Re: SO you think that the recent message is not from Bin Ladin but from someone else who is trying to make a link between Bin Ladin and Saddam? LOL.................nah, couldn't be!!
Indeed, there's no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda... How come the US doesn't consult with its staunch, faithful, Israeli ally before blurting out dubious "evidences" of an Iraq-Bin Laden connection?!? STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH:
Thursday, February 13, 2003 Adar I 11, 5763
Terror in the shadows
Saddam Hussein has refrained from using terror organizations to attain his goals, which runs counter to U.S. claims about Iraq's indirect links to Osama bin Laden
By Yossi Melman
Ahmad Fadheel Nazal Abu Mussab Zarqawi, a 36-year-old Palestinian with an amputated leg, and Mullah Krekar, a preacher in an Oslo mosque, says American intelligence, are the link connecting Saddam Hussein and his government to Al-Qaida and international Jihad terror.
In his speech last week before the United Nations Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell named Zarqawi and his Al-Ansar Al-Islam organization, whose spiritual leader is Mullah Krekar. However, Powell presented mainly circumstantial evidence: Zarqawi was given medical treatment in Baghdad and the Al-Ansar organization runs a training camp in northern Iraq.
On Monday, Powell reiterated his accusations before a congressional committee. But intelligence sources in Israel and Europe, and independent experts, cast considerable doubt on the American claim. They says the links between Iraq and the terror networks, if they exist, are not as straightforward as Powell would like us to believe. Their opinion, in part, reflects careful scrutiny of Saddam Hussein's regime relations with terrorist organizations.
Like other Arab leaders, Saddam Hussein has been involved in Palestinian politics since he took power more than 30 years ago. His intelligence organizations gave asylum to three Palestinian terror organizations in the 1970s. Two were "May 15," led by Abu Ibrahim, which specialized in blowing up airplanes in the air and has been defunct since the 1980, and Mohammed Abu Abbas' Palestinian Liberation Front, which enjoyed a special relationship with the Iraqi Baath regime. The PLF was responsible for the hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro in 1985 and the murder of an elderly, wheelchair-bound Jewish-American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, whom they tossed overboard. Abu Abbas has since joined forces with the PLO. He expressed his support for Arafat's policies and the Oslo agreements and returned to the territories with Israel's permission. Later, he returned to Baghdad, where he once again was given sanctuary.
But the most important link between Saddam and terror may be seen in his connection with the Fatah Revolutionary Council, the organization led by Sabri Al-Banna, better known as Abu Nidal. Since Abu Nidal, the PLO and Fatah representative in Baghdad, challenged Yasser Arafat's authority in 1973 and established an independent organization with the help of the Iraqi intelligence, he and Saddam have maintained a symbiotic relationship. Iraq supplied Abu Nidal with training camps, arms, logistical assistance and documentation, and enabled the organization to attack the PLO and Jewish and Israeli targets. In return, Abu Nidal served as a subcontractor for Iraqi intelligence and carried out actions against the Syrian regime.
Considerable hostility existed between Syria and Iraq, both of which are controlled by the Baath movement, for ideological and other reasons. Abu Nidal's gunmen carried out a series of terror actions against the Syrians on behalf of Saddam. They attacked the Semiramis Hotel in Damascus and the Syrian embassies in Italy and Pakistan, but failed in two attempts to assassinate the Syrian foreign minister, Abed Al-Halim Haddam, who is currently the vice president of the republic.
However, the involvement of Iraq in a plot of this type is more the exception to the rule than a typical pattern characterizing the country in the past 25 years. Unlike Iran and Libya, Iraq has not made a habit of using terror organizations. Abu Nidal continued to be active, especially against Israel and Israeli targets. He later joined up with the Syrian regime, then Libya, and his links with Iraq weakened. Since the second half of the 1970s, Iraq has ceased to use him to attain direct goals. Although he was permitted to return to Baghdad in 1988, Abu Nidal, old and ill, was irrelevant and later viewed as an encumbrance. Last summer, he was found shot dead in the Iraqi capital; the government claimed he had committed suicide. But the four bullets in his head testified otherwise. Saddam apparently ordered his long-time ally killed.
"Iraq was always very cautious in his relations with terrorist organizations," says Dr. Reuven Paz, a former researcher for the Shin Bet and currently the director of a research project on the radical Islamic movements at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. "To provide asylum as well as material, logistic and political support for the organizations is one thing and to use them to carry out terror attacks and assassinations is quite another."
When Iraq wants to assassinate an enemy of the regime outside of Iraq, says Paz, it prefers to use its own security and intelligence apparatus. Iran, on the other hand, did not hesitate to use Lebanese terrorist organizations, such as that of Imad Mughniya, which carried out missions for Iran.
That is why intelligence experts are finding it difficult to believe that now of all times, with Saddam Hussein at the eye of the storm, he would destroy a modus operandi that he is familiar with and commit himself to the groups led by Zarqawi and Krekar. This is especially so, because in view of Zarqawi's and Krekar's background, it is difficult to imagine that they would support the Iraqi regime.
Zarqawi, who was born in the Zarqa in Jordan, is of Palestinian descent. In his youth, he went to Afghanistan, where he joined the struggle against the Soviet occupation there in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When he returned to Jordan, he established radical Muslim cells for Al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. In 1999, a Jordanian court found him guilty of attempting to orchestrate terror attacks against American, Western and Israeli tourists coming to Jordan for the Millennium.
Zarqawi managed to escape and he returned to Afghanistan, where he trained in manufacturing and assembling chemical and biological explosives. He was later placed in charge of a training camp near the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, the main training ground for Jordanian and Palestinian volunteers.
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haaretz.co.il |
