headland

Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime plotted to assassinate Martin Indyk, then U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Martin Indyk

Based on documents from the U.S. Institute for Defense Analyses report released by the Pentagon (see Saddam's support for terror: the Pentagon report's unreported findings, Headland, March 18, 2008), a story in The Australian today ("Saddam had Aussie killed") details the plot against Indyk and also implicates the former Iraqi regime in the murder of Stuart Cameron, a foreign aid worker for Care Australia to the Kurds in northern Iraq.

A letter written on June 30, 2001 from a terrorist operative in the Gaza Strip to Ba'ath party officials in Baghdad discusses a plot to kill Ambassador Indyk. The author of the letter, heavily redacted by the U.S. military before public release, is identified as Wafa Tawfiq al-Sayigh. The two individuals of the Ba'ath party to which the letter is addressed are Talal Salim Abu Taghlub and an individual identified only as the "Official in Charge of Abu al-Haytham - Sa'id al-'Ayyad."

Here is the portion of the letter that speaks of Indyk:

Four: Martin Indyk (U.S. ambassador, Tel Aviv)

Abu al-Haytham Sa'id 'Ayyad has a suggestion of how to eliminate him, one that I will explain to you during the meeting.

: An Australian Jew who was ambassador to Tel Aviv from 1992 until the end of 1996. He was transferred elsewhere and returned in 2000 as ambassador to Tel Aviv. When he was appointed, there was pandemonium at the C.I.A., who accused him of working with the Israeli Mossad. He was welcomed in Gaza city by certain prominent individuals, most notably Industrialists [names censored by the U.S. military] and many other Gaza Strip personalities. He continues to visit them often, at all hours and without reservation. Abu al-Haytham Sa'id 'Ayyad has a suggestion of how to eliminate him, one that I will explain to you during the meeting.

In another reference to Abu al-Haytham Sa'id 'Ayyad, the author of the letter claims that most of the information provided about the assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Mas'oud Hussein Mahmoud 'Ayyad has been obtained from Colonel Sa'id Hussein 'Ayyad (Abu al-Haytham).

Mas'oud 'Ayyad was a member of Yassir Arafat's elite security unit, Force 17, in the Gaza Strip. He was assassinated February 13, 2001 by four missiles fired from two Apache attack helicopter gunships on his vehicle, as he drove down the Salah ad-Din road parallel to the Jahaliya camp in the northern side of the Gaza strip. Israel claimed 'Ayyad was a liaison agent for the Lebanese resistance guerrilla group Hezbollah and had formed a Hezbollah-backed cell in the Palestinian territories. Then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak openly took responsibility for the killing.

Who, then, is Colonel Sa'id Ayyad (Abu al-Hatham), who had suggestions for how Indyk should be "eliminated"? The Palestinian news agency Wafa website from Gaza in Arabic (translated by BBC Worldwide Monitoring,"Palestinian Statement on Israeli attack on Gaza, West Bank, January 25, 2003, subscription) reported on January 24, 2003 that a Col. Sa'id Ayyad was one of the martyred Mas'oud 'Ayyad's five brothers, who were all detained after the Israelis stormed the Gaza neighborhood of Al-Zaytun with 30 tanks and armored jeeps, and demolished the building owned by the family of the assassinated Mas'oud 'Ayyad.

The Palestinian Human Rights Monitor website (PHRMG), which gives many of the details cited above of Mas'oud 'Ayyad's assassination, also identifies a Sa'id 'Ayyad as Mas'oud's brother, and quotes this brother as testifying to PHRMG on February 15, 2001:

"Mas'oud was a good man, he belonged to Fatah movement [sic], and he had nothing to do with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. He was detained by Israel during the first intifada for two years."

Incidentally, the June 2001 letter also alleges, on the basis of eavesdropping on the phone calls of Force 17 officers, that Colonel Muslih 'Urayqat (nicknamed "Abu 'Ali Hasan"), and a number of his attendants, "had advance knowledge of the plan to assassinate Mas'oud." The next three lines are censored, but a few lines later it is noted that neither Yasir Arafat or his military intelligence chief Musa Arafat held

"If they wanted to bump me off, they were a bit slow." -Martin Indyk

Muslih 'Urayqat or one As'ad Sa'id Abu Jahl accountable.

Asked for a reaction by The Australian, Ambassador Indyk said that his connections in Gaza were business types and that his meetings took place in early 2000 with organizations such as the local chamber of commerce. He said that his interaction stopped with the start of the Intifada. He also denied any links to Mossad.

Indyk noted that the letter was dated on the very day that he left Israel as ambassador. He added, sardonically, "If they wanted to bump me off, they were a bit slow."

See:

• Saddam had Aussie killed, Geoff Elliott, The Australian, March 22, 2008.
• PDF: Targeting of Indyk, The Australian
• PDF: Care killings, , The Australian
• 'Never believed it was random attack, Cameron Stewart, The Australian, March 22, 2008

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UPDATE: For a contrary view from the left (and down under), see: The terrorists are (strike) were coming to get us, Larvatus Prodeo.

