It’s almost been 8years since the plot to sink either the USS Sullivans or the USS Cole was set in motion. For many time doesn’t matter. Families for the USS Cole victims have tried to meet with President Bush to get him to take action, but after 8 years President Bush refuses to take action against the plotters or to even meet with the families of the USS Cole or its survivors. One would think that if nothing else the photo opportunity would be worthy, but not President Bush.
Five years ago: Ten of the main suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole escaped from prison in Yemen. American troops took the northern Iraqi city of Mosul without a fight. In Cuba, three men convicted of hijacking a passenger ferry the previous week were executed by firing squad, a swift response by Fidel Castro’s government to a recent string of hijackings to the United States.
How ironic that it comes:
Mark’s done a fantastic job of summarizing the latest 1600page Pentagon report that investigated and documented ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and terrorists. His article is one that no one should miss (and not just because he mentions me 
). Seriously, this is the overview that the media SHOULD have been reporting for weeks now. Don’t miss it.
All this capability would be meaningless, of course, if there were no intention of using it. The authors make clear that Saddam was willing to conduct anti-American terrorism, saying: “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.”
Instead of squabbling over who is and isn’t a member of al-Qaeda and what the requirements of a “link” or “connection” are, this report details Saddam’s broad support for (and sometimes direction of) a multitude of terrorist groups targeting Americans and American allies. Based on the Iraqi Perspectives Project, Saddam’s Iraq did not just use terrorism against America and her allies but took advantage of “the rising fundamentalism in the region” as an “opportunity to make terrorism . . . a formal instrument of state power.” Because of Saddam’s removal, which came at considerable cost in American blood and gold, a “formal instrument” of state terrorism is no longer secretly plotting to kill Americans. The American public deserves to know what a threat was removed for that price.
Every day there seems to be yet another example of lazy journalism or slanted reporting on this latest Pentagon report about ties between Saddam’s regime and terrorists. This time, it’s Newsweek.
I hate to make a long post, but…sometimes it’s necessary.
“Saddam’s Files, They show terror plots, but raise new questions about some U.S. claims”
Let’s go to the woodshed…. Read the rest of this entry »
John C. Bersia won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000. What happened since then? Eight years later the man apparently can’t even do a Google search let alone deep research. This week he joins the ranks of old media ignorants who wrote about the Pentagon’s investigation into documents and tapes captured from Saddam’s regime. Like so many others, he chose to write about it without ever having even seen the report. At least he put his thoughts into the OPINION section instead of a NEWS section, but that suggests he knew he wasn’t writing about the report at all. He was writing his opinion of a report he’d never seen or investigated. The world wonders if anyone in the old media is actually interested in reported unbiased news, and thus interested in this report, OR if they’re all interested in voicing their uninformed, incorrect, and otherwise false opinions instead. So far the trend is the latter.
Let’s take a closer look…. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, AP has done it again. They’ve clearly ignored the latest investigation into ties between Saddam’s regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. Even their own article tries to play both sides of the coin (a writing tactic used primarily by High School students to write book reports on texts they’ve never seen).
“Fact Check: Bush on Al Qaida, Iraqis”
By JENNIFER LOVEN
…That’s about as factual as the article gets. Beyond that, it’s filled with contradictions that try in vain to spin the documented findings to bolster their historically flawed position on the issue; that there were never and could never be any ties between Saddam’s regime and the Al Queda network. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Eichenlaub has an outstanding overview of the recent Old Media reporting on the latest investigation into the depth of ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. His article highlights in perfectly plain sight just how a single, biased writer will bite on a rumor from a single anonymous source about a report that hadn’t even been revealed, and then a total falsehood becomes propagated by the Old Media. When the actual report came out, anyone and everyone reading it could see that it listed innumerable documented and confirmed connections between Saddam’s regime and the network of terror groups called, Al Queda. Read the rest of this entry »
This week opponents of the war were given a treat. They were told-in a single article-based on a single anonymous source-that a report which hadn’t been released said there was never any ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the al-Qaida network of terrorist groups. Millions of the war’s opponents were instantly elated with glee at the idea that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with the war against the al-Qaida terrorist network; that the invasion was completely disconnected from any threat to the United States.
