The more we find in Iraq and the more items that get declassified, the deeper and clearer the ties between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda appear.
Fox News has the story and a translation of how-to manuals for Arab operatives working throughout Afghanistan before 9/11, and evidence of military assistance to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The documents and translation were provided to Fox News by Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group. ISG supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit the hundreds of captured documents and materials of Saddam's regime.
Last week, Fox ran another story that revealed the contents of a 1999 notebook kept by an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) operative. That notebook detailed how Saddam's agents aggressively pursued and entered into a diplomatic, intelligence, and security arrangement with the Taliban and Islamist extremists operating in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks.
In view of that, the transcripts of tapes made by Saddam foretelling terrorist attacks on the US for which `Iraq will not be blamed' have a real context.
I can only imagine what we might have found in Iraq if President Bush had not been deterred by the Left's temper tantrums in America and Britain and had not waited 15 months to go in.
Thanks and big tip o' the kefiyah to my blog homie Kuffar Patrick of Clarity & Resolve
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI don't totally disagree with you, Nazar. But with this caveat:
Saddam was obviously a threat to us,but he was by no means the biggest threat.
Iraq was a haven of terrorism, and there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam was actively engaged in hostilities against us and was a lot farther along in his WMD program than is commonly believed.
If I was calling the shots, I would have done a Qadaffi plus on him, bombing every suspected facility and actively attempting to kill him, Uday and Qusay. If Saddam was killed,problem solved. If not, just like Qaddafi after Reagan slapped him around, he would have been VERY careful not to tick us off in any way.
And I wouldn't have gone through the farce with the UN and waited any 15 months to do it, either.
Also, if I were calling the shots, I would have helped create an independent Kurdistan by now, either after the air strike or after the boots hit the ground if we went in with troops. We would have had a loyal ally there then.
What you and I are reacting to is the mismanagement of post-war Iraq. One doesn't spend billions on nation building until the war is OVER, a stauchly pro American government with NO ties to your enemies is firmly in control and your borders are secure. That's how we did it in Germany and Japan.
NONE of that was done, mainly to placate the Saudis and the UAE and show that we were not `fighting a war against Islam'.
Do a search on Saudi Arabia on this blog and see what I have to say about the pernicious Saudi influence on the Bush Administration and our country in general.
It never pays to fight half a war.
That being said,Iraq was originally valuable because the jihadis made it a major war front, because it MIGHT provide a model for other Arab democracies and because it represented a valuable forward base against Iran.
The last one has become blatantly untrue, as the Iraqi government has informed us in no uncertain terms; the second one is highly iffy; and the first one, while still true takes away from our ability to respond elsewhere, IMO since we continue to saddle our troops with ridiculous rules of engagement and STILL refuse to do what it takes to stop arms, supplies and terrorists from coming across the border from Iran and Syria, or to eliminate Iran's military/poitical clout in the country.
Again read this:J O S H U A P U N D I T: The Iranian controlled Shia militias in Iraq - how NOT to win a war
Bush, IMO, is very much looking for a way to gracefully exit Iraq.
I chiefly posted this as a reaction to the hysterical Leftist mythology that insists that Iraq was not a danger to us in the least. Iraq was, and it needed to be dealt with..my chief differences on on METHOD.
Ultimately,the people that benefitted from Saddam's ouster were the Saudis and Iran, IMO.
We'll just have to hope for the best and see what develops.
Hello Nazar!
ReplyDeleteYeah...our positions are fairly close on a lot of this.As always, you raise some valid and interesting points.
Here's where we differ.
I don't necessarily agree that we would need that many more troops to secure the border..as Imentioned, Reagan shut down Qaddafi without using a single marine on the ground. But if we DO commit our ground troops, we need to do whatever is necessary for victory..and if that means more boots on the ground, so be it. My way would be to make it EXTREMELY worthwhile for Basher Assad and Ayatollah Khameini to control their own borders..or suffer the consequences.
That, by the way is the EXACT mistake we made in Viet Nam..we fought a defensive war of attrition, did not use air and sea power properly and did not control the borders of Laos and Cambodia...which made securing South Viet Nam an almost impossible job.
And as I said,another mistake we made in Viet Nam, as in Iraq, was to commit billions to nation building before the war was won.
B I G mistake, in my view.
My concerns about the Iraqi government are valid, I think. There are any number of members of the Iraqi government who are too damned cozy with our enemies in Iran...but we let them participate in the election anyway, and win. I mean, one of the major parties there is the Islamic Party for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq!
