Connection

Captain's Quarters critiqued various editorial responses to the President's speech last night, and made an important point -- one that has been completely ignored by the press:

The Post makes two errors in its basic presumptions. First, Saddam did partner with al-Qaeda, long before the war, as the Jordanian government confirmed earlier this year and as intelligence reports have demonstrated. He hosted a conference of Islamist terrorists in 1999 that included both Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and sheltered the latter well before the 2003 invasion. In fact, Jordan asked for the extradition of Zarqawi in 2002, a request Saddam refused, not because he couldn't be found but because the Ba'athists didn't want him arrested.

There was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists.  Whether you call them al Qaeda, Hamas, or any other name, there was a connection and that's what this business in Iraq is all about.

Update:  Power Line has more on the connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists.

One of the Democrats' most ridiculous mantras is that there was no connection between Saddam's Iraq and international terrorism. This claim is demonstrably false, but as usual, the Democrats are playing to the least well-informed Americans. Let's just itemize a few of Iraq's most notorious pre-war connections to 9/11 style terrorism:

a) Ansar al Islam, an al Qaeda branch, manufactured ricin for use in attacks on Europe.
b) Saddam hosted al Qaeda's number two leader, Zawahiri, in the 1990s.
c) Saddam harbored, and put on a government pension, one of the few perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing who escaped apprehension.
d) Saddam harbored Abu Nidal, once the world's most famous terrorist, until, for reasons that remain mysterious, Saddam apparently had him murdered shortly before the war began.
e) Saddam harbored Abu Abbas, organizer of the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking in 1984; Abbas was captured in Iraq during the first days of the war.
e) Zarqawi, the world's most deadly terrorist, fled Afghanistan when the Taliban fell at the end of 2001 and went to Iraq. Why? Because he knew that terrorists were welcome under Saddam.
f) From Iraq, Zarqawi organized the murder of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan.
g) From Iraq, Zarqawi organized and financed a chemical weapons attack on Jordan that could have killed tens of thousands. The perpetrators of that scheme are now on trial in Jordan.
h) Saddam paid the families of suicide bombers to encourage terrorist attacks against Israel.

These are just some of the many connections between Saddam's regime and international terrorism that we happen to know about. Others are known, and no doubt still more remain unknown.

The press and the Dems are wearing this one out. 

Comments

[patriot actor]

Tom Tom Tom ...

The Congressional Joint Inquiry Report on 9/11 - not the Post, not the Times, not Fox, not CNN - found no connection between Saddam and 9/11. Can we please get past this inferred point that Saddam had anything to do with the terrorists on board those planes? Any argument that you make against the "liberal" media and the Dems sounds hollow when you make reference to a connection that doesn't exist.

Bush's 2 basic tenets for going to war - WMDs and Saddam's terrorists connections - were b.s. That has been made abundantly clear. However, the attempt to use miltiary force in place of diplomacy as a means to change the political landscape in the Middle East was the clear purpose of invading Iraq. Dems have historically always had an issue with using the military to further change, unless it was of a last resort. That is the contention with GW; that he was so eager to use the miltary i/o using the international diplomatic community to pressure change. GW will argue that diplomacy had been exhausted and that the global landscape underwent a major shift as a result of 9/11 - a completely valid point supporting his argument for military invasion of Iraq (as opposed to the cockamamie WMD/terrorist b.s. he tried to feed to the UN.) Tho Dems don't necessarily agree with this argument, they do however respect it.

What they don't respect, however, is the "after the invasion" phase of this war - part of the Powell Doctrine mantra that if you break it you own it. It seems that not only were the justifications of the war a farce (at least the publicly stated ones) but the afterplan has been so flawed and so wrongly ad-hocced since Baghdad was taken that the president's credibility for future plans is severely called into question. Not only does a bogged down miltary effort cost billions and billions of dollars, it also compromises the US' global security if further situations were to arise elsewhere on the globe.

If he was going to use "the last resort" nature of military force, you would have thought the military plans would have been a lot more comprehensive and thoroughly explored rather than what has been now been made whoefully apparent.

[Tom Bowler]

Even George Bush said there was no evidence to connect Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Kind of a straw man argument to keep bring up that business of no connection to 9/11. That said, I can see that my wording is confusing. I should be saying Saddam had a "connection to terrorism". Saying there is "connection to the terrorists" can easily be taken to mean "connection to the 9/11 hijackers". That is not what I mean.

Saddam harbored terrorists. Zarqawi fled Afghanistan and got medical care in Baghdad. Saddam's murder of Abu Nidal pretty clearly indicates that he thought he could control the terrorists and use them at his convenience. But just as Saddam's connection to terrorism does not mean he was connected to 9/11, the fact that he was not connected to 9/11 does not mean he was not connected to terrorism.

Iraq was a known safe haven for terrorists. To suggest that there was no danger from Iraq with its history of using WMD and harboring terrorists is naive and unrealistic, even in hindsight. The great and wonderful Bill Clinton was surprised that WMD were not found in Iraq, so it's not at all farfetched to think Saddam had them.