Disregarding the misplaced glee for a moment, let’s face some facts. The report described in the article was finally released to the public, and its contents are almost completely contrary to the leaked “article” that described it beforehand.
In fact, if anything this new study should finally put to rest the false perception that Saddam’s regime was too secular to work with radical Islamic holy warriors, and it should be a genuine wake up call for people who continue to ignore the threat posed by state-sponsors of terror like Saddam Hussein once was.
Let’s take a closer look at this “article.” Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, we’ve heard since 2000 that President Bush should be impeached, and probably for as long that Vice President Cheney should be impeached. We hear it exclusively from people who are uber-partisan, seeking personal political gain, or ignorant of the facts, but we do hear it. Congressman Dennis Kucinich was nice enough to actually draft and submit three articles of impeachment for Vice President Cheney (I guess he and his supporters either want President Bush to stay President or don’t feel he’s committed any high crimes and misdemeanors after all). Since the articles were formally submitted, few people who keep track of the historical record or who are left of Howard Dean have taken the time to actually read Congressman Kucinich’s rantings. This weekend, I did, and I found the articles to be purely partisan, lacking factual substance, and (in the case of Article III) lacking common sense. Read the rest of this entry »
This latest MSM piece is just one more in a long line of half truths and misinformation on the connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein’s regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.
The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community’s prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the report’s declassification, said in a written statement that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office — run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith — had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.
Of course the IG report does not state why the intelligence assessment was "inappropiate" if the activity broke no laws and violated no policies. What is so inappropriate about having different agencies developing different analysis reports on intelligence? Isn’t alternative viewpoints a very important tool in developing a consensus?
Be that it may lets get into some facts about the very real connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq. While I agree with all the intelligence agencies that Saddam most likely did not have a very strong operational connection with the group nor was he involved in 9/11 (at this point, more evidence may come up which does in fact tie the two together) I do not agree with most of the left leaning think tanks, MSM outfits and blogs that there was NO connections.
I’ve asked Scott Malensek to do a rebuttal on this WaPo article which he will try to do tonight. He emailed me a few minutes ago with this:
Simply put, there was no pre-war CIA investigation into ties that made any conclusions that there were either ties or not ties. There was no post-war CIA investigation at all. Moreover, the WaPo piece ignores the ties that the ISG report DOES cite (like Saddam training AQ, using Abu Nidal and ANO as intermediary to AQ, and more). That WaPo piece is a full-on partisan hard-on that cherry picks a report, makes assumptions and claims where none are in the report, and makes deliberately false statements contrary to the facts/intel in the report. Man, such a huge subject…so many things to contradict, so little time and space.
Amen. There is just a TON of evidence and facts to point out that any post on this matter would take up hundreds of pages. Just take a look at my Iraq/Al-Qaeda category, lots of pages there.
Of course this editorial at the WaPo calls all this evidence "delusional"
Here are a few examples of intelligence that taken as a whole (along with my many other posts on the subject, the book The Connection, the released Saddam documents, Ray Robisons new book, and Scott Malensek 124 page rebuttal to the IG report along with his book (under the pen-name Sam Pender) Saddam’s ties to al-Qaeda) point to a definite connection.
First lets start with a Stephen Hayes article:
Indeed, more than two years after the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was ousted, there is much we do not know about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. We do know, however, that there was one. We know about this relationship not from Bush administration assertions but from internal Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) documents recovered in Iraq after the war–documents that have been authenticated by a U.S. intelligence community long hostile to the very idea that any such relationship exists.
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.