Labels: Abu al-Haytham, Col. Sa'id Hussein 'Ayyad, Gaza, Institute for Defense Analyses, Iraq, Israel, jihadists, Martin Indyk, Mossad, Pentagon, Saddam Hussein, Stuart Cameron, terror, Yassir Arafat

"Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives." That was the notable, and unreported, finding of the report by the Institute for Defense Analyses, "Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents."

Based on a review of some 600,000 documents captured in post-war Iraq, the 59-page Pentagon report, with over 1500 pages of appendices, details a 'de facto' link between Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin Laden's terror network. Yet, that was not the story reported in the U.S. press.

Instead, a headline in the New York Times and stories in the Washington Post, NPR and ABC reported that the study showed no links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

What accounts for the difference? Stephen F. Hayes in this week's The Weekly Standard ("Saddam's Dangerous Friends; What a Pentagon review of 600,000 Iraqi documents tells us, March 24, 2008, subscription) asks and answers the key question:

How can a study offering an unprecedented look into the closed regime of a brutal dictator, with over 1,600 pages of "strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism," in the words of its authors, receive a wave-of-the-hand dismissal from America's most prestigious news outlets? All it took was a leak to a gullible reporter, one misleading line in the study's executive summary, a boneheaded Pentagon press office, an incompetent White House, and widespread journalistic negligence.

The storyline that drove the coverage by the mainstream press was based upon a leaked -- and "highly misleading" -- phrase taken from the executive summary: "This study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e. direct connection between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda."

Contrast that dismissive summation with the study's actual findings, detailed by Hayes:

In 1993, as Osama bin Laden's fighters battled Americans in Somalia, Saddam Hussein personally ordered the formation of an Iraqi terrorist group to join the battle there.

For more than two decades, the Iraqi regime trained non-Iraqi jihadists in training camps throughout Iraq.

According to a 1993 internal Iraqi intelligence memo, the regime was supporting a secret Islamic Palestinian organization dedicated to "armed jihad against the Americans and Western interests."

In the 1990s, Iraq's military intelligence directorate trained and equipped "Sudanese fighters."

In 1998, the Iraqi regime offered "financial and moral support" to a new group of jihadists in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

In 2002, the year before the war began, the Iraqi regime hosted in Iraq a series of 13 conferences for non-Iraqi jihadists groups.

That same year, a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) issued hundreds of Iraqi passports for known terrorists.

IIS documents included in the Pentagon report reveal two terorist organizations relying on Iraqi financial support were the Afghani Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad of Ayman al Zawahiri.

Hayes concludes:

What's happening here is obvious. Military historians and terrorism analysts are engaged in a good faith effort to review the captured documents from the Iraqi regime and provide a dispassionate, fact-based examination of Saddam Hussein's long support of jihadist terrorism. Most reporters don't care. They are trapped in a world where the Bush administration lied to the country about an Iraq-al Qaeda connection, and no amount of evidence to the contrary -- not even the words of the fallen Iraqi regime itself -- can convince them to reexamine their mistaken assumptions.

The most curious and puzzling aspect of the misreporting of the Pentagon report is the apathy and silence of the Bush administration. Hayes surmises that they were "too busy or too tired or too lazy" to correct the record.

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahri, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Institute for Defense Analyses, Islamic Jihad, jihadists, Pentagon, Saddam Hussein, Stephen F. Hayes

The Irish Independent reports on Monday (Al-Jazeera was 'Saddam's Station'" January 3, 2004 [registration required]) that a videotape shows a former manager of Al-Jazeera thanking Odai, son of Saddam Hussein, and telling him "Al-Jazeera is your channel." On the tape, Odai mentions that he had proposed "some ideas" in previous meetings that had led to changed in Al-Jazeera's political coverage. Al-Jazeera dismissed the manager, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali, from his position shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 without explanation. The tape is set to be broadcast in a documentary on Thursday by Al-Hurra television. Al-Jazeera refused any comment on the report.

For more connections linking Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau to Saddam's regime, see Headland's November 27 story: Allegation Saddam Guard Was Al-Zarqawi Aide Spurs Dispute.

Labels: Al-Jazeera, Saddam Hussein

Was the brother of the former director of Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau a guard for Saddam Hussein and the foremost aide of Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi? The rift between the Qatari-funded satellite channel Al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat over that allegation may reflect deeper fault lines between the two Gulf states.

On November 19, Al-Sharq al-Awsat published a report from Baghdad with the lengthy title: "Al-Zarqawi's aide a former guard of Saddam, brother of 'Al-Jazeera' office's director in Baghdad. Umar Hadid led Al-Fallujah battle, received training in Afghanistan." A translated paraphrase of the article was made by BBC Monitoring International Reports (not, so far as I know, publicly accessible on the web), though a rough translation of a portion of the article is available on FrontPage Magazine.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted informed sources in Iraq as saying that Hamid Hadid, the director of Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau had a brother who had been Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi's foremost aide. This brother, Umar Hadid, was also said to have once been in the special guard of Saddam Hussein. (The translation on FrontPage says he was in Saddam Hussein's "personal body-guards unit"; the BBC Monitoring International Report says Umar was in "Saddam's Special Republican Guard.") About ten years ago, according to the report, Umar left the guard service to associate with radical Islamic fundamentalist groups. With one accomplice, he is alleged to have carried out a bombing of an al-Fallujah cinema that killed a person. He then is thought to have fled to Pakistan, and, from there, to have entered Afghanistan, where he received training in the base camps of al-Qa'idah, under the leadership of Osama bin Laden.

