David Frum is wrong

Was Al Gore wrong though? The administration did lie about an Al Qaeda / Iraqi connection and used that lie to justify a war and legislation like the PATRIOT Act. I will give you that it sounded radical at the time, but hindsight is 20/20 as they say.
jonknee on May 18, 2009 at 9:16 PM

Yea that connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq was so thin…

July 25 1990 Excerpts From Iraqi Documenton Meeting with U.S. Envoy: Saddam “We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you.” so said Saddam in a threat made to our ambassador prior to Kuwait invasion by Iraq. (Entire document is an interesting look into the mind of a quite crazy Middle East dictator. Though the quote above, which I came upon inside of Misunderstimated by Bill Sammon, should send those who believe Saddam was above threatening us with terrorists to the showers. The July 25 1990 link sends you to my site’s archive of the main document in its entirety)

April 16, 1993 How Do We Know that Iraq Tried to Assassinate President George H.W. Bush? In late-April 1993, the United States learned that terrorists had attempted to assassinate Bush during his visit to Kuwait. The Kuwaiti authorities arrested 17 persons suspected in the plot to kill Bush using explosives hidden in a Toyota Landcruiser. The Kuwaitis recovered the Landcruiser, which contained between 80 and 90 kilograms of plastic explosives connected to a detonator ( the Bush device or Bush explosive device ). The Kuwaitis also recovered ten cube-shaped plastic explosive devices with detonators (the cube-bombs ) from the Landcruiser. Some of the suspects reportedly confessed that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS ) was behind the assassination attempt.

On April 29, 1993, CIA bomb technicians compared the Bush explosive device to two known Iraqi explosive devices found in different Middle-Eastern countries in 1990 and 1991 (the Middle-East devices ) . The technicians reported that the remote control firing mechanism in the Bush device was identical to those in the Middle-East devices. Additionally, the technicians reported that blasting caps from the Bush device appeared to be identical to those found in one of the Middle-East devices. The technicians later concluded that the circuit board from the Bush device also closely resembled circuit boards from the Middle-East devices

1998 Radio Free Europe Saddam plots the destruction of Radio Free Europe BIS allegedly had been aware that Iraq had requested its consul, Jabir Salim, to organize the terrorist operation against RFE/RL, apparently in retribution for the start-up last year of Radio Free Iraq.The Czech press says Baghdad sent the consul $50,000 to organize the attack but the consul asked for more money. Baghdad allegedly sent an additional $100,000. The consul then fled to London in December, taking the money, his family and the embassy codes. The government reportedly only found out about the plans to attack RFE/RL from British intelligence.

Saddams plot to blow up Radio Free Europe . Part 2 The tale begins in 1998, when Radio Free Europe, which is headquartered in Prague, started broadcasting anti-Saddam programs into Iraq, infuriating the dictator. Late that year, Tom Dine, the director of Radio Free Europe, says U.S. officials warned him that “the Iraqis were plotting to blow us up.” The information about the plot, sources said, came from a recent Iraqi defector who had fled Prague for Great Britain carrying nine suitcases and $150,000 in cash-the proceeds of which were supposed to have been used to finance the operation.

Radio Free Europe started round-the-clock video surveillance of the building. Soon enough, the cameras picked up a heavyset Middle Eastern man who was hanging around the RFE building taking pictures. He was sometimes accompanied by a thinner, taller man who wore a Shell Oil jacket. RFE passed along the pictures to the Czech intelligence agency, known as the BIS. The Czechs identified the heavier man as Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat widely believed to be a spy. The thinner man was never identified.

