Friday, June 16, 2006

I wonder

I wonder if we will ever know for sure what if anything Saddam Hussein really had to do with 9/11.

Via macsmind :

I've been following Ray's {Robison ed.} work for a while and it's first class. Those who through idiocy continue this "no connection" mantra are going to get their little Kool Aid pumping hearts broken. The fact is while it hasn't been proven that Saddam drove Atta to the airport, nontheless, Saddam had a definate "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" attitude towards Al Qaeda, and as more and more of these documents get translated, the more that connection becomes apparent.

Yet, I'm still not convinced that there was no "direct connect" as regards to Mohammed Atta. In fact there is more evidence FOR than against that assertion - the 9/11 Omission Commission "hole in the wall findings" notwithstanding.

Here is a key point in Ray's analysis:

"Tahir Jalil Habbush al Tikriti came to public attention in December, 2003 when the Telegraph UK reported Terrorist Behind September 11th Strike was Trained by Saddam.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".
.

That would be the same Abu Nidal who shot himself in the head three times. He died in Baghdad on August 19,2002.

Makes you wonder.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

knuck:

I wonder if Saddam had something to do with the OKC bombing. Think about it. A truck bombing at a federal building with lots of dead civilians and a warped Gulf War veteran who said many times that he felt bad about what the US did to poor Saddam.

Luther said...

Listening to J.Lileks on Hewitt yesterday, he made the comment that if you didn't "get it" on 9/11, you're never going to "get it". That crowd does not really care what happened before or after, they just want to keep living in la-la land.

Rick Ballard said...

Terrye,

I thought Abu Nidal's suicide was even worse than the three shots to the head that you describe - didn't he shoot himself in the back numerous times first?

BTW - Laurie Mylroie? has written extensively and convincingly concerning an ME connection with McVeigh.

Anonymous said...

Rick:

Maybe so, right after he beat the hell out of himself.

And then there is Yasin, born right down here by Bloomington In while his parents were students or something. he was the chemical man in the '93 attack on the WTC. He went to Iraq after the attack and then disappeared in March 2003. I figure we will find him about the time we find Jimmy Hoffa.

Syl said...

Knuck

I found a poll done two days after 9/11 (in the WaPo no less) where over 70% said they thought Saddam had something to do with it.

Instapundit linked it after I wrote him saying that meme had to end.

To all:

I don't care whether Saddam had something to do specifically with 9/11. What's more important is that he supported Islamic terrorism in general, had THREE training camps which were still in operation in 2002, wink-winked re Zarqawi's presence, and hated us.

The left thinks we're at war with a specific group of people extant on 9/11 and that group is called al Qaeda. That's it. Nothing more. To them there is no such thing as the Islamic jihadi terrorism movement, nothing matters unless you have a membership card specifically for al Qaeda.

If it were proven that Saddam ordered 9/11 or anything like that, they still wouldn't get it.

buddy larsen said...

Syl, that's the way I've always seen it. Most of the wars in history have involved alliances vs alliances, in most cases seldom engaging in combined tactical operations with their allies. It's the norm--and quite amazing that the ding-a-lings feign to see it as preposterous. They're performing to an extremely uncritical, uninformed, audience.

BTW, find Laurie Mylroie's work at this excellent Benador Associates site. Edward Jay Epstein has followed the early Prague question closely, and Ms. Mylroie took it into Kuwait.

And anybody who ever had to hold his own on the playground knew good and well that no middle-eastern military tyrant tribal chief could take Gulf War I without getting revenge in kind. Followers demand it.

The left has done nothing with this but abuse the gift of language.

Anonymous said...

They are fellow travellers and as far as the left was concerned communism was not a big deal. Keep hat in mind. Like my own brother siad, it is just something the right wingers use to scare people so that they can stay in power. There is no arguing with that kind of logic. It is like trying to explain the color blue to a blind man.

buddy larsen said...

It's worse--it's like trying to explain blindness to the color blue.