From the Weekly Standard.

WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION ALLEGED

TOP U.S. OFFICIALS linked Iraq and al Qaeda in newspaper op-eds, on talk shows, and in speeches. But the most detailed of their allegations came in an October 7, 2002, letter from CIA director George Tenet to Senate Intelligence chairman Bob Graham and in Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5, 2003, presentation to the United Nations Security Council.

The Tenet letter declassified CIA reporting on weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's links to al Qaeda. Two sentences on WMD garnered most media attention, but the intelligence chief's comments on al Qaeda deserved notice. "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qa'ida going back a decade," Tenet wrote. "Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom [in Afghanistan], we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qa'ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that al Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." In sum, the letter said, "Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military actions."

That this assessment came from the CIA--with its history of institutional skepticism about the links--was significant. CIA analysts had long contended that Saddam Hussein's secular regime would not collaborate with Islamic fundamentalists like bin Laden--even though the Baathists had exploited Islam for years, whenever it suited their purposes. Critics of the administration insist the CIA was "pressured" by an extensive and aggressive intelligence operation set up by the Pentagon to find ties where none existed. But the Pentagon team consisted of two people, at times assisted by two others. Their assignment was not to collect new intelligence but to evaluate existing intelligence gathered by the CIA, with particular attention to any possible Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration. A CIA counterterrorism team was given a similar task, and while many agency analysts remained skeptical about links, the counterterrorism experts came away convinced that there had been cooperation.

For one thing, they cross-referenced old intelligence with new information provided by high-level al Qaeda detainees. Reports of collaboration grew in number and specificity. The case grew stronger. Throughout the summer and fall of 2002, al Qaeda operatives held in Guantanamo corroborated previously sketchy reports of a series of meetings in Khartoum, Sudan, home to al Qaeda during the mid-90s. U.S. officials learned more about the activities of Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi, an al Qaeda WMD specialist sent by bin Laden to seek WMD training, and possibly weapons, from the Iraqi regime. Intelligence specialists also heard increasingly detailed reports about meetings in Baghdad between al Qaeda leaders and Uday Hussein in April 1998, at a birthday celebration for Saddam.

In December 2002, as the Bush administration prepared its public case for war with Iraq, White House officials sifted through reams of these intelligence reports on ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda. Some of the reporting was solid, some circumstantial. The White House identified those elements of the reports it wanted to use publicly and asked the CIA to declassify them. The Agency agreed to declassify some 75 percent of the requested intelligence.

According to administration sources, Colin Powell, in his presentation before the U.N. Security Council, used only 10 or 15 percent of the newly declassified material. He relied heavily on the intelligence in Tenet's letter. Press reports about preparations for the Powell presentation have suggested that Powell refused to use the abundance of CIA documents because he found them thin and unpersuasive. This is only half right. Powell was certainly the most skeptical senior administration official about Iraq-al Qaeda ties. But several administration officials involved in preparing his U.N. presentation say that his reluctance to focus on those links had more to do with the forum for his speech--the Security Council--than with concerns about the reliability of the information.

Powell's presentation sought to do two things: make a compelling case to the world, and to the American public, about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein; and more immediately, win approval for a second U.N. resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force. The second of these objectives, these officials say, required Powell to focus the presentation on Hussein's repeated violations of Security Council resolutions. (Even in the brief portion of Powell's talk focused on Iraq-al Qaeda links, he internationalized the case, pointing out that the bin Laden network had targeted "France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia.") Others in the administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, favored using more of the declassified information about Hussein's support of international terrorism and al Qaeda.

Powell spent just 10 minutes of a 90-minute presentation on the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network." He mentioned intelligence showing that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a known al Qaeda associate injured in Afghanistan, had traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment. Powell linked Zarqawi to Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda cell operating in a Kurdish region "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq." Powell told the Security Council that the United States had approached an unnamed "friendly security service"--Jordan's--"to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi," providing information and details "that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi." Iraq did nothing. Finally, Powell asserted that al Qaeda leaders and senior Iraqi officials had "met at least eight times" since the early 1990s.

These claims, the critics maintain, were "hyped" and "exaggerated."

WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION DIDN'T USE

IF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION had been out to hype the threat from an al Qaeda-Saddam link, it stands to reason that it would have used every shred of incriminating evidence at its disposal. Instead, the administration was restrained in its use of available intelligence. What the Bush administration left out is in some ways as revealing as what it included.

--Iraqi defectors had been saying for years that Saddam's regime trained "non-Iraqi Arab terrorists" at a camp in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. U.N. inspectors had confirmed the camp's existence, including the presence of a Boeing 707. Defectors say the plane was used to train hijackers; the Iraqi regime said it was used in counterterrorism training. Sabah Khodada, a captain in the Iraqi Army, worked at Salman Pak. In October 2001, he told PBS's "Frontline" about what went on there. "Training is majorly on terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism. . . . All this training is directly toward attacking American targets, and American interests."

But the Bush administration said little about Salman Pak as it demonstrated links between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to administration sources, some detainees who provided credible evidence of other links between Iraq and al Qaeda, including training in terrorism and WMD, insist they have no knowledge of Salman Pak. Khodada, the Iraqi army captain, also professed ignorance of whether the trainees were members of al Qaeda. "Nobody came and told us, 'This is al Qaeda people,'" he explained, "but I know there were some Saudis, there were some Afghanis. There were some other people from other countries getting trained."

--On February 13, 2003, the government of the Philippines asked Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, to leave the country. According to telephone records obtained by Philippine intelligence, Hussein had been in frequent contact with two leaders of Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda affiliate in South Asia, immediately before and immediately after they detonated a bomb in Zamboanga City. That attack killed two Filipinos and an American Special Forces soldier and injured several others. Hussein left the Philippines for Iraq after he was "PNG'd"--declared persona non grata--by the Philippine government and has not been heard from since.

According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, an Abu Sayyaf leader who planned the attack bragged on television a month after the bombing that Iraq had contacted him about conducting joint operations. Philippine intelligence officials were initially skeptical of his boasting, but after finding the telephone records they believed him.

--No fewer than five high-ranking Czech officials have publicly confirmed that Mohammed Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker, met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer working at the Iraqi embassy, in Prague five months before the hijacking. Media leaks here and in the Czech Republic have called into question whether Atta was in Prague on the key dates--between April 4 and April 11, 2001. And several high-ranking administration officials are "agnostic" as to whether the meeting took place. Still, the public position of the Czech government to this day is that it did.

That assertion should be seen in the context of Atta's curious stop-off in Prague the previous spring, as he traveled to the United States. Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but did not have a valid visa and was denied entry. He returned to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork, and took a bus back to Prague. One day later, he left for the United States.

Despite the Czech government's confirmation of the Atta-al Ani meeting, the Bush administration dropped it as evidence of an al Qaeda-Iraq connection in September 2002. Far from hyping this episode, administration officials refrained from citing it as the debate over the Iraq war heated up in Congress, in the country, and at the U.N.

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS LEARNED SINCE THE WAR

THE ADMINISTRATION'S CRITICS, including several of the Democratic presidential candidates, have alluded to new "evidence" they say confirms Iraq and al Qaeda had no relationship before the war. They have not shared that evidence.

Even as the critics withhold the basis for their allegations, evidence on the other side is piling up. Ansar al-Islam--the al Qaeda cell formed in June 2001 that operated out of northern Iraq before the war, notably attacking Kurdish enemies of Saddam--has stepped up its activities elsewhere in the country. In some cases, say national security officials, Ansar is joining with remnants of Saddam's regime to attack Americans and nongovernmental organizations working in Iraq. There is some reporting, unconfirmed at this point, that the recent bombing of the U.N. headquarters was the result of a joint operation between Baathists and Ansar al-Islam.

And there are reports of more direct links between the Iraqi regime and bin Laden. Farouk Hijazi, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and Saddam's longtime outreach agent to Islamic fundamentalists, has been captured. In his initial interrogations, Hijazi admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994. According to administration officials familiar with his questioning, he has subsequently admitted additional contacts, including a meeting in late 1997. Hijazi continues to deny that he met with bin Laden on December 21, 1998, to offer the al Qaeda leader safe haven in Iraq. U.S. officials don't believe his denial.

