Linked? - Jay Reding points

Linked? - Jay Reding points us to this piece, originating in the Weekly Standard, purporting to show the Hussein/Al-Quaeda link:

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (search) gave terror lord Usama bin Laden's thugs financial and logistical support, offering Al Qaeda (search) money, training and haven for more than a decade, it was reported yesterday.

Their deadly collaboration — which may have included the bombing of the USS Cole (search) and the 9/11 attacks — is revealed in a 16-page memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee (search) that cites reports from a variety of domestic and foreign spy agencies compiled by multiple sources, The Weekly Standard (search) reports.

The memo documents the link:

Two men were involved with the collaboration almost from its start.

Mamdouh Mahmud Salim — who's described as the terror lord's "best friend" — was involved in planning the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Another terrorist, Hassan al-Turabi, was said by an Iraqi defector to be "instrumental" in the relationship.

Iraq "sought Al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided Al Qaeda with training and instructors," a top-level Iraqi defector has told U.S. intelligence.

The bombshell report says bin Laden visited Baghdad in January 1998 and met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

"The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan," the memo says.

So let's recap - of the four justifications for the liberation of Iraq that the Bush Administration used:

1. Nobody on the left - at least on this side of the lunatic fringe - denies the endless string of resolutions the UN passed against the Hussein regime
2. Many on the left, including that leak in from the lunatic fringe, think that life under Hussein was better than life in Iraq today - but it doesn't come up often in arguments.
3. Weapons of Mass Destruction are still very much an open issue - and the Kay Report showed us just how open the issue is, not that you'd have known from the media reports on the subject.
4. And now, the "there was no link" canard may be on the ropes.

Let's see how this develops, of course.

But by the time of the election, I can see the left having to resort to "Bin Laden's been unaccounted for for 926 days"-sorts of statements, aiming for the demographic that thinks that sort of thing matters and also eats by slurping directly from the plate.

Posted by Mitch at November 15, 2003 09:10 AM