April 06, 2007
New DOD Report Indicates No Ties Between Saddam and al Qaeda; New e-Book Indicates Just the Opposite
I QUESTION THE TIMING!
The Washington Post has an article posted this morning by R. Jeffery Smith that seems to put to rest allegations that Saddam Hussein's government was directly in contact with al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Interestingly, the release of this report came on the same day that Vice President Dick Cheney repeated allegations of cooperation:
The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June."This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners about Zarqawi, whom he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."
Folks, unless the Veep has information I don't (which is quite possible), he is possibly conflating two things here.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Zarqawi was a terrorist operating in Iraq by late 2001, and that he was well established prior to the 2003 invasion. There is also no doubt at all that he shared the same radical Sunni Islamist philosophy as al Qaeda. What does not seem to be supported by the report is Zarqawi's direct contact with al Qaeda prior to the 2003 invasion.
But one thing the report does apparently reinforce is that Saddam Hussein did have ties to other terror groups, which Smith glosses over (my bold):
Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.
But is the DOD report accurate?
As we well know, millions of documents were captured after the fall of the Iraqi government, and the overwhelming majority of those documents have yet to be translated, thanks to the rise of the insurgency in Iraq. U.S. intelligence assets have always been extremely thin in regards to Arab translators, and those translators we do have are being used--and rightfully so--in active intelligence operations, not the historical review of documents from a regime that no longer exists. It is simply a matter of priorities.
But while U.S. military assets are correctly focused on current intelligence exploitation, a former member of the Iraq Study Group and his co-authors has gone though the documentation released by DOD, and has come to a vastly different series of conclusions, published in a new e-book, Both In One Trench: Saddam's Support to the Global Jihad Movement and International Terrorism.
I have a review copy of the book and I'm just starting on it, but if Robinson, Dunaway and al-Hadir are correct, then there may be reason to doubt the accuracy of the DOD report, not because DOD is being deceptive in any way, but simply because they are working from limited data that results from their assets being needed elsewhere.
Some of the bombshell conclusions published in the book are stunning:
The Saddam regime supported Islamic terrorists the same as it supported other ‘secular’ terrorists. The key to understanding this issue is the logical distinction between working with Islamic extremists to achieve mutual objectives outside of Iraq versus having them exist uncontrolled inside Iraq. Saddam’s regime was “open for business” to leaders from al-Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, Hamas, Afghani warlords and other Islamic extremist organizations.2. Documents provide strong evidence that Saddam was the instigator and ultimate mastermind behind the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. They also provide evidence to suspect that Saddam was complicit in the Millennium Plot as executed by al Qaeda against the United States. Furthermore, documents reveal what may be foreknowledge by Saddam of the American anthrax attack that occurred within days of 9/11.
3. Saddam was in material breach of UN resolutions. The authorization from Congress for the use of force in Iraq was based largely on the failure of the Saddam regime to comply with its obligations under agreement to the UN. This fact is salient; the Saddam regime was in a state of noncompliance. WMD, while a significant part of the argument before the war, was never the sole justification despite cynical attempts by historical revisionists to portray it as the only justification provided by the Bush Administration.
4. Saddam corrupted mightily. He used pacifists, leftists, and even environmentalists to spread his propaganda. His intelligence agencies claimed to have sources all over the world in sensitive organizations, including the UN and the American media.
5. There are indications of activities in Iraq that we cannot make full determination on at this time, but which raise interesting questions. While we cannot make conclusions, we will pass the relevant information to the reader who may draw his or her own conclusions. For instance, a report by a respected journalist about a claim of an Iraqi underground nuclear test that happened in the late 1980’s appears to have sparked concern within the Saddam regime. The internal memorandum shows active steps to conceal evidence related to the story.
6. For the sake of history we make the startling revelation that during President Bush’s 2006 State of the Union Address, a spy for Saddam Hussein sat with the First Lady, Laura Bush. It should be noted that it was practically impossible to know this, and at the time the man was a leader of the Afghan reform movement that supported the overthrow of the Taliban.
Does the evidence support the allegations made by the authors? If so, does the documentation captured in Iraq provide the documentary evidence to justify the Iraq War?