For one thing, the meeting was reported in the press at the time. It also fits a pattern of contacts surrounding Operation Desert Fox, the series of missile strikes the Clinton administration launched at Iraq beginning December 16, 1998. The bombing ended 70 hours later, on December 19, 1998. Administration officials now believe Hijazi left for Afghanistan as the bombing ended and met with bin Laden two days later.

Earlier that year, at another point of increased tension between the United States and Iraq, Hussein sought to step up contacts with al Qaeda. On February 18, 1998, after the Iraqis repeatedly refused to permit U.N. weapons inspectors into sensitive sites, President Bill Clinton went to the Pentagon and delivered a hawkish speech about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and his links to "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals." Said Clinton: "We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. . . . They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."

The following day, February 19, 1998, according to documents unearthed in Baghdad after the recent war by journalists Mitch Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo detailing upcoming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered with Liquid Paper. The memo laid out a plan to step up contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. The Mukhabarat, one of Saddam's security forces, agreed to pay for "all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might be "a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden."

I emailed Potter, a Jerusalem-based correspondent for the Toronto Star, about his findings last month. He was circumspect about the meaning of the document. "So did we find the tip of the iceberg, or the whole iceberg? Did bin Laden and Saddam agree to disagree and that was the end of it? I still don't know." Still, he wrote, "I have no doubt that what we found is the real thing. We plucked it out of a building that had been J-DAMed and was three-quarters gone. Beyond the pale to think that the CIA or someone else planted false evidence in such a dangerous location, where only lunatics would bother to tread. And then to cover over the incriminating name Osama bin Laden with Liquid Paper, so that only the most stubborn and dogged of translators would fluke into spotting it?"

Four days after that memo was written, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued a famous fatwa about the plight of Iraq. Published that day in al Quds al-Arabi, it reads in part:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. . . . The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million . . . despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

The Americans, bin Laden says, are working on behalf of Israel.

The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

Bin Laden urges his followers to act. "The ruling to kill all Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." It was around this time, U.S. officials say, that Hussein paid the $300,000 to bin Laden's deputy, Zawahiri.

ACCORDING TO U.S. officials, soldiers in Iraq have discovered additional documentary evidence like the memo Potter found. This despite the fact that there is no team on the ground assigned to track down these contacts--no equivalent to the Iraq Survey Group looking for evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Interviews with detained senior Iraqi intelligence officials are rounding out the picture.

The Bush administration has thus far chosen to keep the results of its postwar findings to itself; much of the information presented here comes from public sources. The administration, spooked by the media feeding frenzy surrounding yellowcake from Niger, is exercising extreme caution in rolling out the growing evidence of collaboration between al Qaeda and Baathist Iraq. As the critics continue their assault on a prewar "pattern of deception," the administration remains silent.

This impulse is understandable. It is also dangerous. Some administration officials argue privately that the case for linkage is so devastating that when they eventually unveil it, the critics will be embarrassed and their arguments will collapse. But to rely on this assumption is to run a terrible risk. Already, the absence of linkage is the conventional wisdom in many quarters. Once "everybody knows" that Saddam and bin Laden had nothing to do with each other, it becomes extremely difficult for any release of information by the U.S. government to change people's minds.

Of course, all of these people are lying, or mistaken.

Newpaper articles from 1999, back when being anti-Iraq was fashionable, since the Democrats were running things.

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The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), December 28, 1999.

Iraq tempts bin Laden to attack West
Exclusive. By: Ian Bruce, Geopolitics Editor.

THE world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, has been offered sanctuary in Iraq if his worldwide terrorist network succeeds in carrying out a campaign of high-profile attacks on the West ...

Now we are also facing the prospect of an unholy alliance between bin Laden and Saddam. The implications are terrifying.

"We might be looking at the most wanted man on the FBI's target list gaining access to chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons courtesy of Iraq's clandestine research programmes."

The U.S. intelligence community has been squeezing bin Laden's finances steadily for several years. His personal fortune of anything up to £500m has been whittled down to single figures ...

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U.S. Newswire, December 23, 1999.

Terrorism Expert Reveals Why Osama bin Laden has Declared War On America; Available for Comment in Light of Predicted Attacks.

