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November 18, 2005

New Documents Link Saddam To Al Qaeda?

Steven Hayes is working on what would be, were our media not so hoplessly partisan, a major story:

Recently discovered Iraqi documents now being translated by U.S. intelligence analysts indicate that Saddam Hussein's government made extensive plans to hide Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 - and had deep ties to al Qaida before the 9/11 attacks.
The explosive evidence was discovered among "millions of pages of documents" unearthed by the Iraq Survey Group weapons search team, reports the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes.

In the magazine's Nov. 21 issue, Hayes reveals that the document cache now being examined contains "a thick stew of reports and findings from a variety of [Iraqi] intelligence agencies and military units."

Though the Pentagon has so far declined to make the bombshell papers public, Hayes managed to obtain a list of titles on the reports.

...

Still other reports suggest that Iraq's ties to al Qaida were far deeper than previously known, featuring headlines like:

• Secret Meeting with Taliban Group Member and Iraqi Government (Nov. 2000)

...

• Possible al Qaeda Terror Members in Iraq

...

• [Iraqi Intelligence Service] report on Taliban-Iraq Connections Claims

• Money Transfers from Iraq to Afghanistan

While the document titles sound stunning enough to turn the Iraq war debate on its head, Hayes cautions that it's hard to know for certain until the full text is available.

...

Hayes also notes that an additional treasure trove of evidence on Saddam Hussein's support for al Qaida may be lost forever.

"When David Kay ran the Iraq Survey Group searching for weapons of mass destruction, he instructed his team to ignore anything not directly related to the regime's WMD efforts," he reports.

"As a consequence, documents describing the regime's training and financing of terrorists were labeled 'No Intelligence Value' and often discarded, according to two sources."

Thanks to Mark.

posted by Ace at 09:26 AM

Comments

Too bad Hayes got 'em from Lucy Al Ramirez

Posted by: sentinel on November 18, 2005 09:32 AM

"The Connection" (Hayes' book) is well worth a look if anyone was thinking of checking it out. It's largely a "where there's smoke, there must be fire" kind of exercise, but makes some solid points.

I look forward to seeing this under-reported in the media.

Posted by: RDub on November 18, 2005 09:33 AM

Wha?

Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda may have had connections?

Well, that must be new information.

Posted by: Rocketeer on November 18, 2005 09:44 AM

Alas, Hayes could tell the world that water is wet and no one would listen anymore. Remember, he and his rag are just Neocon tools searching for any evidence at all to support something WE ALL KNOW isn't true.

Give it up, the meme won. Saddam was closer to Carrot Top than to Al Qaeda.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

P.S. Sigh. . .

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on November 18, 2005 09:46 AM

Remember that we finally found proof of the Wanasee Conference (final solution planning) in a drawer at the labor department seval years after the end of WWII.

There are millions of untranslated documents that may contain information like this. (Bureaucracies run on paper). The democratic "Bush lied" push has always gambled that any evidence would be found after the election.

I just hope they are wrong.

Posted by: monkeyboy on November 18, 2005 09:48 AM

I have to add that the 9-11 commission conclusively determined that Al Qaeda had never even heard of Iraq.

Posted by: ron "the second" reagan on November 18, 2005 09:49 AM

I also heard there was no way Al Qaeda and Saddam would have worked together, several reports say that Saddam has chronic onion breath, and translated Taliban cafeteria documents repeatedly indicate that Bin Laden "totally hates onions".

Posted by: Tom on November 18, 2005 10:31 AM

In order for Saddam to have been in bed with Al Qaeda, he'd have be some sort of self-serving prick. Anyone in their right mind knows he's all about the people. The guy's practically a saint.

We right wingers need to quit trying to create fact out of feces in order to justify our own self-serving beliefs.

Grenade suppository anyone?

Posted by: compos mentis on November 18, 2005 11:00 AM

Speaking of Al Qaeda: Zarqawi: Jordan Bombings 'Oops, Our bad.'

Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi said in an Internet audiotape on Friday that the group did not intend to target Muslim wedding parties in deadly bomb attacks in Jordan last week.
"We ask God to have mercy on the Muslims, who we did not intend to target, even if they were in hotels which are centers of immorality," the voice on the tape said.

Posted by: V the K on November 18, 2005 12:13 PM

group did not intend to target Muslim wedding parties in deadly bomb attacks in Jordan last week.

Thus bolstering my contention that it was in fact a hit on the PA general. If they wanted to attack immorality, all they needed to do was go to hollywood.

Posted by: Purple Avenger on November 18, 2005 12:21 PM

Coming soon to a moonbat website near you ...

Hayes LIED! Ace sighed!

Posted by: Kirk on November 18, 2005 06:27 PM

addam Hussein's government made extensive plans to hide Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in March 2003

riiight. I don't want to cause you any pain or embarassment ace. Really.

But Iraq didn't have any fickung weapons of mass destruction to hide before the US invasion in March 2003, you fickung raterd.

Posted by: alistair on November 18, 2005 07:32 PM

Grasp.... Grasp...

Grasp Grasp...

Nothing there but straws!

GRASP GRASP...

Damn more straws...

Come on Ace I thought you were intelligent. Everyone knows there was no connections to Al Qaeda or WMD.

I'm sorry even if there were *documents* found they were probably forged.... kinda like... *hint hint* the Niger document?

Posted by: AlanB on November 19, 2005 12:48 AM

I know, I know. It was kinda silly to use only one document to base a whole war upon. If only there was more than one piece of evidence besides a forged receipt to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Posted by: joeindc44 on November 19, 2005 12:58 AM

Like the 50+ billion barrels of oil in Iraq?

The profits this administration and their Masters, big corporations, are making from this war?

The ideological mentality of the Right?

Posted by: AlanB on November 19, 2005 11:16 AM

These dumb fucking leftist sheep will never get it through their indoctrinated brainwashed skulls that there were WMD in Iraq after the first Gulf War.

Reasoned discourse doesn't work.

Long listings of links doesn't work.

Showing them past reports of the very people who now contradict themselves by denying what they avowed earlier doesn't work.

Trimming it down to catchy slogans like their Commie masters have done doesn't work.

It has officially become a religion, and Dubya is the Satan in their New-Age pantheon. There is no logic, only faith and belief, damned be any evidence to the contrary because it is heresy and blasphemy.

Posted by: Sue Dohnim on November 19, 2005 12:00 PM

Not exactly, Sue...

Obviously, there were WMD left in Iraq after the first GW. They were all gone by 1995 at the very latest. Ritter was right.

What the wingnut straw-graspers don't get, is that the absence of WMD in 2002 is the question. And their existence in 1992 doesn't get them off the hook.

Posted by: on November 23, 2005 04:01 AM

Not exactly, Sue...

Obviously, there were WMD left in Iraq after the first GW. They were all gone by 1995 at the very latest. Ritter was right.

What the wingnut straw-graspers don't get, is that the absence of WMD in 2002 is the question. And their existence in 1992 doesn't get them off the hook.

Posted by: alistair on November 23, 2005 04:01 AM

i>They were all gone by 1995 at the very latest.

And we know this how? As Sue said, the Clinton administration in 1998 and 1999 certainly didn't believe this.

Posted by: geoff on November 23, 2005 04:08 AM

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Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

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[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]