Sources for the report thought that Umar Hadid may have left Afghanistan to return to Pakistan, after the overthrow of the Taleban regime in 2001. There is no doubt among the sources, however, that he returned to Iraq just before the beginning of the war, when Saddam Hussein provided a general amnesty for prisoners, wanted men and runaways.

According to intelligence sources, Umar Hadid led the battle against U.S. forces in al-Fallujah. Iraqi sources privy to information from western intelligence services also claimed that Umar Hadid was still in the al-Fallujah region after al-Zarqawi escaped.

The report of Al-Sharq al-Awsat also alleged that the Hadids had a third brother, who was killed, along with his family, when his house was shelled by U.S. forces just two hours after a visit from Umar.

Al Jazeera responded promptly, on November 20, with an interview of Umar Hadid in their Doha studio. Here are his denials, in a translation provided by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, November 20 (again, so far as I know, not available in any publicly accessible website):

Hadid: I am Umar Ahmad Muhammad al-Jumayli, a brother of Hamid Ahmad Muhammad al-Jumayli, director of Al-Jazeera bureau. The Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat published a report claiming that I have a connection with or that I am an aide to Al-Zarqawi in Al-Fallujah. I deny this because I am 24 years old. The report claims that I was in Afghanistan 10 years ago and went to Pakistan. Ten years ago, I was a little boy. Therefore, this is untrue.

Lina Zahr-al-Din, Al-Jazeera: You do not know Al-Zarqawi at all and you have not met him before?

Hadid: I do not know Al-Zarqawi or anybody linked to him. I hear about him from satellite channels only.

Zahr-al-Din: You said that 10 years ago you were a young boy, but the newspaper accused you that then you worked in Saddam Husayn's special guard. What did you exactly do then?

Hadid: I was a student. I was 14 years old. I left school then and began to drive a lorry to support my family. Afterward, I was enrolled in the Iraqi Army for three months. This is the military service document and the driving licence, which prove that I served in the Iraqi Army for three months. I was discharged later after paying cash for my discharge.

On November 23, Al-Sharq al-Awsat responded with a published interview of Iraqi interim Defense Minister Hazim Sha'lan. Al-Sha'lan attacked Al-Jazeera satellite television as a "terrorist channel. He also claimed that Umar Hadid was indeed "a terrorist and is wanted by the Iraqi government for his terrorist activities in Fallujah." (quotation from "Analysis: Al-Jazeera's Row with Saudi Paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat," BBC Monitoring International Reports, November 26, 2004).

On the same day, the new editor of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Tariq al-Humayd, appeared on the Lebanese channel Future TV to defend his paper's feature story on Umar Hadid. Appointed by Prince Faysal bin Salman in October 2004, al-Humayd has given the London-based newspaper an editorial stance that is firmly in support of the war on terror. (In one piece, entitled "For Saudis only," for example, he took to task those Saudis who sympathized with the jihadists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and particularly, those fighting in Fallujah. He also called for Islamic clerics to stop inciting the youth of Saudi Arabia to jihad.) By the account of the interview in the BBC Monitoring International Report, it appears that al-Humayd took a moderately conciliatory stance toward al-Jazeera, and emphasized that the story's focus had been Umar Hamid, not al-Jazeera. Al-Humayd also expressed concern that the incident should not become "politicized" and lead to a rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Whatever the resolution of this dispute over the Hadids, the fast-approaching trial of Saddam Hussein promises to teach us much, much more about the nexus connecting Saddam's regime to global networks of terror.

Labels: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda, Al-Jazeera, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Hamid Hadid, Iraq, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein

An interview of Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, by Radek Sikorski of the American Enterprise Institute, appears in the December issue (105) of Prospect. The interview is well worth reading in full, but here are just a few selections that stand out:

