Year: 2003

Here’s my precis of Hayes’ precis. The relationship between Saddam and the Islamofascists goes back a long way – right back to the fascist Egyptian Brotherhood (for a peerless account of their ideological pedigree, read Paul Berman’s little masterpiece, “Terror and Liberalism”). Here’s the Feith memo:

4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting–the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes.

No shit. There’s more:

10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as his “cover” for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS officers met at bin Laden’s farm and discussed bin Laden’s request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence’s premier explosives maker–especially skilled in making car bombs–remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.
The analysis of those events follows:
The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials explicitly threatened retaliation.

Figures. These meetings strike me as far more significant than even the alleged Mohammed Atta meetings with Iraqi operatives in the run-up to September 11. They provide a far richer context for the nexus of terrorism with terrorist-sponsoring states that many anti-war advocates deny exist at all:

14. According to a sensitive reporting [from] a “regular and reliable source,” [Ayman al] Zawahiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, visited Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President on 3 February 1998. The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of Abdul Aziz.
An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and an explanation of these reports:
Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations.

Then we have the smoking vial, the intelligence that a link-up between the maniacs of al Qaeda with the resources of the Baathist terror-state was real, and that it could lead to attacks more devastating than 9/11:

26. During a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was “encouraged” after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training.
The analysis of this report follows.
CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh’s timeline is consistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and “poisons.”

Again, all this is amazing stuff: a phenomenally important story, if true.

DOING THE RIGHT THING: I cannot independently judge this material. But others can. All I know is that we shouldn’t rest until the case debunking these claims has been effectively made. We need to be told: Why is this intelligence faulty? How? Has it been cherry-picked? By whom? Why? Above all, the blogosphere has to keep this story from being buried by the anti-war media establishment. The cumulative weight of all this intelligence is stunning. Even if there are some holes in it, the broad picture it paints is unsurprising. The notion that the pragmatic Saddam, who had grown closer and closer to Islamism in the 1990s, would eschew any contacts with al Qaeda has always struck me as bizarre. The alliance is a natural. More important: you’re in the administration after 9/11. All sorts of intelligence like this crosses your desk. You can’t confirm all of it for absolutely sure. But just as surely, you cannot ignore it. The consequences of complacency are too horrifying for words. They still are. Yet today’s 20/20 critics seem eager to claim that, even after 9/11, the administration should only have acted against Saddam if it had proven beyond any reasonable doubt that he was indeed in league with al Qaeda. Well, they were wrong before this report. They are triply wrong now. Thank God we have toppled Saddam. And thank God we had a president who, after so many years of complacency, weakness and denial, took the action that was vital to protect this country.

So I went to the Onine News Association conference, where many other enthusiastic bloggers mixed with some highly-skeptical mainstream media types. Had a great time, and still feel buzzed from the solidarity and good nature of the hill=climbers of the online world. Here’s the official blog of the conference. Here’s the incomparable Jeff Jarvis on the conference as a whole and his instantaneous comments on my keynote speech. Money quote:

One of the three most common blog posts is, “I just met Joe Schmoe of schmoeme.com and, wow, he’s just liked I thought he was going to be.”
Well, Andrew Sullivan is not what I thought he’d be…

Yes, there’s more. Great meeting you too, Jeff.

DEAN’S FAVORITE SINGER: Here’s a fun profile of Wyclef Jean, Howard Dean’s favorite singer. Money quote: “I have a lot of houses. Real estate is big shit, you know?” I think Dean just moved a little bit to the center.

THE EU TARGETS BUSH?: According to the Guardian, there’s now a proposed plan to use EU punitive tariffs against industries in key marginal states in the next election – in order to help the Democrats. I find the Bush administration’s steel tariffs to be noxious and wrong; but the idea that foreign governments would attempt to micro-manage retaliation for partisan politics in another country is a new low. Or at least a sign that Bush-hatred has now reached previously sensible European politicians.

Yes, several French intellectuals are criticizing their country’s slide into mediocrity and appeasement. Collin May begins profiling them.

ANOTHER IRAQ BLOG: This time from a woman. Who needs embedded reporters when you have embedded people? Here’s another.

ONE MORE CONSERVATIVE AGAINST THE FMA: Some words of moderation from Gary Aldrich:

The Conservative Movement cannot allow itself to become mired in an issue right now, which has not even risen to the level of attention that would justify presidential leadership – especially an issue that would require a constitutional amendment. We don’t know how the courts will rule in the various states where same-sex marriage is being weighed. Therefore, to invest enormous energy, time and attention to this issue only serves to squander opportunities to get actions on other more pressing conservative matters, such as privacy issues and out-of-control federal government growth.

Amen. I’ll be speaking on the topic tonight, God willing, at Chapin Hall at Williams College, in Williamstown, MA, at 8 pm.

The Washington Post finds out about Bobby Jindal. The day after he lost. I have a feeling he will be back in their pages in years to come.

Is there any journalist one trusts more than John F. Burns to tell us what is going on in Iraq? Somehow, Burns is untainted with the cynicism and reflexive anti-Americanism of many of his journalistic peers, and yet is open to the nuances of a complicated and often surprising world. His despatch from Iraq today in the NYT is peerless. Not just beautifully written, deep while never seeming less than conversational, it makes a couple of really important points. First off:

The amiability that greets a Westerner almost everywhere outside the Sunni triangle, and even there when American troops are not around, masks a reflex commonly found among people emerging from totalitarian rule: the sense of individual and collective responsibility is numbed, often to the point of passivity. The Iraqis’ instinct to blame their rulers for life’s hardships, engendered by Mr. Hussein’s regime and at the same time silenced by it, is the Americans’ burden now.

