[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 63 (Monday, April 21, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3181-S3185]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SADDAM HUSSEIN AND AL-QAIDA
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, it has been commonplace for critics of the
war in Iraq to minimize, if not actually dismiss entirely, the links
between Saddam Hussein and terrorists generally and al-Qaida
specifically. This is part of a systematic effort by some, especially
now that there are irrefutable signs of progress from the military
[[Page S3182]]
surge in Iraq, to change the narrative on the war. Instead of debating
the way forward, they prefer instead to relitigate the past. In fact,
earlier this month the distinguished majority leader stated:
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, there was not a terrorist in
Iraq. And now, of course, there are lots of them.
It is true that there are a lot of terrorists in Iraq which, of
course, is the reason why we are still there fighting them and need to
stay there until they are defeated. But it is not true that there were
no terrorists in Iraq prior to our invasion. In fact, Saddam's ties to
terrorists are well known and were confirmed yet again in a recent
report commissioned by the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command. This report
found that Saddam Hussein actively supported and financed terrorist
activities during the years he controlled Iraq. The report, entitled
``Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights
from Captured Iraqi Documents,'' was released on March 13. It was the
product of the analysis of over 600,000 documents captured in Iraq
since 2003. It concluded that Saddam's security forces and Osama bin
Laden's terrorist network ``operated with similar aims (at least in the
short term).''
According to the report:
Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always
successful, evidence shows that Saddam's use of terrorist
tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong
up until the collapse of his regime.
The report found that Saddam Hussein worked with several different
terrorist groups, including groups with direct ties to al-Qaida. Many
were engaged in a jihad against the United States and its allies. It
wasn't necessary to read with excruciating detail the entire 1,600-page
report to find proof of these links; all of the above was available for
all to see in the brief abstract that accompanied the report.
Stephen Hayes offers extensive analysis of the entire report by the
Joint Forces Command in the Weekly Standard magazine on March 24, 2008.
I ask unanimous consent to have his article printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Weekly Standard, Mar. 24, 2008]
Saddam's Dangerous Friends: What a Pentagon Review of 600,000 Iraqi
Documents Tells us
(By Stephen F. Hayes)
This ought to be big news. Throughout the early and mid-
1990s, Saddam Hussein actively supported an influential
terrorist group headed by the man who is now al Qaeda's
second-in-command, according to an exhaustive study issued
last week by the Pentagon. ``Saddam supported groups that
either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the
Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's
deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al
Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.'' According to the
Pentagon study, Egyptian Islamic Jihad was one of many
jihadist groups that Iraq's former dictator funded, trained,
equipped, and armed.
The study was commissioned by the Joint Forces Command in
Norfolk, Virginia, and produced by analysts at the Institute
for Defense Analyses, a federally funded military think tank.
It is entitled ``Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and
Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents.''
The study is based on a review of some 600,000 documents
captured in postwar Iraq. Those ``documents'' include
letters, memos, computer files, audiotapes, and videotapes
produced by Saddam Hussein's regime, especially his
intelligence services. The analysis section of the study
covers 59 pages. The appendices, which include copies of some
of the captured documents and translations, put the entire
study at approximately 1,600 pages.
An abstract that describes the study reads, in part:
Because Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin
Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims (at
least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable
when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same
outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in
some way, a `de facto' link between the organizations. At
times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of
shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and
independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust.
Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always
successful, evidence shows that Saddam's use of terrorist
tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong
up until the collapse of the regime.''
Among the study's other notable findings:
In 1993, as Osama bin Laden's fighters battled Americans in
Somalia, Saddam Hussein personally ordered the formation of
an Iraqi terrorist group to join the battle there.
For more than two decades, the Iraqi regime trained non-
Iraqi jihadists in training camps throughout Iraq.
According to a 1993 internal Iraqi intelligence memo, the
regime was supporting a secret Islamic Palestinian
organization dedicated to ``armed jihad against the Americans
and Western interests.''
In the 1990s, Iraq's military intelligence directorate
trained and equipped ``Sudanese fighters.''
In 1998, the Iraqi regime offered ``financial and moral
support'' to a new group of jihadists in Kurdish-controlled
northern Iraq.
In 2002, the year before the war began, the Iraqi regime
hosted in Iraq a series of 13 conferences for non-Iraqi
jihadist groups.
That same year, a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service
(IIS) issued hundreds of Iraqi passports for known
terrorists.
