Up on the Daily Quick Hits this morning, you can find this report from the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes. It offers a great overview and a few suggested passages from the new study Saddam and Terrorism, part of the Iraqi Perspectives Project that the Institute for Defense Analyses was contracted to do by the Pentagon.

You’ll recall that it was widely reported a few days ago that Saddam had no links to Al Qaeda according to the executive summary, which is not what the actual report says at all. Yet I doubt that the record will be set straight anytime soon. Don’t look for as extensive coverage on the actual report with actual facts and examples in it to make the news cycle in the way that a single sentence from the advance summary did. The mainstream media believes that it has already reported the story.

Hmm, the mainstream media twisting a single sentence ahead of a report being released in order to change the dynamics of the report so that it casts the Bush administration’s policy in a bad light. Now where have we heard this before? The Iranian NIE?

Without any more blather from me, lets get into just what this report actually says:

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist-operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some way, a “de facto” link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

Wow, that sounds like they had nothing to do with each other to me!

The secret word earlier this week was “operational link”, as in Saddam contracted out the specific entity Al Qaeda for a joint task or attack. That statement isn’t news and it doesn’t damage the pre-war case that Saddam would be willing to hand off weapons of mass destruction or other forms of aid to terrorist groups. It doesn’t damage the pre-war case that Saddam had involvement with terrorist groups. The report actually bolsters that intelligence claim.

If you’ll reread the above abstract from the report, you’ll see that Saddam and Al Qaeda were connected.

At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust.

So the news that the mainstream media has actually been touting is that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were not the same entity? No, really?

There will be a bit of redundancy as there are more than a few good articles on this report coming out this morning, but here are the remaining quick hits from Hayes’ piece:

… what about this revelation from page 34? “Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda — as long as that organization’s near-term goals supported Saddam’s long-term vision.” (The example given in the report is the Army of Muhammad in Bahrain, a group the Iraqi Intelligence Service describes as “under the wings of bin Laden.”)

… this line from page 42: “Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives.”

Really? Saddam Hussein “supported” a group that merged with al Qaeda in the late 1990s, run by al Qaeda’s #2, and the New York Times thinks this is not a link between Iraq and al Qaeda?

Eli Lake has written a great article for the New York Sun today that bullet points some of the report’s Iraq / Al Qaeda connections.

• The Iraqi Intelligence Service in a 1993 memo to Saddam agreed on a plan to train commandos from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat and was founded by Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

• In the same year, Saddam ordered his intelligence service to “form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia.” At the time, Al Qaeda was working with warlords against American forces there.

• Saddam’s intelligence services maintained extensive support networks for a wide range of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations, including but not limited to Hamas. Among the other Palestinian groups Saddam supported at the time was Force 17, the private army loyal to Yasser Arafat.

• Beginning in 1999, Iraq’s intelligence service began providing “financial and moral support” for a small radical Islamist Kurdish sect the report does not name. A Kurdish Islamist group called Ansar al Islam in 2002 would try to assassinate the regional prime minister in the eastern Kurdish region,
Barham Salih.

• In 2001, Saddam’s intelligence service drafted a manual titled “Lessons in Secret Organization and Jihad Work—How to Organ ize and Overthrow the Saudi Royal Family.” In the same year, his intelligence service submitted names of 10 volunteer “martyrs” for operations inside the Kingdom.

• In 2000, Iraq sent a suicide bomber through Northern Iraq who intended to travel to London to assassinate Ahmad Chalabi, at the time an Iraqi opposition leader who would later go on to be an Iraqi deputy prime minister. The mission was aborted after the bomber could not obtain a visa
to enter the United Kingdom.

More…

The report also undercuts the claim made by many on the left and many at the CIA that Saddam, as a national socialist, was incapable of supporting or collaborating with the Islamist al Qaeda. The report concludes that instead Iraq’s relationship with Osama bin Laden’s organization was similar to the relationship between the rival Colombian cocaine cartels in the 1990s. Both were rivals in some sense for market share, but also allies when it came to expanding the size of the overall market.

The Pentagon study finds, “Recognizing Iraq as a second, or parallel, ‘terror cartel’ that was simultaneously threatened by and somewhat aligned with its rival helps to explain the evidence emerging from the detritus of Saddam’s regime.”

A long time skeptic of the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq and a former CIA senior Iraq analyst, Judith Yaphe yesterday said, “I think the report indicates that Saddam was willing to work with almost any group be it nationalist or Islamic, that was willing to work for his objectives. But in
the long term he did not trust many of the Islamist groups, especially those linked to Saudi Arabia or Iran.” She added, “He really did want to get anti-American operations going. The fact that they had little success shows in part their incompetence and unwilling surrogates.”

Lake quotes evaluation group member David Wurmser near the end of the article.

“This is the beginning of the process of exposing Saddam’s involvement in Islamic terror. But it is only the beginning. Time and declassification I’m sure will reveal yet more,” he said. “Even so, this report is damning to those who doubted Saddam Hussein’s involvement with Jihadist terrorist roups. It devastates one of the central myths plaguing our government prior to 9-11, that a Jihadist group would not cooperate with a secular regime and vice versa.”