At 200+ pages, this book promises to be an interesting read. If the conclusions made are supported, it may just be the most important book released since the beginning of the War On Terror.
Just to be perfectly clear on this, you're saying that some blogger knows better than the DoD whether Saddam cooperated with Al Qaeda. If you like I'll find you a blogger who thinks the moon is made of cheese. Will that then be true as well?
Is your reasoning that the DoD is compromised by liberal bias?
Posted by: Lex Steele at April 6, 2007 04:16 PMRay Robison isn't just some blogger -- he is the smartest man alive (after Christopher Hitchens).
P.S. Liberals are hiding Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
P.S. Liberals are hiding Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
Why, I think I have some WMDs in my pants! How did that get in there?
Posted by: David Terrenoire at April 6, 2007 05:27 PMBTW I am not sure why the author of this blog "questions the timing" of the release of this report or finds it interesting this happened on the day Cheney refutes its contents.
You could assume the VP gets told about DoD releases like this. Particularly when the intended audience is him. He being the one person on the planet who didn't understand the first 5 times this assessment was made public.
Posted by: Kilo at April 6, 2007 05:48 PMFFS, If you google the man's name you have to search all the way down to result #6 to find out he's a conspiracy theorist.
No doubt there'll be a reason the self-policing blogosphere always bitching about MSM errors keeps their "hey check out Loose Change" post up.
Gullible idiots. If nothing else they're 100% reliable in terms of opting for denial over any other option.
Posted by: Kilo at April 6, 2007 05:58 PMYou could assume the VP gets told about DoD releases like this.
Of course you have evidence this happens right?
To presume any one agency of the government talks with any other in any reliable manner is a very bold assumption indeed.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at April 6, 2007 06:27 PMKilo --
You could assume the VP gets told about DoD releases like this.
Cheney doesn't roll in that fashion. He transcends the reality based community with bold leadership and iron resolve. He is a crimefighter, or more accurately an evil-doer fighter. His 'Robin' has sterling instincts, an infallible moral compass, and a legendary gut which more than make up for his lack of brains and experience. Together they will drive evil back into the spider hole from whence it came.
"We can be sure that some pundits will acclaim [Bush's] speech as bold and brilliant; they would do that if he read from 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar.'"
--Paul Krugman
To presume any one agency of the government talks with any other in any reliable manner is a very bold assumption indeed.
Purple (can I call you by your first name?) I've written for two Federal agencies recently and I can tell you from personal experience that this administration is very hands-on. If the DOD was publishing this report today, you can bet your last nickel that Cheney knew what was in it last week.
Trust me. These guys are seriously into control.
Posted by: David Terrenoire at April 6, 2007 06:52 PMThey're all into control.
That's what government is.
I don't know why people assume Democrats aren't into "control." They're kneecapping our troops in the field in a desperate attempt to maintain it.
Posted by: Good Lt at April 6, 2007 11:57 PMHey, what happened to that massive project where hundreds of wingnuts were all carefully going over all those Saddam documents that proved that he was Bin Laden's BFF?
Posted by: sam at April 7, 2007 05:59 AMCorrected link for: Conspiracy Theorist
That was a reference to Ray Robison who, while missing an 'n' and posessing no skills as either a translator or intelligence analyst, has produced a book which would have required at least one of those skill sets to be taken seriously.
Much like my ill-fated translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, hampered somewhat by my only speaking english and not being a biblical scholar. 200 pages though.
The link above refers to this timeline:
March 2003...
- US prepares to invade Iraq.
- US airdrops psyops leaflets for Iraqi population.
- Saddam decides a good way to have civilians distrust US and not pick these up and read them is to start rumours the leaflets are laced with anthrax and pretend they are by collecting them in chemical suits.
- General of the Joint Chiefs of staff cites these actions as a reason the psyops are viewed as effective by Saddam.
March 2006...
- In the Iraqi intel dump Ray finds a reference to these leaflets the US was dropping and the rumour about them containing anthrax, promoted by Iraqis.
- With 3 years of knowledge that no anthrax-laced pamphlets were dropped, Ray interprets this as meaning Saddam did have these leaflets poisoned and airdropped by the Iraqi air force.
