Great piece, Andrew. I can't say I'm really surprised by any of these revelations, but it's nice to have official confirmation. Great SOBs think alike, after all.

Oh, and I see our friends at TNR are still on good terms with their old buddies.

No offense, but I prefer Michael Totten's handling of the issues. I don't come to this site for political screeds, but for human stories of the Middle East. His point of view is clear, but is embedded in the thoughts and lives of the people he encounters. Though he clearly supports the war, he also understands that it's a little more complicated than "Ugh. Saddam Bad. He support Terrorist. Bush GOOD! He fight terrorist."

Andrew, I'm afraid you'll find that a lot of people refuse to acknowledge inconvenient facts. When presented with something that doesn't fit their preconceptions, it might as well not exist- they just repeat the same discredited dogma, as if they thought repetition would make it true.

This is a big part of why I have lost a great deal of respect for certain groups over the last several years.

You're doing a great job Andrew. Your personal site (which I like) infrequently updates, but your work on this site is heavy on regular rotation and I appreciate the material your presenting.

Err...

Ummm...

Uhhh...

BUSH LIED!! QUAGMIRE QUAGMIRE QUAGMIRE!!

/moonbat

Tony,

"Saddam Bad. He support Terrorist. Bush GOOD! He fight terrorist."

Gee whiz, I don't recall seeing that editorial. Maybe you could point us to a link or something?

Stephen Hayes is fast becoming the Oliver Stone of the right. Any tenuous connection to make his case. And all for what? No one cares, Bush did not invade Iraq because of its Al Qaeda connections, whether they existed or not. He's said as much in public many times. Every Arab dictatorship has some connection to Al Qaeda, even Dubai. It was a stupid argument when the left said Saddam had no contact with Al Qaeda, it's a stupid argument when the right, 3 years after the invasion, tries to pretend like this matters to anyone. We invaded Iraq because we could - it was a rotting tyrannical state with no real friends where Bush thought we had a fighting chance to establish a democracy. Saudi Arabia's ties to Al Qaeda are far more egregious than Iraq's, but we cannot invade Saudi Arabia without disrupting the world's oil supply, there is no friendly Kurdistan in Saudi Arabia, and the country lacks even the secular traditions of Iraq. So we went after Iraq instead, it was a gamble that seems to be going wrong. Whether or not Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda, there is no question that Al Qaeda is active in Iraq now so why does Hayes care? If we succeed in Iraq no one is going to care about Saddam's Al Qaeda connections, and if we fail the Al Qaeda connection alone will hardly seem like adequate justification for the invasion in retrospect.
This site has really gone down hill since Michael went on break, it's fast approaching Limbaugh-like inanity.

I think it is funny to see proof that links actually did exist. After three years of yelling about there not being any connection between Saddam because he was secular and blood for oil it is worth a laugh.

"Hayes is fast becoming the Oliver Stone of the right." Making shit up vs. going through documents. If anyone sounds like Limbaugh it's you Vayna.

Andrew,

No offense, but I find your blogging style much less valuable than MJT's. Michael and I may have differences of opinion, but he doesn't tend to spew maybes and possiblies as though they were absolutes.

We may still find wmd's and smoking guns. In fact, I think its great that the blogsphere is willing to cover all of the leads and maybes that pop-up (as opposed to the MSM which seems completely impotent at this point). However, don't become the opposite of the MSM. Don't ignore the maybes, but don't swallow them hook, line and sinker at the slightest hint of fresh earthworm. MJT's blog tends to present information with a low signal to noise ratio. It's usually thoughtful, indepth and accurate in some sense.

Most of what I've seen you post appears, to me, strongly shaded to a particular viewpoint and more noise than signal. If I'm looking for a laundry list of links to anti-left webpages, I can go check out Roger L Simon's site or Instapundit.

I like this site because it provides information, not repetition.

Just my opinion,

Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord

Is there another source for this informational thunderbolt aside from The (gak) Weekly Standard?

Besides, isn't the document in question (at least as they report it) saying that Iraq was cutting funding to the group after discovering they were buying weapons and kindnapping Americans? Doesn't that sound a little like they're cutting funding to terrorists, and NOT funding them?

Would that be cutting funding that they had denied giving and were not supposed to be giving in the first place?

As for some of the other comments, my political stance is easy to discover. It clearly is not conservative.

