US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden's longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members "with open arms" before the war, that they "entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation," and that the regime "strictly and directly" controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan's King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi's group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden's top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.

Iraq's use of terrorism was so widespread, in fact, that it became an issue in the 1992 presidential campaign, when Al Gore accused the first Bush administration of a "blatant disregard for brutal terrorism" practiced by Hussein and ignoring Iraq's "extensive terrorism activities."

Many Islamic radicals voiced opposition to Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait. Sudan's Hasan al-Turabi was not one of them. Turabi's willingness to back Hussein gave the Iraqi dictator the Islamist street credibility he would exploit for years to come. In the debate over the former Iraqi regime's relationship with al Qaeda, it is often said that Saddam's secular Baathist regime could never work with Osama bin Laden's radical Islamist organization. It is a curious argument since Turabi, one of Saddam's staunchest allies, also happened to be one of the most influential Islamists of the past two decades. One of the principal architects of Sudan's Islamist revolution in 1989, Turabi was also the longtime mentor, friend, and host of Osama bin Laden during his stay in Sudan from 1992 until 1996.

At the same time, the Iraqis were cultivating a relationship with Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the current top deputy to bin Laden. According to Qassem Hussein Mohammed, a 20-year veteran of Iraqi Intelligence, Zawahiri visited Baghdad in 1992 for a meeting with Hussein. In a 2002 interview with the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg from a Kurdish prison in northeastern Iraq, the IIS veteran described his duties as a bodyguard for Zawahiri during his visit. This was not Zawahiri's only meeting with top Iraqi officials. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi Intelligence official, Zawahiri met with Iraqi Intelligence officials in Sudan several times from 1992 to 1995. A foreign intelligence service has corroborated that report, adding that at one of those meetings Zawahiri received blank Yemeni passports from an Iraqi Intelligence official.

On February 3, 1998, Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, came to Baghdad for meetings with Iraqi leaders. The visit came as Islamic radicals gathered once again in the Iraqi capital for another installation of Hussein's Popular Islamic Conferences. Iraqi vice president Taha Yasin Ramadan welcomed them on February 9 with the language of jihad:

The Islamic nation's ulema, advocates and preachers, are called upon to carry out a jihad that God wants them to carry out through honest words in order to expose the U.S. and Zionist regimes to the world peoples, to explain facts, and to say what is right and to call for it. This is their religious duty. The Muslim ulema are called upon before Almighty God to act among the Muslim ranks to confront the infidel U.S. moves and to raise their voices against the U.S.-Zionist evil.

We do not have reporting on when, exactly, Zawahiri left Baghdad. But we do know from an interrogation of a senior Iraqi Intelligence official that he did not leave empty-handed. As first reported in U.S. News & World Report, the Iraqi regime gave Zawahiri $300,000 during or shortly after his trip to Baghdad.

On February 17, 1998, Bill Clinton traveled the short distance from the White House to the Pentagon to prepare the nation for a confrontation with Iraq. The symbolism was obvious, the rhetoric belligerent. Clinton explained why "meeting the threat posed by Saddam Hussein is important to our security in the new era we are entering." He warned about the threats from the "predators of the 21st century," rogue states working with terrorist groups. "There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq." War seemed imminent.

All living capabilities of the Arab nation should be toward the unity of the pan-Arab [world] and toward escalating the struggle to the highest levels of jihad. . . . The escalation of the confrontation and the disclosure of its dimensions and the aggressive intentions now require an organized, planned, influential and conclusive enthusiasm against U.S. interests.

This was not, apparently, just bluster. The Iraqi regime wired $150,000 to an account in Prague, according to Jabir Salim, the man on the receiving end. Salim was the Iraqi station chief in the Czech Republic and with the money he received an order: Recruit a young Islamic radical to blow up the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Salim had difficulty finding someone to commit the martyrdom operation, he told British Intelligence after defecting to the West when the U.S. launched Operation Desert Fox--a series of cruise missile attacks on Iraqi targets--on December 16, 1998. Salim also told interrogators that the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship had intensified after the August 1998 embassy bombings and that the Iraqi Intelligence station in Pakistan served as the hub of Iraq-al Qaeda activity.

These claims were not limited to sensitive intelligence reporting. In the weeks that followed the meeting, dozens of press outlets from around the world reported on it as well as several others. The reports indicated that Saddam had offered bin Laden safe haven, had already trained al Qaeda operatives, and was supporting bin Laden's efforts to attack Western targets.

The details reported were striking. On December 28 Milan's Corriere della Sera reported "Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden have sealed a pact." In its issue dated January 11, 1999, Newsweek quoted an anonymous "Arab intelligence officer who knows Saddam personally" as warning that "very soon you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis" against Western targets. The Iraqi plan would be run under one of three "false flags": Palestinian, Iranian, and the "al Qaeda apparatus." All of these groups, Newsweek reported, had representatives in Baghdad.