... (author Yossef) Bodansky also reveals the relationship between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and how the U.S. bombing of Iraq is "strengthening the hands of militant Islamists eager to translate their rage into violence and terrorism." ....

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The Observer. December 19, 1999.

Sanctions reviewed in West as Saddam wields sword of Islam

The Iraqi dictator has rejected a UN deal to lift sanctions. The Western blockade, far from toppling the regime, has bolstered it. He's ditched the sunglasses and taken up the Koran to harness the fervour of fundamentalists.

By: Jason Burke, in Baghdad

... This time last year the U.S. claimed that another delegation had met Osama bin Laden, the alleged terrorist mastermind and tried to woo him to Iraq.

Senior officials claim that the Islamisation programme is an attempt to defuse the threat of Islamic militancy rather than encourage it ...

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United Press International. November 3, 1999, Wednesday, BC cycle.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government has tried to prevent accused terror suspect Osama bin Laden from fleeing Afghanistan to either Iraq or Chechnya, Michael Sheehan, head of counter-terrorism at the State Department, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee ...

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Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio). October 31, 1999. Sunday 1 STAR EDITION.

BIN LADEN SPOTTED AFTER OFFER TO LEAVE
By: From Beacon Journal wire services

DATELINE: JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN:

... The Taliban has since made it known through official channels that the likely destination is Iraq.

A Clinton administration official said bin Laden's request "falls far short" of the UN resolution that the Taliban deliver him for trial....

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The Kansas City Star. March 2, 1999, Tuesday.

International terrorism, a conflict without boundaries

By Rich Hood

... He (bin Laden) has a private fortune ranging from $250 million to $500 million and is said to be cultivating a new alliance with Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who has biological and chemical weapons bin Laden would not hesitate to use. An alliance between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could be deadly. Both men are united in their hatred for the United States and any country friendly to the United States....

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Los Angeles Times. February 23, 1999, Tuesday, Home Edition.
SECTION: Metro; Part B; Page 6; Letters Desk.
HEADLINE: OSAMA BIN LADEN

Where is Osama bin Laden (Feb. 14)? That should be the U.S.'s main priority. If as rumored he and Saddam Hussein are joining forces, it could pose a threat making Hitler and Mussolini seem like a sideshow....

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National Public Radio (NPR)
MORNING EDITION (10:00 AM on ET)
February 18, 1999.

THOUGH AFGHANISTAN HAS PROVIDED OSAMA BIN LADEN WITH SANCTUARY, IT IS UNCLEAR WHERE HE IS NOW.
ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS
REPORTERS: MIKE SHUSTER

... There have also been reports in recent months that bin Laden might have been considering moving his operations to Iraq. Intelligence agencies in several nations are looking into that. According to Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counterterrorism operations, a senior Iraqi intelligence official, Farouk Hijazi(ph), sought out bin Laden in December and invited him to come to Iraq.

Mr. VINCENT CANNISTRARO (Former Chief of CIA Counterterrorism Operations): Farouk Hijazi, who was the Iraqi ambassador in Turkey ... known through sources in Afghanistan, members of Osama's entourage let it be known that the meeting had taken place.

SHUSTER: Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when, according to one U.S. government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There is a wide gap between bin Laden's fundamentalism and Saddam Hussein's secular dictatorship. But some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony....

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Agence France Presse. February 17, 1999.

Saddam plans to use bin Laden against Kuwait, Saudi: opposition

Iraq's President Saddam Hussein plans to use alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden's network to carry out his threats against Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, an Iraqi opposition figure charged on Wednesday.
"If the ... Jaber, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said Iraq had "offered to shelter bin Laden under the precondition that he carry out strikes on targets in neighbouring countries."

... Islamic fundamentalist bin Laden, who has gone missing from his base in Afghanistan, would never seek refuge in secular Iraq on ideological grounds. "I think bin Laden would keep quiet or fight to the death rather than seek asylum in Iraq," the London-based dissident, who asked not to be named, told AFP last week.....

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Deutsche Presse-Agentur. February 17, 1999, Wednesday, BC Cycle

Opposition group says bin Laden in Iraq

DATELINE: Kuwait City

An Iraqi opposition group claimed in a published report Wednesday that Islamic militant Osama bin Laden is in Iraq from where he plans to launch a campaign of terrorism against Baghdad's Gulf neighbours.

