For all you lefties who can’t connect the dots on your own, Greg Sheridan from The Australian does it for you today in his article titled “Saddam, the terrorist’s friend”:
Newly published Iraqi documents reveal just how extensive Saddam’s involvement with international terrorism was. The summary of these documents, published under the heading Saddam and Terrorism, has been reported across the world and read by almost no one.Its first paragraph reads: “The Iraqi Perspectives Project review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism. Despite their incompatible long-term goals, many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the US.
“At times these organisations worked together, trading access for capability. In the period after the 1991 Gulf War, the regime of Saddam Hussein supported a complex and increasingly disparate mix of pan-Arab revolutionary causes and emerging pan-Islamic radical movements.”
We get too little real journalism about these subjects and too much “churnalism”, in which a single sometimes misleading wire report is repeated by thousands of commentators while nobody bothers to read the source document.
The world was misled about this report because of the focus on one single sentence of the report, which said: “This study found no smoking gun (that is, a direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qa’ida.”
However, the report does portray a vast network of Iraqi support for terrorist organisations that includes numerous groups the report identifies as “part of al-Qa’ida”. The misleading and declaratory sentence presumably refers only to Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida central itself. For example, the report states: “Captured documents reveal that the regime (of Saddam) was willing to co-opt or support organisations it knew to be part of al-Qa’ida, as long as that organisation’s near-term goals supported Saddam’s long-term vision.” This included, for example, Saddam providing financial support for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy.
Can we FINALLY be done with the assertions that Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism and didn’t pose a threat to the U.S.? Please?
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Good post. I’ve been screaming about this for years and posting on just this topic at http://www.regimeofterror.com.
Good find.
My book Both In One Trench: Saddam’s Secret Terror Documents examines many of these same documents in detail (and more) in greater historical context. It is quite clear that Saddam was deeply involved in Islamic terrorism and had many connections to al Qaeda core leadership. There is even evidence that he directly influenced al Qaeda and the Taliban and at the very least funded those groups.
http://www.bothinonetrench.com
Saddam had links to terrorits…the sky is blue…..your penis is tiny….we hold these truths to be self evident. Go get laid. That is all.
STOOPID FUCKERZ
Ok for now lets go with this one study and throw out the many many others that found no such connection.
1) Bush/Cheney and co. didn’t have this report or its findings. They had all the intel that proved the opposite, but they twisted and ignored it for their agenda.
2) The US has been underhandedly funding and arming many groups with terrorist ties and methods (or those who would divert it to those who would) for years whenever it was deemed beneficial for us, be it financially, politically, etc.. This includes Saddam himself. We made him. We cannot survive this duality of condemning and supporting the same ideology as its convenient.