I hope that Mr. Wurmser is correct that we will find out more about pre-war Iraq’s terrorist connections, but I imagine that the mainstream media will go kicking and screaming the whole way.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air digs into the report himself.

For instance, how about their support for The Army of Muhammad, a known al-Qaeda subsidiary operating in Bahrain? On pages 34-35 of the report, we find communications between their Bahrain agent and IIS headquarters confirming Army of Mohammad’s loyalty to Osama bin Laden…

AoM had ambitious plans — including attacks on American interests. On page 35, the Iraqis list their aims as attacking Jewish and American interests anywhere in the world, attacking American embassies, disrupting American oil supplies and tankers, and attacking the American military bases in the Middle East. The Iraqi support for AoM may not be an operational link, but it’s certainly a financial link that goes right to Osama bin Laden. The Iraqis certainly understood that much, and hoped to keep it quiet.

Even when working separately, the report notes that Saddam and Osama worked to develop the same terrorist pool from which they would draw support and operational agents. Put simply, Saddam’s more secular aims and Osama’s drive for an Islamic Caliphate worked in tandem to increase the threat of terrorism. Saddam endeavored to create a “business model” for terrorism, especially when it could assist in his own pan-Arab vision. He funded and trained terrorists of all stripes in Iraq, from secular Arab Marxists to radical jihadists (page 41-42).

The conclusion of the study is damning and counter to the earlier mainstream media claims.

One question remains regarding Iraq’s terrorism capability: Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against United States? Judging from examples of Saddam’s statements (Extract 34) before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes.In the years between the two Gulf Wars, UN sanctions reduced Saddam’s ability to shape regional and world events, steadily draining his military, economic, and military powers. The rise of Islamist fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam’s “coercion” toolbox, not only cost effective but a formal instrument of state power. Saddam nurtured this capability with an infrastructure supporting (1) his own particular brand of state terrorism against internal and external threats, (2) the state sponsorship of suicide operations, and (3) organizational relationships and “outreach programs” for terrorist groups. Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces.

As mentioned in point 2, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Saddam was known to pay a $25,000 prize to Palestinians willing to blow themselves up.

You can read the actual report here in PDF format.

While not directly covering the report, Carter Andress at National Review remembers Saddam’s Al Anfal genocide campaign against the Kurds. I thought this passage was especially relevant since we’re remembering Saddam’s intentions and past dirty deeds.

The world took no direct action to stop the genocide. This includes the United States of America, which saw Iran as the greater regional threat. During the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988), America’s support of Baghdad was also meant to punish the mullahs for occupying the embassy in Tehran and holding U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. Saddam saw this support as a green light to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and to invade Kuwait a few years later. The lesson is clear — genocide anywhere threatens everyone everywhere. From Hitler to Pol Pot to Saddam Hussein, history has taught us that there is no satiating such evil.

After 9/11, when the time came to deal with Iraq, how could we dismiss the risk of a megalomaniac who had gassed his own people? The ability of A. Q. Khan of Pakistan to buy, and transport across continents, entire industrial-size uranium-enrichment complexes for his own country as well as Iran and Libya illustrates the ease with which weapons of mass destruction can be moved and concealed. Until the defection in 1995 of Saddam’s son-in-law and minister of armaments, Hussein Kamil, the U.N. — after four years of continuous inspections — was not even aware of Saddam’s extensive and ongoing biological-weapons program.

Much has been made of the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The press constantly points to the Duelfer report, the official post-invasion assessment of Iraq’s unconventional-weapons programs, which stated that no WMDs were found. What the press habitually ignores is the categorical conclusion of the report that once U.N. sanctions were lifted, the government of Iraq planned to reconstitute the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. This conclusion grew out of interviews with hundreds of Iraqi scientists and officials.

Reaction from the blogosphere will be added as it comes in.

Gateway Pundit leads it off with some video links and copies of actual seized Iraqi documents.

Another interesting explanation from the Weekly Standard with more dirt from the report.

The Iraqi Intelligence documents discussed in the report link Saddam’s regime to: the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (the “EIJ” is al Qaeda number-two Ayman al Zawahiri’s group), the Islamic Group or “IG” (once headed by a key al Qaeda ideologue, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman), the Army of Mohammed (al Qaeda’s affiliate in Bahrain), the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (a forerunner to Ansar al-Islam, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq), and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (a long-time ally of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan), among other terrorist groups. Documents cited by the report, but not discussed at length in the publicly available version (they may be in a redacted portion of the report), also detail Saddam’s ties to a sixth al Qaeda affiliate: the Abu Sayyaf group, an al Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines.

Both the EIJ and the IG were early and important core allies for Osama bin Laden as he forged the al Qaeda terror network, which comprises a number of affiliates around the world.

Andy McCarthy at The Corner rightly adds this:

The inexplicable shame of this is why the administration has silently allowed the anti-war Left and its own internal dissenters to solidify the “no connection” lie into a conventional wisdom that has irreparably eroded public support for the war effort.

It is mind-boggling that the Bush administration laid down on the pre-war intelligence, WMD, and everything else by 2004. They haven’t seriously engaged the misreporting since them.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 8:21 am and is filed under Foreign Policy, Iraq, Terrorism.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.