by Mr. Powell.
* Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year, an al-Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was "good," that Baghdad could be transited quickly.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UN
* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
*Zarqawi met with military chief of al Qaeda, Mohammed Ibrahim Makwai (aka Saif al-Adel) in Iran in February 2003, according to intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* 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 Zarqawi's procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against the U.S. or its allies elsewhere.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* ¡¨But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.
Zarqawi, Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties, and one of the specialties of this camp, is poisons.¡¨
¡§When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp. The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch -- imagine a pinch of salt -- less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote. There is no cure. It is fatal.¡¨
¡§Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept al-Qaida from Afghanistan, some of those members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today. ¡§
¡§Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of northeast Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May of 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day. During his stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These al-Qaida affiliates based in Baghdad now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.¡¨
¡§We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain, even today, in regular contact with his direct subordinates, include the poison cell plotters. And they are involved in moving more than money and materiel. Last year, two suspected al-Qaida operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to associates of the Baghdad cell and one of them received training in Afghanistan on how to use cyanide.¡¨
¡§From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond. We in the United States, all of us, the State Department and the Agency for International Development, we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan, last October. A despicable act was committed that day, the assassination of an individual whose sole mission was to assist the people of Jordan. The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder. After the attack, an associate of the assassin left Jordan to go to Iraq to obtain weapons and explosives for further operations. Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates. Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi's activities in Baghdad. I described them earlier. ¡§
¡§Now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large, to come and go.¡¨
¡§As my colleagues around this table and as the citizens they represent in Europe know, Zarqawi's terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia. According to detainees Abu Atiya, who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasked at least nine North African extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks. ¡§
¡§Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested. The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe. ¡§
¡§We know about this European network and we know about its links to Zarqawi because the detainees who provided the information about the targets also provided the names of members of the network. Three of those he identified by name were arrested in France last December. In the apartments of the terrorists, authorities found circuits for explosive devices and a list of ingredients to make toxins.¡¨
¡§The detainee who helped piece this together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence again proved him right. When the British unearthed the cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the destruction of the cell. ¡§
¡§We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi's network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.¡¨ [note: today, Zarqawi is the most wanted man in Iraq. His second in command was captured in 2/04, but he remains at large. The pre and post war ties between Zarqawi (AQ¡¦s WMD specialist) and his proven activities in Iraq completely validate this particular administration claim. More importantly, the claim that there might be a Nexus of Evil between AQ and WMD (particularly Iraq¡¦s WMD) is the primary reason for the war. Post war investigations by the ISG found that the situation in Iraq was less likely than expected to instantly hand over WMD to any terrorists, but far more likely to do so through sales or illicit manufacture outside the control of the regime. In fact, it is the lack of control that Iraq had over its WMD infrastructure that makes the invasion clearly justified-NOT the suggestions by the UN and the Bush Administration that Iraq had not accounted for the WMD it had freely declared earlier-BR]
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UN
* Mohammad Atef, the head of al Qaeda's military wing until the U.S. killed him in Afghanistan in November 2001, told a senior al Qaeda member now in U.S. custody that the terror network needed labs outside of Afghanistan to manufacture chemical weapons, Mr. Powell said. "Where did they go, where did they look?" said the secretary. "They went to Iraq."
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* This senior al-Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of al-Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan. His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al-Qaida. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al-Qaida leader Muhammad Atif, did not believe that al-Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq. The support that this detainee describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abdallah al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gasses. Abdallah al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UNSC
* Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden to purchase poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000. He called his relationship with Saddam's regime "successful," Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* Mohamed Mansour Shahab, a smuggler hired by Iraq to transport weapons to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces in May, 2000. He later told his story to American intelligence and a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London's Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" to be established in Baghdad.
* Mullah Melan Krekar, ran a terror group (the Ansar al-Islam) linked to both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Krekar admitted to a Kurdish newspaper that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan and other senior al Qaeda officials. His acknowledged meetings with bin Laden go back to 1988. When he organized Ansar al Islam in 2001 to conduct suicide attacks on Americans, "three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 'to undertake jihad,'" Newsday reported. Mr. Krekar is now in custody in the Netherlands. His group operated in portion of northern Iraq loyal to Saddam Hussein -- and attacked independent Kurdish groups hostile to Saddam. A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told a United Press International correspondent that Mr. Krekar's group was funded by "Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad."
