Not What They Supposed

...Military and intelligence offi cials have begun the process that these former senior Clinton administration counterterrorism offi cials demanded five years ago...

...11, 2001...

...It is considered one of the most brutal Egyptian organizations...

...A thorough examination of those fl awed analyses and the policies that resulted from them is as important now as it was when Benjamin and Simon called for it in the summer of 2003...

...We have our answer...

...Benjamin laid out his views in the 2003 article he coauthored with Simon and in another one he wrote by himself in the fall of 2002, also published in the New York Times...

...Benjamin & Simon, July 20, 2003 “In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt...

...Benjamin, September 30, 2002 “The Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism...

...IPP report, page 17 There are numerous other examples of these mistaken assumptions...

...EIG’s spiritual leader, Sheikh [Omar Abdel] Rahman, is in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing...

...Captured documents reveal that later IIS activities went beyond just maintaining contact [with Islamist terrorists...

...It will take years before we understand the full scope of Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and the U.S...

...IPP report, page 42 “Two movements, one pan-Arab and the other pan-Islamic, were seeking and developing supporters from the same demographic pool...

...Well, we have our answers...

...For years, Saddam maintained training camps for foreign ‘fighters’ drawn from these diverse groups...

...But was there ever a credible basis for carrying that battle to Iraq...

...They were willing to target not only Western interests but also to directly attack Americans...

...For the time being, it is useful to contrast the views offered by these top Clinton administration national security offi cials with the fi ndings of the military historians who authored the Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) report, as well as with the actual words of the former Iraqi regime...

...Excerpt from an Iraqi Intelligence document dated March 18, 1993, describing terrorist organizations receiving support from Iraq, —IPP report, page 16 X X n “Like other Middle Eastern rulers, Saddam Hussein has long recognized that Al Qaeda and likeminded Islamists represent a threat to his regime...

...IPP report, page ES-2 Iraqi “documents show Saddam’s terror organizations could be deadly...

...The Clinton administration itself was of two minds on Iraqi support for terrorism...

...There are few more succinct distillations of the Clinton administration’s view of Iraq and terrorism than these two articles...

...One sure way to know the truth about Iraq and terrorism, they argued, was to consult the mountain of evidence the regime left behind as its leaders fl ed in front of American forces...

...Sometimes Clinton offi cials argued that Iraq and al Qaeda were in league, as they did in justifying U.S...

...Our information on the group is as follows: It was established in 1979...

...He answered, ‘Both those who are against and the ones who are with Iraq should be killed.’” —Benjamin, September 30, 2002 Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...BY STEPHEN F. HAYES Four months after the start of the Iraq war, two former senior Clinton administration national security officials took to the pages of the New York Times to demand accountability for the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq and terrorism...

...IPP report, page 32 X X n “Iraq and Al Qaeda are not obvious allies...

...A central tenet of Al Qaeda’s jihadist ideology is that secular Muslim rulers and their regimes have oppressed the believers and plunged Islam into a historic crisis...

...Its goal is to apply the Islamic shari’a law and establish Islamic rule...

...Benjamin & Simon, July 2003 “Saddam’s interest in, and support for, non-Iraqi non-state actors was spread across a wide variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations...

...This document appears to refer to the Egyptian Islamic Group [EIG...

...IPP report, page 34 X X n “As members of the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999, we closely examined nearly a decade’s worth of intelligence and we became convinced, like many of our colleagues in the intelligence community, that the religious radicals of Al Qaeda and the secularists of Baathist Iraq simply did not trust one another or share suffi - ciently compelling interests to work together...

...The group’s most recent terrorist attack was the 1997 massacre of fi ftyeight tourists in Luxor, Egypt...

...government throughout the 1990s was, as Benjamin claimed, that Saddam Hussein had little interest in terrorism and no real links to al Qaeda and likeminded jihadists, we now know that consensus was wrong...

...Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon wrote that the Bush administration’s assertions about Iraqi support for terrorism were “suspect” and demanded scrutiny...

...Benjamin, September 30, 2002 “Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives...

...This was the understanding of American intelligence in the 1990’s...

...Or, as they put it in their opening sentence, “Iraq’s supposed links to terrorists...

...intelligence community’s analysis of Iraq, the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policy, and the arguments of anyone who would use the word “supposed” to describe Iraq’s links to terrorists...

...We have previously met with the organization’s representative and we agreed on a plan to carry out commando operations against the Egyptian regime...

...Benjamin and Simon were correct that the review of Iraqi documents could not only shape “our nation’s fundamental approach to security,” but also provide a measure of “political accountability,” in this case for those who wrote off Iraq’s “supposed” links to terrorists...

...And after combing through the files of Iraq’s military and intelligence bureaucracies they have presented “strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism,” including al Qaeda and its affi liates...

...On that, at least, they were right...

...But since George W. Bush took offi ce, and particularly since 9/11, former Clinton offi cials have largely disowned these claims, pretending that they never made such arguments and lashing out at anyone who reminded them that they did...

...This is not only a question of political accountability—it also bears on our nation’s fundamental approach to security,” they wrote...

...Consequently, he has shown no interest in working with them against their common enemy, the United States...

...T]he Iraqi [General Military Intelligence Directorate] was training Sudanese fi ghters inside Iraq...

...airstrikes on the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in August 1998 and in issuing a formal indictment of Osama bin Laden...

...Excerpt from an Iraqi Intelligence document dated March 18, 1993, —IPP report, page 14 X X n “American policy must recognize this clear division between the old state-sponsored terrorism, which we have shown we can deter, and the new, religiously motivated attacks...

...X X n “Attacking Iraq would not be a continuation of the war against terror but a deviation from it...

...A memorandum “drafted in Saddam’s offi ce . . . refers to an agreement with Islamic terrorists to conduct operations against the Egyptian regime during the fi rst Gulf War and for continued fi nancial support for the terrorists after hostilities ended...

...Benjamin, September 30, 2002 “Captured documents reveal that the [Iraqi] regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda—as long as that organization’s near-term goals supported Saddam’s long-term vision...

...And it is a devastating indictment of the U.S...

...If the consensus view of the U.S...

...Back in 2003, Benjamin and Simon wrote that the Iraq war was sold to the American people “as Phase II in the war on terror that began after the attacks of Sept...

...IPP report, pages 16 and 51 “There has been agreement since December 24, 1990, with the representative of the Islamic Group organization in Egypt on a plan to move against the Egyptian regime by carrying out commando operations provided that we guarantee them fi nancing and training and provide them with the requirements in accordance with the honorable order of the President [Saddam Hussein] which calls for carrying out commando operations against hostile alliance governments...

...government’s response to it under Bill Clinton...

...In fact, they are natural enemies...

...They came in the 1,600-page Pentagon study released on March 13 and entitled Iraqi Perspectives Project, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, produced after a review of some 600,000 documents unearthed in postwar Iraq...

...Military and intelligence offi cials need only comb through the fi les of Iraq’s intelligence agency and a handful of other government ministries,” and we would have our answers...

...IPP report, page 42 X X n “During the Persian Gulf war, Omar Abdel Rahman, the radical sheikh now imprisoned in the United States, summed up the Islamist view when he was asked what the punishment should be for those who supported the United States in the confl ict...

...IPP report, page ES-1 “From 1991 through 2003, the Saddam regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing, and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power...

...It carried out numerous successful operations, including the assassination of [Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat...