We sure do hear a bunch about how WMD have not been found but why don't we hear about all of this?
Case for Iraq War Stronger Than Ever
Chief weapons of mass destruction hunter David Kay's pronouncement over the weekend that he doesn't think the U.S. will ever find Iraq's WMD stockpiles has all but demolished the Bush administration's central justification for the Iraq war.
But as the WMD case grew increasingly weaker over the last year, the case for war against Saddam Hussein actually became more and more compelling - based on the growing dossier of evidence linking the Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks.
Though the Bush administration has strenuously looked the other way on one blockbuster development after another, the 9/11 file on Baghdad has grown to include:
* A memo from Iraqi intelligence uncovered by the London Sunday Telegraph last month stating that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had completed his training regimen in Baghdad under the tutelage of notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. The memo was dated just two months before the World Trade Center attacks.
In one passage, the Iraqi intelligence chief reportedly informs Saddam that Atta had demonstrated his capability as leader of the team "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy."
* A Defense Department memo detailing over 50 contacts between senior officials in Iraq and Osama bin Laden's minions going back to the 1980's. According to a Nov. 2003 report in the Weekly Standard, the memo cites evidence that Ahmed al Ani, the Iraqi intelligence chief in Czechoslovakia, "ordered the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] finance officer to issue [Mohammed] Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office."
* A Wall Street Journal report linking Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah to Abu Nidal, who had reportedly helped train his 9/11 partner Mohammed Atta. "A constant figure in Jarrah's life in Germany was his great-uncle, Assem Omar Jarrah," the Journal said. "According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Assem Jarrah worked for a long time as an informer for the Stasi, the East German secret service, while maintaining connections to [Abu] Nidal's terror group."
Eleven months after the 9/11 attacks, Nidal was executed in Baghdad by Saddam's secret police in what many believe was an attempted cover-up of Iraq's 9/11 complicity.
* A November 11, 2001 report in the London Observer citing the accounts of two Iraqi defectors who say they helped train radical Islamists to overcome U.S. flight crews using only small knives - a technique never used before 9/11 - at Iraq's Salman Pak terrorist training facility.
Sabah Khododa, one of the defectors, told PBS's Frontline that he believed the 9/11 attacks had been executed "by graduates of Salman Pak."
While the defectors' accounts were widely reported at the time, the media later dropped the story as the Bush administration built its WMD case against Iraq.
* U.S. satellite photos confirming the existence of a Boeing 707 fuselage that Khodada and his partner say was used as a hijacking classroom. U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who was tapped on Friday to succeed David Kay, corroborated their account.
"We reported [the Salman Pak hijacking drills] at the time, but they've obviously taken on new significance" after the 9/11 attacks," Duelfer told USA Today at the time.
* A May 7, 2003 decision by Manhattan U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer, who awarded $104 million to two families of 9/11 victims based on the testimony of Khodada, Duelfer and former CIA Director James Woolsey, as well as other evidence presented to his court.
In his opinion Judge Baer wrote that the case was "sufficient to meet plaintiffs' burden that Iraq collaborated in or supported bin Laden/al Qaeda's terrorist acts of September 11."
* The account of former CIA Director Woolsey, whose testimony was summarized by Judge Baer thusly:
"Director Woolsey described the existence of a highly secure military facility in Iraq where non-Iraqi fundamentalists [e.g., Egyptians and Saudis] are trained in airplane hijacking and other forms of terrorism. Through satellite imagery and the testimony of three Iraqi defectors, plaintiffs demonstrated the existence of this facility, called Salman Pak, which has an airplane but no runway."
Judge Baer continued: "The defectors also stated that these fundamentalists were taught methods of hijacking using utensils or short knives. Plaintiffs contend it is farfetched to believe that Iraqi agents trained fundamentalists in a top-secret facility for any purpose other than to promote terrorism."
The failure to turn up Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is being called a stunning intelligence failure. But the far more startling intelligence blunder may turn out to be the Bush administration's decision not to spotlight reams of compelling evidence tying Iraq to 9/11.