Radek Sikorski	Paul Wolfowitz
Why couldn't we have had Iraqis liberating Baghdad, winning credibility from defeating Saddam and then becoming the new Iraqi government? Why did we have to have US soldiers to do it for them?	Why was it necessary to have such a large US role? This is a point that is totally misunderstood and almost never explained. It allows people to say that I have held the same view on Iraq for the last 10 years. In fact, before 11th September, those of us who said that it was important to end the hypocrisy of saying "we want the liberation of Iraq but we won't do anything about it" were never advocates of invading Baghdad....But 11th September and the anthrax attacks which came immediately after changed the calculation.
The US would have won more support in Europe if it had justified war on humanitarian grounds-Europe accepted war against Serbia on that basis.	But we would never have had 15 votes in the UN on that proposition. The UN was what forced us down the WMD path, which was a legitimate argument. When the president first went to the UN, he made three arguments. He talked about terrorism, he talked about WMD and he talked about abuse of the Iraqi people. Even with the UN resolution, we might have pushed harder on this issue. On the other hand, the Syrians weren't going to vote for a resolution that endorsed removing Saddam for the sake of the Iraqis.
Conservatives are suspicious of projects to change human nature. They oppose social engineering in domestic policy. Yet here you are, full of ideological zeal, crafting a new form of government for people very different from us. Is this a contradiction?	If you put it that way, you create a contradiction. We're not trying to graft our system of government on to people who are different from us. We're trying to remove shackles that keep them from having what they want. And it's astonishing how many of them want something that's similar to what we in the west have. I was assistant secretary of state for east Asia when we first confronted Marcos under the Reagan administration. People said: "What are you doing? We'll end up with what Carter got in Iran." But we pressed Marcos very hard in the Philippines and I think the proof is in the outcome. The contradiction is to say that allowing people to choose their government freely is to impose our ideas on them. There was a wonderful moment at a conference here in Washington where someone said it's arrogant of us to impose our values on the Arab world, and an Arab got up and said it's arrogant of you to say these are your values because they are universal values.
RS: With the benefit of hindsight and now that the election campaign is over, what would you say could have been done differently in Iraq?	People make a lot about the decision to dismiss the Iraqi army. But I don't think people are shooting at Americans and blowing up schools because we dismissed the Iraqi army. When people talk about why Iraq is as difficult as it is, they always start and finish with a list of American mistakes. Nobody ever talks about the enemy. It would be like saying why the battle of the bulge was tough without ever mentioning the German army. Saddam Hussein didn't stop fighting us, at least until he was captured in December last year. Al-Zarqawi didn't surrender when Baghdad fell. He stepped up his efforts. There are all these organisations that are unheard of in Europe and barely known in the US that people ought to know about. There was the M-14 division of the Iraqi intelligence service, its so-called "anti-terrorism" division, which specialised in hijackings and bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. There was the M-16 division, which perfected new bombing techniques. Many of these guys are out in Falluja and Ramadi in the western parts of Iraq today making bombs.

Labels: American Enterprise Institute, Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, Saddam Hussein, September 11, United Nations

From Pentagon responds to missing-explosives report (Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times):

The Pentagon said yesterday that 380 tons of missing explosives from an Iraqi munitions facility may have been moved before U.S. troops overran the area during the invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

...That explanation was bolstered last night by a report from NBC News, which said the weapons already were missing when their embedded reporter arrived at the site on April 10, 2003.

"NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they [took] over the weapons installation south of Baghdad. But they never found the 380 tons" of missing explosives, the network reported.

Labels: Iraq, NBC News, Saddam Hussein

In the second presidential debate, Sen. John Kerry claimed to have met with all fifteen members of the United Nations Security Council just one week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable."

Joel Mowbray, reports in the Washington Times on Monday that of the five ambassadors to the Security Council in 2002 who were reached for comment, four of the five said they had never met Mr. Kerry. Three of the four ambassadors -- those from Mexico, Columbia, and Bulgaria -- were willing to be identified for the report.

France's chief U.N. representative, Jean-David Levitte, said through a spokesperson that Mr. Kerry had had one-on-one meetings with "some" of the members of the Security Council, but could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as individuals on the Council with whom Kerry had met.

UPDATE: Shape of Days is underwhelmed. Wizbang provides context as well as links to other stories that could spell trouble for the Kerry campaign in the waning days of October.

Labels: France, Jean-David Levitte, John Kerry, Saddam Hussein, Security Council, United Nations

New information on how Saddam Hussein manipulated the oil-for-food program appears in today's Associated Press from Desmond Butler. Earlier this month the report of U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer revealed that various foreign companies and individuals from various countries, but predominantly from Russia, France and China, had received oil contracts from the former Iraqi government under the U.N. program.

Today's report is based on information from interviews with dozens of former and current iraqi officials by congressional investigators at the House International Relations Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Illinois. The Iraqi officials were flown outside of Iraq for the interviews.

The need for protection of these witnesses became evident in late June, when an Iraqi official, Ehsan Karim, head of the Iraqi Finance Ministry's audit Board, was killed in a car bombing after having been interviewed in Amman, Jordan, on May 21.

The Iraqi officials provided lists of foreign companies favored by Saddam for import contracts under the oil-for-food program. They also revealed a parallel blacklist of companies disqualified from getting deals. Iraqi front companies that operated abroad to solicit and process bribes from foreign companies were identified.

The list of favored companies include some who appeared on Duelfer's report as getting oil vouchers, including Gazprom, Lukoil and Tatneft. There were also some obscure Western companies from Germany, Belgium, Cyprus, Italy and Switzerland appearing on the list. Various companies on the blacklist are censured for having done business with Israel.

Labels: China, Ehsan Karim, France, Iraq, Russia, Saddam Hussein, United Nations

John Kerry: But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

In the debate last night, President Bush pursued his campaign's primary strategy of portraying his opponent as a flip-flopper. On the evening's central topic of Iraq, the charge was not difficult to establish.

In his toughest question to Senator Kerry, the moderator Jim Lehrer reminded him of his 1971 congressional testimony in which he famously asked a rhetorical question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Lehrer pointedly asked whether the Iraq war was a mistake. Kerry quickly responded "No," but then neglected to explain how he could reconcile this response with his new "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" position.