There is much, much more. Documents reveal that the regime
stockpiled bombmaking materials in Iraqi embassies around the
world and targeted Western journalists for assassination. In
July 2001, an Iraqi Intelligence agent described an al Qaeda
affiliate in Bahrain, the Army of Muhammad, as ``under the
wings of bin Laden.'' Although the organization ``is an
offshoot of bin Laden,'' the fact that it has a different
name ``can be a way of camouflaging the organization.'' The
agent is told to deal with the al Qaeda group according to
``priorities previously established.''
In describing the relations between the Army of Muhammad
and the Iraqi regime, the authors of the Pentagon study come
to this conclusion: ``Captured documents reveal that the
regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew
to be part of al Qaeda--as long as that organization's near-
term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision.''
As I said, this ought to be big news. And, in a way, it
was. A headline in the New York Times, a cursory item in the
Washington Post, and stories on NPR and ABC News reported
that the study showed no links between al Qaeda and Saddam
Hussein.
How can a study offering an unprecedented look into the
closed regime of a brutal dictator, with over 1,600 pages of
``strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to
regional and global terrorism,'' in the words of its authors,
receive a wave-of-the-hand dismissal from America's most
prestigious news outlets? All it took was a leak to a
gullible reporter, one misleading line in the study's
executive summary, a boneheaded Pentagon press office, an
incompetent White House, and widespread journalistic
negligence.
On Monday, March 10, 2008, Warren P. Strobel, a reporter
from the McClatchy News Service first reported that the new
Pentagon study was coming. ``An exhaustive review of more
than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the
2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam
Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin
Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.'' McClatchy is a
newspaper chain that serves many of America's largest cities.
The national security reporters in its Washington bureau have
earned a reputation as reliable outlets for anti-Bush
administration spin on intelligence. Strobel quoted a ``U.S.
official familiar with the report'' who told him that the
search of Iraqi documents yielded no evidence of a ``direct
operational link'' between Iraq and al Qaeda. Strobel used
the rest of the article to attempt to demonstrate that this
undermined the Bush administration's prewar claims with
regard to Iraq and terrorism.
With the study not scheduled for release for two more days,
this article shaped subsequent coverage, which was no doubt
the leaker's purpose. Stories from other media outlets
tracked McClatchy very closely but began to incorporate a
highly misleading phrase taken from the executive summary:
``This study found no `smoking gun' (i.e. direct connection)
between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda.'' This is how the
Washington Post wrote it up:
An examination of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents, audio
and video records collected by U.S. forces since the March
2003 invasion has concluded that there is `no smoking gun'
supporting the Bush administration's prewar assertion of an
`operational relationship' between Saddam Hussein and the al-
Qaeda terrorist network, sources familiar with the study
said.''
Much of the confusion might have been avoided if the Bush
administration had done anything to promote the study. An
early version of the Pentagon study was provided to National
Security Adviser Steve Hadley more than a year ago, before
November 2006. In recent weeks, as the Pentagon handled the
rollout of the study, Hadley was tasked with briefing
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. It's unclear
whether he shared the study with President Bush, and NSC
officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But sources close to Cheney say the vice president was
blindsided.
After the erroneous report from McClatchy, two officials
involved with the study became very concerned about the
misreporting of its contents. One of them said in an
interview that he found the media coverage of the study
``disappointing.'' Another, James Lacey, expressed his
concern in an email to Karen Finn in the Pentagon press
office, who was handling the rollout of the study. On
Tuesday, the day before it was scheduled for release, Lacey
wrote: ``1. The story has been leaked. 2. ABC News is doing a
story based on the executive summary tonight. 3. The
Washington Post is doing a
[[Page S3183]]
story based on rumors they heard from ABC News. The document
is being misrepresented. I recommend we put [it] out and on a
website immediately.''
Finn declined, saying that members of Congress had not been
told the study was coming. ``Despite the leak, there are
Congressional notifications and then an official public
release. This should not be posted on the web until these
actions are complete.''
Still under the misimpression that the Pentagon study
undermined the case for war, McClatchy's Warren Strobel saw
this bureaucratic infighting as a conspiracy to suppress the
study:
The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public
release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between
late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida
terrorist network. . . . The reversal highlighted the
politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were
first reported Monday by McClatchy.
In making their case for invading Iraq in 2002 and 2003,
President Bush and his top national security aides claimed
that Saddam's regime had ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaida
terrorist network.
