CASE CLOSED
Saddam and al Qaeda reached an understanding leading to cooperation on funding, strategic planning, safe harbour and free movement. I'm not talking about that Weekly Standard article everyone's rightly buzzing about--I'm referring to a Justice Department memo dated 04 November 1998. You may find said memo here. It refers to an indictment handed down that same day against bin Laden and Mohammed Atef for the Africa bombings on August 7 of that same year:
The 238-count indictment charges, among other things, that bin Laden and Atef along with co-defendants Wadih el Hage, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed Sadeek Odeh, and Mohamed Rashed Daoud al'Owhali, acted together with other members of "al Qaeda" -- the worldwide terrorist organization led by bin Laden -- to murder US nationals, including members of the American military stationed in Saudi Arabia following the Gulf War and in Somalia as part of UN Operation Restore Hope, as well as those employed at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. They established front companies, provided false identity and travel documents, and provided false information to authorities in various countries.Bin Laden's "al Qaeda" organization functioned both on its own and through other terrorist organizations, including the Al Jihad group based in Egypt, the Islamic Group also known as el Gamaa Islamia led at one time by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and a number of other jihad groups in countries such as Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia.
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According to the indictment, bin Laden and al Qaeda forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in Sudan and with representatives of the Government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah with the goal of working together against their common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.
"In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq," the indictment said.
Beginning in 1992, bin Laden allegedly issued through his "fatwah" committees a series of escalating "fatwahs" against the United States, certain military personnel, and, eventually in February 1998, a "fatwah" stating that Muslims should kill Americans -- including civilians -- anywhere in the world they can be found.
While the indictment isn't a conviction and is also not necessarily a reflection of official Clinton-era policy, its use in a JD memo does indicate support for its contents. That memo highlighted, among other things, the al Qaeda-Iraqi connection. The Clinton Justice Department believed such a connection was at least a strong possibility, or it would not have issued a memo highlighting it.
Not long after the August 7, 1998 African embassy bombings, the Clinton administration started what amounted to a full-court press aimed at steeling the American people for what it said would be a long, difficult war.
Secretary of State Madeline Albright, on PBS Newshour, August 25, 1998:
I think it's very important for the American people to understand that we are involved here in a long-term struggle. We have been affected by this before. This is, unfortunately, the war of the future, and I think that we have to understand the importance of having a sustained operations here.
That same day, on the same program, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger:
What we did on Thursday [the cruise missile strikes on a chemical plant in Sudan, believed by the Clinton administration to have been a terror-connected chemical weapons plant, and on a suspected terrorist camp in Afghanistan] is to say that while we need a course to defend ourselves, to harden our embassies and protect ourselves, you can't fight this enemy simply on defense. You have to also be prepared to go on offense, as well as, where we believe it's appropriate. (emphasis mine)
Offense? Is Berger talking about pre-emption? Sure sounds like it.
Albright again:
We are involved in really a long-term struggle here with terrorist forces and this is but one stage in it. And I think we have to understand that this is a long-term problem for the United States and the civilized world.
That problem did not go away with the missile strikes, of course. It returned in small ways on an almost daily basis in Israel, where Saddam Hussein and other regional despots funded Palestinian bombers, and on October 12, 2000 when terrorists bombed the USS Cole while in port in Yemen. And it returned with a vengeance on September 11, 2001.
The Clinton administration's various spokesmen clearly articulated the nature of the al Qaeda threat. They stated that the US and civilized world faced a long-term struggle against it, a struggle that would demand resolve if we were to win it. Then they lost power, and several of them have become critics of that same war's prosecution--a prosecution which has been carried out along lines they themselves hinted would be necessary. And because several of those officials, most notably Albright and former Vice President Al Gore, have become such harsh critics of the war on terrorism, many of their partisan supporters have followed suit, and today the nation is divided on several questions relating to the war, namely, whether we should fight it, where we should fight it and when we should fight it. Were the Clinton administration still in power, or if Gore had become president in 2000, it's reasonable to assume that most of those criticizing the war from the left today would support it and any domestic terror-related laws passed to secure the homefront. Today they do not support it simply because the wrong party is leading it. And they continue to ignore the evidence of an Iraqi-al Qaeda connection for the same reason.