Kerry was intent, of course, to deny that he had been inconsistent on Iraq: "I've had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat." The line had been carefully crafted: he later uttered it again, verbatim. His defense of his own consistency reached record levels of risibility when he made a categorically absolute declaration: "I've never wavered in my life." There is irony in repeated and sweeping avowals of one's own consistency. A central result of mathematical logic, proven by Kurt Gödel, establishes that a sure way to guarantee the inconsistency of a rich deductive logical system of propositions is to have that system assert its own consistency!

That Kerry has been conspicuously inconsistent on the question of Iraq raises the question of whether the man has any core beliefs or whether he is simply afraid to share them. The debate provided reason to accept the second alternative.

In response to an excellent question by Jim Lehrer regarding America's right of preemptive action against terror, a question that this space had openly hoped would be put to Kerry at the debate, Kerry responded: "But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Bush took the opportunity to seize on Kerry's response, and made a rare but effective counter-punch:

"I'm not exactly sure what you mean, 'passes the global test,' you take preemptive action if you pass a global test. My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure."

Kerry showed himself to be deeply skeptical of Bush's certain faith that America has the high moral ground. Kerry complained: "We're telling other people, 'You can't have nuclear weapons,' but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using." It apparently does not dawn on Kerry that America can be trusted to do what is right and to accomplish good in the world, but that North Korea and Iran cannot be similarly trusted. That possibility does not even rise to the level of being acknowledged by Kerry. Why not? The doubts expressed in his closing worry that certainty can "get you into trouble" suggests that he adopts the moral skepticism, if not cynicism, characteristic of the civilization-weary sophisticates on the left and of those who regard moral certainty as naive at best and dangerous at worst.

How then is a U.S. President to lead in a world in which jihadists drive passenger jets into buildings and carry out gruesome beheadings? Kerry's plan: have a summit, share our reasons, listen to the objections of the other side. In the post-modern world of Kerry, what passes for moral objectivity is no more than the notion of truth propounded by philosopher Richard Rorty: what others "will let us get away with" in a conversation. The global test is consensus and Kerry's plan to reach it is this: just talk.

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq, jihadists, John Kerry, nuclear weapons, Saddam Hussein

Al-Zawra, the Iraqi Journalists Union newspaper, published "Who Kills Hostages in Iraq?" by Samir Addad and Mazin Ghazi on 19 September. A text in English has been released by BBC Monitoring International Reports. The article reports on the armed groups that are involved in violent resistance in Iraq, dividing the resistance into three categories:

• the Sunni resistance groups
• the Shi'i resistance groups
• Factions abducting and killing.

Below is an outline of the groups in these three categories:

1. The main Sunni resistance groups
1. The Iraqi National Islamic Resistance, "The 1920 Revolution Brigades"
• TARGETS: U.S. forces
• ORIGIN: emerged on 16 July 2003
• GOAL: Expulsion of U.S. and establishment of an independent Iraqi Islamic state
• ACTIVE REGIONS: West of Baghdad, in regions of Abu-Ghurayb, Khan Dari, and Al-Fallujah. Also has activities in the governorates of Ninawa, Diyala, and Al-Anbar.
• STATEMENTS: Distributes statements at gates of the mosques after Friday prayers. A statement issued by group on 19 August 2004 claimed that between 27 July and 7 August 2004 the group carried out an average of ten operations each day, resulting in the deaths of "dozens" of U.S. soldiers and the destruction of U.S. armored vehicles.
• ACTIVITIES:
1. The shooting down of a helicopter in the Abu-Ghurayb region by the Al-Zubayr Bin-Al-Awwam Brigade on 1 August 2004
2. the shooting down of a Chinook helicopter in the Al-Nu'aymiyah region, near Al-Fallujah, by the Martyr Nur-al-Din Brigade on 9 August 2004
2. The National Front for the Liberation of Iraq
• ORIGIN: Formed days after the occupation in April 2003.
• ORGANIZATION: 10 resistance groups.
• COMPOSITION: Nationalists and Islamists.
• REGION OF ACTIVITY: Concentrated in Arbil and Kirkuk in northern Iraq; in Al-Fallujah, Samarra and Tikrit in central Iraq, and in Basra and Babil Governorates in the south, in addition to Diyala Governorate in the east.
• ACTIVITIES: Less extensive than 1920 Revolution Brigades.
3. The Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front, JAMI
• ORIGIN: The newest Sunni resistance group announced its existence on 30 May 2004.
• ORGANIZATION: Includes a coalition of small resistance factions. JAMI's military wing, the Salah-al-Dinand Sayf-Allahal-Maslul Brigades, has carried out dozens of operations against the U.S. forces.
• REGION OF ACTIVITY: Governorates of Ninawa and Diyala.
• ACTIVITIES: In Ninawa Governorate: the shelling of the occupation command headquarters and the semi-daily shelling of the Mosul airport. Jami targets members of the U.S. intelligence in the Al-Faysaliyah area in Mosul and in the governorate of Diyala. In Diyala, the front's Al-Rantisi Brigade sniped a U.S. soldier and used mortars to shell Al-Faris Airport.
4. Other small factions
1. Hamzah Faction: Emerged on 10 October 2003 in Al-Fallujah. Called for release of Shaykh Jamal Nidal, who had been arrested by U.S. forces.
2. Iraqi Liberation Army: First appeared on 15 July, 2003. It warned foreign countries against sending troops to Iraq and pledged to attack any troops that were sent.
3. Awakening and Holy War: Arab Sunni mujahidin. Active in Al-Fallujah. Filmed an operation and sent tape to Iranian television on 7 July 2003. Claimed on tape that Saddam and U.S. were two sides of same coin. Claims to have carried out operations against U.S. forces in Al-Fallujah and other cities.
4. The White Flags: A group of Arab Sunni mujahidin, active in Sunni triangle and probably in other areas. Originally opposed to Saddam Hussein and in alliance with the Muslim Youths and Muhammad's Army. The group criticized the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. No information is available about their operations.
5. Al-Haqq Army: Consists of Arab Sunni Muslims having some nationalistic tendencies but not loyal to Saddam.
5. Ba'thist factions
• CHARACTER: Loyal to previous regime of Saddam Hussein. Do not represent a significant proportion of resistance.
• ACTIVITIES: Mostly restricted to financing resistance operations.
• COMPOSITION: The factions still existing secretly in the Iraqi arena include:
1. Al-Awdah (The Return): Concentrated in northern Iraq: Samarra, Tikrit, Al-Dur and Mosul. It consists of members of the former intelligence apparatus.
2. Saddam's Fedayeen: Formed by Saddam Hussein's regime before the invasion. Many of its members are rumored to have abandoned their loyalty to Saddam and to have joined Islamic and national groups on the side of the 11 September Revolutionary Group and the Serpent's Head Movement.


