Saddam's support to terrorism does matter

I found this on the Counter terrorism Blog. Saddam's past terrorism connections have future consequences

Posted by Andrew Cochran - founder and editor of "The Counterterrorism Blog,"

Saddam's Past Terrorism Connections Have Future Consequences

A U.S. House oversight subcommittee conducts the first public hearing today on the lessons gleaned from the first review of the vast storehouse of Saddam's intelligence documents. They will hear today from two military officers involved in the preparation of the Iraq Perspectives Project (see my post on it earlier) and from an official of the Director of National Intelligence, and Congressmen will also discuss the release of documents by the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office at Ft. Leavenworth, which has been the subject of numerous articles and columns. The skepticism in official IC circles with respect to the value of these documents remains, but we should recall that (a) committed and careful terrorists not only don't die, but they never fade away either; and (b) the IC, including the FBI, missed the use of U.S.-based Islamic charities in the 1980s and 1990s to fund Islamic terrorism. Rest here

Well, well, well....just us kooks hunh NYT? ....hehehe

Folks, a guy like Saddam does not just role over when he is beaten. It was all about ego for Saddam. He is the kind of guy who was smart enough to know he couldn't fight you in a stand up on the street corner, so he would knife you in the ally. That is Saddam. A straight up thug.

He knew he couldn't build large scale production facilities to build WMD anymore, so he hid small amounts for terroristic purposes. He knew that if he sent Iraqis to do his dirty work, it would be traced back to him just like the attempted assassination of George Bush, Sr. But a guy like Saddam would find a way. Let's not forget the IIS had a close relationship to the former Soviet and then Russian intelligence apparatus. Those guys know their business. It would be very wise to conclude that many of their capabilities had been passed to the IIS.

Too many libs and academics, even in the intel community, never step outside their Starbuck coffee houses long enough to remember there are truly bad people in the world. A guy like Saddam doesn't change. He paints himself in the martyr role to gain Pan-Arabic (and Associated Press) support when needed, but that is an act. Sympathy itself is a weapon to Saddam. Yet he feels none for his victims. And he would have not lost a seconds sleep in pulling off a 9/11 style attack on the U.S.. But what made him the most dangerous is that he was, in fact, a very smart man. He played the international community for years and damn near got away with it.

Then George W. Bush became President of the United States. The game had ended and Saddam knew it. He knew that George Bush wouldn't believe his lies for a moment. It is no coincidence that a newly released document shows that Saddam asked for volunteers to attack the U.S. on the heals of the election of President Bush.

Saddam saw what kind of man George Bush is from the beginning. Hussein knew Bush wasn't the kind of guy to let public opinion polls stop him from doing what needed to be done. Saddam knew this because he has that same quality that you find in so many thugs who rise to prominence, a profound ability to judge the fortitude of an opponent.

Saddam Hussein realized that his cloak and dagger war against the U.S. was not to go ignored by a President who had taken the attempted assassination of a U.S. President personally (as our own intelligence community and political leadership should have). He realized he had two courses of action. Play up world sensitivities by ensuring his own people suffered under sanctions. And cultivate a relationship with people who would attack the U.S. who had no fear of loosing their personal power because the power they sought was the power of Allah.

This, he thought, would weaken President Bush because the American people would be too entangled with a war on terrorism to worry about what Saddam was doing. It was, again, a brilliant strategy that nearly worked as evidenced by those on the left who still say Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. That was what Saddam wanted. To occupy the U.S. with a war on Mujahedeen who had defeated the Soviet army, so that he could get the sanctions lifted in an increasingly despot sympathetic U.N. while we weren't looking.

This is evidenced by the diary of an IIS agent who recorded the VP of Iraq offering a secret intelligence relationship to the Taliban as they were "both in one trench". It is also evidenced by a memorandum of instruction for a group of Arab men (presumably Iraqi since it is from Iraq) on how to blend in with Afghani culture and take security precautions including with their families indicating a long term relationship.

It doesn't take a Ph.D. in counter terrorism to know an egomaniac like Saddam would never walk away from defeat without a grudge and a plan for revenge. But apparently, it does take a certain amount of common sense.

A U.S. House oversight subcommittee conducts the first public hearing today on the lessons gleaned from the first review of the vast storehouse of Saddam's intelligence documents. They will hear today from two military officers involved in the preparation of the Iraq Perspectives Project (see my post on it earlier) and from an official of the Director of National Intelligence, and Congressmen will also discuss the release of documents by the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office at Ft. Leavenworth, which has been the subject of numerous articles and columns. The skepticism in official IC circles with respect to the value of these documents remains, but we should recall that (a) committed and careful terrorists not only don't die, but they never fade away either; and (b) the IC, including the FBI, missed the use of U.S.-based Islamic charities in the 1980s and 1990s to fund Islamic terrorism. Rest here