The claim was made by Bayan Jabor, spokesman for the Teheran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Bin Laden "recently settled in Iraq at the invitation of Saddam Hussein in exchange for directing strikes against targets in neighbouring countries," Jabor told the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai al- Aam ... Taleban leaders in Afghanistan, where he had been living, said they lost track of him. Media reports have speculated he sought refuge in Chechnya, Somalia, Iraq, or with a non-Taliban group in Afghanistan.

Jabor, who was interviewed in Damascus, Syria, said Iraq began extending invitations to bin Laden six months ago, shortly after the United States bombed his suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan after linking him with the August 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and in Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania.

The United States indicted Bin Laden for the embassy bombings and has offered a five million dollar reward for information leading to his capture. Bin Laden's disappearance has coincided with stepped up threats by Iraq against neighbours Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey for allowing the United States and Britain to use their air bases to carry out air patrols over two "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq ....

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Associated Press Worldstream. February 14, 1999.

Taliban leader says whereabouts of bin Laden unknown

... Analysts say bin Laden's options for asylum are limited.

Iraq was considered a possible destination because bin Laden had received an invitation from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein last month. And Somalia was a third possible destination because of its anarchy and violent anti-U.S. history ....

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San Jose Mercury News (California). February 14, 1999 Sunday MORNING FINAL EDITION

U.S. WORRIED ABOUT IRAQI, BIN LADEN TIES TERRORIST COULD GAIN EVEN
DEADLIER WEAPONS

U.S. intelligence officials are worried that a burgeoning alliance between terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could make the fugitive Saudi's loose-knit organization much more dangerous ...

In addition, the officials said, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal is now in Iraq, as is a renowned Palestinian bomb designer, and both could make their expertise available to bin Laden.

"It's clear the Iraqis would like to have bin Laden in Iraq," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counterterrorism operations at the Central Intelligence Agency ...

Saddam has even offered asylum to bin Laden, who has expressed support for Iraq.

... (in) late December, when bin Laden met a senior Iraqi intelligence official near Qandahar, Afghanistan, there has been increasing evidence that bin Laden and Iraq may have begun cooperating in planning attacks against American and British targets around the world.

Bin Laden, who strikes in the name of Islam, and Saddam, one of the most secular rulers in the Arab world, have little in common except their hatred of the United States ...

More worrisome, the American officials said, are indications that there may be contacts between bin Laden's organization and Iraq's Special Security Organization (SSO), run by Saddam's son Qusay. Both the SSO and the Mukhabarat were involved in a failed 1993 plot to assassinate former President George Bush ...

"The idea that the same people who are hiding Saddam's biological weapons may be meeting with Osama bin Laden is not a happy one," said one American official....

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Associated Press Worldstream. February 13, 1999; Saturday 14:32 Eastern Time

Bin Laden said to have left Afghanistan, whereabouts unknown

... It is very unlikely bin Laden could remain in Afghanistan without Taliban officials knowing his whereabouts.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who has expressed support for Iraq.

U.S. officials believe bin Laden masterminded the Aug. 7 bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania ...

Bin Laden urged devout Muslims to attack U.S. and British interests in retaliation for their joint assault on Iraq.

U.S. officials demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden, who has been indicted in a U.S. court on murder charges in connection with the bombings. But the Taliban had refused.

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The Bulletin's Frontrunner. January 4, 1999, Monday.

Defiant Saddam Looks To Provoke U.S.

... Time also reported, "For now, the White House will respond to each provocation by counterattacking the offending battery."

Saddam Reaching Out To bin Laden.

Newsweek (1/11, Contreras) reported, "U.S. sources say (Saddam) is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden." ...

(Osama bin Laden was) calling for all-out war on Americans, using as his main pretext Washington's role in bombing and boycotting Iraq." In a Newsweek interview, bin Laden said that "'any American who pays taxes to his government," is a legitimate target." Newsweek reported, "The idea of an alliance between Iraq and bin Laden is alarming to the West," although "Saddam may think he's too good for such an association." However, "Now that the United States has made his removal from office a national objective....