But the study, based on more than 600,000 captured
documents, including audio and video files, found that while
Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of
his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al
Qaida link.
An examination of the rest of the study makes the White
House decision to ignore the Pentagon study even more
curious. The first section explores ``Terror as an Instrument
of State Power'' and describes documents detailing Fedayeen
Saddam terrorist training camps in Iraq. Graduates of the
terror training camps would be dispatched to sensitive sites
to carry out their assassinations and bombings. In May 1999,
the regime plotted an operation code named ``Blessed July''
in which the top graduates of the terrorist training courses
would be sent to London, Iran, and Kurdistan to conduct
assassinations and bombings.
A separate set of documents presents, according to the
Pentagon study, ``evidence of logistical preparation for
terrorist operations in other nations, including those in the
West.'' In one letter, a director of the Iraqi Intelligence
Service (IIS) responds to a request from Saddam for an
inventory of weapons stockpiled in Iraqi embassies throughout
the world. The terrorist tools include missile launchers and
missiles, ``American missile launchers,'' explosive
materials, TNT, plastic explosive charges, Kalashnikov
rifles, and ``booby-trapped suitcases.''
The July 2002 Iraqi memo describes how these weapons were
distributed to the operatives in embassies.
Between the year 2000 and 2002 explosive materials were
transported to embassies outside Iraq for special work, upon
the approval of the Director of the Iraqi Intelligence
Service. The responsibility for these materials is in the
hands of heads of stations. Some of these materials were
transported in the political mail carriers [Diplomatic
Pouch]. Some of these materials were transported by car in
booby-trapped briefcases.
Saddam also recruited non-Iraqi jihadists to serve as
suicide bombers on behalf of the Iraqi regime. According to
the study, captured documents ``indicate that as early as
January 1998, the scheduling of suicide volunteers was
routine enough to warrant not only a national-level policy
letter but a formal schedule--during summer vacation--
built around maximizing availability of Arab citizens in
Iraq on Saddam-funded scholarships.''
The second section of the Pentagon study concerns ``State
Relationships with Terrorist Groups.'' An IIS document dated
March 18, 1993, lists nine terrorist ``organizations that our
agency [IIS] cooperates with and have relations with various
elements in many parts of the Arab world and who also have
the expertise to carry out assignments'' on behalf of the
regime. Several well-known Palestinian terrorist
organizations make the list, including Abu Nidal's Fatah-
Revolutionary Council and Abu Abbas's Palestinian Liberation
Front. Another group, the secret ``Renewal and Jihad
Organization'' is described this way in the Iraqi memo:
It believes in armed jihad against the Americans and
Western interests. They also believe our leader [Saddam
Hussein], may God protect him, is the true leader in the war
against the infidels. The organization's leaders live in
Jordan when they visited Iraq two months ago they
demonstrated a willingness to carry out operations against
American interests at any time.''
Other groups listed in the Iraqi memo include the ``Islamic
Scholars Group'' and the ``Pakistan Scholars Group.''
There are two terrorist organizations on the Iraqi
Intelligence list that deserve special consideration: the
Afghani Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Egyptian
Islamic Jihad of Ayman al Zawahiri.
This IIS document provides this description of the Afghani
Islamic Party:
It was founded in 1974 when its leader [Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar] escaped from Afghanistan to Pakistan. It is
considered one of the extreme political religious movements
against the West, and one of the strongest Sunni parties in
Afghanistan. The organization relies on financial support
from Iraq and we have had good relations with Hikmatyar since
1989.
In his book Holy War, Inc., Peter Bergen, a terrorism
analyst who has long been skeptical of Iraq-al Qaeda
connections, describes Hekmatyar as Osama bin Laden's ``alter
ego.'' Bergen writes: ``Bin Laden and Hekmatyar worked
closely together. During the early 1990s al-Qaeda's training
camps in the Khost region of eastern Afghanistan were
situated in an area controlled by Hekmatyar's party.''
It's worth dwelling for a moment on that set of facts. An
internal Iraqi Intelligence document reports that Iraqis have
``good relations'' with Hekmatyar and that his organization
``relies on financial support from Iraq.'' At precisely the
same time, Hekmatyar ``worked closely'' with Osama bin Laden
and his Afghani Islamic Party hosted ``al Qaeda's terrorist
training camps'' in eastern Afghanistan.
The IIS document also reveals that Saddam was funding
another close ally of bin Laden, the EIJ organization of
Ayman al Zawahiri.