About that connection: Stephen Hayes has written a couple of gems in the past few months looking at how deeply Saddam and bin Laden were connected. The first was a couple months back, and is worth a second look now. His most recent piece is based on a DoD memo sent by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith to the now politicized Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's chair and co-chair, Sen. Pat Roberts and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, respectively. Rockefeller, we should remeber, is at the center of Memogate--the strategy memo detailing how Democrat members of the Committee should use their positions to attack President Bush and the conduct of the war for partisan advantage. The Feith memo is dated October 27, 2003. Here are a couple of highlights:
4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes.---
5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an "understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S. court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader.
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8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti.
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10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.
Read the whole thing, as there is quite a bit more. The Feith memo makes a compelling case that Clinton-era officials had access to data revealing a substantial relationship between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. While much of it is uncorroborated, much of it has been verified by multiple sources. I wonder now about the timing of the Rockefeller memo (for lack of a better name, until we find out who actually wrote it, "Rockefeller memo" will refer to the Democrat Intel Committee strategy memo). What did the Senate Democrats know, and when did they know it? Had they read the Feith memo before drafting their partisan strategy memo? Did they know about mounting evidence supporting an Iraq-al Qaeda connection before or after they decided to hijack the Intel Committee for purely partisan gain? That question is critical to understanding the nature and depth of anti-war sentiment among Democrats on the Hill and running for president. If they are knowingly burying evidence supporting intelligence-based conclusions vis a vis Iraq and al Qaeda, and if in spite of that evidence are still willing to politicize the very nature we gather and investigate intelligence relating to the war, it's clear that they are willing to sacrifice national security in the quest for political power.
(thanks to InstaPundit, Roger Simon, and others)
UPDATE: DoD's take on the Feith memo leak: It shouldn't have been leaked and doesn't represent DoD's firm conclusions regarding ties between Iraq and al Qeada. True on both counts. But it's a sign of the times that leaks of memos have become the chief means of dialogue in Washington concerning the war. It's hard to see how we win if this keeps up.
MORE: Victor Davis Hanson, in a related vein:
In the future, the American military must accept that if it is asked to go to war under a Republican administration, its public-relations problems will pose as much a dilemma as the campaign itself — as the New York Times, National Public Radio, the campuses, the major networks, and the Europeans will almost immediately seek to oppose and caricature America's efforts. In contrast, in our contemporary therapeutic society that gives currency to lip-biting, publicly feeling pain, and professions of utopianism, Democrats can pretty much use the military as they wish — secure they will always be seen as sober and judiciously using force only as a "last resort."Such generalizations have little to do with history: In both World War I and World War II, Democrats were seen as engaged internationalists, Republicans as shrill isolationists. Nor are these fault lines necessarily permanent trends, given that there is nothing in Democratic ideology that inherently rules out the use of force in a necessary cause.
Nevertheless, the present public perceptions and political realities will likely persist, since recent popular ideologies like multiculturalism and utopianism have become embedded in the postwar Democratic party. Both notions tend to characterize the American military not as a force for good, but as an extension of American pathology that legitimizes if not promotes an oppressive globalism, racism, sexism, colonialism, and economic oppression.
If one finds that stereotype unfair, remember the pathetic scene of a Gen. Clark during the recent Democratic debate, who castigated the president of the United States at a time of war while deferring to the wisdom of Al Sharpton. Take out a mass murderer, free 26 million, and you will earn charges of incompetence if not treason; slander a DA, fabricate a crime, and fan the flames of riot and racial hatred, and you will win respect from a Democratic frontrunner. For Republicans who must resort to war, the primary challenge will not be the fighting itself, but rather the perception that the United States was inherently wrong to have fought in the first place.