Today the Weekly Standard has a new article from Stephen Hayes about Saddam's terror camps. Not terrorist training camps in the Kurd territories that "Saddam had no control over" as so many on the left have claimed. But terror camps run by Fedayeen Saddam. (It even has Saddam right in the name so try to spin that one MSM)
From the article:
A new study from the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia,
paints quite a different picture. According to captured documents cited
in the study and first reported in THE WEEKLY STANDARD in January, the
former Iraqi regime was training non-Iraqi Arabs in terrorist
techniques.
Beginning in 1994, the Fedayeen Saddam opened its
own paramilitary training camps for volunteers, graduating more than
7,200 "good men racing full with courage and enthusiasm" in the first
year. Beginning in 1998, these camps began hosting "Arab volunteers
from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, 'the Gulf,' and Syria."
Ray:
(these documents have been released at the FMSO website, but remember, the left, Intel professionals and the media say there is nothing new in these documents, so I guess we already new that Fedayeen Saddam was running terror training camps, because, these documents have nothing new in them, the professionals said so, right? Which begs the question, since the media know about Fedayeen Saddam training terrorists, did they then decide to "unknow" the last 3 years as they have constantly reported that Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism?)
I wrote in the American Thinker about recently declassified documents captured in Afghanistan that disprove the statements made by Paul Pillar:
originally published at the American Thinker, thanks Thomas
Many people and institutions have a stake in the conclusion that
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda and the attacks on
the United States, culminating (so far) in the destruction of 9/11. One
spokesman coming to the fore of late to defend this position, despite increasing evidence to the contrary, is Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA official.
Pillar was recently featured in the Washington Post in a story written by Walter Pincus:
The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the
Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of
“cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had
already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country
could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to
overthrow Saddam Hussein.Paul R. Pillar, who was the national
intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to
2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies’ mistakes in
concluding that Hussein’s government possessed weapons of mass
destruction.
Last night on MSNBC, Paul Pillar was interviewed by Chris Matthews.
Pillar told Chris Matthews that there was no link between Saddam and
al-Qaeda.
With such an impressive sounding title as “National Intelligence
Officer” far be it from little old me to challenge his claims. But
maybe I will anyway.
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point just released a study
on al-Qaeda. Part of the study included al-Qaeda documents captured in
Afghanistan. The study focus is on al-Qaeda, and had nothing to say
about any connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
But such evidence is there none the less, buried in the details.
One document talks about Saddam:
Doc ID: AFGP-2002-601693
Date: Unknown
Author: Abu Mus’ab
Now look at these passages:
Page 4
"I read your criticism of the doctor "[undoubtedly this is al-Zawahri – RR]
We can conclude from this that these men are at a high level for one
of them to be openly writing letters critical of al-Zawahri. It
continues skipping a few lines for brevity:
"…that’s what he and along with Abu Hammam and others have done.
Some of them went to Saddam; others went to Iran and so on. May Allah
make us steadfast to his religion and I praise Him for making me say
everything had happen."
I included the second sentence because it seems equivalent to
swearing to God that this was true, which is probably significant for a
Jihadist.
Consider carefully that these are captured al-Qaeda document from
Afghanistan from what would seem to be a high level source. And this
al-Qaeda operative is indicating that fighters, Mujahedeen were sent to
Iraq before the Iraq war.
But wait, there’s more, as the TV commercials say.
On page 2:
"After my release I found that people came from the
Sudan and everywhere, and began fighting along side the Taliban
movement which for Pakistan was a substitute for Hikmatyar. Everyone,
even the children in the streets knew that they were created and
controlled by Pakistan. Their leader Fadhlurahman is a friend of
Banazeer, Saddam and Qaddafi. They comprise of the veteran sheiks…"
So the author tells us here that in 2002, before the invasion of
Iraq that people came to the aid of the Taliban (actually they were
probably Mujahedeen outside of Afghanistan) and brags that the leader
was a friend of the infidel Saddam and that they were most pious.
But don’t the Jihadists hate Saddam? We have been told this
repeatedly by those who dismiss any possible link between al-Qaeda and
Saddam.
The answer is found in the report itself. There are a wide variety
of philosophies inside even al-Qaeda, and it is quite probable that
even if Osama Bin Laden hated Saddam, his buddy al-Zawahri, as the
leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, had obtained support from Iraq.
I demonstrated this yesterday in an American Thinker article. Al-Qaeda is more than Bin Laden. Saddam and al-Qaeda did cooperate.
Wait
a minute, what am I thinking? The National Intelligence Officer for the
Near East and South Asia said there was no connection. How could he be mistaken?
Now comes this from the Hayes articles:
It is early, but the emerging picture suggests that the U.S.
intelligence community underestimated Saddam Hussein's interest in
terrorism. One U.S. intelligence official, identified only as an "IC
analyst" in the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on Iraq,
summarized the intelligence community's view on Iraq and terrorism with
disarming candor: "I don't think we were really focused on the CT
[counterterrorism] side, because we weren't concerned about the IIS
[Iraqi Intelligence Service] going out and proactively conducting
terrorist attacks. It wasn't until we realized that there was the
possibility of going to war that we had to get a handle on that."
A report produced by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, signed
by all members of the Intelligence Committee, Democrats and
Republicans, offered this withering assessment of the intelligence
community's work on Iraq and terrorism:
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did not
have a focused human intelligence (HUMINT) collection strategy
targeting Iraq's links to terrorism until 2002. The CIA had no [redacted] sources on the ground in Iraq reporting specifically on terrorism.
And why didn't the CIA worry about the IIS supporting terrorism before? Because the lead intel analyst for Iraq was so busy trying to distinguish himself in the intel community as an "outside the box" thinker that he overlooked the obvious. Paul Pillar was so invested in his theory that terrorist groups where moving away from state sponsorship, that he went to the extreme and excluded the possibility despite the evidence.
That is why the "U.S. intelligence community underestimated Saddam Hussein's interest in terrorism", because Paul Pillar said it wasn't happening.
Paul Pillar, if you read this, look up at the top of the page. See where it says "pointing out the obvious to the oblivious"? Here it comes. Niether Saddam or Jihadists have any problem with slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians. To say that neither would work with the other based on their moral objections to the others political and religious beliefs completely ignores the fact that men like these have a fluid moral relativism that can easily change based on their immediate need.