How about Ahmed Hikmat Shakir? Who is he? Well take a look at my post on him from two years ago:
Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, a 37 year old Iraqi citizen, was a greeter at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in August 2000 (I know, sounds kinda like wal-mart but apparently greeters are quite common in Southeast Asia). How was he hired to be a greeter? Ahmed had told associates that he had been hired by contact’s in the Iraqi embassy. What’s unusual is that it was this contact, not his employer, who told him when and where to report to.
In late December of 1999 the CIA, NSA and The State Department all received intelligence that indicated there would be a Al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in early January of 2000. The NSA had intercepted communications from those tied to the 1998 Kenya/Tanzania embassy bombings. The information was incomplete but did contain the names of three people, Khalid, Nawaf, and Salem.
The CIA and Malaysian intelligence set up a joint operation to track the meeting. They got many photographs of the principals arriving. Principals such as Khalid al Mihdhar (A known al-Qaeda associate), Nawaf al Hazmi, Yazid Sufaat (another known al-Qaeda associate) and Ramzi bin al Shibh. An interesting note about Ramzi, he would later brag to be the "coordinator of the holy tuesday operation" (9/11).
Ahmed was told to work the day these guys showed up. After greeting these fine folks Ahmed didn’t go back to work but left with them to the meeting. The meeting ended on Jan 8th and Ahmed quit on the 10th.
The purpose of this meeting? The planning of attack on the USS Cole and 9/11. Malaysian and American intelligence bear this out. Don’t believe it? Then guess who was on flight 77 on 9/11? Nawaf al Hazmi, his brother Salem and Khalid al Mihdhar…that’s right, the same folks photographed upon their arrival for the above meeting.
On Sept 17th, 2001 authorities in Qatar arrested Ahmed and found a huge amount of information on high level terrorists with strong ties to al-Qaeda and indirect links to Iraq.
Among his contacts? Zahid Sheikh Mohammed, the brother of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Musab Yasin, the brother of the 93 WTC bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin. Interestingly Musab was harbored by Iraq for a decade after the 93 bombing.
Want more? When he was arrested he had the telephone number for Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. The number was to the desk of Taba Investments, one of the best known front companies used by Osama Bin Laden.
So you have a known Iraqi citizen being paid by the Iraqi embassy in Kuala Lumpur, attending a meeting by known al-Qaeda members, some of whom later turn up on one of the planes on 9/11. After 9/11 he is arrested and found to have information on some high level al-Qaeda contacts who have direct links with Iraq. Add all this up and what does it tell ya? Maybe Iraq had links with al-Qaeda after all.
How about the fact that Saddam Hussein supported Syrian religious extremists in their efforts to overthrow Syrian leader Hafez al Assad. In 1982 Assad brutally put down this rebellion at which point the extremists, who had formed the group Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, scattered. Some went to Iraq where they trained with Iraqis at the al Rashdiya camp outside Baghdad.
One of the Syrians who spent time at the camps was Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas who would later become the leader of al-Qaeda’s operations in Spain. He stayed in Iraq until 1986.
Yarkas was captured in Madrid in November 2001, along with papers that included a invitation to a party at the residence of the Iraqi ambassador to Spain. The invitation was addressed to Luis Galan Gonzales (a known al-Qaeda associate who took the muslim name Yusaf Galan.
It also turns out Yarkas was the roommate of lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in Germany (must be a coincidence tho huh?). Since then intelligence departments around the world have found that many leaders of the al-Qaeda cells in Madrid and Hamburg, the cells that executed 9/11, were onetime Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members.
On May 5th, 1998 Iraqi state-run tv reported that vice president Taha yasin Ramadan met with leaders of the SMB in Baghdad.
What does Saddam’s relationship with SMB show us, not only that he was not hostile to Islamic Radicals as suggested by many in the left, but openly welcomed them.
How about the fact that on January 19th, 1991, Ahmed J. Ahmed and Abdul Kadham Saad, two Iraqi students living in the Philippines, attempted to detonate a bomb at a US government building. The consul general at the Iraqi embassy in Manila (Muwufak al-Ani) met with the two bombers at least 5 times in the days leading up to the attack, they even used his car to deliver the bombers to within a few blocks of their target. The bomb was accidently detonated one block short of their target when they went to check it. Saad survived the blast, badly burnt, and at the hospital he directed the nurses to notify the Iraqi embassy and recited the embassy’s number. Muwufak’s business card was found in his pocket.
