double-whammy

[rone]

"I would welcome it being declassified," [Richard Clarke] said. "But not just a little line here and there -- let's declassify all six hours of my testimony."

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John Kerry cited a Bible verse Sunday to criticize leaders who have "faith but has no deeds," prompting President Bush's [...] campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt [to say that] Kerry's comment "was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack." [thanks to doctroid]

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Is it just me, or can you feel the stress coming out of the White House these days?

Comments

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Any pointers to Hussein/AQ links would be appreciated.

Spinsanity (http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030528.html), not exactly a rabid partisan for the Administration:

The best evidence of a connection now appears to be a three-page document recovered in the Baghdad headquarters of the Mukhabarat, part of the Iraqi intelligence service. The handwritten memo describes an envoy from Osama Bin Laden who reportedly visited Iraq in March of 1998 and stayed about two weeks as a guest of the Iraqi government.

Hussein support for Palestinian intifada, not directly AQ related, from the al-Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,912938,00.html):

Along with the [cheque for $25,000], the old man yesterday received a certificate from President Saddam in recognition of his son's futile suicide attack on an Israeli gunboat.

Don Dahler, ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/alqaeda_iraq020927.html):

Abu Iman al-Maliki was convicted of spying on the Kurds as an Iraqi intelligence officer. He says he worked as such for 20 years. [...]

"The U.S. believes Iraq has had contact with al Qaeda," I said, "Do you know that to be a fact?"

"Yes. In '92, elements of al Qaeda came to Baghdad and met with Saddam Hussein and among them was Dr. Al-Zawahiri."

Ayman Al-Zawahiri, [...] has been identified as a top lieutenant of bin Laden's, and is widely thought to be a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Techcentralstation.com (http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html):

let's review the evidence, all of it on the public record for months or years:

* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.

* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam's mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.

* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.

* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.

* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the Guardian reported.

* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane's Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane's reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 2 man.

The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/527uwabl.asp), admittedly pro-Administration, has a long article about AQ/Iraq links, with some data on the Sudanese AQ strikes during the previous Administration.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Googling around confirms some of the stuff... i stand corrected.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I have no trouble believing that a lot of this is true; Saddam and al Qaeda have little ideologically in common, but they certainly have common enemies, and the evidence is that terrorists tend to get around and share information.

The question then becomes whether all this was sufficient that an invasion of Iraq would actually be a sensible thing to do to fight al Qaeda. Right now, to me, the most troubling piece of data in this regard is the story of the Ansar al-Islam camp (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/) in the northern no-fly zone. Before the war, this was often cited as Exhibit A supporting Iraq's link to al Qaeda, even though it wasn't in the part of Iraq actually controlled by Saddam Hussein. More recently, there have been reports that the US military had the ability, the opportunity and the plan to destroy the camp without invading Iraq, but that this mission was put on hold in favor of a full invasion, and in the meantime the terrorists in question got away from there, and later ended up blowing up several hundred people during the occupation. (I also heard some claims that they were linked to the Madrid bombings, but that sounded fishy; at any rate it seems generally believed that they've been major players in terrorism in occupied Iraq.)

That MSNBC report had unnamed military sources claiming that the camp was allowed to exist in order to bolster justification for the war. A somewhat less damning interpretation (http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001592.html) (at least to my mind) is that the attack was held off in order to avoid side effects that might jeopardize efforts (ultimately fruitless) to secure Turkish cooperation in the invasion. In any event, it appears that this was an opportunity to kill some al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in Iraq that was actually missed because of the Iraq war, and that these same people subsequently murdered hundreds. You'd have to win a lot to call that a net gain.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

The question then becomes whether all this was sufficient that an invasion of Iraq would actually be a sensible thing to do to fight al Qaeda.

I think this statement buries an unwarranted assumption. The current war is not against al-Qaeda solely, but against the particular strain of guerrilla violence fueled by a blasphemous misinterpretation of Islam and the dysfunctional autarchies that shelter and enable that violence. An invasion of Iraq may or may not be a sensible thing to do to fight al-Qaeda; I think the position that it is not is an eminently defensible one. Invading Iraq is a sensible thing to do if your goal is a decades-long project to, essentially, destroy the predominant culture in the area and build up something less inclined to kill your citizens. Iraq was and is the best place to try to set up a model functional Middle Eastern democracy, because of its tradition of (relative) secularism, its large, educated middle class, and its (relatively, again) decent infrastructure.