Ratatosk,

I think pointing out these facts are important. Many of the folks who opposed this war spend a great deal of time repeating their cant, hoping to spin the facts in their favor. If I had a nickle for every time I have read or heard an argument that boils down to absence of evidence is evidence of absence ... Well, not quite, because there is evidence, just nothing that is unquestionable. For example, we have not found WMD stockpiles, but we have found a few WMD and WMD facilities. What did he have, what were his intentions, & what potential did he have? Would he have given terrorist WMD? Despite the rhetoric from the left, these questions are largely unanswered.

In other words, it is unreasonable to hammer the hawks folks on lack of evidence and then complain about noise when they produce evidence.

For the sake of clarity —so that we may truly understand the implications of this report— would you please define "Al Queda linked" and how that's distinguished from just plain old Al Queda?

Andrew,

Good point. If Abu Sayef, reportedly founded by the brother-in-law of one of Osama Bin Laden's 54 siblings, did indeed receive support from Al Qaeda while receiving funding from the Saddam Hussein, then you've the beginnings of something. But you could have made the same point about Resolution 687 by simply pointing out Saddam's funding for suicide bombers in Israel.
Had you done that, though, you wouldn't have been able to link it back to Al Qaeda an in turn link it back to the Sept. 11 attacks and make smug comments, which seems to be what your posts are all about.
As for the claim that "we did find a few WMDs" posted below: Are you referring to the 53 artillery shells fitted for mustard gas that were mentioned deep in Dueffler Report? The reference that comes from Volume 3, Page 97? The one that says:

"Beginning in May 2004, ISG recovered a series of chemical weapons from Coaltion military units and other sources. A total of 53 munitions have been recovered, all of which appear to have been part of pre-1991 Gulf War stocks based on their physical condition and residual components."

Because that's the only reference that backs up your claim. If so, think about it: is an old 155m artillery shell with mustard gas really a weapon of MASS destruction? Or has it become one just now, in the desperate search for invasion rationales?

See, MikeK and JBP, it seems that all you, and Hayes, care about is scoring points against the anti-war left. As I said before, who gives a rat's ass? It is completely irrelevant. Saddam's connections with al Qaeda, as Ratatosk pointed out, are just noise. Neither our possible success nor our potential failure in Iraq is going to be judged in any way by these documents. People like you play right into the hands of the left - when people on the left claim that Saddam didn't have Al Qaeda ties, the proper answer to the left is who cares? That's not why we toppled Saddam. If your neighborhood leftist is so concerned about Al Qaeda ties ask him/her when he wants to invade Syria, or Pakistan for that matter. When you go grasping at straws - "look I found the Al Qaeda ties!" - you're just asking for the left to laugh at you.

The left continue to amaze me with their ability to lie on a dime. Among the biggest complaints of the left during the invasion was that Bush said there were connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam and they claimed there were not. Therefore Bush lied!!

Now we have proof that there were connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam and their talk is that Bush did not invade because of connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam and besides there are connections all over the place there. Absolutely amazing!! How do they ever look at themselves in the mirror in the mornings without gagging.

I can't believe people are whining about guest posters filling in whil MJT is out getting more stories for us.

Unless you have a clone machine, deal with it.

Dick, the internet left is really stupid. They are also liars. It's kind of interesting to watch them fall apart as the truth comes out. It is sad, too.

Arguments that were once dismissed as not factual are today dismissed as irrelevant -- now that the facts have piled up, that is. We do in fact give a "rat's ass" about what Saddam was up to, and how accurate the claims about his regime are/were.

So Al Qaeda has more "egregious" links to Saudi Arabia than did Saddam? No similarity. AQ is attacking the Saudi government. While individual Saudis fund terror networks, there are no official governmental Saudi links to AQ that compare with Saddam's. Documents proving the Saddam-AQ link were found long ago, and studiously ignored by the propagandistic media. Facts matter, and not just to historians.

Further, the USA is not about to invade nations "just because it can." If that were true, Costa Ricans would be scared witless. Bush invaded the center of the Middle East, and the terror network has reacted as might be expected: as fiercely as it can, because this is a mortal blow. Iraqis are increasingly coming to understand that their enemy is the coalition of Iranian, Syrian, Chechen and AQ terrorists who are in league with diehard Saddamite has-beens, and the new Iraqi army is shaping up nicely. Meanwhile, Khadaffy has pulled in his horns, possibly because of the new US resolve, which is in stark contrast to previous cut-bait-and-row-frantically-for-shore fiascos. The terrorists have excellent reason to be terrorized.