Think that may point to Saddam actively supporting terrorists?
Many of Saddam’s documents also contain evidence of the link such as this one from the late 90’s:
B. An approval to meet with opposer Osama bin Laden by the Intelligence Services was given by the Honorable Presidency in its letter 138, dated January 11, 1995 (attachment 6). He [bin Laden] was met by the previous general director of M4 in Sudan and in the presence of the Sudanese, Ibrahim al-Sanusi, on February 19, 1995. We discussed with him his organization. He requested the broadcast of the speeches of Sheikh Sulayman al-Uda (who has influence within Saudi Arabia and outside due to being a well known religious and influential personality) and to designate a program for them through the broadcast directed inside Iraq, and to perform joint operations against the foreign forces in the land of Hijaz. (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the details of the meeting in our letter 370 on March 4, 1995, attachment 7.)
D. Due to the latest conditions in Sudan and accusing her harboring of supporting and harboring terrorism it was agreed with the opposition person the Saudi Osama Bin Laden to leave Sudan to another place where he left Khartoom in the month of July 1996 and the information indicate that he is Afghanistan at the present moment. There is stil relation with him through the Sudanese side and we work in the present moment to activate this relation with him through a new channel in light of the current place where he stays.
[...]The approval of the Honorable Presidency was granted to meet with the opposition person Osama Bin Laden by the Apparatus
[...]a discussion occurred about his organization, and he requested the broadcasting of Sheikh Sleiman AL Awada (who has influence in Saudia and outside since he is a known and influential religious personality) and dedicate a program for them through the station directed inside the country and make joint operations against the forces of infidels in the land of Hijaz
How about Saddam’s ten years of harboring of 1993 World Trade Center bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin?
Or the Clinton administration’s top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke’s, assertions that Saddam had offered bin Laden asylum after the embassy bombings, and Clarke’s memo to Sandy Berger advising him not to fly U-2 missions against bin Laden in Afghanistan because he might be tipped off by Pakistani Intelligence? From the 9/11 Commission report:
It would require Pakistani approval, he wrote; and “Pak[istan’s] intel[ligence service] is in bed with” Bin Ladin and would warn him that the United States was getting ready for a bombing campaign: “Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad.”
How about the fact that high-ranking Clinton administration officials insisted to the 9/11 Commission that the 1998 strikes against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory was justified because the factory was a chemical weapons facility tied to Iraq and bin Laden?
Finally, but not last by any long shot, we have the Clinton Justice Department’s indictment against bin Laden
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.
Want more? Scott’s piece tonight will detail much more I’m sure. Or check out my Iraq/Al-Qaeda category, or Scott’s rebuttal to the IG report and his many books on the subject, or Ray Robisons new book (in ebook format at the moment) which details many more connections.
The evidence is staggering, except to our MSM outfits and the lefties in this country who wish to keep their heads in the sand. All in the name of politics.
The truth be damned.
UPDATE
Woops:
A reader has pointed out to me that the indictment against Osama by the Clinton Administration was updated with the state sponsorship segment retracted. I asked the resident expert on this subject Scott Malensek to add his thoughts on this:
Scott Malensek adds:
Yes, it was in fact updated, and the section 4 that described UBL/AQ ties was removed by (drum roll) Patrick Fitzgerald…the same guy who went on a witch hunt for Rove, Cheney, and wound up with Scooter Libby. HOWEVER(!!!!), far more detailed and confirmed descriptions of the IIS (Saddam’s intel service) working directly with Al Queda (including and specifically on the USS Cole attack) was included in the civil case against Iraq re the wtc attacks and more. That case was a success. Additionally, I believe (though I haven’t gotten the docs to confirm it yet) that the recent case in Virginia about the Sudan being partially responsible for the Cole, includes information about how AQ got the Russian RDX to Yemen via Sudan, and that it came from Iraq to Sudan. That case went something like this:
Russian RDX (confirmed by FBI dir Freeh in his book, MY FBI pg 282) was used in USS Cole attack. (unconfirmed)
Reports in Russian media, History Channel, and a few others suggest that this RDX was sold to Iraq, then shipped to Iraq’s only ally in 1990+…Sudan. Sudan then used diplomatic "pouch" clearances to get RDX to Yemen, and in Yemen, Iraqi IIS bombmakers helped develop the largest shaped charge ever built (per History Channel).
