Saddam Dossier

For my readers who haven't seen it yet, check out foxnews.com top, middle section.

Thanks to AmericanThinker.com, Confederate Yankee, California Conservative, and all the contributors who made this possible.

Update: the column will be a weekly feature that will start at the top (of the foxnews.com website)on Fridays and work its way down over the weekend. Thanks to all those who showed their support. Big thanks to Hugh Hewitt for plugging this site in covering the story. 

Also thanks to Spencer Hughes for having me on yesterday on fox news radio.

Scheduled for tomorrow on KVI with Kirby Wilbur, KVI has streaming if anybody is interested. I used to live out at Ft Lewis and listened to Kirby often, it's an honor to talk with him.

Also, check out:

It also looks like ANOTHER top Saddam aide has been found to have been working with Zarqawi SINCE 2002 and was nearly named the new head of al Qaeda in Iraq. http://markeichenlaub.blogspot.com/2006/06/former-saddam-hussein-aide-military.html

Mark is doing a lot of research and is definitely worth checking out, thanks to Mark for his support here.

Also, big thanks to Christopher Hitchens, THE Christopher Hitchens for lending his intellectual weight to this research. Slate

I was wondering why I wasn't seeing too many liberal assaults on the legitimacy of that document, then I saw Hitch had some what blessed the work, which carries a lot of prestige in the field of ideas.

Comments

[Mark Eichenlaub]

Ray,
Congratulations. It also looks like ANOTHER top Saddam aide has been found to have been working with Zarqawi SINCE 2002 and was nearly named the new head of al Qaeda in Iraq. http://markeichenlaub.blogspot.com/2006/06/former-saddam-hussein-aide-military.html

[Sock puppet of the Great Satan]

'Congratulations. It also looks like ANOTHER top Saddam aide has been found to have been working with Zarqawi'

Err, half-true: make that an ex-Saddam aide. From the Asia Times article that you quote:

"He [Abu aseel] served there during the heyday of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime, and *abandoned the army to join Islamic fundamentalist parties in the 1990s*. He had worked closely with Zarqawi since 2002."

Context is everything, folks. Analysis: it's not for amateurs.

[Mark Eichenlaub]

He's obviously not "still" one of Saddam's top aides. He was a Military Intelligence aide.
You are right about an ex-aide to Saddam, I should have been more clear. Thanks for pointing it out for me.
It was used as an example to point out that Baathists aren't as rigid in who they will work with as they have been portrayed to be.

I have a full list of former Baathists found to be working with Zarqawi at my site if you scroll down some. I can't tell you when they started working together because I don't know. It would be interesting to find out though.

[SMB]

"You are right about an ex-aide to Saddam, I should have been more clear. Thanks for pointing it out for me."

I pointed this out to you in the comments section of your blog - you decided not to publish my post.

No surprise there.

[Mark]

SMB,
If you were "anonymous" who had all kinds of unkind stuff you wanted to post in my comments section, you are right, I am not going to post you in there. I'd prefer to keep my comment section clean of that stuff. There's still nothing missing from the way it was posted on my site and the only error above is that I didn't put the word "former" in because I assumed that most people are smart enough to know that Saddam isn't still in power and any aide being referenced would be a "former" aide. Apparently I was wrong in assuming people would know the basics.

[Sock puppet of the Great Satan]

"the only error above is that I didn't put the word "former" in because I assumed that most people are smart enough to know that Saddam isn't still in power and any aide being referenced would be a "former" aide. "

No, there is a larger error made by you: it's evident from the Asia Times article that Abu Aseel left the Iraqi army to join with fundamentalist parties in the 1990s, i.e., he left Ba'athism well before the fall of Baghdad.

Further, there's also no indication in the Asia Times story you link to that Abu Aseel was a "top Saddam aide", just that he worked in Military Intelligence. As I can't imagine describing every official at DIA or Army Intelligence as a "top presidential aide", it seems to me you and Ray are engaging in hyperbole.

Read the data for what it says, rather than what you wish it to say.

[Ray Robison]

SPotGS, wow, you are so authoritarian on the subject, and I only get my information from head hunters on the ground in Iraq running down the former bathists to get at the terrorists who are working together. And of course, documentation that says they were working together since the 90's. So why on eartch would anybody assume that a MI official might have been working with al Qaeda in an official capacity when we only have a document outlining a secret intelligence relationship between Saddam and the Taliban. Silly us for putting the pieces together. Wish we had your capacity for realistic analysis...

[SMB]

[Ray wrote: "I ... get my information from head hunters on the ground in Iraq running down the former bathists to get at the terrorists who are working together."]

Who are you referring to specifically - foot soldiers, intelligence specialists?

So far as I can tell, you have absolutely no ties to the intelligence community, yet you seem happy to imply such a connection.

Please clarify.