The reports did not end there. Throughout February and March 1999, there was media speculation that bin Laden would relocate from Afghanistan to Iraq. Behind the scenes, Clinton administration officials were engaging in similar conjecture. According to the 9/11 Commission report, Richard Clarke sent an email to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on February 11, 1999. Clarke told Berger that if bin Laden learned of U.S. operations against him, "old wily Osama will likely boogie to Baghdad." Days later Bruce Riedel of the National Security Council staff also emailed Berger, warning that "Saddam Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad." Reports of Iraqi offers of safe haven, cooperation, and training continued throughout 1999.

"Following the expulsion of al Qaeda from Afghanistan and their arrival in northern Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi (a senior al Qaeda figure) was relatively free to travel within Iraq proper and to stay in Baghdad for some time. Several of his colleagues visited him there."


The Butler Report, July 14, 2004

TEN DAYS BEFORE September 11, 2001, a small group of Islamic radicals came together in the northern, Kurdish-controlled area of Iraq. They would quickly come to be known as Ansar al Islam. Their ranks swelled as hundreds of al Qaeda terrorists fled the U.S. assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan. It quickly became clear to many policymakers and intelligence analysts that the Ansar camps were fallback zones for al Qaeda.

Senate Intelligence Committee report, July 7, 2004

THE CONCLUSION of the Senate Intelligence Committee report--that the CIA did not have the type of intelligence reporting that "would have enabled it to better define a cooperative relationship"--was ignored by the press. We now have reporting that demonstrates the nature of the relationship. One day there will be much more. At a large warehouse in Doha, Qatar, the Defense Intelligence Agency is reviewing millions of pages of documents from the former Iraqi regime. That process is painfully slow due to a lack of resources and a lack of interest in pursuing the full story of Iraqi support for terrorism.

That lack of interest is not new. As the anonymous intelligence analyst told the Senate Intelligence Committee: "I don't think we were really focused on the CT [counterterrorism] side, because we weren't concerned about the IIS going out and pro-actively conducting terrorist attacks." That the intelligence community did not pay particular attention to Saddam Hussein's terrorist aspirations created a sizable blind spot.

The Mother of All Connections
From the July 18, 2005 issue: A special report on the new evidence of collaboration between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda.
by Stephen F. Hayes & Thomas Joscelyn
07/18/2005, Volume 010, Issue 41

We know that in the context of a decade-long confrontation with the United States, Saddam reached out to al Qaeda on numerous occasions. We know that the leadership of al Qaeda reciprocated, requesting assistance in its endeavors. We know that reports of meetings, offers of safe haven, and collaboration persisted.

What we do not know is the full extent of the relationship. But we know enough to know that there was one. And we know enough to know it was a threat.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard and author of The Connection (HarperCollins). Thomas Joscelyn is an economist and writer living in New York.

MODERATE MUSLIMS MUST BANISH THE ENEMY WITHIN
by Mansoor Ijaz
Financial Times
July 11, 2005

The trust that binds citizens of free societies together was ­violated last week when ­suspected Islamist terrorists set off a wave of bombs at the height of London's morning rush hour, killing at least 52 people and injuring 700.

The latest tragedy is the 17th ­bombing carried out by al-Qaeda's ­franchisees since the September 11 2001 attacks on the US. Its deft planning and execution indicates that al-Qaeda continues to function efficiently. For the perpetrators of London's attacks to escape the notice of the world's most formidable domestic counter-terrorism service underscores their resolve and cunning. Shopping centre bombings and attacks on global trade routes ­cannot be far behind.

Al-Qaeda's success in mutating from a centralised terror conglomerate into an amorphous ideology with local, home-grown cells in target countries challenges the big-power thesis of taking the war to the enemy before the enemy arrives on your shores. Most disturbingly, however, al-Qaeda's ­continuing success defines the central ­failure within moderate Islam to ­identify, control and stamp out its extremists. The enemy, it appears, is already among us.

This is why the London bombings represent a milestone for moderate Muslims. They can either stand up and fight Islam's radical fringes from within or sit haplessly by while the west does it for them. Verbal condemnations and choreographed press releases against violent terrorist acts, as Britain's Muslim leaders produced last Thursday, are no longer sufficient. Real action is needed - and fast.

America's Muslims failed to rise up to their citizenship responsibilities after the September 11 attacks, choosing instead to play the role of aggrieved, helpless victims. Their voices in America's body politic are now marginalised as a result. Britain's Muslims have an opportunity to set an important example by elevating the duties of citizenship above fears of looming civil rights violations.

