Media lie, people die

Saturday, 15th March 2008

The ‘Bush/Blair lied, people died’ brigade swung into instantaneous knee-jerk action-replay when the Institute for Defence Analyses, a Defence Department funded body, reported on the results of screening more than 600,000 original captured documents and several thousand hours of audio and video footage from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which have been archived in a US Department of Defence database. Thus

Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie

said the New York Times.

Official US study denies Saddam had links with al-Qaida

said the Guardian, going on:

A US military study officially acknowledged for the first time yesterday that Saddam Hussein had no direct ties to al-Qaida, undercutting the Bush administration's central case for war with Iraq.

But the actual report doesn’t say that at all. Indeed, its reveals the precise opposite. Although its executive summary states:

This study found no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda

the body of the report finds significant evidence of highly pertinent indirect connections with al Qaeda affiliates. For example:

Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda-as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's longterm vision…A later memorandum from the same collection to the Director of the IIS reports that the Army of Muhammad is endeavoring to receive assistance [from Iraq] to implement its objectives, and that the local IIS station has been told to deal with them in accordance with priorities previously established. The IIS agent goes on to inform the Director that ‘this organization is an offshoot of bin Laden, but that their objectives are similar but with different names that can be a way of camouflaging the organization.

…Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.

Woah! Read that one again! Saddam supported an organisation led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy! The abstract of the document explains:

Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term) considerable operational overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the regional groups involved in terrorism. This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a ‘de facto’ link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

Saddam and al Qaeda were not only recruiting from the same terrorist swamp, but it served Saddam’s pragmatic interests to make common cause. Indeed, in addition to providing evidence of actual links between Saddam and al Qaeda affiliates, the report destroys the ludicrous claim that Saddam would not have entertained such links with religious zealots since he was a ‘secular’ Muslim:

A much longer document from 1993… illuminates how the outwardly secular Saddam regime found common cause with terrorist groups who drew their inspiration from radical Islam…The document goes into great depth about Iraq's links to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and includes a memorandum, dated 8 February 1993, asking that movement to refrain from moving against the Egyptian government at that time.

There was also an

order from the Presidential Secretary to the IIS, directing a task for the Afghan Islamic Party

and the revelation that, in 2001, Iraq was

training Sudanese fighters inside Iraq.

Part of the mind-blowing rewriting of history that has taken place is the bizarre claim that Saddam not only had ‘no links’ with al Qaeda but had ‘no links’ with terrorism at all. This report not only states:

Iraq was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism,

not only provides copious evidence of its links with international terrorism, but also provides the following from July 2002:

We hope for your opinion regarding how to destroy weapons in our embassy in London, which include seven Kalashnikov guns, nineteen other guns with ammunition belonging to them, and silencers.

What was that again about Saddam posing ‘no threat’ to Britain?

So far from

undercutting the Bush administration's central case for war with Iraq

this document in fact shows that Saddam was up to his neck in the Islamic jihad against the west and that therefore the case for removing him (quite apart from the legal case, which in my view was always sound) is thus well and truly proved.

The British and American media, however, have said the precise opposite. When will the shoe drop about these useful idiots, the Islamists’ most important strategic weapon against the west?