January 1993 Newsweek article written Sept 2002 Seeing the Evil In Front of Us Christopher Dickey January 1993 Newsweek article written Sept 2002 Seeing the Evil In Front of Us Christopher Dickey So Islamic radicals from all over the Middle East, Africa and Asia converged on Baghdad to show their solidarity with Iraq in the face of American aggression. Chechens in Persian-lamb hats, Moroccans in caftans, delegates who hailed “from Jakarta to Dakar,” as one Senegalese put it, poured into Baghdad’s Rashid Hotel, where Saddam’s minions urged them to embrace jihad as “the one gate to Paradise.” And the greatest holy warrior of all? “The mujahed Saddam Hussein, who is leading this nation against the nonbelievers,” they were told. “Everyone has a task to do, which is to go against the American state,” declared Saddam’s deputy Ezzat Ibrahim. The Americans had colonized Lebanon; they had colonized Saudi Arabia. But the line against them would be drawn in Iraq. Believers would triumph, said Ibrahim: “Our stand now can lead us to final victory, to Paradise.”

That was in January 1993. I was there, and every time I hear diplomats and politicians, whether in Washington or the capitals of Europe, declare that Saddam Hussein is a “secular Baathist ideologue” who has nothing to do with Islamists or with terrorist calls to jihad, I think of that afternoon and I wonder what they’re talking about.

The Contradictions of Michael Scheuer celebrated author of Imperial Hubris: Michael Scheuer has some valuable insights into our war, but what we are focused on here are his contradictory views towards the idea that Iraq was giving aid to Al Qaeda. He has become a sort of celebrity to the left because of statements like this:

So we did the research, we gave him the documentation, we came up with a conclusion. But then we turned all of that information over to the analysts, and the analysts then did the same thing. They, as far as I know, found no connection that was remotely approaching what DoD was claiming in regard to Saddam and Al Qaeda.

The left bless their black little hearts don’t say much about what he wrote in his first book concentrating instead in his new career as a Bush basher. They miss marvelous stuff like this from his earlier book “ Through Our Enemies’ Eyes”:

In Sudan, bin Laden decided to aquire and , when possible, use chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons against Islam’s enemies. Bin Laden’s first moves in this direction were made in cooperation with NIF Leaders, Iraq’s intelligence service, and Iraqi CBRN scientists and technicians. He made contact with Baghdad through its intelligence officers in Sudan, and by a Turabi-brokered June 1994 visit by Iraq’s then-intelligence chief Faruq al-Hijazi; according to Milan’s Corriere della Sera, Saddam, in 1994, made Hijazi responsible for “nurturing Iraq’s ties to [Islamic] fundamentalist warriors.” Turabi had plans to formulate a “common strategy” with bin Laden and Iraq for subverting pro-U.S. Arab regimes, but the meeting was a get-aquainted session where Hijazi and bin Laden developed good rapport that would “flourish” in the late 1990s.

06 November 1998 TEXT: US GRAND JURY INDICTMENT AGAINST USAMA BIN LADEN (It is worth noting that this indictment had the full support of Mr. Scheuer, indeed he bragged about it.)

United States District Court Southern District of New York New York — A U.S. Federal Grand Jury in New York on Nov. 5 issued an indictment against Usama Bin Laden alleging that he and others engaged in a long-term conspiracy to attack U.S. facilities overseas and to kill American citizens. The indictment noted that Al Qaeda, Bin Laden’s international terrorist group, forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in Sudan and with the government of Iran and with its associated group Hezballah to “work together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.” Additionally, the indictment states that Al Qaeda reached an agreement with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons development.

4. Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of
Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq. Full indictment at link above

October 14, 2001 Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992.
Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992. He worked at what he describes as a highly secret terrorist training camp at Salman Pak

So you were training Iraqis, Saddam’s fedayeen, members of the militia in Iraq. And someone else, other groups, were training the non-Iraqis?

They were special trainers or teachers from the Iraqi intelligence and al-Mukhabarat. And those same trainers or teachers will train the fedayeen, the Iraqi fedayeen, and also the same group of those teachers will train the non-Iraqis, foreigners who are in the camp. Personally, my profession is not this kind of training. My profession is to train people on infantry, typical infantry training, such as training on machine guns, pistols, hand grenades, rocket launchers on the shoulder and this kind of training. The special training that I’m talking about, such as the kidnapping and so, is conducted by those trainers who are not from the army; they are from … al-Mukhabarat.And there was a person who is very famous. They call him Al-Shaba. [ph]. This is Arabic word means “The Ghost,” who was responsible for all the training, and those trainers or the teachers.

