Evidence supporting Iraq-AL Qaeda link

[Cheese78CA]

Jeff Goldberg of the New Yorker was the first to write/report this. Here's is his most current article backed up by articles from the New York Times.

New Yorker article

NY Times editorial (requires free registration) posted below for your reading convenience.

NY Times article referenced by the first two paragraphs of the previous NY Times article

Clear Ties of Terror

By WILLIAM SAFIRE (New York Times)
Jan. 27, 2003

WASHINGTON ? In the days following the Sept. 11 attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell could find "no clear link" between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

One soon appeared. On Sept. 24, 2001, I reported: "The clear link between the terrorist in hiding [Osama] and the terrorist in power [Saddam] can be found in Kurdistan, that northern portion of Iraq protected by U.S. and British aircraft. . . . Kurdish sources tell me (and anyone else who will listen) that the Iraqi dictator has armed and financed a fifth column of Al Qaeda mullahs and terrorists. . . ."

The C.I.A. would not listen. Through credulous media outlets, the agency ? embarrassed by its pre-Sept. 11 inadequacies ? sought to discredit all intelligence about this force of 600 terrorists. Called Ansar al Islam, and led by Osama's Arabs trained in Afghanistan, they were sent in with Saddam's support to establish an enclave in the no-flight zone. One assignment was to assassinate the free Kurds who made up the only anti-Saddam leadership inside Iraq.

Well armed and financed by both Iraq and Iran, this affiliate of Al Qaeda has since provided a haven for bin Laden followers exfiltrating from Afghanistan. They tried to assassinate an articulate Kurdish leader, Barham Salih, killing several bodyguards, but their target escaped and several killers were captured. Our National Security Council members did not learn about this bloody engagement, one of them told me a week afterward, until they read about it in The Times.

The Kurds induced the captives and some defectors to reveal that the Ansar cell of Al Qaeda had begun producing poisonous chemicals for export. One product was reported here to be a cyanide cream being smuggled through Turkey. The operation was set up by a man with a limp, the informants said, a key bin Laden lieutenant, Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi. ( I misspelled that name a few weeks ago.)

The C.I.A. continued to pooh-pooh any connection between Ansar and Saddam. But reporter Jeff Goldberg of The New Yorker and more recently C. J. Chivers of The Times went into Iraq and interviewed some of the captured terrorists. Such reporting eroded the "no clear link" line put out by opponents of action against Saddam.

 

[bozo1]

That's not really a NY Times 'article.' It's an op/ed column by a conservative columnist.

 

[morkinva]

Hey look! I just found Oswald's palm print on a rifle !!

 

[Zim Hosein]

Originally posted by: morkinva
Hey look! I just found Oswald's palm print on a rifle !!

LMFAO morkinva 😀

 

[udonoogen]

according to my poli sci professor (from my "war, violence and terrorism" class) this type of evidence is highly unlikely. the version of Islam that Al Qaeda practices is different than the "corrupted" version found in Iraq.

 

[Cheese78CA]

Point taken, but the article of interest should be the one from the New Yorker.

Tenet [Director of CIA] said, Iraq has "provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." Tenet added, "Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression," and he suggested that, even without an American attack on Iraq, "Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase."

Originally posted by: bozo1
That's not really a NY Times 'article.' It's an op/ed column by a conservative columnist.

 

[Cheese78CA]

It was common belief until recently that Saddam and Al Qaeda had nothing in common besides they both held common hatred for the US. However, from Goldberg's article on the New Yorker

Rumsfeld believes that one long-held belief among Middle East analysts is overdue for reconsideration: the idea that doctrinal differences prevent Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and religious and secular Muslims, from pursuing common projects in anti-American terrorism. This is a subject of great relevance today, because the Bush Administration contends that Baghdad is a sponsor of Al Qaeda; critics of the Administration's foreign policy argue that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are natural enemies. "The argument is that Al Qaeda has got a religious motivation, somehow or other, and the Iraqi regime is considered to be a secular regime," Rumsfeld said. "The answer to that is, so what? The Iraqi regime will use anything it can to its advantage. Why wouldn't they use any implement at hand?"

Originally posted by: udonoogen
according to my poli sci professor (from my "war, violence and terrorism" class) this type of evidence is highly unlikely. the version of Islam that Al Qaeda practices is different than the "corrupted" version found in Iraq.