Hide under the covers, Vanya. Things are only going to get worse for your crowd.

Anybody here know why the President denied he said there was a connection between 9-11 , Al Qaeda and Saddam?

"Anybody here know why the President denied he said there was a connection between 9-11 , Al Qaeda and Saddam?"

Did he ever say there was a connection between 9-11 , Al Qaeda and Saddam? He did say there was a connection between Saddam and international terrorists, of which Al Queda is an example (but all these groups interact and morph into other groups, so it wouldn't have to be Al Queda specifically). We know Al Queda did 9-11. Bush and his admin have been very careful to not claim that Saddam had anything to do with 9-11. maybe he did and maybe he didn't.

"No one cares, Bush did not invade Iraq because of its Al Qaeda connections, whether they existed or not. He's said as much in public many times."

Vanya, what planet were you living on in 2002-2003? Bush said that Iraq was not involved with al Qaeda in planning or executing 9/11; he never said that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. Check your facts before you start spouting Democratic talking points.

Dale, he denied it because he never said it.

%%%%%%%%%

"Andrew, I'm afraid you'll find that a lot of people refuse to acknowledge inconvenient facts. When presented with something that doesn't fit their preconceptions, it might as well not exist- they just repeat the same discredited dogma, as if they thought repetition would make it true."

I'm afraid that you are right, rosignol. I would say that most of the committed anti-war types will go on as before. I guess the only hope is for us to crucify (figuratively, of course) any politicians who try to get elected by pushing the "Bush lied, people died" agenda.

Now I'm an anti-war type because I don't care about trivia? We invaded Iraq to build a stable functioning Arab country that could serve as a beacon/warning to the Middle East, that's why we are still there. If our aim had been to punish Saddam for his ties to Al Qaeda we would have declared victory in 2003. I promise you if we ever did invade Saudi Arabia you would find that there are many people in the government covertly, and not so covertly, supporting Al Qaeda. The point is not that US invades "any country it can", the point is that of the bad boys in the Middle East (Syria, Saudi, and Iraq) Iraq was the only country where we had any realistic chance of succeeding in transforming an Arab society. So Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda are a side-show at best. If you're going around calling yourself a war supporter, at least know what the war is about for God's sake. You're as pathetic as the know-nothings on the left. You people are so blinded by your stupid partisan games you can't pull your heads out of your asses long enough to read. I'm happy for you that you can score some debating points against some hippy on the UC Berkeley campus, some of us care about the real war we're trying to win.

"Who cares if there was a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda?"

Let me pose a hypothetical scenario. Imagine, if you possibly can Vanya, that Saddam did indeed have WMD in 2002. Saddam hated America. Al Qaeda wants to obtain WMDs to carry out attacks on America. Saddam provides the WMDs to al Qaeda because it has a connection. Bush does nothing to stop Saddam from providing the weaponry, and al Qaeda hits NY, Chicago, etc. with chemical, biological, or perhaps someday, nuclear weapons. Now THAT would have been an impeachable offense, if Bush had done nothing to protect America. Since Bush (and numerous countries around the world) firmly believed that Saddam did in fact
have WMD, he really had little choice. Now, you may doubt that Bush really believed that Saddam had WMD, but most rational people are confident that the President did believe it, whether he was mistaken or not. Just like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and other Dems believed it.

That is why the question is important.

As a Bush supporter, I have no problem agreeing with Vanya's point above, that "We invaded Iraq to build a stable functioning Arab country that could serve as a beacon/warning to the Middle East..."

It's either that, or nuke that whole part of the world. What's the problem?

Hi Vanya,

You wrote(orignally and then continue to repeat) the following:

"Stephen Hayes is fast becoming the Oliver Stone of the right."

Oliver Stone and Castro I understand. Who would you pick for Hayes? Just curious.

Any tenuous connection to make his case. And all for what? No one cares, Bush did not invade Iraq because of its Al Qaeda connections, whether they existed or not.

Al-qaeda, Abu-sayyaf, Abu-nidal, Abu-abbas, whatever. "Bush" didn't invade anybody. The US Military through the authority of the United States congress determined that Saddam Hussein was a threat that needed to be eliminated.

So he was.

