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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jttmab who wrote (188517)	6/6/2006 9:37:05 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 281500

I've seen your common sense and logic at work: Iraq under Saddam was full of jihadists that Saddam had to appease. So where did they all come from? Are you trying to tell me that thousands of people suddenly converted from secular Ba'thism into Takfirist "infidel slayers" overnight? Explain to me why Abu Ayman, one VERY BAD DUDE, and former aide to the COS of Iraqi Intelligence under Saddam's regime, is suddenly the head of the "Secret Islamic Army"?? defenselink.mil One would think that people in such high positions within Saddam's regime would have been vetted as secular Ba'thists, but this guy became one of Al Qai'da lieutenants. One would also think that he wouldn't be hanging out with a Syrian-born Jihadist, Abu Qutaba, who was also captured. Saad Ali Firas was one of Zarqawi's closest associates and was killed in a shootout last fall. He was also an IIS officer (although this news release doesn't denote this): defenselink.mil Why was the IIS coordinating meetings with Ayman Zawahiri and other Al Qai'da members in the '90s? weeklystandard.com Why was the Iraqi Air Force, in a Top Secret memo from March, 2001, recruiting pilots for a suicide mission?? Top secret memoranda sent to Al-Kadisseiya Military branch No.2205 dated 04/03/2001 and to the Headquarters of Zee karr military branch No. 246 dated: 08/03/2001 that we were informed by another memo from Ali Unit military branch No. 154 dated: 10/03/2001. We urge you to inform the above mentioned unit of the names of people wishing to volunteer for suicide action to liberate Palestine and strike American interests according to the following below for your information and to let us know. captainsquartersblog.com Why was Saddam hosting meetings of Jihadists in Baghdad: Another common assertion used to discredit speculation about Saddam and radical Islamic groups was the argument that “Saddam’s regime is essentially secular and doesn’t trust the Islamists and they don’t trust him.” Well, sir, “there may not be great reserves of trust, but active and extensive cooperation [with radical Muslim groups] dates back to 1990,” says my half-forgotten note to the editors. Saddam “had longstanding ties to the Muslim Brothers of Syria, with whom he’d intrigued for years to undermine his ideological rival in Damascus. And when the shooting started over Baghdad in 1991, his most vocal support came from the ideologues of Islamic revolution, including [those ruling] Sudan, which never failed to express its solidarity with Saddam’s cause. As a nice little touch, he also put the phrase ‘Allah akbar,’ God is great, on the supposedly secular Iraqi flag.” “After the war, Saddam continued to gather around him the flotsam and jetsam of the Islamic tide,” the memo continued. “In 1993 I went to a jihad conference in Baghdad attended by Islamic radicals who hailed ‘from Jakarta to Dakar,’ as they liked to say. We’re talking Chechens and Moroccans, Filipinos and Algerians—all sorts. There were so many of them, I couldn’t even get a room at the Rashid Hotel where they were staying.” You continue to cite pre-war opinion that Saddam had nothing to do with the Islamists, but the post-war information says otherwise. The reason for this disparity of opinion is that PRE-WAR intelligence collection against Iraq was ABYSMAL. We just didn't have a lot of credible source reporting about Saddam's interactions, and certainly very little information derived from US intelligence collection. But we have the IIS files now (or a large part of them) as well as CURRENT evidence of the ties between the IIS and Al Qai'da and other Islamist groups. Were Saddam strictly a secular dictator, this would seem very unlikely. But after Desert Storm, Saddam was forced to seek new avenues of support and the means to strike out at the US, and he began turning to the Islamists for this capability. But of course, those ties had to be kept extremely secret, lest the US catch wind of it and use it as a pretext for overthrowing him. Now its your turn to present your evidence to counter my documented links. Hawk

To: jttmab who wrote (188517)	6/6/2006 9:59:36 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator who also served as a 9/11 Commissioner, recently told Eli Lake of the New York Sun that the Iraqi Intelligence documents offer "a very significant set of facts." While cautioning that the documents don't tie Saddam to 9/11, Kerrey added that they do tie Saddam to "a circle that meant to damage the United States."...... .....Bergen ends his piece by reminding us that bin Laden offered to fight against Saddam Hussein's Iraq before the first Gulf War, noting that "months before the Kuwait invasion in 1990 [bin Laden] angrily warned colleagues that Iraq had designs on Persian Gulf states." This is true, and suggests that the on-again, off-again relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda was based on mutual exploitation rather than mutual admiration. But Bergen fails to acknowledge that another captured Iraqi document, this one from 1992 and authenticated by the Defense Intelligence Agency, reveals that the Iraqis considered Osama bin Laden an Iraqi Intelligence asset who had good relations with the Iraqi intelligence station in Damascus, Syria. findarticles.com