We have to keep reminding ourselves of the context from which these beleaguered people have emerged. It’s perhaps impossible for any of us to feel in our bones the psychological hell of living in a police state like Saddam’s. But these people are still, for the most part, in post-traumatic shock. This country will take time to heal. Each day I read of deaths of American soldiers or Italian policemen or Iraqi innocents and feel punched in the stomach by these losses. We cannot forget the human dimension to these tragedies and the pain that spreads from them. At the same time, it strikes me now, more than ever, that what we are trying to do in Iraq right now is as just as it is difficult, as vital as it is constantly grueling. We must win. I leave you with Burns’ peroration:

Gesturing toward the smoking hulk of the headquarters where at least 19 Italians and 13 Iraqis died, I asked the crowds if they thought America and its allies should pack up and go home. In the clamor that followed, I asked for quiet so that each man and boy could speak his mind. Unscientific as the poll was, the sentences that flowed expressed a common belief.
“No, no!” one man said. “If the Americans go, it will be chaos everywhere.” Another shouted, “There would be a civil war.”
“If the Americans, the British or the Italians leave Iraq, we will be handed back to the flunkies of Saddam, the Baathists and Al Qaeda will take over our cities,” another man said.
Nobody offered a dissenting view, though many said it would be best if the Americans achieved peace and left as soon as possible. These people, at least, seemed concerned that America should know that the bombers, whoever they were, did not speak for the ordinary citizens of Iraq.

If only Mike Kelly were around to go there as well.

PARIS AND ANTI-GLOBALIZATION: The alliance is formally formed.

From the Telegraph today:

The files contain the only surviving copy of the draft Conservative manifesto for an expected snap general election in 1978, which James Callaghan decided against holding. Mrs Thatcher clearly felt that the manifesto was too soft, especially on the trade unions. Her comments are scrawled over the document. “This paragraph is pathetic”, she wrote next to one passage.

Heh.

When you construct an extremist movement based in part on irrational hatred of Jews, it is only a matter of time before you start targeting Jews in every country for death. That much we know from history. Except it isn’t history any more, is it? For good measure, a Jewish Middle School was just burned down in France by what even the French Interior Minister describes as anti-Semites. Never again? It’s already here.

IDIOT OF THE WEEK: “It looks like Clark is trying to shore up some conservative support by favoring a flag-burning amendment. Great, soft on defense and tough on civil liberties. A lethal combination for South Park Republicans. Even Kerry had enough sense to oppose this idiotic position.” – More feedback on the Letters Page.

I can’t quite believe my eyes any more. Here’s liberal-Democratic partisan, Tim Noah, accusing Rummy of lying when he denied that he had said that U.S. troops would be welcomed “with open arms.” Does Noah find a quote where Rummy said that? Nope. He finds a quote where Rumsfeld said that the Shi’a and Kurds would be happy to be liberated from Saddam and would soon do things that were previously forbidden, just as the Afghans did after liberation from the Taliban. And that has indeed been borne out. Noah and otghers are still trying to conflate Baathist Sunni remnants with the entire Iraqi population – when we know that’s not true. What we’re getting now is a massive disinformation campaign from the anti-war left, simply inventing what the Bush administration said before the war, or grotesquely simplifying it, or outright lying about it. I nominate Tim Noah for the whopper of the week. Caught red-handed.

It’s lockdown time in London. The anti-war left, who let the visits of Mugabe and Assad pass without much protest, is galvanizing to bring the country to a standstill during Bush’s visit. The BBC is in the vanguard of anti-Bush hysteria. A British reader (an ex-pat American) writes:

It’s really bad here. Yesterday Radio 4 PM Programme they had an American ‘expert’ commenting on the American failures in Iraq. Of course it was some guy from the Clinton administration. Channel 4 had Americans who hate Bush and showed them preparing for their protest. Will Michael More be joining them? It wouldn’t surprise me.
The BBC is working the country into a frenzy regarding the upcoming Bush visit. Personally, I would love to go up to London and hold a placard welcoming the President but I fear for my safety. The Mall looks great with all the flags but I have no doubt it will all be trashed. We’re getting reports that anarchists will storm Buckingham Palace. The papier mache effigies of W are nearly complete. (Don’t these people have jobs??).
I can’t get any break from it. I was on a school inspection this week in Southampton and a weedy member of the inspection team cornered me and starting in on Bush and how she had marched against the war, etc. This was not the time nor place to express political views of any type. I simply informed her that I was a New Yorker and that my sister and brother-in-law had lost eight neighbours in the World Trade Center and I wholly support President Bush and the fight against terrorism. Silence.
Your column this morning is absolutely right – these people have forgotten 9/11.
After 22 years in Surrey we’re looking to move to America.

My column next week is a 3,000 word defense of the president and will run in the Sunday Times this Sunday (Inside Dish subscribers will receive it this weekend – click here to subscribe). I don’t believe that the Brits are, as a whole, that hostile either to the war or to Bush. The minority who hates him appeals to the ignorance of those who condescend to him. And the BBC has whipped up anti-Americanism to fever pitch. But my native country isn’t renowned for its common sense for nothing. I have faith that the majority will eventually see through the propaganda to the truth.

Another wonderful tidbit from the greatest Briton:

Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran, favored continuing the BBC monopoly. When he questioned Churchill about it, the great man exploded. “For eleven years they kept me off the air. They prevented me from expressing views which have proved to be right. Their behavior has been tyrannical. They are honeycombed with Socialists – probably with Communists.”

True again today. They no longer have a monopoly – but they still force Brits to pay for propaganda. This nugget can be found in “Diaries of Lord Moran: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965,” page 417. (Thanks to a reader.)