2. Shi'i resistance against occupation
1. Al-Sadr group: The Al-Mahdi Army
• ORIGIN: The Al-Mahdi Army is considered the only militia experiment to emerge after the occupation. Shi'i leader Muqtada al-Sadr announced the formation of the Al-Mahdi Army in July 2003, but not as a force directed against the occupation.
• COMPOSITION: Within a short period, Al-Sadr gathered between 10,000 and 15,000 well-trained youths, the majority of whom were from the poor of the Al-Sadr City, Al-Shu'lah, and the southern cities.
• ACTIVITIES: after the closure of Al-Sadr's Al-Hawzah newspaper in March 2004,Al-Sadr's assistant Mustafa al-Ya'qubi is arrested, under suspicion of being involved in the killing of Imam Abd-al-Majid al-Khu'i. A writ to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr is issued in April on charges of assassinating Al-Khu'i inside the Al-Haydari mosque in Al-Najaf on 10 April 2003. The arrest warrant placed the Al-Mahdi Army in confrontation with the occupation forces in Baghdad and the southern governorates. The greatest confrontation between this militia and the occupation forces erupted in Al-Najaf in August 2004. The battle lasted for nearly three weeks, and ended with the signing of a cease-fire agreement.
2. Imam Ali Bin-Abi-Talib Jihadi Brigades
• ORIGIN: This Shi'i group appeared for the first time on 12 October 2003.
• TARGETS: The group announced its intention to kill the soldiers of any country sending its troops to support the coalition forces. The group also threatened to transfer the battleground to the territories of coalition countries. The group also threatened to assassinate all the members of the Interim
  Governing Council and any Iraqi cooperating with the coalition forces.
  
• REGION OF PROJECTED ACTIVITIES: The group announced that Al-Najaf and Karbala were the battlegrounds in which it would target the US forces.


3. Factions which adopt terrorist methods of abductions and killing -- Armed groups that resort to operations of abducting and killing noncombatant foreigners, as a method to terrorize the enemy and apply pressure to achieve specific political ends. This method of terror was successful in pressuring Philippine President Gloria Macapagol-Arroyo to withdraw the Philippine forces from the U.S.-led coalition, after the abduction of her compatriot Angelo del Cruz on 7 July 2004.

   The most prominent of these groups are:

   1. Assadullah Brigades
   • STATEMENT: The brigades said in a statement number 50: "The mujahid is entitled to capture any infidel that enters Iraq, whether he works for a construction company or in any other job, because he could be warrior, and the mujahid has the right to kill him or take him as a prisoner."
   • REGION OF ACTIVITIES: This group is concentrated in Baghdad and its suburbs.
   • NOTABLE ACTIVITIES: This group detained the third most senior diplomat at the Egyptian Embassy to Iraq, Muhammad Mamduh Hilmi Qutb, in July 2004, after the Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif announced that Egypt was prepared to offer its security expertise to the interim Iraqi government. The diplomat was released after a week.
   2. Islamic Retaliation Movement:This group abducted the US Marine of Lebanese origin, Wasif Ali Hassun, on 19 July 2004, and then released him.
   3. Islamic Anger Brigades: This group abducted 15 Lebanese in June 2004 and then released all, except for one: Husayn Ulayyan, an employee of a communications company, who was killed.
   4. Khalid-Bin-al-Walid Brigades and Iraq's Martyrs Brigades: This group is believed to have abducted and killed Italian journalist Enzo Bladoni in August 2004.
   5. The Black Flags Group: A battalion of the Secret Islamic Army. This group abducted three Indians, two Kenyans and an Egyptian working for a Kuwaiti company operating in Iraq. The stated aim was to coerce the company to cease its activities in Iraq. The hostages were later released.
   The last four groups are clearly intellectually close to the beliefs and thinking of Al-Qa'idah Organization and its leader, Usamah Bin-Ladin.
   6. The Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi Group: "The first case of slaughter was that of US national Nicholas Berg in May 2004, and the Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi group claimed responsibility for it."
   7. The Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad Group: the Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad Group killed South Korean Kim Il, "who was working for a Korean company providing the US Army with military installations." [sic -- Most sources identify Al-Zarqawi's group as one and the same as Al-Tawhid wa Al-jihad]
   8. The Islamic Army in Iraq: "A secret organization that adopts the ideology of Al-Qa'idah. The organization abducted Iranian Consul Feredion Jahani and the two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot."
   9. Ansar al-Sunnah Movement: In August 2004, the Ansar al-Sunna Movement abducted 12 Nepalese and killed them on 23 August 2004.
   The operations of abducting hostages has cascaded in Iraq: some have been slaughtered, and others have been released.

