Thursday, June 30, 2005
Iraq and Al Qaeda
Many on the left seem to hold as an article of faith that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had no connection with Al Qaeda. For them the War in Iraq has no relation to 11 September. How dare the President mention 11 September in a speach regarding the War in Iraq. The New York Times, Senator Harry Reid and David Gergen all find such mention extremely offensive.
Andrew C. McCarthy offers an excelent presentation in the National Review of the evidence connecting Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda. He challenges those who insist on no contact between Iraq and Al Qaeda to explain the many contacts between the two that he sets out.
For example, Mr. McCarthy asks the "no contact" crowd to explain
Ahmed Hikmat Shakir — the Iraqi Intelligence operative who facilitated a 9/11 hijacker into Malaysia and was in attendance at the Kuala Lampur meeting with two of the hijackers, and other conspirators, at what is roundly acknowledged to be the initial 9/11 planning session in January 2000? Who was arrested after the 9/11 attacks in possession of contact information for several known terrorists? Who managed to make his way out of Jordanian custody over our objections after the 9/11 attacks because of special pleading by Saddam’s regime?
He also points to "Saddam's intelligence agency's efforts to recruit jihadists to bomb Radio Free Europe in Prague in the late 1990's." In addition, he cites intelligence not from the period of the Bush presidency but from President Bill Clinton:
The continued insistence of high-ranking Clinton administration officials to the 9/11 Commission that the 1998 retaliatory strikes (after the embassy bombings) against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory were justified because the factory was a chemical weapons hub tied to Iraq and bin Laden?Top Clinton administration counterterrorism official Richard Clarke’s assertions, based on intelligence
reports in 1999, that Saddam had offered bin Laden asylum after the embassy bombings, and Clarke’s memo to then-National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, advising him not to fly U-2 missions against bin Laden in Afghanistan because he might be tipped off by Pakistani Intelligence, and “[a]rmed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad”? (See 9/11 Commission Final Report, p. 134 & n.135.)
Clearly, the "no contact" crowd needs to explain how they can maintain their faith in light of the reality shown by these very real contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. They seem to think that they can stonewall reality and speak from positions of authority as the "Newspaper of Record," the Minority Leader and Insider to Presidents of both parties.
Sorry, but that no longer suffices. You can no longer ignore substantial evidence and expect the rest of the country to blindly accept your arguments on faith alone.
If our intelligence operations learned the many points raised by Mr. McCarthy, how many other contacts occurred without our knowledge?
# posted by Thomas A. Becket : 8:12 AM