"Every Arab dictatorship has some connection to Al Qaeda, even Dubai."

Few if any had the potential that Saddam did. To ignore this would be completely irresponsible.

"It was a stupid argument when the left said Saddam had no contact with Al Qaeda, it's a stupid argument when the right, 3 years after the invasion, tries to pretend like this matters to anyone."

The right and the middle aren't and haven't been pretending. It has and continues to matter.

"We invaded Iraq because we could - it was a rotting tyrannical state with no real friends where Bush thought we had a fighting chance to establish a democracy. Saudi Arabia's ties to Al Qaeda are far more egregious than Iraq's, but we cannot invade Saudi Arabia without disrupting the world's oil supply, there is no friendly Kurdistan in Saudi Arabia, and the country lacks even the secular traditions of Iraq.

Yeah. What a tragedy it would be in the WAR AGAINST ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS FANATICS if we could establish a democratic process, in a secular leaning Arab-Islamic country, that pays people to attack us, by removing their oppressive murderous tyrant of a leader.

Yah. Big mistake there huh.

So we went after Iraq instead, it was a gamble that seems to be going wrong.

So says you.

Whether or not Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda, there is no question that Al Qaeda is active in Iraq now so why does Hayes care?

Because they were there before and they are there now. It's not a coincidence. They are one and the same. Example: Iraqi Fedayeen=Abu-Nidal.

If we succeed in Iraq no one is going to care about Saddam's Al Qaeda connections, and if we fail the Al Qaeda connection alone will hardly seem like adequate justification for the invasion in retrospect.

Hoperfully we succeed in Iraq and nobody cares about anything. Either way, Saddam won't be financing terrorists anymore, nor playing mad scientist with nuclear material. That's a win as far as I'm concerned.

Now I'm an anti-war type because I don't care about trivia? We invaded Iraq to build a stable functioning Arab country that could serve as a beacon/warning to the Middle East, that's why we are still there.

Kind of.

The idea is that a stable functioning democracy in the middle east would be an antidote to the terrorist-creating toxicity in that part of the world.

I don't know if it will work, but I prefer trying this over trying a more indiscriminate approach, or not doing anything.

If our aim had been to punish Saddam for his ties to Al Qaeda we would have declared victory in 2003.

Punishing Saddam was one of the US's aims. It was far from being the only aim.

I promise you if we ever did invade Saudi Arabia you would find that there are many people in the government covertly, and not so covertly, supporting Al Qaeda.

Of course we would.

We would also find that world energy prices had gone through the roof, resulting in tremendous economic disruption worldwide. The western countries would probably get away with only going through a severe recession, but the rest of the planet would be reduced to poverty.

If you're going to go to war with someone, make sure that what you're going to do hurts the enemy more than it hurts you.

The point is not that US invades "any country it can", the point is that of the bad boys in the Middle East (Syria, Saudi, and Iraq) Iraq was the only country where we had any realistic chance of succeeding in transforming an Arab society. So Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda are a side-show at best.

Iran belongs on that list.

It's the place radical islam gained control of a nation. Without their example and willingness to fund militant religious fanatics, we'd still be dealing with secular despots running countries that tried to go socialist before they developed an industrialized economy (something that is such a bad idea that even Karl Marx advised against it). In short, they'd be about as much of a danger as the Soviet Union, only without the Red Army or the nuclear arsenal.

Saudi Arabia may be the bank account of the jihadi movements, but Iran is it's heart.

Want another source? Try ABC. http://abcnews.go.com/International/IraqCoverage/story?id=1734490&page=1
It's actually amusing how scared the "Bush lied" crowd is this. Plenty of them are in this thread. "Docs aren't important. They are fake. No real connection."
Your whole world is breaking down in front of you and you don't know how to handle it.

Why is this story important? O I don't know I guess finding out who is funding, training and aiding terrorists in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe to attack us and our allies is just a little important. But then again, those of you who don't think Saddam is a threat may also be in the camp that believes al Qaeda isn't real so I am probably wasting bandwith on Micheal's site. Sorry Mike.

