Posted: March 17, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Saddam Hussein on Iraqi TV prior to the war

Among the pre-war documents posted online yesterday by the Pentagon is a letter from a member of Saddam's intelligence apparatus indicating al-Qaida and the Taliban had a relationship with the regime prior to the 9-11 attacks.

The letter by the member of Saddam's Al Mukabarat to a superior, dated Sept. 15, 2001, reports a pre-9/11 conversation between an Iraqi intelligence source and a Taliban Afghani consul.

The documents were released yesterday at the direction of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

Among the first batch of the thousands expected to be declassified over the next several months, the Al Mukabarat document was translated from the original Arabic by a contributor to the online forum Free Republic.

Laura Mansfield, an independent Middle East analyst, examined the translation for WorldNetDaily and said it appears to be accurate.

The letter indicated Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan were in contact with Iraq – noting a specific visit to Baghdad – and said the U.S. had proof Saddam's regime and al-Qaida were cooperating to hit a target in the U.S.

The document said the U.S. was aware of such a relationship and could strike Iraq and Afghanistan if the attacks proved to be tied to bin Laden and the Taliban.

The translated text is as follows:.

Zarqawi a pre-war presence?

Mansfield pointed to another document showing that less than a year after the 9-11 attacks, Saddam's government had identified at least one active al-Qaida cell in his country.

Photos of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in pre-war Iraqi document recovered by U.S.

The document, released only in Arabic, is described by the U.S. government as follows:

Mansfield said a translation of the document shows the al-Qaida terrorist Saddam's government had identified was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who emerged as one of the leading terrorists in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

The document, dated Aug. 17, 2002, identifies the al-Qaida member as Ahmed Fadil Nizal Al Khalaylah, the real name of Zarqawi, and includes a series of photos.

A memo within the document shows that as early Aug. 8, 2002, Zarqawi was identified as a member of "Tanzeem al-Qaida," or the "Al-Qaida Organization”.

"This document provides startling documentation that at the very least that Saddam Hussein's government knew that al-Qaida was active and functioning in Iraq," Mansfield said.

She pointed out that although the document goes on to outline activities of the group, there is no indication the Iraqi government took any steps to stop al-Qaida from operating within Iraq, in clear defiance of international law.

Caveat

Weekly Standard reporter Stephen Hayes, whose reporting has helped move members of Congress to call for release of the documents, nevertheless, has cautioned that they are published with a caveat. The Pentagon website says: "The U.S. Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available."

The administration's intent is to allow lawmakers and the public to investigate the documents' claims about controversial issues such as weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida's relationship to the regime prior to the March 2003 invasion.

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., requested the release, and last weekend Negroponte agreed to set up the website.

Hoekstra said in a statement he welcomed the opportunity to answer questions critical to the debate over the war.

"Whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them, the most important thing is we discover the truth of what was happening in the country prior to the war," he said.

In 2003, a 16-page top secret government memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee said bin Laden and Saddam had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, as well as financial and logistical support, and may have included the bombing of the USS Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The memo, dated Oct. 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee," reported the Weekly Standard. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration.

According to the Weekly Standard, the memo reports Saddam's willingness to help bin Laden plot against Americans began in 1990, shortly before the first Gulf War, and continued until the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It says bin Laden sent ''emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials.'' At some unspecified point in 1991, according to a CIA analysis, ''Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to establish links to al-Qaida.''  

Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents

U.S. 'unable to rule out' WMD transfers to Syria...

WASHINGTON, DC (NS/WorldTribune) - Charles Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he could not rule out Saddam's transfer of Iraqi missiles and weapons of mass destruction to Syria. Duelfer, an adviser to the CIA, said at a Senate hearing that "a large amount of material had been transferred by Iraq to Syria before the March 2003 war."

"A lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria," Duelfer said. "There was certainly a lot of truck traffic across the border points. We've got a lot of data to support that, including people discussing it. But whether in fact in any of these trucks there were WMD-related materials, I cannot say."

The Iraq Survey Group, headed by Duelfer, said Russia, Syria, Jordan and other arms suppliers were paid from Iraqi oil revenues.