In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations
with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt. Our information
on the group is as follows:
It was established in 1979.
Its goal is to apply the Islamic shari'a law and establish
Islamic rule.
It is considered one of the most brutal Egyptian
organizations. It carried out numerous successful operations,
including the assassination of [Egyptian President Anwar]
Sadat.
We have previously met with the organization's
representative and we agreed on a plan to carry out commando
operations against the Egyptian regime.
Zawahiri arrived in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s, and
``from the start he concentrated his efforts on getting close
to bin Laden,'' according to Lawrence Wright, in The Looming
Tower. The leaders of EIJ quickly became leaders of bin
Laden's organizations. ``He soon succeeded in placing trusted
members of Islamic Jihad in key positions around bin Laden,''
Wright reported in the definitive profile of Zawahiri,
published in the New Yorker in September 2002. ``According to
the Islamist attorney Montasser al-Zayat, 'Zawahiri
completely controlled bin Laden. The largest share of bin
Laden's financial support went to Zawahiri and the Jihad
organization.''
Later, Wright describes the founding of al Qaeda.
Toward the end of 1989, a meeting took place in the Afghan
town of Khost at a mujahideen camp. A Sudanese fighter named
Jamal al-Fadl was among the participants, and he later
testified about the event in a New York courtroom during one
of the trials connected with the 1998 bombing of the American
embassies in East Africa. According to Fadl, the meeting was
attended by ten men--four or five of them Egyptians,
including Zawahiri. Fadl told the court that the chairman of
the meeting, an Iraqi known as Abu Ayoub, proposed the
formation of a new organization that would wage jihad beyond
the borders of Afghanistan. There was some dispute about the
name, but ultimately the new organization came to be called
Al Qaeda--the Base. The alliance was conceived as a loose
affiliation among individual mujahideen and established
groups, and was dominated by Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The
ultimate boss, however, was Osama bin Laden, who held the
checkbook.
Once again, it's worth dwelling on these facts for a
moment. In 1989, Ayman al Zawahiri attended the founding
meeting of al Qaeda. He was literally present at the
creation, and his EIJ ``dominated'' the new organization
headed by Osama bin Laden.
In the early 1990s, Zawahiri and bin Laden moved their
operations to Sudan. After a fundraising trip to the United
States in the spring of 1993, Zawahiri returned to Sudan
where, again according to Wright, he ``began working more
closely with bin Laden, and most of the Egyptian members of
Islamic Jihad went on the Al Qaeda payroll.'' Although some
members of EIJ were skeptical of bin Laden and his global
aspirations, Zawahiri sought a de facto merger with al
Qaeda. One of his top assistants would later say Zawahiri
had told him that ``joining with bin Laden [was] the only
solution to keeping the Jihad organization alive.''
Again, at precisely the same time Zawahiri was ``joining
with bin Laden,'' the spring of 1993, he was being funded by
Saddam Hussein's Iraq. As Zawahiri's jihadists trained in al
Qaeda camps in Sudan, his representative to Iraq was planning
``commando operations'' against the Egyptian government with
the IIS.
Another captured Iraqi document from early 1993 ``reports
on contact with a large number of terrorist groups in the
region, including those that maintained an office or liaison
in Iraq.'' In the same folder is a memo from Saddam Hussein
to a member of his Revolutionary Council ordering the
formation of ``a group to start hunting Americans present on
Arab soil, especially Somalia.'' A second memo to the
director of the IIS, instructs him to revise the plan for
``operations inside Somalia.''
More recently, captured ``annual reports'' of the IIS
reveal support for terrorist organizations in the months
leading up the U.S. invasion in March 2003. According to the
Pentagon study, ``the IIS hosted thirteen conferences in 2002
for a number of Palestinian and other organizations,
including delegations from the Islamic Jihad Movement and the
Director General for the Popular Movement for the Liberation
of al-Ahwaz.'' The same annual report ``also notes that among
the 699 passports, renewals and other official
[[Page S3184]]
documentation that the IIS issued, many were issued to known
members of terrorist organizations.''
The Pentagon study goes on to describe captured documents
that instruct the IIS to maintain contact with all manner of
Arab movement and others that ``reveal that later IIS
activities went beyond just maintaining contact.'' Throughout
the 1990s, the Iraqi regime's General Military Intelligence
Directorate ``was training Sudanese fighters inside Iraq.''