I continue to be amazed by the obtuseness and stupdity displayed on this thread. Drum and Cannon and TMan who do you think you're arguing with? Apparently when people don't fit into your two mental slots of "Gung-ho Bush supporter" and "Michael Moore supporter" your head explodes. I'll repeat slowly - the invasion of Iraq was a good idea and a daring idea. Get this into your skulls - we invaded to remove Saddam as a threat and to build a functioning democracy. Saddam's Al Qaeda ties probably would have helped build more support for war if they could have been proven to more people in 2002 but it doesn't matter now because we ALREADY invaded. Are you saying the invasion was pointless if we can't prove the Al Qaeda ties?
Apparently that is what you believe. Furthermore Saddam's WMDs were a threat to the Middle East and US security EVEN IF SADDAM HAD NO AL QAEDA ties. Is that so hard to understand? That is why Al Qaeda is a side issue, at best. Al Qaeda is just one of many jihadist groups. I'm the one being consistent, I didn't think Saddam's Al Qaeda ties mattered very much in 2002 so why should I care now? President Bush made a case for war that never mentioned Al Qaeda. That case convinced most people, but apparently you are now only comfortable with the war if Al Qaeda was involved. Way to stand tall. This is why I have little respect for Hayes. True supporters of the war, like Hitchens, defend the war on its own terms. Hayes seems much more concerned with ass covering and scoring points against left-wing pundits.

Saddam's Al Qaeda ties probably would have helped build more support for war if they could have been proven to more people in 2002 but it doesn't matter now because we ALREADY invaded.

I'm afraid you are mistaken. Saddam's support for, and association with various terrorist groups is quite relevant- at least, it is in the US.

I notice your email address ends in .ru, and I suspect you are not particularly familiar with what has been going on with regards to domestic US politics for the last 3 years. Apologies if I'm mistaken, but here's the capsule version just in case:

Basically, the leftist opponents of the war have been beating the "BUSH LIED! PEOPLE DIED!" drum pretty-much non-stop for, oh, three years now. As you might expect, many people on the right have become very sick of it. So much so that they have developed something of a reflex reaction to certain lines of argument, which I am afraid you appear to have triggered.

Some American conservatives/right/hawks/whatever have decided to ignore the argument over what Bush actually said, accept the leftist's premise that Bush did say there were connections between Saddam and various terrorist outfits such as al Qaeda, and use this as an opportunity to score rhetorical points.

This has nothing to do with justifying the invasion, and everything to do with discrediting domestic political opponents who have spent the last 3 years trying to discredit President Bush- payback is very much an factor in American politics.

This is an election year, you see. What happens in November will determine if the Republicans will retain their majorities in the House and Senate. So scoring rhetorical points is something of a priority for the partisans just now.

Is what is going on clearer now?

Are you saying the invasion was pointless if we can't prove the Al Qaeda ties?

Can't speak for the others, but for myself...

Hell, no! Sic semper tyrannis! :-)

Vanya, I'm hearing you loud and clear. I think Rosignol's last post was dead on, too.

I knew what vanya was getting at right away, but then again, I am not as "ensconced" in all this as probably the majority of you are. It is interesting to see people, who basically share the same point of view in regards to the war misunderstand eachother on an internet site. Although, I do think vanya understood the detractors, but not vice versa.

I agree with both of you. Of course I think that Sadaam's links to AQ are exremely pertinent to the case for war and more to the point, to answer the moonbat's with their deafening cry of, "there was NO connection between SH and AQ". Vanya's point is, "who the hell cares about those moonbat's cries?" Some people do, some people don't. These revelations are important to solidify that "reason" for the war. It is also important because it gives a great rationale for the "improvement" of that part of the world. SH had ties to Iraq. The administration chooses the "democracy experiment" in Iraq, for the reasons vanya stated, and others.

This is a nice site. I am glad I stumbled upon it.

This is a nice site. I am glad I stumbled upon it.

This site is considerably different from its usual state at the moment, as Michael is away, and the site under temporary caretakership.

I agree with the previous commenter; both are right. We sometimes have to debate in absolutes because that is the level of discourse in our media. That is why we have people like Stephen Hayes making the case. Like Vanya, I am finding the whole thing a bit boring. The smoking gun in the document exploitation story will be when they find the memo that says Saddam STOPPED working with islamic terrorists. I wouldn't hold m breath on that one

sodom must die! As long as he is alive people will die because of him still. They will try to bust him out. Just as they have killed the judges, lawyers and people near by. sodom must die yesterday. Thanks again Samir!

sodom must die! As long as he is alive people will die because of him still. They will try to bust him out. Just as they have killed the judges, lawyers and people near by. sodom must die yesterday. Thanks again Samir!

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