The conventional wisdom before the Iraq war was that Saddam
Hussein had plenty of weapons of mass destruction but no ties to Al
Qaeda. It is beginning to look like the conventional wisdom was
backwards: Saddam Hussein’s regime had ties to Al Qaeda but nowhere
near the level of weapons of mass destruction suspected.
Iraq under Hussein was a nest for anti-American terrorists.
Little noticed in weapons inspector David Kay’s recent remarks was
his observation that Iraq was not less dangerous than assumed but
more dangerous: “I actually think what we learned during the
inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in
fact, we thought it was even before the war.”
What Kay means is that terrorists were traveling through a
country where free-lancing scientists had nuclear, biological, and
chemical programs underway — erratic weapons programs even Hussein
wasn’t aware of that these terrorists could have easily exploited:
“We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq. And now we know
that there was little control over Iraq’s weapons capabilities. I
think it shows that Iraq was a very dangerous place. The country
had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were
terrorist groups passing through the country — and no central
control.” Up until the war started Iraqi scientists were “actively
working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin,”
says Kay.
The antiwar Democrats are cheering Kay’s report that he found
WMD programs but not WMD stockpiles. They conveniently ignore that
the assumption of WMD stockpiles was a bipartisan blunder and
completely ignore Kay’s point that WMD programs, chaotically
administered in a haven for terrorists, is itself an imminent
threat. Kay’s statement in effect punctures their claim that the
Iraq war had nothing to do with the war on terrorism.
EVEN AS THESE DEMOCRATS DENY any connection between Hussein’s Iraq
and Al Qaeda, the U.S. military is capturing Al Qaeda operatives in
Iraq. Last week the White House announced the capture of Hassan
Ghul. Ghul worked for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the
9/11 attacks.
The war has led to the capture of innumerable terrorists like
Ghul. But the antiwar Democrats don’t want Americans to know that
Hussein’s Iraq was a safe haven for Al Qaeda operatives, as this
information causes their claim that the Iraq war undermined the war
on terrorism to collapse.
After Vice President Dick Cheney recently endorsed the
Weekly Standard’s article, “Case Closed: The U.S.
government’s secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden,” Democratic presidential nominee
Wesley Clark rebuked him.
The media, though curious about the WMDs claim, has also been
generally incurious about connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda,
and usually observes with sourness that a majority of Americans
still believe Hussein was part of the Islamic terror network
responsible for 9/11.
The Los Angeles Times basically scoffed at Cheney’s
remark that evidence of a relationship between Hussein’s Iraq and
Al Qaeda is “overwhelming.” The Times reported
dismissively that “U.S. intelligence officials agree that there was
contact between Hussein’s agents and Al Qaeda members as far back
as a decade ago and that operatives with ties to Al Qaeda had at
times found safe haven in Iraq. But no intelligence has surfaced to
suggest a deeper relationship, and other information turned up
recently has suggested that significant ties were
unlikely…Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is
in custody, has told American interrogators that Al Qaeda rejected
the idea of any working relationship with Iraq, which was seen by
the terrorist network as a corrupt, secular regime.”
Notice that the Times is relying here on the testimony
of a terrorist whose deputy was just captured in Iraq. And why
would the relationship have to be “deep” to invalidate Cheney’s
comment? Because an irregular, marriage-of-convenience relationship
existed between Hussein’s Iraq and the terrorist network behind the
9/11 attacks, the Bush administration had no cause to worry about
it?
Senator Jay Rockefeller called Cheney’s remarks “perplexing.”
What’s perplexing is that senators can yawn at intelligence (leaked
to the Weekly Standard) showing among other things that
Osama bin Laden received bomb training from the Iraqi Intelligence
Service’s principal technical expert, that Al Qaeda agents met with
Hussein’s officials to set up terrorist camps, received money and
weapons from them, and continued meeting with them after 9/11. The
Standard also drew attention to intelligence about Al
Qaeda terrorist planner Abu Musab al Zarqawi that helps to explain
the post-war insurgency: “According to sensitive reporting, al
Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in
case of a U.S. occupation of the city.”
If the Democrats consider this intelligence bogus, they should
say so and call for more probes, not browbeat Cheney into silence.
But this time they may not want a new investigation lest too much
evidence turn up.
