World Threats

Jim Lacey has written an excellent article covering some of the damning stuff we did find after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Yes, the huge stockpiles weren’t there as we expected, but critics of the war have gone too far in painting Saddam Hussein as basically non-threatening.  I also wrote an article on this topic that you can check out by clicking here.

Here are some facts that Lacey mentions that it seems almost everyone has forgotten and aren’t mentioned in my article:

• Saddam had already completed construction of an anthrax production facility, which was a week away from going live. If it had been permitted to go into production, this one facility could have produced ten tons of weaponized anthrax a year. Experts estimate that anthrax spores that infect the skin will kill 50 percent of untreated victims. Inhaled anthrax will kill 100 percent of untreated victims and 50 percent of those receiving immediate treatment. That means that a mere 1 percent of Saddam’s annual production (200 pounds) sprayed by crop-duster over New York City would have killed upwards of three million people

•  Saddam even had a huge bio-warfare production facility masquerading as the Samarra Drug Company. This facility would have been capable of producing up to 10,000 liters of deadly pathogens a year. It was less than a month from going into production when the invasion of Iraq began

• Investigators also found two labs that appeared to be producing animal vaccines. However, according to investigators, all of the equipment was “dual use . . . and easily diverted to produce smallpox or other pathogenic viruses.” Another nearby lab was busily working on cowpox vaccines, with the exact same equipment necessary to create smallpox.

•  Between 1996 and 2002 — the eve of the invasion — spending on WMD projects increased 40-fold, and the number of specific projects increased from 40 to 3,200

• Saddam’s minister of military industrialization, Abdullah Mullah al-Huwaysh,stated that Saddam was working to reconstruct all of his WMD programs within five years. In his words, this would have included “a sizable nuclear inventory on hand for immediate use.”

• One set of details appears in a report written six weeks after 9/11. It states that Iraq was sending an administrative officer to establish and oversee a terrorist training camp, and lists the equipment being dispatched in the first set of supplies:

15,000 Kalashnikov 7.62-mm rifles
15,000 [SKS] rifles
5,000 Browning pistols
5,000 Markarov pistols
1 high-quality photocopier

The memorandum ends with the names of 52 fighters waiting for training in the camp.

There are very reasonable reasons to feel the invasion of Iraq was the wrong thing to do, but opposition to the war should not lead to a misrepresentation of the threat Saddam Hussein truly did pose.

The case for removing Saddam Hussein from power just got due to an unlikely source: Wikileaks. Newly-released files about detainees held in Guantanamo Bay identify two individuals who served as liaisons between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

A leaked file says that Jawad Jabber Sadkhan, an Iraqi intelligence officer who moved to Afghanistan in 1998, “admittedly forged official documents and reportedly provided liaison between the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq.” The government of Afghanistan at that time was the Taliban, which employed him as a vicious interrogator for its intelligence service. His driver said he was also close to Osama Bin Laden, who paid him before and after the 9/11 attacks. Another detainee revealed that Sadkhan would travel to Iraq through Iran to retrieve supplies for the Taliban. Sadkhan was not universally popular, as his superior, Abdul-Hadi al-Iraqi, warned Saif al-Adel in November 1998 that he was part of a group of Iraqis “involved in un-Islamic activities.” This accusation did not end the relationship.

According to another detainee named Abbas Habid Rumi al-Naely, Sadkhan was a member of one of Saddam Hussein’s top units tasked with assassinating political opponents. The U.S. government also identified al-Naely as a liaison between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Al-Qaeda. He joined the Taliban in 1994 while living in Baghdad. One U.S. government memo shows he was accused of preparing attacks on the U.S. and British embassies in Pakistan in August 1998 with an Iraqi intelligence officer on the orders of Osama Bin Laden. Later memos did not include the charge.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

September 11, 2001, taught us that it is too costly to allow a leader with a history of aggression and stated intent to harm the U.S. to maintain links to terrorist groups and acquire weapons capabilities to act upon that sentiment. Newly declassified documents about the testimony of Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s deputy prime minister, reminds us why Saddam had to be removed from power.