   "The total number of hostages killed so far is: two Italians, two [now three] US nationals, two Pakistanis, one Egyptian, one Turk, one Lebanese, one Bulgarian, one South Korean, and 12 Nepalese."

Labels: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda, Al-Mahdi Army, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, hostages, Iraq, Nicholas Berg, Saddam Hussein

In an editorial in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Claudia Rosett asks U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan a trenchant question: “What’s 'Illegal'?”

Recall that last week, Mr. Annan voiced the opinion that the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein was illegal. Ms. Rosett counters:

But if Mr. Annan wants to discuss right and wrong in Iraq, which seems to be the real issue, then it is time to talk about baby formula. Why? Because Mr. Annan's preferred means of dealing with Saddam was a mix of U.N. sanctions and the U.N. relief program called Oil-for-Food. And the heart and soul of Oil-for-Food was supposed to be the feeding of sick and hungry Iraqi babies--including the purchase by Saddam, under U.N. auspices, of large amounts of baby formula.

We now know that Saddam was running a scam on his oil-for-food contracts: overpaying for the goods and collecting a substantial portion of the overpayment in kickbacks. The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that graft from the U.N. program yielded Saddam at least $10.1 billion.

"Of all the abuses of Oil-for-Food committed by Saddam--and not only allowed but in effect approved and covered up by Mr. Annan's U.N.--the most cynical has to have been the trade in baby formula."

Ironically, Saddam was able to rake off the largest payoffs from the baby formula deals, ostensibly aimed at alleviating the suffering of starving infants. In just four baby food and milk contracts examined by the Pentagon the potential overpayment was 26% for $11 million.

Meanwhile, Mr. Annan's Secretariat, charged with ensuring that the revenues were used for humanitarian purposes, collected more than $1.4 billion in commissions on Saddam's oil sales. In 2002, when Security Council by Oil-for-Food director Benon Sevan reported that acute malnutrition was still rampant among the young children of Iraq, Mr. Annan responded by urging that Saddam be permitted to sell more oil.

Ms. Rosett concludes:

Mr. Annan is due to step down next year. If he wants to leave a legacy more auspicious than having presided over Oil-for-Fraud, he might want to devote his twilight time at the U.N. to mending a system in which a U.N. Secretary-General feels free to describe the overthrow of a murderous tyrant as "illegal," but no one at the top seems particularly bothered to have presided over that tyrant's theft of food from hungry children.

Labels: Claudia Rosett, Iraq, Kofi Annan, Oil-for-Food, Saddam Hussein, United Nations

Claudia Rosett and George Russell write of apparent links between Saddam and Al Qaeda through the United Nations Oil-for-Food program at Fox News (acknowledgements to Belmont Club). By manipulating contract prices, Saddam was able to skim off billions of dollars of revenue. A key question is to what extent these revenues were used to assist Al Qaeda. Rosett, Senior Fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, sees a potential connection to Ahmed Idris Nasreddin and his business partner, Youssef Nada, whose defunct Swiss investment company, Nada Management Organization (formerly called Al Taqwa), based in Lugano, Italy has been accused by the United States of financing terror. Some of these connections between Saddam's business partners and Al Qaeda were raised in the July 8, 2004 Congressional hearing before the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

At that hearing, Ms. Rosett raised two telling points. First, it should have been obvious that something funny was going on with the "Oil-for-Food" program:

"Actually, there is something that I've been debating whether to mention, but I think I should. In discussing the palaces, the weapons, and so on, there is an arithmetic identity here that everybody keeps overlooking. Iraq's government under Saddam had no source of income other than Oil For Food, there was no tax system, there was no other source of income, except oil. Under the U.N. arrangement all oil was supposed to go through the U.N. programs, therefore, anything basically that got funded, the military, the ministries, was either illicit or went through the U.N. The world hasn't noticed this. I am not sure why this doesn't figure in the discussions. But, it would seem to be a very strangely concocted program that we had, and the assumptions that went with it, that this was simply the way it should operate becomes stranger and stranger as you see more about how this whole thing works."

Moreover, the investigation of Oil-for-Food has been as farcical as the program itself.

