“Inever believed in the link between Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden,
al Qaeda, and Islamist terrorism,” former Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright flatly declared in an October 21 essay published in Australia’s
Melbourne Herald Sun.i
“Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorism. Our invasion has made it
one,” said Senator Ted Kennedy (D–Massachusetts) on October 16. “We were
told Iraq was attracting terrorists from al Qaeda. It was not.”ii
As President Bush continues to lead America’s involvement in Iraq, he
increasingly is being forced to confront those who dismiss Saddam Hussein’s ties
to terrorism and, thus, belittle a key rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bush’s
critics wield a flimsy and disingenuous argument that nonetheless enjoys growing
appeal among a largely hostile press corps. Hussein did not personally order the
September 11 attacks, the fuzzy logic goes, hence he has no significant ties to terrorists,
especially al Qaeda. Consequently, the Iraq war was launched under
bogus assumptions, and, therefore, Bush should be defeated in November 2004.
West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking
Democrat, exemplified this thinking recently when he told the Los Angeles Times
that Iraq’s alleged al Qaeda ties were “tenuous at best and not compelling.”iii In a
September 16 editorial, the L.A. Times slammed Vice President Dick Cheney for
making “sweeping, unproven claims about Saddam Hussein’s connections to terrorism.”
On August 7, former vice president Albert Gore stated flatly, “The evidence
now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin
Laden at all.”iv
All of these claims about a lack of ties between Hussein and terrorists, however,
are untrue, and it is important that debate on this vital issue be informed
by facts. The president
and his national
security team should
devote entire
speeches and publications—
complete with
names, documents,
and visuals, including
the faces of terrorists
and their innocent
victims—to remind
Americans and the
world that Baathist
Iraq was a general
store for terrorists,
complete with cash,
training, lodging, and
medical attention.
Indeed, this magazine
article could serve as a model for the kinds of communications
that the administration regularly should generate
to set the record straight about Hussein and terrorism and
reassert the reasons behind the Iraq mission.
Such an effort to reinvigorate U.S. public diplomacy on
Iraq should be easy. After all, the evidence of Hussein’s
cooperation with and support for global terrorists is abundant
and increasing, to wit:
Saddam Hussein’s Habitual Support for Terrorists
Both supporters and opponents of Islamic terror have provided
abundant evidence of Hussein’s aid for a wide array
of terrorists. Consider the following.
• Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families
of Palestinian homicide bombers.
“President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of
the Palestinian political office, Faroq al Kaddoumi, his decision
to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of
the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000,”
Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, announced
at a Baghdad meeting of Arab politicians and businessmen
on March 11, 2002, Reuters reported two days later.v
Mahmoud Besharat, who the White House says disbursed
these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said,
“You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being
so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this
distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue.”vi
Such largesse poured forth until the eve of the Iraq war.
As Knight-Ridder’s Carol Rosenberg reported from
Gaza City last March 13: “In a graduation-style ceremony
Wednesday, the families of 22 Palestinians killed fighting
Israelis received checks for $10,000 or more, certificates of
appreciation and a kiss on each cheek—compliments of
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.” She added: “The certificates
declared the gift from President Saddam Hussein; the checks
were cut at a Gaza branch of the Cairo-Amman bank.”
This festivity, attended by some 400 people and organized
by the then-Baghdad-backed Arab Liberation Front,
occurred March 12, just eight days before American-led
troops crossed the Iraqi frontier.vii
Hussein’s patronage of Palestinian terror proved fatally
fruitful. Between the March 11, 2002, increase in cash incentives
to $25,000 and the March 20, 2003, launch of
Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured
1,209 people and killed 223 more, including 12 Americans.viii
• According to the U.S. State Department’s May 21,
2002, report on Patterns of Global Terrorism,ix the Abu
Nidal Organization (ANO), the Arab Liberation Front,
Hamas, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the Mujahedin-e-
Khalq Organization, and the Palestine Liberation Front
all operated offices or bases in Hussein’s Iraq. Hussein’s
hospitality toward these mass murderers directly violated
United Nations Security Council Resolution 687,
which prohibited him from granting safe haven to or
otherwise sponsoring terrorists.
• Key terrorists enjoyed Hussein’s warmth, some so
recently that Coalition
forces subsequently found
them alive and well and
living in Iraq. Among
them:
• U.S. Special Forces
nabbed Abu Abbas last
April 14 just outside
Baghdad. Abbas masterminded
the October 7–9,
1985, Achille Lauro
cruise ship hijacking in
which Abbas’s men shot
passenger Leon
Klinghoffer, a 69-year
old Manhattan retiree,
then rolled him, wheelchair
and all, into the
Mediterranean. Abbas
briefly was in Italian custody
at the time, but was
released that October 12
because he possessed an
Iraqi diplomatic passport.
Since 2000, Abbas resided in Baghdad, still under Saddam
Hussein’s protection.x
• Khala Khadr al Salahat, a member of
the ANO, surrendered to the First
Marine Division in Baghdad on April 18.
As the Sunday Times of London reported
on August 25, 2002, a Palestinian
source said that al Salahat and Nidal
had furnished Libyan agents the Semtex
bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103
over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December
21, 1988, killing 259 on board and 11
on the ground. The 189 Americans murdered
on the sabotaged Boeing 747
included 35 Syracuse University students
who had spent the fall semester in
Scotland and were heading home for
the holidays.xi
• Before fatally shooting himself in the
head with four bullets on August 16,
2002, as straight-faced Baathist officials
claimed, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal
(born Sabri al Banna) had lived in Iraq
since at least 1999. As the Associated
Press’s Sameer N. Yacoub reported on
August 21, 2002, the Beirut office of the
ANO said that he entered Iraq “with the
full knowledge and preparations of the
Iraqi authorities.”xii Nidal’s attacks in 20
countries killed 407 people and
wounded 788 more, the U.S. State
Department calculates. Among other
atrocities, an ANO-planted bomb
exploded on a TWA airliner as it flew
from Israel to Greece on September 8, 1974. The jet
was destroyed over the Ionian Sea, killing all 88 people
on board.xiii
• Coalition troops have shut down at least three terrorist
training camps in Iraq, including a base approximately
15 miles southeast of Baghdad, called Salman Pak.xiv
Before the war, numerous Iraqi defectors had said that
the camp featured a passenger jet on which terrorists
sharpened their air piracy skills.xv
“There have been several confirmed sightings of Islamic
fundamentalists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf states
being trained in terror tactics at the Iraqi intelligence camp
at Salman Pak,” said Khidir Hamza, Iraq’s former nuclearweapons
chief, in sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate
Foreign Relations Committee on July 31, 2002. “The training
involved assassination, explosions, and hijacking.”xvi
“This camp is specialized in exporting terrorism to the
whole world,” former Iraqi army captain Sabah Khodada
told PBS’s Frontline TV program in an October 14, 2001
interview.xvii Khodada, who worked at Salman Pak, said,
“Training includes hijacking and kidnapping of airplanes,
trains, public buses, and planting explosives in cities . . . how
to prepare for suicidal operations.” Khodada added, “We saw
people getting trained to hijack airplanes. . . . They are even
trained how to use utensils for food, like forks and knives
provided in the plane.” A map of the camp that Khodada
drew from memory for Frontline closely matches satellite
photos of Salman Pak, further bolstering his credibility.xviii
These facts clearly disprove the above-quoted statements
by Senator Kennedy and the Los Angeles Times and
similar claims made by others. The Bush administration
could advance American interests by busing a few dozen foreign
correspondents and their camera crews from the bar of
Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel to Salman Pak for a guided tour.
Network news footage of that might open a few eyes.