A CIA report, authored by the Iraq Survey Group, identified Russia and Syria atop a list of 12 arms suppliers to Iraq until the U.S.-led war against Baghdad started in March 2003.

The report listed Russia and Syria above North Korea — regarded as the leading missile proliferator to the Middle East — as leading suppliers to Baghdad.

Jordan was the third largest supplier of weapons to Iraq. After Jordan came Belarus, China, India, North Korea, South Korea, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, France, Romania and Turkey. The report said these countries were involved in both "weapons of mass destruction and arms-related procurement."

The report said Saddam diverted money from the UN oil-for-food program to pay for both conventional and nonconventional weapons and components.

The report said state-owned companies in Russia and Syria defied UN sanctions and supplied weapons and platforms to Baghdad. The report said Syria also served as the leading route for illegal arms supplies from Europe and other countries.

Several of Iraq's neighbors were said to have joined in the secret military effort to aid Baghdad. The report — based on interviews with senior Iraqi officials and 40 million pages of documents and classified intelligence — cited Jordan and Turkey as leading suppliers to the Saddam regime.

 CNSNews.com Publishes Iraqi Intelligence Docs...
By David Thibault
CNSNews.com Managing Editor

(CNSNews.com) - When CNSNews.com published an article entitled, "Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties," we decided against publishing all 42 pages of the Iraqi intelligence documents in our possession and on which the article was based.

We published only the first page, fearing that if more were made widely available on the Internet, they might end up being altered or otherwise manipulated. We offered credentialed news organizations and counter-terrorism experts the opportunity to view and receive copies of the documents so that they might check for themselves on the authenticity of the documents and judge their importance in the debate over whether Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and/or had ties to international terrorist organizations.

Several news organizations did just that. But in light of other assertions on Wednesday, widely reported by the mainstream media, that Saddam did not pose any significant threat prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we felt it was time to publish as many of the Iraqi intelligence documents as possible.

What follows are copies of 24 of the 42 pages that are in our possession. Pages 21 through 26 were not published because they contain a list of terrorists trained at a camp belonging to the Iraqi Intelligence Directorate. CNSNews.com hopes to glean more information about the individuals on this list and provide updates in the future on their activities and whereabouts. Pages 29 through 40 were excluded because they replicate, though in a different person's handwriting, earlier documents.

Upon clicking on the individual pages of Arabic documents, readers will have an opportunity to click on the unedited English translation of those documents. We hope this serves to further illuminate a very important element of the ongoing debate.

Page 1: Jan. 18, 1993 memo from Saddam Hussein, through his secretary, to the Iraqi Intelligence Service, urging that missions be undertaken to "hunt down Americans," especially in Somalia.

Pages 2-12: Jan. 25, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service to Saddam Hussein, outlining the existing or developing relationships between Iraq and terrorist organizations.
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12

Page 13: Feb. 8, 1993 response from Saddam Hussein to the Jan. 25, 1993 memo.

Pages 14, 15: March 11, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service detailing plans for a meeting with "one of the leaders from the Egyptian Al-Jehad" terrorist organization.
Page 14
Page 15

Page 16: March 16, 1993 response from Saddam's secretary to the March 11, 1993 memo.

Pages 17, 18: March 18, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service detailing plans to "move against the Egyptian regime" of Hosni Mubarak.
Page 17
Page 18

Pages 19-20: Iraqi Intelligence Service internal memos regarding the information of individuals who participated at "the martyr act camp" belonging to the Iraqi intelligence directorate.
Page 19
Page 20

Pages 21-26: They comprise a list of terrorists trained at a camp belonging to the Iraqi Intelligence Directorate.
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Page 24
Page 25
Page 26

Pages 27, 28: Notes from the Iraqi Intelligence Service outlining strategies. Included is the assessment that terrorist "efforts should be concentrated on Egypt." The notes also advise against targeting the U.S. military, but recommend targeting "Americans as general" as well as "US agents inside the (Egyptian) regime."
Page 27
Page 28

Page 29-40: Duplicative of pages 2-12, except in a different person's handwriting.

Page 41: Table indicating Sept. 6, 2000 acquisition of malignant pustule (anthrax) as well as sterilization/decontamination equipment.

