Kind of curious as to why neither the IDA report, nor your far more informative response, including the following documents uncovered by the Iraq Survey Group Document Exploitation effort:

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=%5CNation%5Carchive%5C200410%5CNAT20041011a.html

The copies of the original documents, leaked out in 2004 (I didn’t do it.. and their english translations clearly indicate that Saddam had charged his Intelligence director with making contact with various “Arabian elements” (Egyptian Islamic Jihad.. etc) to initiate terrorist attacks against AMERICAN targets, INCLUDING SOMALIA, as early as 1992-93:

http://www.cnsnews.com/PDF/2004/enPage1.pdf

I shouldn’t have to remind folks that the date of these documents PRECEDE the events that led to “Blackhawk Down” in Mogadishu later in 1993.

While there is was no direct evidence that Iraqi intelligence actually formalized and implemented their plan, it’s clear that they were directed to do so on Saddam’s own order.

Thus, legally speaking, Saddam had undertaken to violate the 1991 cease-fire and re-engage in covert aggression against the US. This despite his legal obligation under the cease-fire accord to have nothing to do with any terrorist groups or activites.

Thought I would share that public document with you all..

And btw, to correct the record, there are more than just a couple of million documents in US hands.. The last count I had heard was upwards of 20 million. And certainly not all of them have been scanned in Harmony since DIA significantly cut the funding for the DocEx operation when the ISG was shut down in April, 2005.

Another problem that is not often mentioned is that when those documents were collected, they were normally scattered and mingled and due to limited time on site, they were just thrown into boxes to be sorted out later.

Thus, the vast majority of those harmony documents consist of “bits and pieces” of various documents and letters. The task of properly matching all of those intermingled pages into complete documents was something that was still a major limiting factor to their usefulness (lacking full informational context) when ISG ceased operations. To imagine your average harmony document, think of trying to complete a puzzle with pieces from 100 different subjects.

I highly doubt that the tremendous resouces necessary to match these documents together has been allocated.

But overall, great article!!

Diogenes

Mortonesque idiots exempted, you keep your readers remarkably well-informed with excellent back-up proof.

Morton reads Islamic Republic of Iran state-run news? Even the MSM is better than that, or maybe not?

You say that “Official records discovered in Baghdad revealed that Zarqawi received medical treatment at the Olympic hospital run by Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son.” Are we supposed to believe Zarqawi was in Iraq just because you say so?

You say “An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as “Abu Mohammed,” told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden’s fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997.” Yuo fail to mention this was before the war! Bush got us stuck there!! Not Saddam!!!

Again, “The Iraqis, who had the Third World’s largest poison-gas operations prior to the Gulf War I, have perfected the technique of making hydrogen-cyanide gas….In the hands of Al-Qaeda, this would be a fearsome weapon in an enclosed space – like a suburban mall or subway station.” They don’t have al Qaeda people or malls or subways in Iraq until after the U.S. went there dummy!

The next weak thing you say is that “Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, entered the U.S. on a phony Iraqi passport.” The illegal aliens also come to the U.S. with illegal documentations this does not make them al qaeda!

Lets hope Obama wins so we can finally have the change we were promised. I don’t listen to the MSM. I am smart enough to also look at other sources like IRNA (www.irna.ir) and Venezuelan/Cuban sources to decide for the truth. We have to understand those people so we can understand their need for nuclear energy and accomodate them with the spirit of friendship! These divisive inflamatory things don’t go so well for us to work with them.

When you cite the Hezbollah link are you referring to the 2002/2003 State Department report or is the Saudi group that is mentioned in the new IDA report Saudi Hezbollah?

I have some info that they did reach out to another Shi’te terror group as well which really puts the secular thing to rest because it means he’d not only work with Sunni Islamists (as he was Sunni) but the Shia that were much farther away from him ideologically.

http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com

Indeed, I don’t think it would be going too far to refer to Al Qaeda as a Saudi Arabian terrorist organization, vice an international terrorist organization.

So why do we continue to turn the other cheek toward the Saudis, while we sacrifice thousands of lives and billions of dollars over the handful of loose threads you discuss above?