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* After October 2001, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have holed up in the Ansar al-Islam's strongholds inside northern Iraq.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* On two separate occasions, Atta--not a man given to the earthly pleasures of sightseeing--traveled to Prague to meet Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi agent later expelled from the Czech Republic as a spy. Since the information surfaced last fall, there have been numerous efforts to bury the story--the most tangible evidence linking Sept. 11 to Baghdad. The Czech government, however, had little reason to question its own intelligence on the Atta trips and stood by the story. Last month, a high-ranking White House official confirmed the meeting.
-Putting it All Together 8/21/02
* 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.
¡K
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. [NOTE: much has been said about the reports of the meetings between these two men. The US maintains that the meetings never occurred, but since the arrest of Al-Ani, there have been no more denials, and my requests for confirmation have been blatantly avoided. What is certain is that the two men met at least twice, and COULD have met two more times. The US had presumed that Atta could not have met with Al-Ani just before 911 as there were no receipts for travel found at Atta¡¦s apt after the attack that might have corroborated this. However, there are records of Atta renting a car from Austria (right by Czechoslovakia to Spain (where the recon footage for the 911 attacks was found later). This makes the meeting possible. There are other aspects to the meeting that neither the Czechs nor the US want to discuss as they are potentially embarrassing and relate to currently actionable intel. They may have or may not have met before the attack, but they did meet two other times, and it¡¦s unlikely that they talked about the funny papers. People of similar orientation tend to discuss their commonalities, and their commonalities were covert action, a disdain for the US, and a willingness to take part in attacking the US-BR]
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary. [note: Lesley Stahl of CBS actually went to Baghdad and interviewed him. Upon hearing of her trip, Yasin was arrested, and I haven¡¦t been able to find him since.-BR]
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections
* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam's mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.
-Richard Miniter Losing Bin Laden
* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to UNSC
* 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 Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Sen. Pat Roberts and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the Guardian reported.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* ¡§Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials.
The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq.¡¨
[NOTE: this report came before President Bush was even running for President. It is extremely suspicious that the head of the IIS traveled all the way into Afghanistan to meet with Bin Laden. It¡¦s not a 911 smoking gun, but if Director Tenet did so, and Bin Laden was then tied to attacks on Bejing, does anyone think that the PRC wouldn¡¦t hold the US responsible or at least look suspiciously at the US?-BR]
-The Guardian 2/6/99
* 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. . . .
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* "I noticed on some of the documents there were some marks erased out... we scraped away with a razor and underneath we found the name Bin Laden three times and obviously realised this was highly significant. ¡K
These documents explain that an envoy from Bin Laden came to Iraq in March 1998 to discuss contact between al-Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence.
¡K
It also talks about sending an oral message back to Bin Laden and it furthermore discuss the idea of setting up a direct meeting with Bin Laden himself."
-Iraq Files Show ¡¥Al Queda Link¡¦-BBC News 4/23/02, Inigo Gilmore
* ¡§We suggest permission to call the Khartoum station [Iraq's intelligence office in Sudan] to facilitate the travel arrangements for the above-mentioned person to Iraq.
And that our body carry 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¡¨
-text of document found at Iraqi IIS HQ in Baghdad, -Iraq Files Show ¡¥Al Queda Link¡¦-BBC News 4/23/02, Inigo Gilmore
* . . . . 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 Saddam's explicit direction.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane's Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane's reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 2 man.
-Richard Miniter ¡§The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections¡¨
* 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* Iraqis continue to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan.
-Sec State Colin Powell Address to the UN
* 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* According to CIA reporting, bin Laden and Zawahiri met with two Iraqi intelligence officers in Afghanistan in Dec. 1998.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* . . . . 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.
-Leaked classified memo from DoD UnderSec for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee 10/27/03
* Just before the outbreak of war [in 1991] Iraq sent hit squads around the world to attack diplomats and government officials of Coalition nations. Western intelligence agencies and their collaborators picked this up, and as ambassador I¡¦d seen reports about this in Bangkok.
¡K
I went to my office, where I was handed urgent papers from a collectivity of intelligence organizations. They revealed that an Iraqi terrorist group had assembled in Bangkok with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and an array of other weapons, with which they planned to attack the U.S., Israeli, and Australian embassies.
