SADDAM AND TERRORISM
Correspondence SADDAM AND TERRORISM WE THANK THE WEEKLY STANDARD for reminding its readers of the criticisms we made of the Bush administration’s linkage of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda (“Not...
...investigators had translated and analyzed the detritus of the former Iraqi regime, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon assured us that this captured material would provide critical insights about Iraq and terrorism...
...According to court testimony from senior al Qaeda terrorist Jamal al Fadl and others, Sudanese intelligence provided security at al Qaeda training camps in Sudan and al Qaeda operatives worked hand-in-glove with Sudanese military and intelligence offi cials...
...And contrary to their claims that Dick Cheney has “given up” connecting Iraq and al Qaeda, he did so quite emphatically at a press conference in Baghdad on March 17...
...It is all somewhat speculative, and it would be helpful to know more...
...Take Ayman al Zawahiri, the man who has served as Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy for more than two decades...
...So before they even offered their perfunctory acknowledgment of Iraq’s involvement in global terrorism, they dismissed the signifi cance of this fact and mocked those who took it seriously...
...Let’s assume, against all logic, that Benjamin is correct...
...He explained: The Iraqi connection with al Shifa, given what we know about it, does not yet meet the test as proof of a substantive relationship because it isn’t clear that one side knew the other side’s involvement...
...intelligence community was aware of a few meetings between bin Laden’s men and Saddam’s...
...In the most extreme case, if the Iraqis suspected al Qaeda involvement, they might have had assurances from the Sudanese that bin Laden’s people would never get the weapons...
...What Benjamin neglected to mention was the relationship between the Sudanese military and intelligence offi - cials and al Qaeda...
...4 state sponsor of international terrorism...
...He said, directly: “There was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda...
...Someone should tell them their side has surrendered...
...But they conveniently ignore the explanation of those lines given by 9/11 co-chairman Tom Kean at the press conference to introduce the report...
...In the opening of their July 2003 article—an argument claiming that Iraq was a distraction from the war on terror—Benjamin and Simon refer to “Iraq’s supposed links to terrorists...
...As offi cials who helped coordinate the U.S...
...Yet Stephen F. Hayes and THE WEEKLY STANDARD fi ght on, like the Japanese soldiers who emerged from the jungles of the Philippines decades after World War II ended...
...According to the authors of the Iraqi Perspectives Project, the captured Iraqi documents confi rm that Iraq and al Qaeda were indeed willing to “work together” and that the Iraqi regime was, in fact, willing “to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be a part of al Qaeda...
...The only al Qaeda operative who said otherwise, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, appears to have done so during a harsh interrogation, and he later recanted...
...And Benjamin and Simon tell the entire story quite convincingly in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror...
...THE WEEKLY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor...
...Well, in his article back in 2002, Benjamin interrupted his long list of reasons why Iraq and al Qaeda were not linked with this rather jarring non sequitur: “Later, an indirect link appeared...
...How does one qualify as a target in that effort if not by providing the technology for the world’s most deadly weapons to the world’s most deadly terrorist group...
...George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have long since given up on this connection...
...He implies that we said there were no contacts between the two sides, yet as we wrote in our book The Next Attack (2005), even though the two sides’ interests diverged, “that does not mean they had no contact or did not at times sniff around each other to see if they might become allies...
...I laughed out loud the fi rst time I read the Japanese-soldier put down—in another magazine, from another writer...
...They were wrong...
...embassies in East Africa, Bill Clinton ordered airstrikes against the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory outside Khartoum...
...Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer’s name, address, and phone number...
...The Middle Eastern tradition of keeping tabs on all groups, friendly or not, persists, and the U.S...
...intelligence community knew that Iraq was helping al Qaeda with chemical weapons production but neither the Iraqis nor al Qaeda did...
...In this case, the intercepted calls revealed that Emad al Ani, the head of Iraq’s VX nerve agent program, was working with an arm of the Sudanese military with close ties to bin Laden...
...Multiple high-ranking Iraqi intelligence offi cials have corroborated these written records...
...That may sound less than satisfying, but the Sudanese did show a talent for fl eecing bin Laden...
...Benjamin and Simon are not interested...
...And yet Benjamin and Simon ignore it...
...Even on background, it’s something government offi cials rarely do for fear of jeopardizing the sources and methods of obtaining such information...
...The authors of the study wrote: “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...
...To determine the truth about Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda, they wrote on July 20, 2003, “military and intelligence offi cials need only comb through the fi les of Iraq’s intelligence agency and a handful of other government ministries...
...National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told CNN that the U.S...
...Yet in the July 20, 2003, New York Times op-ed that he cites in his opening paragraph, we wrote: “Don’t misunderstand—we should all be glad to see the Iraqi people freed from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, and the defeat of Iraq did spell the demise of the world’s No...
...Internal Iraqi documents indicate that Saddam Hussein supported Zawahiri’s group for years...
...It is true, as they point out, that they have not changed their conclusions about Saddam Hussein’s support for al Qaeda...
...I asked Benjamin about this in an email back in 2003...
...It turns out there is a lot more to that story than Benjamin suggests...