- Ray claims that's what has been discovered in newly translated documents, the benign subject of which was MSM news 3 years earlier and online ever since.
- The mention of use of anthrax (which wasn't used) in a document (not written by the Iraqis) is cited as proof Iraqis had anthrax.
April 2007...
- Someone is yet unclear as to whether Ray Robison's fantastic discoveries in translated Iraqi intel documents, without employing skill in translation or intel analysis, will be credible or worth reading.
ps. Please take care in quoting this post as inclusion of certain words may prove that you too are in posession of, or have launched attacks with, biological agents.
Posted by: Kilo at April 7, 2007 06:45 AMKilo, your link goes to a google search. Provide the specific direct link for your allegation, becuase when I clicked on your first link, it went to a site called the Liberal Avenger (a less than credible source, to put it mildly), and the only link it had on that page went to a Fox News article written by Robinson, which, on a quick review (and perhaps I missed it), does not support your anthrax allegation.
As for Robinson's qualifications, he is a Sr. Military Operations Research Analyst with a background including over ten years of military service as an officer and enlisted soldier including the Gulf War and Kosovo operations, and is a graduate of the Combined Arms and Services Staff School.
He worked as a contractor for DIA with the Iraqi Survey Group, supervising linguists and cataloguing documents as they were captured in Iraq.
Please, enlighten us as to how a senior research analyst with service in military intelligence who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a contracting supervisor to a team of translators/linguists cataloging and classifying these captured documents is not qualified to write this book. I'm all ears.
As for Robison no speaking Arabic, well, duh; he never claimed he did. You notice he has two co-authors, one of which is a Arab translator going by the name of Sammi al-Hadir.
Sam, that "massive wingnut project" was pulled when the ever conservative New York Times cried about Iraqi nuclear weapons information being among the released documents. The Times article is now behind a $$$ firewall, but I posted on it here on Nov 03, 2006.
Intrestingly enough the Times may not have ever known of this information had Robinson not contacted a former member of the IAEA about a related document in that release of DOD two weeks prior.
Realizing that the document dump did indeed contain potentially classified and dangerous information, the web site was shut down.
By the time the site was shut down, Robinson, Dunaway and al-Hadir (the authors of this book), had already downloaded a significant amount of the documentation.
This book is the culmination of that very same research project the Times was responsible for shutting down over nuclear fears.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at April 7, 2007 10:36 AMThey're all into control.
That's what government is.
No. This crew is seriuously into controlling everything. That's why they've installed political officers, much like the old Soviet system, in every bureau and branch of the federal government. I work with these people and all the old hands say they've never seen anything like this. Never.
And the Democrats knee-capping our troops? You mean like sending them to war without up-armor, too few troops, no police training, no exit strategy, no plans for the insurgency and managed by a bunch of loyalist cronies with no experience in building a nation's bureaucratic infrastructure? You mean knee-capping like that?
No, I didn't think so. Here, have another glass of Kool Aid.
Posted by: David Terrenoire at April 7, 2007 10:40 AMI don't think the DOD is made up of liberal bias. I just don't think this report was really designed to look at all the data that might show links between Hussein and al Qaeda, it was more to analyze the process by Feith's office of making the case for links.
On the overall topic I am 100% sure, having studied this topic for four years and writing about it some at www.regimeofterror.com, that Saddam's regime had covert links to al Qaeda. There's been HUNDREDS of ex Saddamists found as al Qaeda leaders and fighters since 2002 and plenty of members of both sides, in custody and at large who have admitted links. I'll take this volume of evidence over what Saddam told his captors.
This doesn't mean all members of both groups had a secret pact to always cooperate but there were certainly instances in which their paths crossed and their interests overlapped.
Posted by: Mark Eichenlaub at April 7, 2007 11:22 AMConfederate Yankee wrote: ...enlighten us as to how a senior research analyst with service in military intelligence who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a contracting supervisor to a team of translators/linguists cataloging and classifying these captured documents is not qualified to write this book.
James Robison is not qualified to interpret data of this kind, which is why he played no part in analyzing these documents in Qatar. He is, however, perfectly entitled to write a book - so long as he sticks to a subject he knows something about, like projectiles.
