via Maria, Saddam Hussein’s regime was planning suicide attacks on U.S. interests six months before 9-11 (emphasis added)
Assuming the document’s accuracy, this shows that Saddam’s regime was not only providing aid and support for terrorist organizations of other countries. It was also planning its own bombings directed at U.S. facilities and personnel.
As counterterrorism consultant Dan Darling wrote last week on the Weekly Standard’s Web site, that would mean Russian intelligence services under Vladimir Putin were better informed about Iraq’s terrorist abilities than the U.S. spy community.
Though little noticed by the press, during a July 2004 visit to Kazakhstan the Russian president said that between 9-11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, “Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received . . . information that official organs of Saddam’s regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the U.S. and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations.”
. . .
What has come out so far has confirmed Americans’ worst fears about Saddam’s evil regime. To review:Saddam is heard on a 1997 tape predicting terrorism would soon be coming to the U.S., while his son-in-law — who was in charge of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction — gloats about lying to U.N. weapons inspectors to hide the extent of Iraq’s WMD program.
Saddam, in a tape made in 2000, talks with Iraqi scientists about his plans to build a nuclear device. He discusses Iraq’s plasma separation program — an advanced uranium-enrichment technique completely missed by U.N. inspectors.
An Iraqi intelligence document, released just two weeks ago, describes a February 1995 meeting between Saddam’s spies and Osama bin Laden. During that meeting, bin Laden offered to conduct “joint operations” with Iraq. Saddam subsequently ordered his aides to “develop the relationship” with the al-Qaida leader.
A fax, sent on June 6, 2001, shows conclusively that Saddam’s government provided financial aid to Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf is an al-Qaida offshoot co-founded by bin Laden’s brother-in-law.
The article asks, “Why won’t Washington get the word out?”
Indeed.
Read the Iraq Files and WMD files at Pajamas Media.
How about some calm reasoning instead, foks?
Democrats: Get loud, get angry! YEAARGH!
Via Elephants in Academia, Chavez threatens to kick out US ambassador. As the Academic Elephant says, “Sometimes I wish we got “Hello, Mr. President” just for laughs.”
New (to me) blog and a website,
First the blog, via Rosemary, The Online Chaplain.
New website Families United for Our Troops and Their Mission
One more, via Mary, Lerterland, by David R. Adler, posting from Iraq.
Michael Fumento‘s in Iraq right now, so don’t forget to visit his blog.
More articles from Maria
Everest Expedition Uncovers Exotic Species
Penguins survived when dinosaurs died
McCain revealed, and George Will doesn’t like him.
More blogging later.
[back now]
[Ted] Kennedy’s revisionist history
Here’s the truth about the Cuban missile crisis that you won’t read in Kennedy’s book.
After President Kennedy took office in 1961, he began planning a limited invasion of Cuba for the purpose of overthrowing Fidel Castro, who had seized power two years earlier. Kennedy planned to rely mostly on anti-Castro Cubans based in Miami. He promised them air support for their campaign.
On April 17, 1961, Kennedy dispatched a Central Intelligence Agency-trained force of about 1,300 in what would become known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. When the would-be liberators met stiff opposition, Kennedy refused to send the promised air support – leaving his allies to be picked off on the beaches.
It was a foreign policy disaster that shook the Kennedy administration. Not only had it failed to achieve its objectives, it had demonstrated to Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Kremlin that Kennedy was weak, a vacillator, indecisive.
It was that weakness in failing to achieve a victory in the Bay of Pigs that prompted Khrushchev a year later to move Soviet nuclear missiles to Cuba – 90 miles from the United States.
Maria’s favorite, Burt Prelutsky, writes about Polite rotten Commies
Don’t forget the Carnivals
DynamoBuzz hosts the Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers #47
Princeton, April 9
Another wonderful photo by the very talented Maria,