The second section of the Pentagon study also discusses
captured documents related to the Islamic Resistance
organization in Kurdistan from 1998 and 1999. The documents
show that the Iraqi regime provided ``financial and moral
support'' to members of the group, which would later become
part of the al Qaeda affiliate in the region, Ansar al Islam.
The third section of the Pentagon study is called ``Iraq
and Terrorism: Three Cases.'' One of the cases is that of the
Army of Muhammad, the al Qaeda affiliate in Bahrain. A series
of memoranda order an Iraqi Intelligence operative in Bahrain
to explore a relationship with its leaders. On July 9, 2001,
the agent reports back: ``Information available to us is that
the group is under the wings of bin Laden. They receive their
directions from Yemen. Their objectives are the same as bin
Laden.'' Later, he lists the organization's objectives.
Jihad in the name of God.
Striking the embassies and other Jewish and American
interests anywhere in the world.
Attacking the American and British military bases in the
Arab land.
Striking American embassies and interests unless the
Americans pull out their forces from the Arab lands and
discontinue their support for Israel.
Disrupting oil exports [to] the Americans from Arab
countries and threatening tankers carrying oil to them.
A separate memo reveals that the Army of Muhammad has
requested assistance from Iraq. The study authors summarize
the response by writing, ``the local IIS station has been
told to deal with them in accordance with priorities
previously established. The IIS agent goes on to inform the
Director that this organization is an offshoot of bin Laden,
but that their objectives are similar but with different
names that can be a way of camouflaging the organization.''
We never learn what those ``previous priorities'' were and
thus what, if anything, came of these talks. But it is
instructive that the operative in Bahrain understood the
importance of disguising relations with al Qaeda and that the
director of IIS, knowing that the group was affiliated with
bin Laden and sought to attack Americans, seemed more
interested in continuing the relationship than in ending it.
The fourth and final section of the Pentagon study is
called ``The Business of Terror.'' The authors write: ``An
example of indirect cooperation is the movement led by Osama
bin Laden. During the 1990s, both Saddam and bin Laden wanted
the West, particularly the United States, out of Muslim lands
(or in the view of Saddam, the ``Arab nation''). . . . In
pursuit of their own separate but surprisingly `parallel'
visions, Saddam and bin Laden often found a common enemy in
the United States.''
They further note that Saddam's security organizations and
bin Laden's network were recruiting within the same
demographic, spouting much of the same rhetoric, and
promoting a common historical narrative that promised a
return to a glorious past. That these movements (pan-Arab and
pan-Islamic) had many similarities and strategic parallels
does not mean they saw themselves in that light.
Nevertheless, these similarities created more than just the
appearance of cooperation. Common interests, even without
common cause, increased the aggregate terror threat.
As much as we have learned from this impressive collection
of documents, it is only a fraction of what we will know in
10, 20, or 50 years. The authors themselves acknowledge the
limits of their work.
In fact, there are several captured Iraqi documents that
have been authenticated by the U.S. government that were not
included in the study but add to the picture it sketches. One
document, authenticated by the Defense Intelligence Agency
and first reported on 60 Minutes, is dated March 28, 1992. It
describes Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset
``in good contact'' with the IIS station in Syria.
Another Iraqi document, this one from the mid-1990s, was
first reported in the New York Times on June 25, 2004.
Authenticated by a Pentagon and intelligence working group,
the document was titled ``Iraqi Effort to Cooperate with
Saudi Opposition Groups and Individuals.'' The working group
concluded that it ``corroborates and expands on previous
reporting'' on contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. It
revealed that a Sudanese government official met with Uday
Hussein and the director of the IIS in 1994 and reported that
bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan. Bin Laden, according
to the Iraqi document, was then ``approached by our side''
after ``presidential approval'' for the liaison was given.
The former head of Iraqi Intelligence Directorate 4 met with
bin Laden on February 19, 1995. The document further states
that bin Laden ``had some reservations about being labeled an
Iraqi operative''--a comment that suggests the possibility
had been discussed.
Bin Laden requested that Iraq's state-run television
network broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and the document
indicates that the Iraqis agreed to do this. The al Qaeda
leader also proposed ``joint operations against foreign
forces'' in Saudi Arabia. There is no Iraqi response provided
in the documents. When bin Laden left Sudan for Afghanistan
in May 1996, the Iraqis sought ``other channels through which
to handle the relationship, in light of his current
location.'' The IIS memo directs that ``cooperation between
the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely
through discussion and agreement.''