re: al-Ansar not being in the area controlled by Saddam. Well, precisely. In the area controlled by Saddam, he could use the usual methods of control -- secret police, etc. In an area he didn't directly control, he had to use an underground terrorist organisation as a catspaw. His lack of control over northern Iraq supports, rather than undermines, the contention that his regime was connected to al-Ansar. In terms of letting the camp go unmolested, well, that's sticky. It's reminiscent of the Coventry dillema Churchill faced. Would attacking the camp unilaterally put Saddam on alert? Would the Turks be more pissed-off, perhaps to the extent of pre-emptively stealing a march on the Northern Kurds, something they came very, very close to doing as it was? Would a Saddam on heightened alert managed combat differently, resulting in greater immediate coalition casualties? It's too hindsighty for me to really answer effectively.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Is there any evidence that Zarqawi was Saddam's Kurdistan catspaw? My impression is that he was working to overthrow Saddam.

My impression is that "al Qaeda" is as much a brand name as a unitary organization; its allegiances can shift all over the place, and two people who have had connections with al Qaeda are not automatically going to be allies.

As for the long-term cultural-change mission... I suppose this is the place where we just agree to disagree, but I've completely lost any faith I had that this sort of thing is possible through invasions. The vaunted Iraqi secularism is probably going to be extinct in a few years, since it was basically being propped up by Saddam's quasi-Stalinist police state. As far as I can tell, the place is sliding toward theocracy and possibly religious civil war, and Bush is just trying to wash his hands of the whole thing as rapidly as possible.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Is there any evidence that Zarqawi was Saddam's Kurdistan catspaw? My impression is that he was working to overthrow Saddam

Mrf? Zarqawi is aQ; I was talking about al-Ansar as the Kurdistan catspaw. Related to, but not identical to, aQ. One of the links upthread includes information on a 'nonagression pact' between the Hussein regime and aQ, for what it's worth -- all this info is necessarily sketchy and to be taken with seasoning.

My impression is that "al Qaeda" is as much a brand name as a unitary organization; its allegiances can shift all over the place

Fair enough; I've said as much to people who keep trotting out the 'OBL is necessarily and completely antipathetic to the Hussein regime, so they can't possibly be in cahoots, even against a perceived greater enemy' line.

I've completely lost any faith I had that this sort of thing is possible through invasions.

Good thing that isn't the primary, or even the only, tool we're using, then.

As far as I can tell, the place is sliding toward theocracy and possibly religious civil war

I disagree with that assessment quite thoroughly, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Good thing [invasion] isn't the primary, or even the only, tool we're using, then.

So what else are we using? Flooding the Iraqi market with consumables?

I disagree with that assessment quite thoroughly, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.

I hope you can show me how that isn't going to happen, because it looks likelier every day (that is, i don't want an assurance, i'm just wondering what is inspiring optimism in you).

[palecur.livejournal.com]

i'm just wondering what is inspiring optimism in you

I read the draft Constitution, and a couple of analyses of that, taking into account how it plays the tribal factions off against each other in a fashion reminiscent of the 3-way tug of war between the branches of the US government, back when we still had separation of powers early last century. I read the reports of people who have been in Iraq, or are still there. Transnationals are making plans to open businesses. Unemployment has dropped by half (from an unbelievably shitty 60% to a still amazingly shitty 30%, but hey, half). There's a notable influx of expats from abroad, and by 'abroad' I mean 'the US.' Women who have held jobs and driven their own damn cars and walked down a mall in a miniskirt are going back there, with their kids and Playstations and Linkin Park CDs. It's not going to turn into Way, Way East Oregon overnight, but the reports I see from the field do lead me to the conclusion that the average Iraqi dude wants a job, dinner, and a little folding money, not to put the Taliban in charge.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

That doesn't strike me as enough. I doubt the average Iranian dude wants anything different than the average Iraqi dude, and yet we have the people in charge considering someone like Khatami as their version of Dennis Kucinich. Unless something happens to calm down the Shi'ite nuts, Iraq is gonna blow in the next year or two. That's gratitude for ya...

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Iran is not going to blow in the next year or two. Iran is blowing right now. Riots in northern Iran (http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/world/Viewdet.asp?ID=2164&cat=a). They are sick, sick and tired. They're getting ready to throw the mullahs out on their ear.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Only took `em 25 years...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Huh. For what it's worth, this guy says Spanish officials now think Zarqawi was the mastermind (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3907923,00.html) of the Madrid bombings. Bear in mind that this needs to be run through the British Press Uncorroborated Story Skepticism Filter. If true, it's pretty bad.