...intelligence community had collected “information that Iraq has assisted chemical weapons activity in Sudan” and “information linking bin Laden to the Sudanese regime and to the al Shifa plant...
...A Sudanese effort to procure chemical weapons, which Mr...
...government’s annual listing of state sponsors of terror, we could hardly have thought otherwise, and we have written about Iraqi support for terror elsewhere, including in The Age of Sacred Terror, which your reviewer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, called “a near-masterpiece...
...Later, Hayes complains that Clinton offi cials who once noted the links between Iraq and the al Shifa chemical plant in Sudan had “largely disowned these claims,” yet Daniel Benjamin said plainly in the September 30, 2002, New York Times op-ed: “A Sudanese effort to procure chemical weapons, which Mr...
...Benjamin and Simon have argued for years that Iraq and al Qaeda were “natural enemies” and that secularists like Saddam Hussein would not support jihadists like Osama bin Laden...
...Although it’s hard for me to understand why he would have wanted me to include this in my original piece, I’m happy to air his full views now...
...Even more important, Hayes is prepared to accept the word of Iraqi documents while ignoring the adamant denials of top al Qaeda operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah that there was any cooperation between al Qaeda and Iraq...
...It would have been nice if Stephen F. Hayes—in his indefatigable quest to prove that connection—hadn’t distorted our arguments with such clear dishonesty and complete disregard of the written record...
...bin Laden had invested in, seemed to rely on an Iraqi production method...
...That is, it is not clear that the Iraqis knew about bin Laden’s well-concealed investment in the Sudanese Military Industrial Corporation...
...All letters should be addressed: Correspondence Editor THE WEEKLY STANDARD 1150 17th St., NW, Suite 505 Washington, DC 20036 You may fax letters: (202) 293-4901 or email: editor@weeklystandard.com...
...Isn’t it still a problem that Iraq was unwittingly providing assistance to al Qaeda on WMD production...
...Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States...
...The Sudanese very likely had their own interest in VX development, and they would also have had good reasons to keep al Qaeda’s involvement from the Iraqis...
...Correspondence SADDAM AND TERRORISM WE THANK THE WEEKLY STANDARD for reminding its readers of the criticisms we made of the Bush administration’s linkage of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda (“Not What They Supposed,” April 14...
...Much of his story is devoted to accusing us of maintaining that Saddam’s regime was not implicated in terrorism...
...It’s not hard to understand why...
...Benjamin and Simon conclude their response to my piece with an amusing insult, a misleading claim, and a false one...
...There is no acknowledgment anywhere of the delusory nature of Saddam’s regime—a theme of the Iraqi Perspectives Project that Hayes could hardly have missed if he had done more than cherry-pick useful quotes—which suggests that the documents he cites may have been as fi ctional as others that were circulating within the Iraqi bureaucracy...
...On August 20, 1998, in response to al Qaeda attacks two weeks earlier on U.S...
...Then Hayes goes on to suggest that we scanted Iraq’s ties with al Qaeda and used quotations from the Iraqi Perspectives Project to prove that there was a connection...
...Moreover, not one of the quotations Hayes cites demonstrates a direct link to al Qaeda...
...After all, Saddam was exactly the kind of secularist autocrat that al Qaeda despised...
...To strengthen these claims, Clinton administration offi cials took the extraordinary step of discussing intercepted communications...
...DANIEL BENJAMIN & STEVEN SIMON Washington, D.C...
...Now they are chiefl y concerned that these documents might be “fi ctional” and, judging from their determination to avoid engaging on the substance of these Iraqi fi les, seem interested only in what they might tell us about the “delusory” regime of Saddam Hussein...
...Thanks to the Iraqi regime’s own fi les, we now know much more about these very real links to terrorists...
...bin Laden had invested in, seemed to rely on an Iraqi production method...
...Benjamin and Simon offer their only substantive complaint when they chide me for failing to include the one time either of them cited an Iraq-al Qaeda connection...
...To justify the action, no fewer than six Clinton administration offi cials said the Iraqis had aided al Qaeda’s efforts to produce chemical weapons...
...So their insults are banal, their arguments are dishonest, and they are careless with facts...
...William Cohen, Clinton’s secretary of defense, told the 9/11 Commission that an executive from the al Shifa plant “traveled to Baghdad to meet with the father of the VX program...
...Instead, several passages discuss connections with organizations that were not part of al Qaeda, such as the Islamic Group in Egypt (al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya), or to discussions of joint efforts of which there is no further proof...
...Benjamin and Simon cite two lines from the 9/11 Commission report to support their case that there was no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda...
...STEPHEN F. HAYES RESPONDS: Before U.S...
...In short, nothing in this or any of Hayes’s numerous articles dents our conclusions or that of the 9/11 Commission that “we have seen no evidence that [the contacts] ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship...
...Benjamin and Simon still maintain that Iraq was a distraction from the global war on terror...
...But that says much more about their refusal to accept evidence showing they are wrong than it does about the evidence itself...
...Benjamin’s claim, then, boils down to this: The U.S...
...He left it at that...
...There is no indication he stopped...
Vol. 13 • April 2008 • No. 31
