New IDA Report States That There Were Links Between Saddam and Al Qaeda

On Wednesday, March 12th, I read an article in the Washington Post, Study Discounts Hussein, Al-Qaeda Link, that purported to be an accurate representation of a then-unreleased report from the Institute for Defense Analysis on Saddam Hussein's links to terror organizations, including Al Qaeda. The author begins by stating that

An examination of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents, audio and video records collected by U.S. forces since the March 2003 invasion has concluded that there is "no smoking gun" supporting the Bush administration's prewar assertion of an "operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network, sources familiar with the study said.

That article led to numerous postings on left-wing blogs stating that it has finally been proved that Saddam was a peace-lover, with no links to terrorism at all, let alone Al Qaeda. That conclusion, I assume, was the intent of both the reporter and the source.

But as the Bush Administration had asserted that Saddam had links to Al Qaeda and its affiliates, but not an "operational relationship" as the article alleges, I felt that I had to comment on the Post's website (seventh message down). Couldn't really say much more than that, since the report hadn't been publicly released yet.

The report was finally released to the public yesterday. I assumed that it would be a rather bland overview of information that we had seen before - a collection of documents that would provide ample ammunition for myself to continue to say that there were links, and for opponents of the war to continue to say that there wasn't. Boy, oh boy was I wrong. Aside from a seemingly out of place line in the executive summary (page EE-1) that says the following: "This study found no "smoking gun" (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda", the study goes on to provide ample documentation that in fact there was hard evidence linking Iraq to just about every pan-Arab terrorist organization that had been operating at that time, in addition to several pan-Islamic groups under Al Qaeda.

I've uploaded the 94 page pdf file, "Iraqi Perspectives Project - Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents Volume 1 (Redacted)", here:

Download Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf

...so that anyone who wants to can read it. It's an astounding document, and makes me wonder why the Bush Administration hasn't been promoting these findings, along with the rest of Harmony, as it was being uncovered. Instead, the Administration has allowed the Left and the media to control the public's perception of the Iraq War being unnecessary, and unsupported by any concrete intelligence.

Luckily, many of us on the right are starting to publicize the findings:

NRO's Andy McCarthy          CONNECTED: Iraq and al Qaeda
TWS' Stephen F. Hayes        The New Report on Iraq and Terror
The NY Sun's Eli Lake          Report Details Saddam's Terrorist Ties
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey          Saddam supported at least two al-Qaeda groups: Pentagon

Captain Ed (Ed Morrissey's old nom de guerre at Captain's Quarters) also has written a very good analysis on what all of this new (to us, not to the Administration) information means:

Several points need to be made more clear. First, it’s pretty apparent that the vast bulk of the reporting on this paper has come from leaks within the Pentagon, and not from a read of the paper itself. Stephen Hayes more generously attributes it to a shortsighted focus on the executive summary, but even that makes clear that Saddam used Islamist radical terrorist groups to his advantage, and that state support of terrorism grew so large as to require an expansion of government bureaucracy to manage it. Anyone who reads the executive summary would be compelled to look for the support within the body of the document.

Furthermore, one has to remember the purpose and structure of al-Qaeda. It is not a top-down hierarchical organization like the PLO. Rather, it serves as a framework for a web of affiliated terrorist organizations, both for funding and for inspiration. AQ’s leadership structure maintains communications and coordination with these groups, which often merge with and split into other organizations. The report itself tries to remind readers of this, and sees Saddam and Osama as using essentially the same network for the same ends, when their interests overlap. That’s why Iraq’s IIS winds up funding the Army of Mohammad and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad — both of which are authentically AQ, and in the case of AoM, Iraq funded it specifically because of its goals of attacking American interests.

Reader Sam Pender points out that Egyptian Islamic Jihad actually has more significance than most in the AQ network. EIJ at one time provided the lion’s share of AQ’s leadership, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, and certainly that was true in the period between 1991 and 2003. Saddam’s support for EIJ shows a more direct connection to AQ leadership than anyone had predicted before the capture of the documents on which this report is based.

The Al Qaeda groups that Saddam had links to were not new, Al Qaeda "inspired" groups. For example, Egyptian Islamic Jihad merged with Al Qaeda before 9/11, and was the original home of Al Qaeda's so-called second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri.  The Army of Mohammad, whose proper name is "Jaish-e-Mohammed", was originally formed in 1994 and has direct connections to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

This is a remarkable report, and I recommend that everyone read it. I'll be posting more on it later.