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The White House Bulletin. Copyright 1999. Bulletin Broadfaxing Network, Inc.

In a Newsweek interview, bin Laden said that "'any American who pays taxes to his government," is a legitimate target." Newsweek reported, "The idea of an alliance between Iraq and bin Laden is alarming to the West," although "Saddam may think he's too good for such an association." However, "Now that the United States has made his removal from office a national objective, he....

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United Press International. January 3, 1999, Sunday, BC cycle.

UPI Focus: Bin Laden 'instigated' embassy bombings

... (The Taliban) government in Afghanistan says the Saudi does not have the money to finance projects in the country. Newsweek also reported that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been making new overtures to bin Laden in an attempt to rebuild his intelligence network and to create his own terror network....

Of course, all these people were lying, or mistaken.

A discussion of other terror links can be found here.

For his part, Sadaam has also not been above forging alliances with a range of partners when he has considered it expedient to do so. Terrorist organization's that have received support or sanctuary in Iraq include the Palestinian group May 15 Organization, the Palestinian Liberation Front, and the Abu Nidal Organization. Saddam's relationship to with this last group (which Iraq helped found) reveals the mercenary nature with which he views such alliances. Having expelled the organization in 1983 in an attempt to foster good relations with the West during the Iran-Iraq war, Sadaam later permitted its leader Abu Nidal to reside to Baghdad until August 2002 when his house there was raided by Iraqi security forces. A month later Nidal's death was reported. Iraq claimed he shot himself, amid suspicions that the Iraqi security services were responsible, and the killing an attempt to show that Iraq was severing its links with terrorism.

Saddam has also been linked with the Kurdish Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK) - formerly known as the Turkish Workers Party (PKK), an anti-Turkish group that has operated from bases in northern Iraq with the blessing and support of Baghdad. The Iranian-opposed Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) has also been tied to Sadaam's regime. Indeed, the MEK has become a virtual tool of Iraqi policy against Tehran, such is the degree of control and influence exerted over the organization by Baghdad.

Despite his links with such groups, Sadaam has tended to rely on his own security services for his terrorist operations — often with quite clumsy results. For instance, during the last Gulf War their use of sequentially-numbered passports made Iraqi intelligence agents easy to detect once the first few had been detained. During the same period, the would-be-bombers of an American interest in the Philippines were dropped off at their target by an Iraqi embassy car. On that occasion, the bomb exploded prematurely, killing one of the Iraqi agents, while the other was discovered to be carrying the business card of a (subsequently expelled) Iraqi diplomat. While such ineptness should not be automatically assumed should Iraq again resort to terrorist attacks abroad in the face of any American attack, unless they have significantly enhanced their capabilities Iraq's intelligence services would be hard-pressed to successfully carry out such operations amid the heightened security of America's ongoing counter-terrorist effort.

According to a Feb. 26 report in the Christian Science Monitor, an Iraqi defector has told American intelligence officials that Baghdad recently planned to send agents to Indonesia, Amman and Jordan. The defector also spoke of Iraqi schemes to carry out suicide attacks on U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf. Such attacks, while they cannot be ruled out, seem unlikely to be carried out by Iraq's security services. As a secular regime that rules by fear, Sadaam's would find it difficult to command either the loyalty or religious fervor to inspire such sacrifice. Admittedly, he could hold family members hostages as a means of compelling suicide bombers to carry out such missions, but this strategy would not guarantee the success of these operations.

It seems much more probable that Baghdad would seek to carry out terrorism by proxy, enlisting the help of Islamic militants with whom he shares a common American enemy. According to the Christian Science Monitor report, the Philippines government claims attempts to forge such alliances have already begun. Manila expelled an Iraqi diplomat last month, saying he was in contact with Abu Sayyaf — a Filipino Islamic terrorist organization that has been linked to al Qaeda. The diplomat was tied to Abu Sayyaf after a cell-phone activated bomb planted by the organization failed to explode. The phone that was to have detonated the device was found to have been used to call the diplomat as well as Abu Sayyaf leaders — damning, if circumstantial evidence.

Of course, all these people are lying, or mistaken.

I'd love to know what level of evidence is required for showing that Saddam was linked to terrorism. Examples would be nice.

And please bookmark this so I don't have to do this again.