What Will It Take

For quite some time now the left has been telling us that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. They tell us there was no connection between Hussein and bin Laden. It just did not happen and the 9/11 Commission has made that clear, so they say. The Weekly Standard has a story by Stephen F. Hayes & Thomas Joscelyn entitled The Mother of all Connections. Jonathan at GOP Bloggers has written about the story and it is also detailed at Blogs for Bush.

Here is Adam’s take (one of many similar comments he makes)

As for terrorism being on the rise, CIA reports came out this year or last talking about terrorism breeding grounds. Saddam did not have ties to al Qaeda as you’ve suggested. Powell himself said “I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection.” The terrorists there now are there because Saddam is out of power and the region is even more unstable, thanks to us.

I do not intend to go into detail but I want to highlight a few items from the article so that the liberals who happen along with the idea that there was no connection will finally be enlightened. i don’t hold out much hope because they are like drone bees mindlessly carrying out the bidding of the collective. Here is some information from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS).

We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden’s request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a “trusted confidante” of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members “with open arms” before the war, that they “entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation,” and that the regime “strictly and directly” controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan’s King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi’s group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden’s top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.

Well imagine that. Al that contact with terrorists by that nice fellow Hussein. Remember, there is no connection between Hussein and al Qaeda. The MSM has largely ignored this information (no surprise there) and their drones just follow in lock step buzzing the same denial of substantiated facts. Who would know better, after all, the 9/11 Commission or the IIS? This is information that was not available to the Commission.

John Lehman, a 9/11 commissioner, spoke to The Weekly Standard at the time the report was released. “There may well be–and probably will be–additional intelligence coming in from interrogations and from analysis of captured records and so forth which will fill out the intelligence picture. This is not phrased as–nor meant to be–the definitive word on Iraqi Intelligence activities.”

The next excerpt is rather lengthy but it has some very important information. There has been all this babble from the left that there was no connection between Hussein and bin Laden. The men were not in allegance, they were not allies, they did not plot against America (and for that matter our allies), and there just is no credible evidence that these two respected men had any kind of relationship.

Operation Desert Fox would last four days. Saddam Hussein’s response was revealing. On December 21, he dispatched one of his most trusted intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, to Afghanistan to meet bin Laden. Hijazi had met with both Zawahiri and bin Laden on many occasions earlier in the decade. On December 26, Osama bin Laden condemned the U.S.-led attacks. “The British and the American people loudly declared their support for their leaders’ decision to attack Iraq,” bin Laden proclaimed. He added that this support made it the “duty of Muslims to confront, fight and kill” British and American citizens.

The meeting between bin Laden and Hijazi instigated a burst of intelligence reporting on Iraq and al Qaeda. One 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.”

These claims were not limited to sensitive intelligence reporting. In the weeks that followed the meeting, dozens of press outlets from around the world reported on it as well as several others. The reports indicated that Saddam had offered bin Laden safe haven, had already trained al Qaeda operatives, and was supporting bin Laden’s efforts to attack Western targets.

The details reported were striking. On December 28 Milan’s Corriere della Sera reported “Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden have sealed a pact.” In its issue dated January 11, 1999, Newsweek quoted an anonymous “Arab intelligence officer who knows Saddam personally” as warning that “very soon you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis” against Western targets. The Iraqi plan would be run under one of three “false flags”: Palestinian, Iranian, and the “al Qaeda apparatus.” All of these groups, Newsweek reported, had representatives in Baghdad.

The reports did not end there. Throughout February and March 1999, there was media speculation that bin Laden would relocate from Afghanistan to Iraq. Behind the scenes, Clinton administration officials were engaging in similar conjecture. According to the 9/11 Commission report, Richard Clarke sent an email to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on February 11, 1999. Clarke told Berger that if bin Laden learned of U.S. operations against him, “old wily Osama will likely boogie to Baghdad.” Days later Bruce Riedel of the National Security Council staff also emailed Berger, warning that “Saddam Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad.” Reports of Iraqi offers of safe haven, cooperation, and training continued throughout 1999.

So somebody tell me once again that there was no connection between Hussein and bin Laden. Tell me how that mice guy Hussein did not have ties to terrorists and that they only showed up there when we ousted him. You can keep saying it but unlike the drones out there, people who know how to think and reason will not believe misinformation just because it is continuously repeated. Thinking people are not swayed by the media wing of the democratic party whose message only reaches the toadies who sit around with tin foil on their heads.

And in case you still think theat Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism and that those fellows we are holding in Cuba should be freed, here is something one of them had to say when interrogated:

“In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars.”
U.S. government “Summary of Evidence” for an Iraqi member of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

(Chemical weapons he did not have)
Mother of all Connections

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