Case for Iraq War Stronger Than Ever
Chief weapons of mass destruction hunter David Kay's pronouncement over the weekend that he doesn't think the U.S. will ever find Iraq's WMD stockpiles has all but demolished the Bush administration's central justification for the Iraq war.
But as the WMD case grew increasingly weaker over the last year, the case for war against Saddam Hussein actually became more and more compelling - based on the growing dossier of evidence linking the Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks.
Though the Bush administration has strenuously looked the other way on one blockbuster development after another, the 9/11 file on Baghdad has grown to include:
* A memo from Iraqi intelligence uncovered by the London Sunday Telegraph last month stating that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had completed his training regimen in Baghdad under the tutelage of notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. The memo was dated just two months before the World Trade Center attacks.
In one passage, the Iraqi intelligence chief reportedly informs Saddam that Atta had demonstrated his capability as leader of the team "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy."
* A Defense Department memo detailing over 50 contacts between senior officials in Iraq and Osama bin Laden's minions going back to the 1980's. According to a Nov. 2003 report in the Weekly Standard, the memo cites evidence that Ahmed al Ani, the Iraqi intelligence chief in Czechoslovakia, "ordered the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] finance officer to issue [Mohammed] Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office."
* A Wall Street Journal report linking Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah to Abu Nidal, who had reportedly helped train his 9/11 partner Mohammed Atta. "A constant figure in Jarrah's life in Germany was his great-uncle, Assem Omar Jarrah," the Journal said. "According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Assem Jarrah worked for a long time as an informer for the Stasi, the East German secret service, while maintaining connections to [Abu] Nidal's terror group."
Eleven months after the 9/11 attacks, Nidal was executed in Baghdad by Saddam's secret police in what many believe was an attempted cover-up of Iraq's 9/11 complicity.
* A November 11, 2001 report in the London Observer citing the accounts of two Iraqi defectors who say they helped train radical Islamists to overcome U.S. flight crews using only small knives - a technique never used before 9/11 - at Iraq's Salman Pak terrorist training facility.
Sabah Khododa, one of the defectors, told PBS's Frontline that he believed the 9/11 attacks had been executed "by graduates of Salman Pak."
While the defectors' accounts were widely reported at the time, the media later dropped the story as the Bush administration built its WMD case against Iraq.
* U.S. satellite photos confirming the existence of a Boeing 707 fuselage that Khodada and his partner say was used as a hijacking classroom. U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who was tapped on Friday to succeed David Kay, corroborated their account.
"We reported [the Salman Pak hijacking drills] at the time, but they've obviously taken on new significance" after the 9/11 attacks," Duelfer told USA Today at the time.
* A May 7, 2003 decision by Manhattan U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer, who awarded $104 million to two families of 9/11 victims based on the testimony of Khodada, Duelfer and former CIA Director James Woolsey, as well as other evidence presented to his court.
In his opinion Judge Baer wrote that the case was "sufficient to meet plaintiffs' burden that Iraq collaborated in or supported bin Laden/al Qaeda's terrorist acts of September 11."
* The account of former CIA Director Woolsey, whose testimony was summarized by Judge Baer thusly:
"Director Woolsey described the existence of a highly secure military facility in Iraq where non-Iraqi fundamentalists [e.g., Egyptians and Saudis] are trained in airplane hijacking and other forms of terrorism. Through satellite imagery and the testimony of three Iraqi defectors, plaintiffs demonstrated the existence of this facility, called Salman Pak, which has an airplane but no runway."
Judge Baer continued: "The defectors also stated that these fundamentalists were taught methods of hijacking using utensils or short knives. Plaintiffs contend it is farfetched to believe that Iraqi agents trained fundamentalists in a top-secret facility for any purpose other than to promote terrorism."
The failure to turn up Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is being called a stunning intelligence failure. But the far more startling intelligence blunder may turn out to be the Bush administration's decision not to spotlight reams of compelling evidence tying Iraq to 9/11.