That moderate Muslims do not take meaningful steps to irradiate al-Qaeda's cancerous metastasis in their communities is a stunning failure of leadership and lies at the heart of the increasing distrust secular societies have for all Muslims.

What to do? The action plan for moderate Muslims is uncomplicated if the political will to combat Islam's extremists from within takes hold. In Britain, three steps would be effective.

First, forbid the use of mosques and other religious institutions to discharge bigotry and hatred. As France has done already, Britain should require each imam to pass minimum competency exams. Radical preaching must be replaced with knowledge of how the Koran relates to daily life within Britain's secular traditions. Any imam failing to comply should be shown politely to the departure lounge at Heathrow airport. Those that pass must accept their citizenship responsibilities to become resources for authorities seeking data on criminal elements residing in Britain's Muslim communities.

Second, open Britain's Islamic charities to greater financial scrutiny to identify those that fund terrorism. Charities should be asked to limit foreign donations to 10 per cent of operating budgets and certify that the remainder of their donors are British citizens who give from taxable - and transparent - income sources. Stopping the flow of money is central to dismantling al-Qaeda's franchise strategy, where one or two foreign "masterminds" oversee terrorist attacks with foreign money and logistical support.

Third, form community watch groups made up of Muslim citizens to reclaim Islam from the terrorists and committed to contributing useful information to the authorities. Britain's tolerant political environment has transformed it into a haven for militant Islam. Communities joining together to compile and analyse data on Muslim fanatics for use by British authorities in official proceedings is the best way for moderate Muslims to prevent the state's anti-terror apparatus from appearing biased or being used inappropriately. It would also be the surest sign that British Muslims take their citizenship as ­seriously as their religion.

It is hypocritical for Muslims living in western societies to demand civil rights enshrined by the state and then excuse their inaction against terrorists hiding among them on grounds of belonging to a borderless Islamic community. It is time to stand up and be counted as model citizens before the terror consumes us all.

The writer, chief executive of Crescent Technology Ventures, in 1997 negotiated Sudan's offer of counter-terrorism ­assistance to the Clinton administration

London: The Pakistani Connection
Those paying attention to Britain's Jamaati culture shouldn't be surprised by London's home-grown terrorists.
by Stephen Schwartz

07/13/2005 3:45:00 PM Weekly Standard

IN THE FIRST FEW DAYS after the horror in London on July 7, media in Britain and abroad focused considerable attention on "Londonistan"--the local zoo of Islamist agitators, almost entirely Arab, who have made headlines for years with their extremist preaching. Analytical lines, many of them useful, were drawn to al Qaeda and Iraq, but almost nobody looked at domestic Muslim extremism in the United Kingdom.

Close observers of the British Islamic community, however, few of whom seem to have been consulted by reporters or the government, had been discussing for months a dramatic increase in radical agitation by Pakistani Muslim immigrants in Britain, as well as among their children.

According to the authoritative Muslim Council of Britain, the British Islamic population, totaling 1.5 million, has a plurality of 610,000 Pakistanis, with an additional 360,000 from Bangladesh and India, and 350,000 Arab and African. Unfortunately, Pakistan is the world's second most significant front-line state (after Iraq) in the global war on terror. Pakistan produced the Jama'at-i-Islami (Community of Islam) movement, founded by Abu'l Ala Mawdudi, a theologian who died in 1979, strangely enough, in Buffalo, New York, at age 76. Known as Jamaatis, the followers of Mawdudi have attained exceptional influence in the Pakistani army and intelligence services, and were a key element in the Pakistani-Saudi alliance to support the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Western academics and journalists are often at pains to distinguish between the Jamaatis and Wahhabism, which is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. But differences in theological details, although they do exist, are secondary; mainly, the Saudi Wahhabis hold to a deceptive alliance with the Western powers, while the Jamaatis were always frontally anti-Western. The Jamaatis study in Saudi Arabia and share with the Wahhabis a murderous hatred of Muslims who do not conform to their ideology, considering those who reject their teachings to be apostates from Islam. They regularly massacre Shia Muslims, in particular, in Pakistani cities. They also completely reject participation by Muslim immigrants in the political and social institutions of Western countries in which they live, and they consider suicide terror legitimate. Pakistan has very few energy resources, and the Saudis have used cheap oil to support Wahhabi infiltration. In the system of radical Islam, if Saudi Arabia may be compared with the former Soviet state, Pakistan could be a parallel to the former East Germany.

