Iraq: Lynchpin of terror war

Posted: April 15, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

President Bush finally made it clear in his news conference this week - Iraq was and is a central campaign in the war on terror.

He could do the nation a great service by brining attention to the enormous and growing body of evidence that points to direct Iraqi involvement in planning and approving terrorist attacks on the United States - before Sept. 11, 2001.

It's no longer difficult to make a case that Baghdad under Saddam Hussein was technically, legally and morally responsible for the airline hijackings and the destruction America faced that day.

There is even stronger evidence of Iraqi links to two previous acts of U.S. terrorism - the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City and the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Is this the stuff of conspiracy-mongers? Tell it to former CIA Director James Woolsey, who told the Wall Street Journal "when the full stories of these two incidents are finally told, those who permitted the investigations to stop short will owe big explanations to these two brave women. And the nation will owe them a debt of gratitude."

He was referring to Jayna Davis, an investigative reporter in Oklahoma City who lost her television job due to her determination to follow the trail of an Iraqi-Islamic terrorist connection to the bombing, and Laurie Mylroie, a distinguished author who sees Iraq's hand behind Ramzi Yousef and others imprisoned for the first attack on the World Trade Center.

In Davis' new book, "The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing," published by WND Books, Davis identifies another suspect - John Doe No. 2 - originally sought by the FBI in Oklahoma City as Iraqi Hussain al-Hussaini. She says she has more than 20 witnesses who can place him near the federal building on the day of the bombing or link him to other parts of the conspiracy.

Later, Hussaini moved to Boston and got a job at Logan Airport. But he quit his job in 1997, four years before planes from there were hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001. He reportedly said, "If anything happens there, I'll be a suspect."

Gee, I wonder what he was thinking about?

While Timothy McVeigh was executed for his role in the bombing and Terry Nichols is in jail still facing murder charges in the attack, evidence introduced in their trials supports the Iraqi theory. An FBI report records a call a few hours after the bombing from Vincent Cannistraro, a retired CIA official who had once been chief of operations for the agency's counter-terrorism center. He told Kevin Foust, a FBI counter-terror investigator, that he'd been called by a top counter-terror adviser to the Saudi royal family.

Foust reported that the Saudi told Cannistraro about "information that there was a 'squad' of people currently in the United States, very possibly Iraqis, who have been tasked with carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States. The Saudi claimed that he had seen a list of 'targets,' and that the first on the list was the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma."

In her book, "The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks," Mylroie says the bomb was designed to topple the North Tower into the South Tower and envelop the scene in a cloud of cyanide gas. Hussein is responsible, says Mylroie. At the very least, she says, Hussein is harboring a wanted terrorist, Abdul Yasin, one of several suspects who got away. He came to the U.S. six months before the Trade Center attack and is charged with helping mix chemicals for the bomb. Picked up in an early sweep after the bombing, he talked his way out of an FBI interrogation and turned up back in Baghdad.

Mylroie insists the bombing was "an Iraqi intelligence operation with the Muslim extremists as dupes." She says that the original lead FBI official on the case, Jim Fox, concluded that "Iraq was behind the World Trade Center bombing." In late 1993, shortly before his retirement, Fox was suspended by FBI Director Louis Freeh for speaking to the media about the case - he died in 1997. Mylroie says Fox told her that he did not continue to pursue the Iraq connection because Justice Department officials "did not want state sponsorship addressed."

Yousef was later arrested, and a laptop computer seized in the Philippines showed plans to hijack airliners and crash them into strategic buildings in the United States. Yousef and Nichols were in the Philippines at the same time - and Nichols wasn't just visiting his wife's relatives. While there, he was in frequent contact with Ernesto Malaluan, a relative of his wife who had once lived in Saudi Arabia and owned a boarding house in Cebu City. The boarding house reportedly "shelters students from a university well known for its Islamic militancy."

Philippines law-enforcement officials also suggest there was at least one meeting between Nichols and Yousef. They have a statement from Edward Angeles, said to be one of the founders of the Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaida ally. Angeles was assassinated in 1999 by unknown gunmen.

Saddam Hussein provided financial and logistical support for al-Qaida for at least 10 years, according to terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America." He was supporting al-Qaida prior to Sept. 11 and post-Sept. 11.

President Bush needs to defend his policy in Iraq. There's a persuasive case to be made that Iraq is the lynchpin in the war on terrorism. The U.S. government was systematically involved in covering up acts of Middle East terrorism leading up to Sept. 11. Now it's time to end the cover-ups and let the American people know the truth.