Connection? Saddam And Terrorists? Impossible...

The information on Saddam's regime being linked to terror groups comes in bits and pieces. So much so that it becomes hard to keep track of everything that backs up Bush's decision to take Iraq out of the picture. A great article from Stephen F. Hayes at the Weekly Standard begins to pull the pieces together, and forms a pretty convincing picture. The entire story is here. Some high points include: "...Ansar al Islam, the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that operated in northern Iraq, the former high-ranking military intelligence officer says: "There is no question about the fact that AI had reach into Baghdad. There was an intelligence connection between that group and the regime, a financial connection between that group and the regime, and there was an equipment connection. It may have been the case that the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] support for AI was meant to operate against the [anti-Saddam] Kurds. But there is no question IIS was supporting AI." ---------------------------------------------------- Most damnig of all: Spanish investigators believe that Ghasoub Ghalyoun, the man they have accused of conducting surveillance for the 9/11 attacks, who also has roots in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, was trained in an Iraqi terrorist camp in the early 1980s. "[Saddam] used these groups because he was interested in extending his influence and extending the influence of Iraq. There are definite and absolute ties to terrorism. The evidence is there, especially at the network level. How high up in the government was it sanctioned? I can't tell you. I don't know whether it was run by Qusay [Hussein] or [Izzat Ibrahim] al-Duri or someone else. I'm just not sure. But to say Iraq wasn't involved in terrorism is flat wrong." --------------------------------------------------- "...Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Senators Rick Santorum and Pat Roberts--also demanded more information from the Bush administration on the status of the vast document collection." "Following several weeks of debate, a consensus has emerged: The vast majority of the 2 million captured documents should be released publicly as soon as possible." "...Rumsfeld is pushing aggressively for a massive dump of the captured documents. "He has a sense that public vetting of this information is likely to be as good an astringent as any other process we could develop," says Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita." "The main worry, says DiRita, is that the mainstream press might cherry-pick documents and mischaracterize their meaning." That's obvious, of course. But every last file that does not have security ramifications should be made available to the public and world community. If nothing else it will help put a cork in the crazed left's "Bush lied, people died B.S." "...secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis." I believe this story will come together nicely. I'd almost bet money on it. The only reason I see to hold off reporting what is in the more than "2 million exploitable items" is to screw with the Democrats before the elections. Personally, I feel that if no WMD's are ever found (not counting the tons of mustard gas and other deadly nerve agents already found), the idea that Iraq was training humans to become individual WMD's used to kill others is more than enough reason to take them down.