They put it on a boat, it sank.
SO, the terrorists got out the explosives, tested some in Afghanistan, came back, rebuilt the bomb, and hit the Cole with it.
I never got the chance to confirm it, but I think some of the captured Iraq docs show Iraqis in Afghanistan purely coincidentally of course at this same moment in 2000.
SO, there’s court stuff saying that AQ/Iraq were in cahoots in several civil trials-often won, but the indictment of UBL was updated to remove the part about working together.
Why?
Same as in my article-no intelligence was being gathered on AQ and no intelligence was being gathered on Iraq from 98-01. This is exactly why I put so much emphasis on the last intel gathered on either (which happens to be in 98). The link it my latest post shows that before Clinton and Bush blew off monitoring AQ and monitoring Iraq, the last thing on either was that they were working directly together. Coincidentally of course, the 911 plot was set in motion within days of those reports…reports confirmed by KSM’s testimony in interrogations as cited by 911 Comm, his testimony to Moussaoui trial, and his gitmo testimony.
Other’s Blogging:
UPDATE
The antiwar crowd is going to have to argue that the information somehow wasn’t dangerous in the hands of Saddam Hussein, but was dangerous posted on the Internet.
I just had to put the above sentence from Jim Geraghty up at the top of this post….read further to get the inside scoop:
END UPDATE
I find it funny the lengths the NYT’s will go to in trying to destroy the Bush Presidency, and then shooting themselves in the foot….I mean WHO are they to question the release of sensitive information?
Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”
Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
You see, the story isn’t that Saddam had documents that showed them how to build a nuclear bomb and also tells us how close they were to building that same bomb….no, the story in their minds is that the Bush government put them on the web.
Will they now complain about all those documents that showed us the ties Saddam has with Al-Qaeda? You can take a gander at a whole bunch of them here.
Even funnier is the fact that the Times believes that if these documents had not been put on the web then Iran would never be able to build a bomb…..it’s not like they are actively trying huh?
A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues said the documents showed “where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures.” The documents, he added, could perhaps help Iran or other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but probably not terrorists or poorly equipped states. He called the papers “a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car.”
Yup, the whole reason Iran is building a bomb is because Bush was so dumb he put up Nuke bomb building documents.
Sigh…..
And finally check out this paragraph in which they try to dismiss all those documents that tie Saddam to Al-Qaeda:
Some intelligence officials feared that individual documents, translated and interpreted by amateurs, would be used out of context to second-guess the intelligence agencies’ view that Mr. Hussein did not have unconventional weapons or substantive ties to Al Qaeda. Reviewing the documents for release would add an unnecessary burden on busy intelligence analysts, they argued.
Guess it all comes down to their meaning of substantive huh? I guess meeting with OBL, and telling the group that they want to help them is not substantive? Setting up terrorist training camps isn’t substantive?
No bias here.
UPDATE
Allah at Hot Air made some excellent points:
On behalf of every conservative in the United States, let me ask one question:
Exactly how far along was Saddam’s nuclear research that Iran might possibly benefit from it?
Update: Okay, two questions:
Why is the IAEA worried about Iran using bombmaking information in their “peaceful nuclear energy program”?
Good questions.
Hey, what do you know…the article answers one of them:
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
But there was absolutely no reason to go into Iraq dammit!