Why was he called the Ghost?

I don’t know exactly why he’s being called the Ghost. I came there and his name was the Ghost. But I know that he has conducted several terrorist operations in Lebanon and in other countries all over the world. And I know that he told us that he’s been requested to be arrested by the Interpol. This is probably why he called himself the Ghost.

Edward Jay Epstein’s look into the Salman Pak terrorist training base
Question: What warning, if any, did the CIA receive from the National Reconnaissance Office concerning Arabs training on the fuselage of a passenger airliner at a terrorist training camp prior to September 11th, 2001?

Answer: After Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, an Iraqi military officer, defected from Iraq in 1999 to Turkey. He now lives in Fort Worth, Texas. When he was debriefed, he described his training mission at Salman Pak, a military base about 21 miles from Baghdad that had been used for the testing of secret weapons, including chemical biological warfare agents, and paramilitary training for covert actions. Captain Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami said that as late as 1998 he trained an elite commando team, Fedayeen Saddam, in airline hijacking and sabotage. Through a translator, Mr. Alami described, according to the Wall street Journal, a daily regimen of exercises on kidnapping, assassination, and — using a Boeing 707 parked inside the complex — how to hijack a plane or bus without weapons. He said that a separate group of non-Iraqis were being similarly trained by Saddam’s intelligence service, the mukhabarat. Asked about the plane by an interviewer for Front Line, he said “Yes, there’s a real whole 707 plane, a whole real plane, standing in the middle of the training area in this camp.”

January 7, 2002 Iraq’s Tie to Al-Qaeda Terrorists, Airline Hijackings From: Aviation Week Space Technology Headline: Satellite images of a facility near Baghdad show an airliner that Iraqi defectors say is used to train terrorists in the art of hijacking. Space Imaging, which operates the Ikonos civilian surveillance satellite, was prompted to look for the aircraft in existing photos after a ”Frontline” television show interviewed two Iraqi defectors who described the hijacker training and the aircraft used for the mock attacks.

Salman Pak / Al Salman Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility at Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations. The Salman Pak biological warfare facility was located on a peninsula caused by a bend in the Tigris river, approximately five kilometers (km) from the arch located in the town of Salman Pak. The facility area comprised more than 20 square km, and might have been known as a farmers (or agricultural) experimentation center. The peninsula was fenced off and patrolled by a large guard force. Immediately inside and to the east of the fence line were two opulent villas: the larger built for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the other for his half-brother, Barazan al-Tikriti. A main paved road ran through the center of the Salman Pak facility/peninsula. GulfLINK

Marines capture suspected terrorist training camp SALMAN PAK
The rusted shell of an old passenger jet sat out in a field, its tail broken off. Good for hijacking practice, U.S. Marines speculated Sunday as they examined an Iraqi training base about 20 miles south of Baghdad.The Americans also found a full obstacle course — with wooden walls and other barriers to be climbed over or crawled under — as well as a three-story concrete tower draped with ropes, apparently for rappelling.

President Saddam Hussein’s regime has said the camp, part of a larger military reservation in a bend of the Tigris River, was used for anti-terrorism training for Iraqi special forces.

But U.S. officials and others have long suspected the camp trained terrorists. Two former Iraqi military officers told The New York Times and PBS’s “Frontline” in the fall of 2001 that Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs were brought here to practice hijacking planes and trains, planting bombs and staging assassinations.

BRIG. GEN. VINCENT BROOKS CENTCOM Confirms Salman Pak as Terror Training base
We continue the operations in and around the area and beyond. There was a raid last night by First Marine Expeditionary Force, but what they raided was a training camp near Salman Pak. You can see the explosion along on the map near Salman Pak. This raid occurred in response to information that had been gained by coalition forces from some foreign fighters that we encountered from other country, not Iraq, and we believe that this camp had been used to train these foreign fighters in terror tactics. It is now destroyed.

PierreLegrand on May 18, 2009 at 10:14 PM