In another instance, the new Pentagon study makes reference
to captured documents detailing the Iraqi relationship with
Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines founded
by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law. But the Pentagon study
does not mention the most significant element of those
documents, first reported in these pages. In a memo from
Ambassador Salah Samarmad to the Secondary Policy Directorate
of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, we learn that the Iraqi regime
had been funding and equipping Abu Sayyaf, which had been
responsible for a series of high-profile kidnappings. The
Iraqi operative informs Baghdad that such support had been
suspended. ``The kidnappers were formerly (from the previous
year) receiving money and purchasing combat weapons. From now
on we (IIS) are not giving them this opportunity and are not
on speaking terms with them.'' That support would resume soon
enough, and shortly before the war a high-ranking Iraqi
diplomat named Hisham Hussein would be expelled from the
Philippines after his cell phone number appeared on an Abu
Sayyaf cell phone used to detonate a bomb.
What's happening here is obvious. Military historians and
terrorism analysts are engaged in a good faith effort to
review the captured documents from the Iraqi regime and
provide a dispassionate, fact-based examination of Saddam
Hussein's long support of jihadist terrorism. Most reporters
don't care. They are trapped in a world where the Bush
administration lied to the country about an Iraq-al Qaeda
connection, and no amount of evidence to the contrary--not
even the words of the fallen Iraqi regime itself--can
convince them to reexamine their mistaken assumptions.
Bush administration officials, meanwhile, tell us that the
Iraq war is the central front in the war on terror and that
American national security depends on winning there. And yet
they are too busy or too tired or too lazy to correct these
fundamental misperceptions about the case for war, the most
important decision of the Bush presidency.
What good is the truth if nobody knows it?
Mr. KYL. The Joint Forces Command report sheds light on the
relationship between Saddam Hussein and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin
Laden's second in command.
I quote:
Saddam supported groups either associated directly with al
Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), led at one
time by bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that
generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.
Mr. Hayes notes in his article that Zawahiri's organization was being
financed by Saddam Hussein at the very time Zawahiri was working almost
exclusively with bin Laden. In fact, Zawahiri had been working with al-
Qaida from its inception in late 1989. By 1993, Zawahiri, as the leader
of the EIJ, sought to merge the organization with al-Qaida and, in
fact, the two terrorist organizations eventually merged in 1998.
The Standard further reported that:
Captured documents revealed that the regime was willing to
co-opt support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda
as long as that organization's near-term goals supported
Saddam's long-term vision.
The more than 600,000 documents likely revealed only a fraction of
what we will ultimately know of the true relationship between bin
Laden, the global jihad, and Saddam Hussein. Given this information, it
is a surprise that many in the mainstream media have concluded only
that there was no smoking gun linking al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, thus
failing to report the key findings in the report to the American
people.
I am not one who supports relitigating why it was necessary for the
United States to remove Saddam Hussein from power. But for those who
find themselves stuck in the past, the Iraqi Perspective Project
provides yet another substantial body of evidence, adding to that which
was before the Congress when we authorized the Iraq mission. I want to
refer to one item in that body of evidence, a letter, dated October 7,
2002, from CIA Director George Tenet to the Honorable Bob Graham, then
chairman of the Select Committee on intelligence. Among the things he
writes in this letter, these are the items that were available to us
[[Page S3185]]
before we authorized the invasion of Iraq. He refers to a question by
Senator Bayh about Iraqi links to al-Qaida. He says Senators could draw
the following points from unclassified documents. There was, of course,
much more that was classified. I will quote this brief portion of his
letter:
Our understanding of relationship between Iraq and al-
Qa'ida is evolving and is based on sources of varying
reliability. Some of the information we have received comes
from detainees, including some of high rank.
We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between
Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade.
Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa'ida have
discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression.
Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of
the presence in Iraq of al-Qa'ida members, including some
that have been in Baghdad.
We have credible reporting that al-Qa'ida leaders sought
contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD
capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has
provided training to al-Qa'ida members in the areas of
poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians,
coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-
Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will
increase, even absent US military action.
I commend the Joint Forces Command for its ongoing, exhaustive review
of this record of intelligence collected in Iraq. I urge all colleagues
to take the time to educate themselves on its findings. I urge the
administration to undertake a serious effort to correct the
misimpressions formed in recent years about this important issue.
There can be no doubt. Saddam Hussein was a threat. He actively
supported terrorists both in and outside of Iraq, and the world is a
safer place for him having been removed from power.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.
____________________