Declassified Truth
Investor's Business Daily
Posted 3/16/2006
The War On Terror: The government is finally getting around to unloading some of Saddam Hussein's secret documents. A look at just a few pages already leads to some blockbuster revelations.
In the early stages of the war that began three years ago, the U.S. captured thousands of documents from Saddam and his spy agency, the Mukhabarat. It's been widely thought the documents could shed light on why Saddam behaved as he did and how much of a threat his evil regime represented.
Yet, until this week, the documents lay molding in boxes in a government warehouse. Now the first batch is out, and though few in number, they're loaded with information.
Among the enduring myths of those who oppose the war is that Saddam, though murderous when it came to his own people, had no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorist designs outside his own country. Both claims now lie in tatters.
As we've reported several times, a number of former top military officials in Saddam's regime have come forward to admit that, yes, Saddam had WMD, hid them and shipped them out of the country so they couldn't be detected. And he had plans to make more.
Now come more revelations that leave little doubt about Saddam's terrorist intentions. Most intriguing from a document dump Wednesday night is a manual for Saddam's spy service, innocuously listed as CMPC-2003-006430. It makes for interesting reading.
Here, for instance, are the marching orders for Directorate 8, the Mukhabarat's "Technical Affairs" department:
"The Eight Directorate is responsible for development of
materials needed for covert offensive operations. It
contains advanced laboratories for testing and production
of weapons, poisons and explosives."
It goes on. Directorate 9, we discover,
"is one of the most important directorates in the
Mukhabarat. Most of its work is outside Iraq in
coordination with other directorates, focusing on
operations of sabotage and assassination."
The document also discusses the Mukhabarat's Office 16, set up to train "agents for clandestine operations abroad." The document helpfully adds that "special six-week courses in the use of of terror techniques are provided at a camp in Radwaniyhah."
Got that? Terror techniques.
Even as the media studiously avoid these new documents — just as they avoided 500 hours of Saddam's personal tapes showing his scheming on WMD — it's clear the U.S. did the right thing in invading Iraq and taking out a formative terrorist threat.
Saddam had close ties to al-Qaida. That's not just our opinion, but also that of the 9-11 Commission Report that so many in the media have selectively cited to bolster the case against the war.
As Chairman Thomas Kean said the day the report was released: "There was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida."
As such, we were heartened to see that President Bush on Thursday reaffirmed the U.S. will continue to fight a pre-emptive war on terror — accompanied by news that the U.S. had launched Operation Swarmer, its largest anti-insurgent offensive since 2003.
Polls be damned — that's how a war is fought.
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