[Ray Robison]

lets see, despite all the evidence, you see no ties between the Saddam Regime and terrorism, now you see no ties between myself and the intelligence community based exactly on what information? Oh yea, the time I worked for the Iraq Survey Group under DIA contract on a CIA led project analyzing, and archiving what? Oh my, could it be intelligence? If you are going to just be silly then please stop wasting my time.

[Mark]

The article says that Ayeel abandoned the Army, not the Baath party or connections to the Baath party.

Being escalted to intelligence in the Military, as opposed to internal security, is quite a big deal, its also worth noting that all of that took place during Saddam's best years. If he wasn't an important player during Saddam's days, then what was he?

[SMB]

Stop dissembling and please answer my question.

I am already aware of the previous position you temporarily held with the ISG: You were a staffer with zero linguistic/analytic skills. Your job was to provide triage-level examination of captured material only as a means of cataloguing each item, subsequently so professional analysts could study them in greater detail. You were, in essence, a file clerk:

"Many times when we reviewed the information with intelligence professionals on site, we were rebuked as not being intelligence specialists, despite the fact that many of us had extensive operational military backgrounds..."

http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=4477

What I am enquiring about here, now, is the exact nature of your relationship with people currently serving in Iraq today. Do you have genuine and meaningful contact with any intelligence personnel, or are you once again deliberately inflating your importance and knowledge?

[Sock Puppet of the Great Satan]

"I only get my information from head hunters on the ground in Iraq running down the former bathists"

Then you should have no problem giving me a cite for Abu Aseel's being a "top aide" to Saddam beyond the Asia times article. If you need to use terms of art like "sources I can't name here", that's OK. Just want it on record.

"Being escalted to intelligence in the Military, as opposed to internal security, is quite a big deal,"

Escalated? I took that as being the booby prize. Who was closer to power in Iraq - the Army or internal security?

"its also worth noting that all of that took place during Saddam's best years."

He was put into MI in the 1960s, before Saddam was on the scene.

"If he wasn't an important player during Saddam's days, then what was he?"

So you just assumed he was an important player then?

[Ray Robison]

Oh, I know who this is, you are a huge freaking liar, you told every one I was punished by my superiors while with ISG, a blatant lie. Crawl back in you hole nutbag, before I ban thee, let me inform thee as useless a proposition as that is:

"You were a staffer with zero linguistic/analytic skills" ummm brainiac, if I have no analytical skills, why am I getting paid to analyze new missile technology? DDDDUUUUUHHHHH! Why was I chosen out of all the people in the world to analyze these documents for the number 1 cable news organization in the world? DDDUUUHHHHH

"we were rebuked as not being intelligence specialists" this is a statement about the arrogance of cubicle riding analysts disregarding the advice of operations people. If you had one iota of wisdom and experience, this universal truth would be immediately recognized. But since you have never left your mamma's basement, you have no point of reference to even conceive that this is a common failure between operations and analysis everywhere.

"What I am enquiring about here, now, is the exact nature of your relationship with people currently serving in Iraq today."
since my credentials are already well stated, it is absolutely useless to try to convince somebody who would still argue I have no IC experience or contacts, I will not suffer this fool any longer.

"You were, in essence, a file clerk:" you know, last time you called me a librarian, here is the obvious to the oblivious, if you want to know where to find something, who do you ask? the file clerk or the librarian nitwit. take a hike.

[Mark]

SMB, Sockpuppet,
Abu Aseel is one in a long line of former Baathists caught working with Zarqawi. Izzat al Douri was also named as potential Zarqawi replacement. Is he not a top aide as well?
How do I know all this? By researching and asking questions on my own. I would be as skeptical about all this as you guys are except noone else is compiling this information, noone told me about it and noone (including the Bush administration) is combining all of this evidence and analyzing it.
I could see questioning the motives and logic behind it all and question Aseel's role in Iraq, but how about doing so to get answers to these questions instead questioning the people who point out their presence and role in Iraq's insurgency.

You can go to my blog and go to my very first post I did in April and see all of the former Baathists caught with Zarqawi. There are a number of them still no the loose in Syria funding the Baath element of the insurgency AND the al Qaeda side. Check Thomas Joscelyn's blog, check mine. And I ask that you do it without an open mind instead of obsessing on semantics.

You could also go to the,frequently updated, most wanted list in Iraq at MNF and CENTCOM. Many of the Tikrti's and ex-Baathist leaders are wanted for funding the insurgency still and listed as so. None of this is a secret. Do the research on your own because apparently you don't trust the way others do it. If you do the research on your own you will come to the same conclusion that many of us have.
The Baathists are now working with al Qaeda in Iraq and have been since at least the August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters. Are you really being honest with yourself if you say that their cooperation didn't begin until after the U.S. invaded?

[swamp6]

Forgive me for being a little behind, I just read the Christopher Hitchens article.
Awesome that he quoted it you, you are indeed the man on the subject.

Keep kickin the science man!