One document on Saddam and Osama
Glenn Reynolds can be counted on to link to any new finding that suggests a "tie" or "link" or a meeting once in the 90s.
Here's one that the NYT says may have been missed by the 9/11 Commission. During the early 90s (at least 7 years before March 2003), there were apparently discussions between Al Qaeda and Saddam about co-operating on a number of fronts.
Where does the document come from?
"The Americans confirmed that they had obtained the document from the Iraqi National Congress, as part of a trove that the group gathered after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government last year. The Defense Intelligence Agency paid the Iraqi National Congress for documents and other information until recently, when the group and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, fell out of favor in Washington.
"Some of the intelligence provided by the group is now wholly discredited, although officials have called some of the documents it helped to obtain useful."
This doesn't sound good. Isn't it possible that everything Chalabi says is a lie, and every "key document" he turns over is some kind of forgery? Apparently the Americans now share my suspicions.
"A translation of the new Iraqi document was reviewed by a Pentagon working group in the spring, officials said. It included senior analysts from the military's Joint Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and a joint intelligence task force that specialized in counterterrorism issues, they said.
"The task force concluded that the document 'appeared authentic,' and that it 'corroborates and expands on previous reporting' about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis.
"It is not known whether some on the task force held dissenting opinions about the document's veracity."
So it is now U.S. policy to distrust everything Chalabi says or hands over--and this document passed the test.
By the mid-90s, bin Laden had been involved on attacks on Americans, or on facilities used by Americans--but there was no indication of an involvement by Saddam in these attacks.
"At the meeting, Mr. bin Laden requested that sermons of an anti-Saudi cleric be rebroadcast in Iraq. That request, the document states, was approved by Baghdad.
"Mr. bin Laden 'also requested joint operations against foreign forces' based in Saudi Arabia, where the American presence has been a rallying cry for Islamic militants who oppose American troops in the land of the Muslim pilgrimage sites of Mecca and Medina.
"But the document contains no statement of response by the Iraqi leadership under Mr. Hussein to the request for joint operations, and there is no indication of discussions about attacks on the United States or the use of unconventional weapons."
For Saddam before 1996: anti-Saudi sermons: yes. Anti-American anything at all: as far as we know, no.
There is no year attached to these meetings, but the story agrees with the one told by the 9/11 Commission:
"'A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan,' it said, 'finally meeting bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded.'"
As Kevin Drum says, it is the possibility of actual plans of violence between Saddam and Osama that interest most of us, not isolated meetings that seem to have led nowhere. The NYT even says Osama asked for some kind of base or support within the borders of Iraq, and this was refused.
Again, it would be strange if Saddam's people never met with Osama's people under any circumstances; they would have a natural desire to keep some tabs on each other. Bush's defenders are now stuck with pretending that the only real anti-Bush view on all this is "there were never any contacts of any kind." Therefore any contact, of any kind, is substantial evidence in Bush's favour; and in fact a link or a tie is always somehow turned into coordination.
Frantic efforts are being made to make a lot out of a little, or even something out of nothing--as in the cases of mistaken identity. (See also Yglesias here). (On Cheney's contradiction on Atta in Prague see here. A fairly full account of the Prague story, with answers to Stephen Hayes' latest, here and here--thanks to Hit and Run).
And always lurking over the horizon: the idea that these two bad guys, among the few Third World leaders most Americans can name, must have somehow worked together in planning 9/11. But of course, no one in the Bush administration has actually said that.
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