¡K
Later there were some arrests of Iraqis in Thailand, and caches of arms were found. So the terrorist threat was real, not imaginary.
-Australian Ambassador Richard Butler, fmr head of UNSCOM, The Greatest Threat, Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Growing Crisis of Global Security
* Two days after the start of the last war against Iraq in 1991, Iraqi agents tried to blow up a U.S. government cultural center in the Philippines. The bomb detonated prematurely, killing one Iraqi and severely injuring another.
In the aftermath, the United States discovered more than two dozen Iraqi agents throughout the region.
-ABC News 3/6/03
*"In recent days, we received information regarding specific terrorist plots in two countries involving Iraqi intelligence officers. In both cases, operatives were arrested and terrorist material confiscated,"
-State Department spokesman Richard Boucher
*Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he believes there is a definite threat ¡X of increasing magnitude ¡X from Iraqi agents overseas. "It is more likely that something will take place in another nation involving Americans or American institutions than in this country," said Rockefeller, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I will say this, that our agencies are on top of it."
-ABC News 3/6/03
If anyone has any questions or comments I might be able to elaborate on some of these.
-thanks BR
Oh, and by the way, did anyone notice that every major AQ attack happened on the anniversary of a Gulf War date. For example, 91191 was the day that President Bush Sr addresses Congress, announced the New World Order, and declared that Saddam Hussein's aggression would not stand (that's about as close as a declaration of war as it gets when only 1/5 of your forces are deployed).
is this enough for ya birds?
Letter to Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, US Senate wrote: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, Washington, DC, October 7, 2002.
Hon. BOB GRAHAM, Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: In response to your letter of 4 October 2002, we have made unclassified material available to further the Senate?s forthcoming open debate on a Joint Resolution concerning Iraq.
As always, our declassification efforts seek a balance between your need for unfettered debate and our need to protect sources and methods. We have also been mindful of a shared interest in not providing to Saddam a blueprint of our intelligence capabilities and shortcoming, or with insight into our expectation of how he will and will not act. The salience of such concerns is only heightened by the possibility for hostilities between the U.S. and Iraq.
These are some of the reasons why we did not include our classified judgments on Saddam?s decisionmaking regarding the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in our recent unclassified paper on Iraq?s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Viewing your request with those concerns in mind, however, we can declassify the following from the paragraphs you requested.
Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States.
Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions. Such terrorism might involve conventional means, as with Iraq?s unsuccessful attempt at a terrorist offensive in 1991, or CBW.
Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.
Regarding the 2 October closed hearing, we can declassify the following dialogue. Senator Levin: . . . If (Saddam) didn?t feel threatened, did not feel threatened, is it likely that he would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction?
Senior Intelligence Witness: . . . My judgment would be that the probability of him initiating an attack?let me put a time frame on it?in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low.
Senator LEVIN: Now if he did initiate an attack you?ve . . . indicated he would probably attempt clandestine attacks against us . . . But what about his use of weapons of mass destruction? If we initiate an attack and he thought he was in extremis or otherwise, what?s the likelihood in response to our attack that he would use chemical or biological weapons?
Senior Intelligence Witness: Pretty high, in my view.
In the above dialogue, the witness?s qualifications ???in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now???were intended to underscore that the likelihood of Saddam using WMD for blackmail, deterrence, or otherwise grows as his arsenal builds. Moreover, if Saddam used WMD, it would disprove his repeated denials that he has such weapons.
Regarding Senator Bayh?s question of Iraqi links to al-Qa?ida, Senators could draw from the following points for unclassified discussions: Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa?ida is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank. We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa?ida going back a decade.
Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa?ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression.
Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa?ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
We have credible reporting that al-Qa?ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa?ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
Iraq?s increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa?ida, suggest that Baghdad?s links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action.
Sincerely,
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN
(For George J. Tenet, Director).
STATEMENT BY DCI GEORGE TENET, October 8, 2002
That's more or less what I meant to say, even if I couldn't phrase it that way. Insomuch as it sounds corny that Homeland Security can't say what would be hit, who would do it, or even when, there are reasons for not inciting some crazed mass panic and protecting the anonymity of sources involved.woodchip wrote:Ky, it may be more a balancing act of saying just enough and not saying so much that sources wind up getting whacked.