Page 42: Table indicating Aug. 21, 2000 acquisition of mustard gas as well as protective equipment.

The Defense Department announced earlier that coalition forces, acting on information from detainees, discovered a chemical production and storage facility in northern Iraq. Here are a couple of photos of the facility; click to enlarge:



Suspicion is that the chemicals have been used to make car bombs, but the Defense Department is keeping quiet until tests have been completed and analyzed. One can't help wondering, too, how long the facility has been there and whether it could have played a role in Saddam's chemical weapons program.

H.T.:Powerline Blog

Here's the AP Story: U.S. Raids Chem Facility in Iraq

 

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Fact - U.S. Finds Radioactive Missiles in Iraq...                                                                     

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NS/NewsMax.com) - U.S. Army troops operating at a former Iraqi air base recently made a startling discovery: Russian-made missiles marked with radioactive warning signs...

Army bomb disposal troops confirmed using Geiger counters that the missiles are indeed radioactive...

The discovery is not, however, considered the long-sought "smoking gun" of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction...

The missiles appear to be part of a cache of weapons supplied to Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War...

The Russian-made R-60, NATO code name AA-8 Aphid, air-to-air missiles are part of a huge stockpile of former Iraqi Air Force munitions uncovered in over a dozen concrete bunkers...

The Russian-made missiles are more than 6 feet long. Each carries 1.6 kilograms or about 3.5 pounds of radioactive uranium wrapped around a high explosive warhead...

The uranium is not pure enough nor in large enough quantity to be a nuclear warhead but it is dangerous enough, as you can see from the label: U.S. bomb experts noted the R-60 warheads are similar in design and content to a so-called "dirty bomb" that could contaminate a small area with radioactive materials...

Difficult Disposal

The discovery of the uranium-laced R-60 missiles illustrates the difficulty that coalition troops have in trying to dispose of the billons of dollars of Iraqi weapons left behind after the second war...

The R-60 missiles cannot simply be destroyed because the uranium-laced warheads could pose a health hazard to coalition troops and Iraqi civilians...

Army bomb-disposal experts have gathered up all the R-60 missiles found at the site and quarantined them at a single, heavily guarded location...

The R-60 has a very small 6-kilogram (13.2-pound) explosive warhead. The R-60 missiles supplied to Iraq by Russia contained uranium in their warheads to assist the small explosive charge in destroying targeted aircraft...

Russian weapons designers added the uranium belt to the missile in order to knock-out western aircraft using the dense metal as a way to punch through heavily armored sections of U.S. made jets...

U.S. troops also found a small number of advanced R-60M warheads at the site. The R-60M missiles are equipped with an advanced laser destruct system that detonates the warhead when it passes close to a target aircraft...

More Russian Missiles

In addition, U.S. troops uncovered several large air-to-surface Kh-28 missiles, NATO code-named AS-9 Kyle. The Kh-28 is a Russian-made, anti-radar, air-to-surface missile with a top speed of more than 2,000 miles an hour...

The missile is approximately 19.5 feet long, 17 inches in diameter, has a wingspan of 5.5 feet and weighs more than 1,500 pounds. It carries a conventional 340-pound high-explosive warhead and has a range of 54 miles...

U.S weapons experts are also handling the Kh-28 missiles carefully, but not because of its electronic radar-seeking warhead...

The Kh-28 is powered by a liquid-propellant propulsion system that consists of a fuel tank and an oxidizer tank. The oxidizer is a dangerous chemical known as "red fuming nitric acid" or IRFNA. Each missile carries approximately 20 gallons of IRFNA...

The oxidizer is considered to be highly dangerous and a possible carcinogen. U.S. Air Force disposal squads dismantled a Kh-28 found after the 1991 Gulf War using full Hazmat suits and special anti-chemical gear...

Again, U.S. forces are taking great care in the disposal of the missiles for fear of exposing coalition troops and local civilians to hazardous chemicals such as the oxidizer found in the Kh-28 missiles...

* * *   Editors Note:   This does not reflect the fact that al-Qaida is actively seeking WMD's of their own...