Confederate Yankee wrote: Intrestingly enough the Times may not have ever known of this information had Robinson not contacted a former member of the IAEA about a related document in that release of DOD two weeks prior.
Many people kept a watchful eye on the Operation Iraqi Freedom document portal. Neither James Robison nor Joseph Shahda played any part in the chain of events that led to its closure, despite both of them separately suggesting that they did.
Mr Eichenlaub, your research isn't worth poo. Former Saddamists and Jihadists joining together, you say? Yes, probably. According to President Bush, Iraq is now the central front of the 'war on terror'. This particular strand of backward logic is summarised in three words: Affirming the consequent. Different groups have come together as a result of military action, not the other way around. Next you will be informing us that open umbrellas cause rain!
Posted by: smb1971 at April 7, 2007 06:55 PMKilo, your link goes to a google search. Provide the specific direct link for your allegation, becuase when I clicked on your first link, it went to a site called the Liberal Avenger... Posted by: Confederate Yankee at April 7, 2007 10:36 AM
Who's blog is banned from being directly linked here.
The google search term was the name of that blog and the exact title of one of its posts. I can't imagine it was too obscure what I was linking to.
...Liberal Avenger (a less than credible source, to put it mildly)
I wasn't pointing you to Liberal Avenger as the source. I was pointing you to Ray. How do you rate Ray on Ray-related matters ?
There's a post there that mentions Ray had made these ridiculous claims on that blog and many responses from Ray, none disputing this fact.Whether the blog was Liberal Avenger or Dan Reihl the only writing in question are Ray's own posts.
and the only link it had on that page went to a Fox News article written by Robinson, which, on a quick review (and perhaps I missed it), does not support your anthrax allegation.
The anthrax allegation isn't mine. It's Ray's. And yes you did miss some links, the "2003" and "2006" section headings in my post are links to the references in question.
As for Robinson's qualifications, he is...
... exactly what I said he was in terms of the only 2 qualifications that would matter.
Please, enlighten us as to how a senior research analyst with service in military intelligence who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a contracting supervisor to a team of translators/linguists cataloging and classifying these captured documents is not qualified to write this book. I'm all ears.
I did enlighten you already. I pointed out that he has no qualifications as a translator or an intelligence analyst while writing analusis of intelligence in a foreign language, as he has been doing on his blog for some time.
You should probably note that I did actually take his word for it before writing that, but we can argue about it if you like.
As for Robison no speaking Arabic, well, duh; he never claimed he did.
And indeed you never claimed in your previous paragraph that
his translating experience which didn't involve being able to translate Arabic was in any way contradicting what I wrote.
You notice he has two co-authors, one of which is a Arab translator going by the name of Sammi al-Hadir. Posted by: Confederate Yankee at April 7, 2007 10:36 AM
Yes I did notice that. I didn't spot though where Sammi was revealed to be a rabid anti-conspiracy-theorist though, if the suggestion is that he would be offsetting Ray's failings.
I was after all suggesting that the man has a record of making ricidulous claims and flat-out-wrong interpretations of intelligence, which often involve hysterical conspiracy theories.
You should be able to understand though that his own inability to translate arabic, and therefore to verify advice he receives about translations, has added to how ridiculous these X-files-like cliams have been in the past.
In fact I do believe even the single example I citied involved the same Sammi providing an incorrect translation which led to Ray -- with no option but to rely on a single incorrect translation -- basing his analysis on information which didn't exist.
I'm actually quite certain you can read Ray explaining that himself on one of those two links I provided. So you know, the boat ain't looking any leakier now that Sammi is involved now is it ?
I'm going to assume you appreciate the significance that you've introduced this guy's name here, I've googled his name, selected one Iraq-al Qaeda claim he's made and on that one issue he's peddled a ridiculous, baseless claim based on information that was debunked 4 years ago the second it was known and in part because his translator screwed up the translation.
Gee I wonder if someone looked into him for longer than 15 minutes and on more than one "intelligence discovery" claim he has made whether his credibility would look better or worse.
Actually no I don't. Neither does anyone else reading this.