UPDATE
A beautiful post by Jim Geraghty at NRO:
I’m sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB?
What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been “no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat”, for the past three years solid. Now we’re being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.
Let’s go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.
I think the Times editors are counting on this being spun as a “Boy, did Bush screw up” meme; the problem is, to do it, they have to knock down the “there was no threat in Iraq” meme, once and for all. Because obviously, Saddam could have sold this information to anybody, any other state, or any well-funded terrorist group that had publicly pledged to kill millions of Americans and had expressed interest in nuclear arms. You know, like, oh… al-Qaeda.
The New York Times just tore the heart out of the antiwar argument, and they are apparently completely oblivous to it.
And they think Bush is stupid.
More:
The antiwar crowd is going to have to argue that the information somehow wasn’t dangerous in the hands of Saddam Hussein, but was dangerous posted on the Internet.
And the kicker, as I and many have noticed:
I’m still kinda blown away by this paragraph:
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
Is this sentence referring to 1990, before the Persian Gulf War? Or 2002, months before the invasion of Iraq? Because “Iraq is a year away from building a nuclear bomb” was supposed to be a myth, a lie that Bush used to trick us into war.
And yet here is the New York Times, saying that Iraq had a “how to manual” on how to build a nuclear bomb, and could have had a nuke in a year.
Indeed.
UPDATE II 2125hrs PST
Polipundit reminds us what Sen. Feinstein said in 2003:
“The bottom line is that Iraq did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in 2003 when the war began. There simply is no there, there. Saddam Hussein did not have an active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons program. Considering the statements that were being made by the Administration and the intelligence that was presented to Congress which said otherwise, this is quite disturbing and points once again to failures in the analysis, collection and use of intelligence.”
And also remember the recent Plame debacle. Wilson said Iraq never tried to get that Uranium, I mean what would they need with Uranium and the plans to build a bomb? Maybe they were just going to bake a cake…
UPDATE III 11/03/06 0845hrs PST
Wretchard from The Belmont Club posts his usual good stuff:
Posting very sensitive, undoubtedly secret restricted data is treason, isn’t it? And very irresponsible. The NYT should know. I’m rather disappointed in the Times for warning me, this late in the game, of the terrible dangers that lurked in Saddam’s archives. Recipes for unthinkable weapons that could have been given to just anyone, something Saddam surely wouldn’t do unlike the Bush administration which evidently would. They should have warned us sooner, such as during the days when Abu Nidal was in residence in Baghdad, and all those men of good will who are now cutting off the heads of Iraqis by the gross were in charge of those very documents whose shadow menaces the world. But they really didn’t exist then, did they? And even if they did they were in safe hands. Because if they did, then taking down Saddam was a responsible thing to do. But they exist now and releasing those newly existing secrets is a terribly irresponsible thing to do. It was the dream of alchemists to turn lead into gold and they failed. The NYT has succeeded.
I just cannot get my head around the fact that the Times was that blind. Blind enough to not see that what they were printing actually vindicated the US and Bush for going into Iraq. There is no other way to view this. If these documents were SO sensitive then this means Saddam was well on his way to getting that bomb, especially if he acquired that yellowcake.
But the left will deny reality, as they usually do, but continue to shoot themselves in the foot as they shrilly cry “it’s all your fault!”. Rick Moran:
For true irony (rather than blatant stupidity) Booman fills the bill nicely:
[T]he Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has completely f*cked up. You see, Peter Hoekstra just couldn’t believe Saddam Hussein has no WMD and thus posed no threat to the U.S. or his neighbors. So he threw a tantrum and insisted that our intelligence agencies put all the documents we seized in Iraq on the Internet where citizen wingnuts, fluent in Arabic, could discover evidence that our trained professional had missed. How did that work out?
[...]Hoekstra is supposed to be safe, but he is a total idiot that has endangered the safety of all 300 million Americans. There is no way he should be able to survive this, but Kotos doesn’t have much time to get the message out. Give him ten bucks so he can run some quick radio ads and maybe we’ll get a real progressive in a comservative (sic) western Michigan seat.
