More evidence of Saddam’s Terrorist Ties

Last year I told you about thousands of documents and audiotape files recovered from Iraq that linked Saddam to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. A story that virtually went unnoticed by the mainstream media.

Well we are continuously learning more about Saddam’s regime as these documents continue to be analyzed. Today we have another story stemming from those sets of documents that is sure to get the same amount of media coverage from the mainstream media.

A report titled “Saddam and Terrorism and released this week by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says it found no “smoking gun” linking Iraq operationally to Al Qaeda, but says Saddam collaborated with known Al Qaeda affiliates and a wider constellation of Islamist terror groups.

Now the no “smoking gun” between Saddam operationally to al Qaeda is sure to get some attention. Just as it has in the past to similar reports, but let’s take a look at what the mainstream media likes to ignore.

In this report you will find the following:

~The Iraqi Intelligence Service in a 1993 memo to Saddam agreed on a plan to train commandos from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat and was founded by Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

• In the same year, Saddam ordered his intelligence service to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia ." At the time, Al Qaeda was working with warlords against American forces there.

• Saddam's intelligence services maintained extensive support networks for a wide range of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations, including but not limited to Hamas. Among the other Palestinian groups Saddam supported at the time was Force 17, the private army loyal to Yasser Arafat.

• Beginning in 1999, Iraq 's intelligence service began providing "financial and moral support" for a small radical Islamist Kurdish sect the report does not name. A Kurdish Islamist group called Ansar al Islam in 2002 would try to assassinate the regional prime minister in the eastern Kurdish region, Barham Salih.

• In 2001, Saddam's intelligence service drafted a manual titled "Lessons in Secret Organization and Jihad Work—How to Organize and Overthrow the Saudi Royal Family." In the same year, his intelligence service submitted names of 10 volunteer "martyrs" for operations inside the Kingdom.

• In 2000, Iraq sent a suicide bomber through Northern Iraq who intended to travel to London to assassinate Ahmad Chalabi, at the time an Iraqi opposition leader who would later go on to be an Iraqi deputy prime minister. The mission was aborted after the bomber could not obtain a visa to enter the United Kingdom.

Saddam may not have had a direct link into al Qaeda operations, but there is now little doubt there was some type of relationship.

Now let’s sit back and watch the mainstream media ignore these facts in the report and continue the claim of no link between Saddam and al Qaeda or terrorism.