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Iraq Was, And Is, Part Of The War On Terror
By Greg Reeson
March 24, 2008
You've heard them say it over and over again. Certain congressional leaders and presidential candidates repeating the mantra for audiences around the country: "Iraq is not part of the war on terror." "The real terrorists are in Afghanistan." "By going into Iraq, we took our eye off the ball." But a new report, released last week from the Institute for Defense Analyses, reveals that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a leading state sponsor of regional and global terrorism, and that Saddam, at least indirectly, supported al Qaeda through associated terrorist groups.
After the report was released, most news organizations and some political pundits seized on one sentence from the report's executive summary: "This study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e. direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda." There are two important things to keep in mind, though. The first is that the war on terror goes far beyond bin Laden's al Qaeda and Afghanistan. It is, in fact, a war on Islamic radicalism wherever it may exist in the world. Al Qaeda is but one group that uses terrorist tactics in the name of Islam, and al Qaeda is certainly not our only enemy. The second thing to keep in mind is that the lack of a "smoking gun" does not mean there was no association at all between al Qaeda and Saddam's Iraq. Going beyond a simple reading of the executive summary and actually analyzing the contents of the report provides a different picture than that portrayed by the news media headlines.
The study, which was commissioned by the military's Joint Forces Command, reviewed some 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after a U.S.-led coalition removed Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, finding multiple sources of evidence that indicated Saddam's support for terrorism. Some of the groups listed as having received support from Iraq include Fatah-Revolutionary Council (the group of international terrorist Abu Nidal), Palestine Liberation Front, Force 17, Renewal and Jihad Organization, The Palestinian abd al-Bari al-Duwaik, Islamic Jihad Organization (Egyptian Islamic Jihad), Islamic Ulama Group, The Afghani Islamic Party, and Jam'iyat Ulama Pakistan.
The report cites a captured memorandum that details an agreement with Islamic terrorists to conduct operations against the Egyptian government, an ally of the United States, during Operation Desert Storm, with financial support to continue to the Islamists after the Gulf War was over. Then there is the document that tells us the top ten graduates of each Fedayeen Saddam class in 1999 were to be sent to London so as to be in position to conduct operations throughout Europe. Yet another memorandum concerning the establishment of a terrorist training camp in Sudan says, according to the study, "...Iraq would send one administrative officer to establish and oversee the camp and that the following equipment would be provided initially: 15,000 Kalashnikov 7.62mm rifles, 15,000 [SKS] rifles, 5,000 Browning pistols, 5,000 Markarov pistols...." Let's not forget that Osama bin Laden was active in Sudan in the 1990s.
A memorandum from Saddam's presidential secretary to the Revolutionary Council in 1993, a time when bin Laden claims his henchmen were attacking U.S. forces in Mogadishu, Somalia, details Saddam's interest in establishing "...a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia." Then there's an article by Stephen Hayes in this week's issue of The Weekly Standard that cites other captured Iraqi documents, since verified by the U.S. government, that were not included in the study. One of these documents, Hayes writes, "...describes Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset 'in good contact' with Saddam's intelligence assets in Syria. Another, says Hayes, was examined by a Pentagon and intelligence working group that concluded the document not only corroborated, but expanded on, other sources of evidence detailing contact between Saddam's Iraq and bin Laden's al Qaeda.
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