Leaving aside the laughably amateurish notion that a Dennis Kucinich liberal would have a ghost of a chance to win even if Hoekstra were to keel over and die, note first the title of Mr. Booman’s piece; “Peter Hoekstra Handed Our Enemies the Bomb.”
When has anyone on the left referred to any nation in the world as “our enemy” recently? Certainly not the Yankee Doodle minutemen killing our soldiers in Iraq. Those cuddly mullahs in Iran? The Laughing Goat in Venezuela? The inscrutable Mr. Kim in North Korea?
For the life of me, I can’t recall “enemy” being used by the left in any other context except when referring to the President of the United States. It would be delicious irony indeed if, in their haste to skewer Republicans over this story that the left discovered there are, in fact, nations who wish us ill and would destroy us if they could.
No way! There are no evil men, there are no evil countries, other then Bush. None of them would actually wish us harm, but you know if they did then it’s all our fault anyways because we’re so evil so we deserve it.
Sound’s like the leftist mode of thinking huh?
But the thing they will not be able to deny is the fact that this liberal crappy newspaper printed the following words:
Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
That, my friends, is a smoking gun.
From the Duelfer Report, we already know one of the key findings with respect to a nuclear program was that Saddam Hussein was ready to reconvene a nuclear program once UN sanctions were released. In the period before the war, Iraq was attempting to bribe UNSC nations to remove those exact sanctions and bans.
UPDATE IV 1135hrs PST
Ray Robison has found something that pretty much kills the lefties attempts to disregard the paragraph:
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
That something turns out to be the Senate Prewar Intelligence Review:
The Senate Prewar Intelligence Review Phase II report reveals that Saddam’s Foreign Minster told the US government that Saddam was trying to build a bomb. He said Saddam was trying to get uranium and was irate that his nuclear team was taking too long.
In September 2002, the CIA obtained, from a source, information that allegedly came from a high-level Iraqi official with direct access to Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. The information this source provided was considered so important and so sensitive that the CIA’s Directorate of Operations prepared a highly restricted intelligence report to alert senior policymakers about the reporting. Because of the sensitivity, however, that it was not disseminated to Intelligence Community analysts.
Concerned that something may have been missed in our first Iraq review, the Committee began to request additional information from the Intelligence Community and to question current and former CIA officers who were involved in this issue. As noted above, the Committee has not completed this inquiry, but we have seen the operational documentation pertaining to this case.
We can say that there is not a single document related to this case which indicates that the source said Iraq had no WMD programs. On the contrary, all of the information about this case so far indicates that the information from this source was that Iraq did have WMD programs.
So what did Saddam’s foreign minister tell the US government? From the report: [emphasis mine]
The intelligence report conveyed information from the source attributed to the Iraqi official which said:
• Iraq was not in possession of a nuclear weapon. However, Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon. Saddam, irate that Iraq did not yet have a nuclear weapon because money was no object and because Iraq possessed the scientific know how, had recently called meeting his Nuclear Weapons Committee.
• The Committee told Saddam that a nuclear weapon would be ready within 18-24 months of acquiring the fissile material.
Material like say….yellowcake?
What the Times has done is shown us that indeed Saddam was a HUGE threat. Imagine this man with the bomb.
Michelle Malkin links to Rep. Hoeksra’s statement which is a doozy:
In fact, as of today the DNI had withheld 59 percent of the documents that it had reviewed, and has become more risk-averse over time. If the DNI believes that the documents that were released were in the safe 40 percent, imagine what the 60 percent being withheld must contain.
[...]“These documents also raise several additional issues of interest. First, it is extraordinary that the New York Times now acknowledges that the captured documents demonstrate that ‘[Saddam] Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.’ This only reinforces the value of these documents in understanding the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Only 1 percent of the estimated 120 million pages of captured documents have been reviewed, and we must continue working to promptly understand these materials. If there is concern about Saddam’s nuclear program, there should be simi