 

[dahunan]

Saddam owns many of the suicide bombers in Palestinian Territory

How about these links <<choose which is most credible>>
IRAQ TO UNLEASH SUICIDE BOMBERS

 

[etech]

Originally posted by: udonoogen
according to my poli sci professor (from my "war, violence and terrorism" class) this type of evidence is highly unlikely. the version of Islam that Al Qaeda practices is different than the "corrupted" version found in Iraq.

Did you remind your professor that the US had no problem being allies with the USSR during WWII including supplying them with arms and equipment. The allies united and worked together to defeat their common enemy which was seen as the greater threat.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: Cheese78CAWell armed and financed by both Iraq and Iran, this affiliate of Al Qaeda...

That I find hard to believe. Iran and Iraq don't actually love each other. And Iran hates Taleban (close allies of Al Qaida). I find it hard to believe that they would finance Al-Qaida

 

[SnapIT]

Evidence? where? ok, nothing to see here...

 

[Czar]

few pointers, the Kurds want their independant state, Iraq and other countries in the region dont want that. Thats why they have been fighting Kurdish rebel groups (terrorist groups). The Kurds where protected by the no fly zones after the gulf war. Sure you can make some connections with the kurdish groups to al qaeda, but its extremely unlikely that the kurdish groups have any connection with Saddam.

 

[Bulk Beef]

Sure you can make some connections with the kurdish groups to al qaeda, but its extremely unlikely that the kurdish groups have any connection with Saddam.

The editorial isn't linking AQ with the Kurds.

And while I don't really buy this whole link story, I don't buy the "ideological differences" rationale either. The Muslim world seems to have a habit of overcoming those differences when faced with an outside threat.

 

[FrancesBeansRevenge]

If the Arab and/or Muslim world is nearly unified in thier hatred of Israel and thier support of the Palestinians why is it a stretch that they would also be unified in thier hatred for the US?

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: sward666

Sure you can make some connections with the kurdish groups to al qaeda, but its extremely unlikely that the kurdish groups have any connection with Saddam.

The editorial isn't linking AQ with the Kurds.

And while I don't really buy this whole link story, I don't buy the "ideological differences" rationale either. The Muslim world seems to have a habit of overcoming those differences when faced with an outside threat.

Like Iran did during the US war in Afganistan? They didn't actually volunteer to "help their Muslim brothers"

. In fact, before the war, Iran came REALLY close to attacking Taleban on it's own!

 

[SnapIT]

Originally posted by: sward666

Sure you can make some connections with the kurdish groups to al qaeda, but its extremely unlikely that the kurdish groups have any connection with Saddam.

The editorial isn't linking AQ with the Kurds.

And while I don't really buy this whole link story, I don't buy the "ideological differences" rationale either. The Muslim world seems to have a habit of overcoming those differences when faced with an outside threat.

AQ are muslim radicals, the do NOT overcome differences just because there is a greater cause.... They would rather die than accept that...

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: sward666

Sure you can make some connections with the kurdish groups to al qaeda, but its extremely unlikely that the kurdish groups have any connection with Saddam.

The editorial isn't linking AQ with the Kurds.

And while I don't really buy this whole link story, I don't buy the "ideological differences" rationale either. The Muslim world seems to have a habit of overcoming those differences when faced with an outside threat.

oh yeah, thought this was just the typical post about someone trying to link saddam with bin laden 😛

 

[Bulk Beef]

AQ are muslim radicals, the do NOT overcome differences just because there is a greater cause.... They would rather die than accept that...

OH REALLY?? Is that what it says in your "Welcome to Islamic Fanaticism" handbook? Do you really think that those people are above hypocrisy?

 

[udonoogen]

Originally posted by: etech

Originally posted by: udonoogen
according to my poli sci professor (from my "war, violence and terrorism" class) this type of evidence is highly unlikely. the version of Islam that Al Qaeda practices is different than the "corrupted" version found in Iraq.

Did you remind your professor that the US had no problem being allies with the USSR during WWII including supplying them with arms and equipment. The allies united and worked together to defeat their common enemy which was seen as the greater threat.

i see where you're going with the common enemy thing. the US/USSR relationship isn't really analogous with the Al Qaeda/Iraq relationship. you're talking about a terrorist organization and a rogue state. different than two different countries even though they did not get along/hated each other. terrorist organizations have no obligation to follow the same rules that countries do.

i still think the Al Qaeda and Iraq relationship is a bit of a stretch.