Contradicting Saddam Hussein’s testimony where he claimed he actually wanted an alliance with the U.S. against Iran, Tariq Aziz describes Saddam as an “anti-American” who was “delighted” when al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The documents do not mention Saddam’s private reaction to 9/11, but we know that his public reaction was to be possibly the only leader to refuse to condemn the attacks, as well as the only leader to openly praise them. His sons and the state-controlled press did the same. This is a critical fact that is often forgotten: Saddam’s regime was the only one to publicly hail the 9/11 hijackers and not hide its desire to see such attacks happen again.

Click here to read the rest of my Pajamas Media article.

The declassified testimony of Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam’s Vice Presidents, provides ammunition for both sides of the debate on whether Iraq was linked to Al-Qaeda. On the one hand, Tariq Aziz says that Saddam Hussein was “delighted” at the terrorist group’s 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He had respect for Al-Qaeda’s abilities, viewing them as “effective” and Aziz admits that Saddam’s regime supported Abu Abbas, the terrorist who engineered the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro.

Saddam’s support for Abbas went further than previously known and went beyond safe harbor. According to Aziz, Abbas used a farm to raise money for Palestinian militants and “The farm evolved into a camp where Abul Abbas would train fighters with AK-47s” donated by the regime.

Read the rest of this entry »

Click here for my latest FPM article. Karl Rove says his biggest mistake was deciding against a counter-offensive targeting opportunistic politicians trying to claim President Bush was evil enough to lie the country into war. That was a big mistake, but I name a bigger one: Not trying to vindicate the decision to remove Saddam Hussein using mounds of evidence, including Iraqi government documents, found after the invasion began.

My latest Pajamas Media article is here. This is about the evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government truly was a state sponsor of terrorism, including of Al-Qaeda. Critics of the war can still argue that the invasion was more of a hinderance than asset to the War on Terror and that it wasn’t worth the cost, but it should be admitted that documents and testimony show that Iraq was sponsoring terrorism at that time.

The person in charge of prosecuting Saddam Hussein says that there are documents proving that his regime and Al-Qaeda had a relationship.

From MEMRI:

Ja’far al-Musawi, head of the prosecution team in the trial of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, has told the Iraqi TV channel al-Faihaa of the existence of official documents that prove the involvement of the Saddam regime with the two leaders of Al-Qaeda – “the terrorist Osama bin Laden and the terrorist Ayman Al-Zawahiri.”

He said that members of the Saudi royal family worked to deepen the relationship between the Saddam regime and the terrorist Al-Qaeda organization.

Source: Al-Faiyaa.tv/news, November 14, 2009

These events have been reported to World Threats.

Nov. 13 – In Sanandaj in the evening of November 12 more than 800 people and families of political prisoners gathered in Azadi Square and marched down Ferdosi Ave. They were protesting against the execution of Ehsan Fatahian and demanding the revocation of execution warrants on eleven other prisoners in Sanandaj Prison.

The march was held under conditions equivalent to a curfew. Seven people were arrested when the SSF raided the crowd and they were taken to an unknown place. Eyewitness reports reported that the SSF even beat old people and women walking on the sidewalks and in the alleys. Some of the agents took photographs of people in the crowds for later identification.

Nov. 13 – In Kermanshah at 2:30 PM more than 1200 residents gathered in Shahrak Karmadan Mosque to commemorate the death of Ehsan Fatahian. Those present had pictures of Ehsan and placards reading “Eshan Fatahian – fallen for freedom”. Young people had hi picture in their hands and on them was written “each of us is an Ehsan”.

Nov. 14 – Reports say that some female prisoners in Evin Prison are in critical condition. Several are reported to have influenza and are in bad shape. The prison authorities have cut off all calls and visits to prevent this news from being reported.

This information was published during the time period when this website was non-functional due to technical (and financial) problems. In June 2008, a Kurdish newspaper published a 2002 Iraqi intelligence document where it discusses a plan to meet with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of Al-Qaeda, to discuss a “revenge operation” in Saudi Arabia called for by Saddam Hussein.

Zawahiri had ties to the Iraqis back from his days as head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which later merged into Al-Qaeda. In my research on state sponsorship of terrorism, he’s been at the center of such relations with Iraq and Iran (and according to Litvinenko, even Russia) far more frequently than Bin Laden.

Although I can’t prove it, it seems that Bin Laden and his ilk were more opposed to relations with states they viewed as non-Muslim than those of Zawahiri, and so the connections would be more on his end. It’s entirely possible for state sponsors of terrorism to maintain ties with this faction of Al-Qaeda and not the other.

