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In No hype needed: Saddam, al-Qaida linked Victor Davis Hanson itemizes a laundry list of relationships between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda and points out, that despite bouts of amnesia amongst the Democrats, there is nothing new or seriously disputed about the evidence of these relationships. (UPDATE: Also check out Powerlineblog’s comments on Hanson’s article.)

Almost every responsible U.S. government body had long warned about Saddam’s links to al-Qaida terrorists. In 1998, for example, when the Clinton Justice Department indicted bin Laden, the writ read: “In addition, al-Qaida reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al-Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaida would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.”

Then in October 2002, George Tenet, the Clinton-appointed CIA director, warned the Senate in similar terms: “We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade.” Seventy-seven senators apparently agreed — including a majority of Democrats — and cited just that connection a few days later as a cause to go to war against Saddam: ” … Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.”

…

More importantly, one of the masterminds of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Baghdad to find sanctuary with Saddam after the attack. And after the U.S.’s successful war against the Taliban, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the present murderous al-Qaida leader in Iraq, reportedly escaped from Afghanistan to gain a reprieve from Saddam.

All of this is understandable since Saddam had a long history of promoting and sheltering anti-Western terrorists. That’s why both Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas — terrorist banes of the 1970s and 1980s — were in Baghdad prior to the U.S. invasion and why the families of West Bank suicide bombers were given $25,000 rewards by the Iraqi government.

Some have argued that the secular Dictator Saddam was not an Islamofacist and, thus, would not cooperate with the terrorists. This ignores the fact that both have a common enemy: the West. As Hanson says

Saddam worried little over the agendas of these diverse terrorist groups, only that they shared his own generic hatred of Western governments. This kind of support from leaders such as Saddam has proven crucial to radical, violent Islamicists’ efforts.

After Sept. 11, it became clear that these enemies can only resort to terrorism to weaken American resolve and gain concessions — and can’t even do that without the clandestine help of illegitimate regimes (from Saddam in Iraq to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the theocracy in Iran, Bashar Assad in Syria and others) who provide money and sanctuary while denying culpability.

Middle Eastern terrorists and tyrants feed on one another. The Saddams and Assads of the region — and to a less extent the Saudi royal family and the Mubarak dynasty — deflected popular anger over their own failures onto the United States by allowing terrorists to scapegoat the Americans.

We can disagree about the execution of the war in Iraq and even whether the invasion, at that time, was the right course. However, the facts concerning Saddam’s relationship with al Qaeda are well established and immutable to historical revisionism. As John Adams said,

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
— John Adams, ‘Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,’ December 1770 US diplomat & politician (1735 – 1826)

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2005 at 11:19 am and is filed under General, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.