The equivalent of what's happened in Iraq would have been for the US to allow Ernest Raeder (later communist dictator of East Germany and a tool of the Russians)to become Chancellor of Germany during our occupation there.
Instead, AFTER we were sure we had the country secured, we put in Konrad Adenauer, anti-Nazi, anti-Communist and staunchly pro American.
If this is the most pro-American government we're going to get, we 're in trouble, Bush's gambit on `Arab democracy' has likely failed and what we're headed for in the end is `thanks for your time and money, Infidels. Now get the hell out so we can bond with our jihad buddies'.
Not good. Hopefull al-Maliki is stronger andthe government more pro Western than they seem.
You make a good point in stating that Iraq's population may not have supported Saddam wholeheartedly..but enough of them were willing to follow orders. And enough of them were pro Baathist to make it work.
I don't think we needed to bomb Iraq back to the stoneage, but it WAS necessary to completely humiliate and discredit the old order..which we did NOT do.And to do enough so that the consequences of opposing the occupation were crystal clear.
One of the reasons the democratization of Germany and Japan worked so well is that we COMPLETELY discrdited the old order
and/or co-opted it (ie Hirohito).
I also have to question your point that the majority of the so-called `insurgency' is made up of `Nationalist Iraqis'. If that were true,they would not be murdering their own people en masse.
In fact, many of the terrorist in Iraq are a mixture of ex-Baathists and Tikritis who have nothing to lose, foreign fighters and al Qaeda recruits, some from as far away as France, Bosnia and Britain (as in Afghanistan), and the Iranian controlled jihadi militias like the Mahdi Army and the Badr Force who are RELIOUSLY motivated, not nationalists as we would use the term.
It's the last group who are the emost worrisome to me.
With the exception of a couple of very old countries like Egypt, the idea of the nation-state is largely a Western concept..in the Islamic world,the basis of society is still largely feudal, and loyalty is to the clan, the tribe and the Muslim ummah rather than an abstract concept like `the nation'.
Iraq is an excellent example of this,being an artificial Britsh construct of severalethnic enclaves that became a `nation' back in 1922.
Great comments and points..thanks as always for weighing in and improving the conversation, Nazar!
"In view of that, the transcripts of tapes made by Saddam foretelling terrorist attacks on the US for which `Iraq will not be blamed' have a real context."
ReplyDeleteBingo! this statement was not Saddam professing innocence, but indicating a lack of evidence to track it back to him.
Nazar..respectfully, you kind of shoot your arguments in the foot on Viet Nam when you mention moving the war into Cambodia and Laos would just have caused the communists to move further west.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, as you point out, Nixon did EXACTLY that, along with strategic bombing of the infrastructure of North Viet Nam..and not only didn't the NVA move further West and expand the war, but the North Vietnamese ended the war and came to terms precipitously, realizing that if they didn't, Nixon was fully capable of invading the North and ending the war that way.
Your remarks on `clear and hold' are entirely correct, but such actions are difficult when fresh supplies and terrorists are constantly coming in from outside the country.
You can't fight a war half way, or engage in nation building while still involved in hostilities, IMO...hopefully you are correct and I'm wrong about that.
I certainly agree with you that this war is too important to be lost, and patience is called for..but I also recognize that (a) there are other fronts in this war (b) America does best with wars of movement rather than defensive wars of attrition because we like results and (c)Given the influence of Iran, security for the Iraqis will be very difficult until that situation is addressed.
We're really not too far apart on this.
Here's a bit of a different view on Vietnam:
The problem was not that the NVA were so motivated and efficient, but that the US never fought the war properly until Nixon did so.
As General Giap has written, LBJ could have ended the war in 1968 with a US victory after the Tet Offensive, when US fire power decimated the NVA and there was literally nothing between the US marines and Hanoi. Instead, placating the Left in the Democratic Party and hoping to be renominated, LBJ held back..with the result that the VC and NVA were able to recuperate. And a lot more Americans and Vietnamese died as a result.
Nixon, whatever his failings, ended the war on what should have been honorable and lasting terms, given the lackof political will in the US to continue .
South Vietnam and the Lon Nol government in Cambodia stopped the communist armies cold after the Americans withdrew, and they would be free today if it were not for the Leftist congress elected in the wake of Watergate that repudiated our pledged word, cut off all military aid and left South Vietnam and Cambodia to the mercy of the communists, the gulags and the Killing Fields. Read the last volume of Kissinger's memoirs for more details.
Have a great weekend, Nazar!
Anonymous...EXACTLY right! You definately got the context.
ReplyDelete