 

[Cheese78CA]

From the New Yorker Article:

According to several intelligence officials I spoke to, the relationship between bin Laden and Saddam's regime was brokered in the early nineteen-nineties by the then de-facto leader of Sudan, the pan-Islamist radical Hassan al-Tourabi. Tourabi, sources say, persuaded the ostensibly secular Saddam to add to the Iraqi flag the words "Allahu Akbar," as a concession to Muslim radicals.

In interviews with senior officials, the following picture emerged: 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.) Another Al Qaeda operative, the Iraqi-born Mamdouh Salim, who goes by the name Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, also served as a liaison in the mid-nineteen-nineties to Iraqi intelligence. Salim, according to a recent book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," by the former N.S.C. officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, was bin Laden's chief procurer of weapons of mass destruction, and was involved in the early nineties in chemical-weapons development in Sudan. Salim was arrested in Germany in 1998 and was extradited to the United States. He is awaiting trial in New York on charges related to the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings; he was convicted last April of stabbing a Manhattan prison guard in the eye with a sharpened comb.

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.

Ansar al-Islam was created on September 1, 2001, when two Kurdish radical groups merged forces. According to Barham Salih, the Prime Minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the group seized a chain of villages in the mountainous region outside the city of Halabja, and made a safe haven for Al Qaeda fighters. "Our intelligence information confirmed that the group was declared on September 1st at the behest of bin Laden and Al Qaeda," Prime Minister Salih told me last week, in a telephone conversation from Davos, Switzerland. "It was meant to be an alternative base of operations, since they were apparently anticipating that Afghanistan was going to become a denied area to them."

Salih also said that a month before the September 11th attacks a senior Al Qaeda operative called Abdulrahman al-Shami was dispatched from Afghanistan to the Kurdish mountain town of Biyara, to organize the Ansar al-Islam enclave. Shami was killed in November, 2001, in a battle with the pro-American forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The Ansar al-Islam enclave, according to Salih and American intelligence officials, soon became the base of operations of an Al Qaeda subgroup called Jund al-Shams, or Soldiers of the Levant, which operates mainly in Jordan and Syria. Jund al-Shams is controlled by a man named Mussa'ab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian of Palestinian extraction. Zarqawi is believed by European intelligence agencies to be Al Qaeda's main specialist in chemical and biological terrorism. Zarqawi is also believed to be behind the assassination, on October 28th, of an American A.I.D. official in Jordan, and also two unsuccessful assassination attempts: last February 20th, Ali Bourjaq, a Jordanian secret-police official, escaped injury when a bomb detonated near his home; and on April 2nd gunmen opened fire on Prime Minister Salih's home in Sulaimaniya. Salih was unhurt, but five of his bodyguards were killed; two bystanders were killed in the Bourjaq assassination attempt.

The Administration believes that Zarqawi made his way to Baghdad after the United States' invasion of Afghanistan, when he was wounded. According to American sources, Zarqawi was treated in a Baghdad hospital but disappeared from Baghdad shortly after the Jordanian government asked Iraq to extradite him. American intelligence officials believe that Zarqawi was also among an unknown number of Al Qaeda terrorists who have sought refuge in the Ansar al-Islam over the past seventeen months.

 

[Czar]

aaand another one
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2727489.stm

UK report rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link

There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network, according to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News.

The top secret document, written by defence intelligence staff three weeks ago, says there has been contact between the two in the past.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC on Wednesday the case against Saddam Hussein is based on his defiance of UN demands that he disarm, not on alleged links with terrorism.

BBC correspondents say the report raises questions about what is expected to be a key strand of the US case being made against Iraq at the Security Council later on Wednesday.


US officials say secretary of state Colin Powell will present fresh evidence of Baghdad's non-compliance with UN disarmament resolutions at the meeting, specially convened at Washington's request.

Analysts say the reaction he receives at the Council is likely to determine whether or not the US seeks a new resolution on disarming Iraq or embarks on military action on the basis of existing resolutions.

 

[Moonbeam]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to steal the oil openly without having to pretend you're invading for some phony reason. Nobody else is fooled.

 

[etech]

Originally posted by: udonoogen

Originally posted by: etech

Originally posted by: udonoogen
according to my poli sci professor (from my "war, violence and terrorism" class) this type of evidence is highly unlikely. the version of Islam that Al Qaeda practices is different than the "corrupted" version found in Iraq.