Mark Eichenlaub of RegimeofTerror.com breaks the story that Matthew Degn, who was a U.S. Army civilian interrogator in Iraq and then a senior advisor to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, says that detainees told him that Saddam Hussein’s regime used the unofficial banking system commonly used in the region called “Hawala” to support elements of Al-Qaeda that were open to working with him.

He also said that Al-Qaeda had at least two training camps in Iraq under Saddam’s rule, specifically in Anbar Province and the western part of the country. Eichenlaub links to a story about how a captured Iraqi terrorist named Ramzi Hashem Abed said that Al-Qaeda used a camp in Fallujah while Saddam Hussein was in power. His confession aired on Iraqi TV in August 2005.

Deng also says there’s evidence that Iraq sponsored an attack on U.S. forces in October 2002:

When pressed for specific examples of attacks Degn replied that detainees and sources in Iraq’s current government knew that Hussein’s Iraq sponsored repeated attacks on Westerners and U.S. forces in Kuwait. One particular attack was on a U.S. naval ship and another killed 3 U.S. marines, who were Degn’s friends, during their service in Kuwait.

Thank you to Mark Eichenlaub for pointing this out. In a TIME Magazine article from 2003, captured documents indicate that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and at least one member of Ansar al-Islam, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, were in Baghdad before the regime fell.

“He spent the months leading up to the war moving through Iran and northern Iraq, where he attached himself to the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam. A confidential al-Tawhid document obtained by TIME describes a fighter killed in Fallujah last April as having joined al-Zarqawi in Baghdad “just before the fall of the previous regime”—a claim that backs up the Bush Administration’s disputed assertions that al-Zarqawi passed through the Iraqi capital while Saddam Hussein was in power. Al-Zarqawi has built his network in Iraq by exploiting the furies unleashed by the fall of Saddam. “

Of course, it can easily be argued that the removal of Saddam Hussein allowed such Al-Qaeda-affiliated networks to expand beyond their pre-war capabilities, but the growing evidence that Al-Qaeda had some sort of presence in Iraq before the invasion began must be acknowledged. Whether that should change the decision of whether we should have invaded in the first place is up to the reader to decide.

Also, notice that he traveled via Iran. It’s really hard to deny that a ratline for Al-Qaeda running from Afghanistan through Iran operated in 2001-2002 existed.

Add another chapter to the textbook debunking the myth that extremists of different ideologies won’t work together.

From Middle East Newsline:

The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has determined that Al Qaida was working with loyalists of the former Saddam Hussein regime.
Officials said leading members of the Al Qaida network have coordinated operations with Saddam aides since 2003. They said Al Qaida and Saddam forces attacked Shi’ites in an effort to spark a civil war in Iraq.

“They agreed that Al Qaida would carry out the suicide attacks, while the Baathists [Saddam's ruling party] would do the remote-control bombs,” Al Maliki said.

I thought there was no connection between Saddam Hussein’s government and Iraq?

The U.S. now believes that Abu Ibrahim, “who controlled a web of dangerous operatives while living in Baghdad under the protection of Saddam Hussein,” is in hiding in Syria. He is also suspected of silently helping the insurgency.

“With the assistance of Iraqi intelligence, Ibrahim carried out many attacks. He struck in London, Rome, Athens. In West Berlin, an infant was killed and 24 wounded after one of his bombs detonated at an Israeli-owned restaurant.”

Read the rest of this entry »

An investigation based on interviews and recently declassified documents reveals that Khalid Dunham Al-Jawary, who sits in jail for his involvement in a terrorist plot to car bomb three Israeli targets in New York City in 1973, may have had Iraqi sponsorship. The documents show that he was involved in other terrorist plots with the Black September terrorist organization.

Al-Jawary lived in Baghdad and when he applied for his visa, used a fake Iraqi passport and said he wanted to come to the U.S. for flight training. Once he got to New York, he worked with at least two others to plan the car bombings.  Each vehicle contained propaganda from Black September, and the bombs were clearly similar to letter bombs sent around the world by the terrorist organization the previous year. The report also shows how the closest associates of Arafat were involved in the plots, as well. But here’s the kicker from the New York Post‘s report:

“According to the AP probe, just before Al-Jawary planted the bombs, the National Security Agency intercepted a message about where they had been placed.

