>>From O'Hanlon & Gordon on Iraq a while ago:
>Although he [Saddam Hussein] >appears not to
have been implicated in the Sept. 11 >attacks,
he could decide to give biological arms to Al
>Qaeda in the future.
This recalls for me that NYT article (3-17-02) in
which they quoted various 'al Qaeda' documents found in Afghanistan, including this:
"In a Qaeda house in Kabul, there was a public statement from the 'Islamic Battalion, Kurdistan, Iraq,' dated Nov. 20, 1999, calling on 'the movement for Islamic unity' to help the jihad against President Saddam Hussein."
I wasn't on this list at the time, so maybe I missed a discussion, but does anyone have more on this?<<
For a start it's doubtful whether Hussein has anything at all to sell.
There wasn't an overwhelming amount of serious discussion about anything to do with 9-11 on this list because certain key members were uncomfortable with the whole topic. Attempts to do so elicited comments like 'oh, another sick fuck' or something like that. There was a lot of news and disinfo. posted, and some of us agreed that armed conflict was not the proper policy to pursue.
(I was against it not only because of the civilian deaths but because I figured many in the Taliban were just young recruits who were going to make fodder just the way Hussein's troops did--and I was right of course. The result is at least 3000-5000 'civilian' deaths and no one cares how many Taliban conscripts.)
It is well known that OBL is an avowed enemy of Hussein and other secular Arabs. One reason why Islamic fundamentalists have long been tolerated and even nurtured by the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is that it was felt they make good foot soldiers in the war against communism, socialism, Baathism, and pan-Arabism--or anything else that might drain our vital bodily fluids and mess up the oil supply and all the money it makes for the guys who own the racket.
I ventured blowback theories right from the start, and nothing has dissuaded me to the contrary. The recent post about the Time article, however pabulum-like the actual content, supports me now. First, indirect blowback: the Bush team was so dead set on getting a major campaign going against Hussein that they forgot about Al Qaeda and ignored Clinton's team (who had already started a fighting war against the Afghan Arabs and the Taliban, remember). The whole national security state was obsessed with the idea that Hussein is the enemy--and no doubt, some of them are actually convinced he is a greater threat.
I still think direct blowback might have happened, too: the CIA, the defense intelligence, even the State Dept. (largely overlapping with the intelligence people anyway) got wrapped up in the anti-Hussein campaign that all other things went to the wayside. This might even have involved the kneejerk use of 'Islamic fundamentalist assets' because the key to getting control of Iraq post-Hussein would be to have a group of Sunni Arabs ready to work with you. It would be through such groups that Saudi Arabia and Egypt would try to influence regime change, since Kurds are non-Arab and only want a Kurdistan, and the sort of pro-Iran Shiite Arab who fights Hussein everyday is also stirring up trouble in Saudi Arabia. Hence my theory that pilot training and flight engineering training for Sunni assets became the trojan horse that let in Egyptian and Saudi terrorists.
Finally, I have never been convinced that anyone in the Taliban or the OBL's group in Afghanistan were ever involved in the details of pulling off 9-11. I do think the master plan was OBL helped finance such efforts and then took the heat for 9-11. The Mullah Omar might have been naive in his support of OBL and in his estimation of US military power ( the way the Taliban positioned their troops convinces me of this), but I doubt if OBL was ever naive about what the US was going to do.
Charles Jannuzi
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