For these reasons, the identification of four British-born Muslims of Pakistani origin as the perpetrators of the London atrocity comes as no surprise to those who have been paying attention to these matters. The seething, ferocious rhetoric heard in Pakistani Sunni mosques, at Friday services every week in outlying cities such as Leeds, is far more insidious, as the London events may show, than the antics engaged in by Arab loudmouths like the Syrian Omar Bakri Muhammad, the hook-handed Egyptian Abu Hamza al-Masri, or the bogus Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih, all of who mainly perform for non-Muslim media attention.

Social marginalization and underemployment of second generation ethnic Pakistani youth in Britain may be cited as a cause for the extremist appeal among them; but the constant drumming of the Jamaati message from the pulpit is much more significant. It is interesting to hear first-generation Pakistani Sunnis in Britain claim shock and surprise at the presence of terrorists among them. Pakistani Islamist radicalism dominates British Islam much as the "Wahhabi Lobby" in America monopolizes the voice of the Muslim community on our shores.

Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.

"No" he said "only the boat"

"I agree with you that it is vain to ruminate upon, or even reflect upon the authors of our present misfortunes. We should rather exert ourselves, and look forward with hopes, that some lucky chance may yet turn up in our favor."-------General George Washington in a letter to Robert Morris, December 24, 1776

So ican, what your are saying is that George Washington was a sucessful terrorist?

Until and unless the left gets this point, and abandons the idea that "breeding" of terrorists is something the West triggers, they cannot be trusted with the conduct of the war.

July 17, 2005, 1:11AM

Studies: Most foreign fighters didn't wage terror before Iraq warhave found that the vast majority of them are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war.

The studies cast serious doubt on President Bush's claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the "central front" in a battle against the United States.

"The terrorists know that the outcome in Iraq will leave them emboldened or defeated," Bush said in a nationally televised address last month. "So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction."

However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding calls to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid.

An analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior al-Qaida operatives, "the vast majority of non-Iraqi Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."

The Israel study says: "Only a few were involved in past Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya."

You can deny it all you want, but Iraq HAS lead to a large rise in terrorism in the world.

The Taliban seemed to open the doors to all who wanted to come to Afghanistan to train in the camps. The alliance with the Taliban provided al Qaeda a sanctuary in which to train and indoctrinate fighters and terrorists, import weapons, forge ties with other jihad groups and leaders, and plot and staff terrorist schemes. While Bin Ladin maintained his own al Qaeda guesthouses and camps for vetting and training recruits, he also provided support to and benefited from the broad infrastructure of such facilities in Afghanistan made available to the global network of Islamist movements. U.S. intelligence estimates put the total number of fighters who underwent instruction in Bin Ladin-supported camps in Afghanistan from 1996 through 9/11 at 10,000 to 20,000.78

In addition to training fighters and special operators, this larger network of guesthouses and camps provided a mechanism by which al Qaeda could screen and vet candidates for induction into its own organization. Thousands flowed through the camps, but no more than a few hundred seem to have become al Qaeda members. From the time of its founding, al Qaeda had employed training and indoctrination to identify "worthy" candidates.79

Al Qaeda continued meanwhile to collaborate closely with the many Middle Eastern groups-in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia, and elsewhere-with which it had been linked when Bin Ladin was in Sudan. It also reinforced its London base and its other offices around Europe, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Bin Ladin bolstered his links to extremists in South and Southeast Asia, including the Malaysian-Indonesian JI and several Pakistani groups engaged in the Kashmir conflict.80

The February 1998 fatwa thus seems to have been a kind of public launch of a renewed and stronger al Qaeda, after a year and a half of work. Having rebuilt his fund-raising network, Bin Ladin had again become the rich man of the jihad movement. He had maintained or restored many of his links with terrorists elsewhere in the world. And he had strengthened the internal ties in his own organization.

The inner core of al Qaeda continued to be a hierarchical top-down group with defined positions, tasks, and salaries. Most but not all in this core swore fealty (or bayat) to Bin Ladin. Other operatives were committed to Bin Ladin or to his goals and would take assignments for him, but they did not swear bayat and maintained, or tried to maintain, some autonomy. A looser circle of adherents might give money to al Qaeda or train in its camps but remained essentially independent. Nevertheless, they constituted a potential resource for al Qaeda.81

Now effectively merged with Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad,82 al Qaeda promised to become the general headquarters for international terrorism, without the need for the Islamic Army Shura. Bin Ladin was prepared to pick up where he had left off in Sudan. He was ready to strike at "the head of the snake."

Al Qaeda's role in organizing terrorist operations had also changed. Before the move to Afghanistan, it had concentrated on providing funds, training, and weapons for actions carried out by members of allied groups. The attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa in the summer of 1998 would take a different form-planned, directed, and executed by al Qaeda, under the direct supervision of Bin Ladin and his chief aides.

Do you understand this, Ican? Radicalized by the war.

We have created the vast majority of the enemies that we fight.