What's bewildering people who work on mid-east issues is why certain individuals within the CIA (and some within the Pentagon, but mostly CIA) deny there's a link between Saddam and September 11. Al-Qaeda isn't a terrorist group as such - it's an umbrella term for a number of groups with a convergence of interests - like the Animal Liberation Front - it's a name activists might use when they carry out an action - they "claim" the action under the name ALF.
To imagine that Saddam Hussein, who funds almost all mid-east terrorist groups, just happened not to fund any of the groups associated with al-Qaeda, is to misunderstand the nature of terrorist funding - which involves money being sent by a donor who doesn't want to know details, which is sent to bank account X, from which a letter of credit is established for bank Y to buy something that will be sold elsewhere for deposit in bank account Z, and so on and so forth, until you've no idea where the money ends up - and the donor wants it that way for the sake of "plausible deniability".
Some parts of the CIA seem to be saying there's no proof of a link between Saddam and September 11 until someone can show that Osama bin Laden met with Saddam Hussein, and they sat down and discussed the plans. But this isn't how things work. A message would go out to good donors that a major attack was in the works against America. The donors would pay up via whatever circuitous routes they had established and the action would be carried out by others at some unspecified time in the future.
The argument that the secular Saddam wouldn't associate with Islamic fundamentalists doesn't stand up to scrutiny. To give just one example: when Saddam was talking to the American Ambassador April Glaspie before the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he warned her that America shouldn't suppose, just because Saddam had just fought a war against Iran (which is strongly Islamic), that America could pursue a policy of "divide and rule". He reminded her of certain historical precedents where Iran and Iraq had made peace to fight a common enemy and told her this would certainly happen again if either country felt threatened by America.
The suspicion is that the CIA has its own reasons to deny there's a link and they must be good reasons because otherwise Bush would give details showing the Saddam-Osama link to get more of the American public behind the invasion. It could be the CIA don't want to be held responsible for not knowing about September 11 in advance, and given they're monitoring Iraqi intelligence all the time, if Iraqi intelligence knew, the CIA should have known. Or - it could be, as you suggest, that they had a relationship with Iraqi intelligence in regard to Osama bin Laden, and now don't want to admit someone played a double game with them, and/or don't want the American public to find out about that relationship.
Who knows? I'm no conspiracy theorist, but there's something fishy afoot IMO.
Sarah
At 11:01 PM -0500 02/19/2003, Jim L'Hommedieu (Lama) wrote:
Maybe keeping Osama bin Lauden down was part of Saddam's job. Maybe Saddam's being replaced as "America's bully" in the Islamic world.
