The American Spectator

p> THE BALUCH CONNECTION br> Re: Laurie Mylroie’s Al Qaeda’s Hidden Roots : /p>

The cooperation the article suggests makes very good sense. It seems to me to explain how even though Yousef had nothing to do with bin Laden, as the article notes, Iraq could still be involved in both WTC attacks through the Baluch who designed them. Yousef and KSM left together for Manila from Islamabad, the same place Yousef was later captured. It wouldn’t be too surprising to learn that during the Cold War, the KGB handled Bulgarian assassins through the Soviet Embassy in Sofia. And it wouldn’t be any more surprising if evidence were found that the IIS was doing the same with Yousef through the Iraqi Embassy in Islamabad.

Ahmed Hikbat Shakir, an Iraqi, also seems to connect Iraq to 9/11 and Al Qaeda, as well as to the Baluch. An al-Mudair at the Iraqi Embassy in Kuala Lumpur controlled Shakir’s schedule as a “facilitator” at the airport in January, 2000. Shakir helped at least one of the two 9/11 hijackers who came there attend an al Qaeda meeting about both the Cole bombing and 9/11. A few days later, Shakir quit the job, and the two hijackers flew to L.A. and met a man who got them settled in San Diego.

Apparently, this same Shakir had phoned Musab Yasin’s number not long before 2/26/93. And when Qatari authorities detained him about 9/17/01, they found contact information for relatives of KSM and Yousef — and for Musab Yasin. I believe that Shakir also has ties to the close friend of Bin Laden’s who stabbed a prison guard in the eye.

p>Maybe all those Americans who think that Hussein was somehow behind 9/11, for which liberal intellectuals deride them as dumb and foolish, have hit on the truth but can’t say how. The earth would be no less round, even if half the people on it could not say just why they believed it was. br> — Mike Hollins /p> p> JOHN WAYNE AT WORK