Did you remind your professor that the US had no problem being allies with the USSR during WWII including supplying them with arms and equipment. The allies united and worked together to defeat their common enemy which was seen as the greater threat.

i see where you're going with the common enemy thing. the US/USSR relationship isn't really analogous with the Al Qaeda/Iraq relationship. you're talking about a terrorist organization and a rogue state. different than two different countries even though they did not get along/hated each other. terrorist organizations have no obligation to follow the same rules that countries do.

i still think the Al Qaeda and Iraq relationship is a bit of a stretch.

It may be a "bit of a stretch" but it is possible. I had trouble believing that Saddam would pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers but that has been confirmed. It seems that the two groups which have some similar goals might work together is not that implausible. Of course none of us here have the top secret security clearance necessary to have access to the information to truly decide this point.

In any case the real case is UN Resolution 1441
..
9. Requests the Secretary-General immediately to notify Iraq of this resolution, which is binding on Iraq; demands that Iraq confirm within seven days of that notification its intention to comply fully with this resolution; and demands further that Iraq cooperate immediately, unconditionally, and actively with
UNMOVIC and the IAEA;

13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations;
...


Somehow I don't think having the top UN weapon inspector being reduced to pleading with Iraq
Blix Pleads With Iraq on Weapons Issue shows the cooperation that was requested from Iraq.

Now unless you think that "serious consequences" means another in the long series of UN Resolutions that Iraq has ignored than the removal of Saddam seems to be the last resort that has finally been reached.

 

[Cheese78CA]

Phony reason? Saddam invaded a neighbor he should not have and proved he is a threat to Middle East stability. The UN resoluted to send inspectors in to ensure Iraq disarms and doesn't rearm. The French pushed to sanction the oil-for-food program for France's own interest. However, Sadam couldn't rearm without the eyes of the inspectors over his back. Thus, in 1997, he accused American inspectors of spying and kicked them out. The rest of the 77 inspectors withdrew from Iraq in show of solidarity to their American counter parts.

Clinton sent 2 aircraft carriers to pressure Sadam into compilying with UN resolution. The French, once again, interjected and demanded UN sanctions be ended with unlimited oil sales by Iraq. Being the clever chess master that Sadam is, he seemingly responds to French's goodwill and let the American inspectors back in Iraq. Sure, Sadam has shown he'll wittingly throw a bone to let the world to salivate over. Almost as soon as he let them in, he bans all inspectors the following year in 1999.

The UN has let Sadam slide too long. Former Russian states like Kazakhstan disarmed of all its nuclear arsenal peacefully--the inspectors got in and got out. The proposed war is the result of the threat Sadam demonstrated in 1992, years of non-compliance to disarm and failure of tried diplomatic negotations due to Sadam's lack of sincerity. Removing the possible connection with Al Qaeda would simply be killing two birds with one stone. Sadam is a threat to the Middle East region and in the post 9/11 world, he is a threat to the US.

Oh, the oil interest? "Why is France so pro-Saddam? It's the motive (wrongly) ascribed as behind U.S. enmity toward him: oil. French commercial deals with Middle East terrorist states dominate its foreign policy. It was a French company that risked U.S. sanctions by investing in Iranian oil production and it is French interests that benefit from the tie with Saddam." * Sure, to the victor gets the spoils, but the opportunity would've never presented itself had Sadam changed his ways and came clean. However, that is certainly not the main reason the US is going into war for. The evidence presented by Powell yesterday showed Sadam has no intention of disarming inspite of tired diplomatic efforts and the will of the UN Security Council for a peaceful resolution. He's still playing the cat and mouse game he's mastered in a period of over 10 years.

* Dick Morris, political consultant to Bill Clinton thoughts

Why should the French and the Germans care that Sadam is a murdering tyrant who threatens thousands of innocent lives? Between those two countries, at least 70 French and German companies do business with Saddam. They make money off him! That is the reality of it. They will tolerate any kind of blackmail from the Middle East because: 1) They are afraid to strike back, 2) They make money off the murderers and 3) They know that, ultimately the U.S. will protect them from the villains. They are like children who criticize their parents while accepting their protection.

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to steal the oil openly without having to pretend you're invading for some phony reason. Nobody else is fooled.