The encrypted message was sent possibly from Iraq’s New York mission to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad, said Jim Welsh, a NSA analyst. Then the message was relayed to the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters, Welsh said.

Iraq reportedly backed Black September, the terrorists behind the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.”

Al-Jawary fled back to Iraq after the attack, but was later caught after leaving the country in an attempt to attend the funeral of a Black September leader.

But, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the leader of Iraq during this plot. However, as Sean Osborne of the Northeast Intelligence Network (who also deserves credit for being the first to bring attention to these reports) says:

“Iraq in 1973 was ruled by the Ba’athist party under the leadership of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. Al-Bakr had come to power via a coup d’etat in 1968. The infamous Saddam Hussein was Al-Bakr’s right-hand man in that coup and was subsequently given the position of Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. As the head of the Iraqi security apparatus it is inconceivable that Saddam Hussein did not have explicit foreknowledge of this planned terrorist attack. On July 16, 1979 Saddam Hussein forced Al-Bakr to resign and became Iraq’s dictator six days later.”

Al-Jawary will be released this month and probably deported. He maintains his innocence, so it is unlikely we’ll get much more detail from him.

1. Someone in the Iraq Memory Foundation, which is going through troves of documents and files about Saddam Hussein’s reign, says that Iraqi intelligence documents show a link between the former Iraqi regime and Al-Qaeda.

The documents state that on December 12, 1994, Uday Hussein received a message from Osama Bin Laden via a Sudanese politician requesting an alliance. Many skeptics of such a connection claim Bin Laden would never work with a secular dictator he considered an “infidel,” but this shows Bin Laden actually initiating the discussion about an alliance.

The Sudanese politician then attended a meeting between Bin Laden and an Iraqi representative described as “M.A.M.” on January 11, 1995, according to documents from the office of Saddam Hussein.

An intelligence document dated March 4, 2005 refers to the meeting, saying that cooperation in attacking foreign forces in Saudi Arabia was discussed.

Other documents show that Iraqi intelligence suggested to Bin Laden that he leave the Sudan due to fears about his safety (if the Iraqis feared Bin Laden like some suggest, why would they want to help him survive?) and that they’d continue working with him in Afghanistan.

Smoking gun? Not quite, but it definitely should make those that think radicals who disagree can’t cooperate think twice about their rigid beliefs on the subject.

2. The Kuwaitis have dismantled an Iranian intelligence network after being passed information from the British. The network consisted of an Iraqi businessman, state security officer, and a former military intelligence operative. This shows the reach, and deadliness of Iranian intelligence. Their capabilities should not be underestimated.

3. The Pentagon has reversed course and decided to sell Israel 1,000 bunker-busters. Of course, without an aerial pathway to Iran they won’t be any good. Israel must fly over Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Jordan to carry this out and it is unlikely any would authorize such an assault. The next question is whether Israel can thwart the air defenses of one of these countries to reach Iran and whether they have the political will-power to do so.

4. The Obama campaign is denying a report that Senator Obama tried to pressure the Iraqi leadership into delaying an agreement with the U.S. on troop withdrawals so that the next administration (his) could sign their own. The New York Times backs up the allegation in its own reporting, saying that Obama felt the Iraqi and American governments in 2009 shouldn’t be bound to an agreement made by the Bush Administration in an election year.

Some are saying Obama was driven by political considerations: A withdrawal from Iraq would take away one of his issues, and he couldn’t claim credit for starting it once in office. Whatever the reason, if the allegations are true then it’s clear he was trying to undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts, but the argument first mentioned does make sense. It is up the reader to decide whether such activity is ethical or not, but any objective reader can understand Obama’s desire to have his administration define their relationship with Iraq on this issue, rather than being forced by treaty to follow his predecessor’s path.

5. The IAEA says that Iran is not cooperating with them as they follow-up intelligence reporting that the mullahs are conducting secret nuclear weapons research. One official said that the IAEA believes Iran is still two years away from being able to make enough highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, but that of course assumes the IAEA has seen all the sites involved in the effort.

Well, lucky for us, Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful domestic energy purposes. And the IAEA is capable of preventing a nuclear weapons program from emerging. And the UN, with Russia and China holding veto power, is capable of stopping Iran from obtaining a nuke. So, nothing to worry about.