"...we've all been playing by the U.N. rulebook, which imposes absurd, and self-serving levels of secrecy. Does it strike no one here as strange, for instance, that the United Nations clearing Koto Annan, the son of the Secretary General, of any wrongdoing via the inspections firm Cotecna, hired by the United Nations, that this report was done by an employee of Kofi Annan, and apart from the convenient leak to produce a sympathetic article in the New York Times, it has remained the confidential property of the United Nations."

Later in the hearing, Jed Babbin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense in the George H. W. Bush administration, broadened the charge against the United Nations:

"...as serious as the oil-for-food scandal may be, it is after all only about money. There is a corruption in the U.N. and its agencies that is far more important to every American, and it is not financial corruption. It is a moral corruption, a decadence of thinking and reasoning that tolerates terrorism. No, it's more than just a tolerance -- it's an acceptance of terrorists and the nations that support them, evidencing a moral bankruptcy that is unimaginable to most Americans."

Labels: Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Claudia Rosett, Iraq, Jed Babbin, Kofi Annan, Koto Annan, Oil-for-Food, Saddam Hussein, United Nations, Youssef Nada

The July 14 escape of bomber Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi and two Abu Sayyaf terrorists from a Manila jail was far too easy. There was no question of the importance of al-Ghozi. A militant operative of Jemaah Islamiyah, al Ghozi was serving a 17-year jail term for killing 22 in a December 2000 bombing of a rail coach in Manila. His two companions, Abdul Mukhim Edris and Omar Opik Lasal, were members of a terrorist group that openly boasted of financial ties to Saddam Hussein. Remarkably, an international terrorist could simply walk out of his jail, unnoticed, leaving the cell gate locked behind him. His absence was not noticed until the next morning.

Initially, investigators assumed that the prisoners had a set of keys, so that they could (politely?) lock the gate behind them. Possession of keys proved pointless, however, when it was discovered the locked gate could be lifted off of its hinges and opened easily.

As more details emerged from the Philippines, the escape looked to be more the result of conspiracy than incompetence. Abu Ali, ex-prisoner and member of Abu Sayyaf turned state witness, was hired as a "utility boy” at the jail and granted access to all of the cells. He confessed to telling al-Ghozi about the defective gate.

Guards were first said to be asleep, drunk, or out getting snacks. One of the guards who had said he was sleeping, however, has since changed his story. Ronald Palmeras now claims he was called away from his post at midnight by his supervisor. A sinister footnote: though Palmeras has asked to go into the witness protection program, his request has been denied on the absurd grounds that police officers do not need protection.

Supt. Reuben Galban, dismissed chief of the Intelligence Group’s Foreign Intelligence Liaison Office, admitted to having returned to Camp Crame around the time of the jailbreak, but denies any involvement. It was Galban, however, who had moved al-Ghozi out of a higher-security cell.

Rumors that Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director-General Hermogenes Ebdane was meeting in Mindanao with people handling al-Ghozi, or that Ebdane already had al-Ghozi in custody were also vehemently denied.

Frustration with widespread corruption is affecting military morale in the war on terror. Ten junior officers attempted a coup today against the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Storming a shopping center, they planted explosives and released a video to telelevision stations in which they

accused the Philippine military of selling ammunition to rebel groups, such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Abu Sayyaf and the communist New People's Army. "The bullets killing our comrades came from the Armed Forces of the Philippines," a voice on the tape said. "The real terrorists are in our government."
Rogue Officers Storm Commercial Center in Manila

The coup was eventually foiled , though only two of the junior officers have been captured so far.

In the midst of all this unrest, plans are said to going forward still for the visit of President Bush to the Philippines in October.

Labels: Abu Sayyaf, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Jema'ah Islamiyah, Jemaah Islamiyah, Manila, MILF, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Philippines, Saddam Hussein

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Is there anything new to say about those 16 words in President Bush's State of the Union address? Perhaps.

In a column published in today’s Washington Post, David Ignatius claims the president's words were misleading, but not in ways most critics have suggested. Ignatius complains that the president was not disclosing new British intelligence, that the British intelligence was "almost certainly" based upon French intelligence, and that the information was not based upon the documents that were exposed as crude forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I suppose readers are to figure out for themselves how any of the above considerations show Bush was misleading. I confess that I cannot. How could it be misleading to make a claim that actually had better support than it was subsequently, and erroneously, believed to have?

Well, did Bush speak the truth? Some commentators take it as obvious that his remarks, taken literally, are true. Matthew Miller writes: "those 16 words (citing British suspicions on Iraqi activity) for which Bush staffers keep apologizing were literally true." Kevin McCullough argues in a similar vein: "Let's be clear here – all the 16 words say is: 'This is what the Brits have learned.' In order to be able to prove the veracity of the statement, one must simply ask the British."

This defense of Bush's statement fails to be clever by at least a half. Learned is what philosophers call a "success verb." If Iraq did not seek to buy uranium ore from Africa, then the Brits could not have learned that they did. In this respect, Learn is like know and not like claim or allege. You can make a mistaken claim, but you cannot learn -- or know -- what isn't so.

All right, but did British intelligence learn that Iraq sought African uranium ore, so called yellowcake, or did they not? Alas, there is not enough information in the public domain to know, but the widely held impression that the British claim was based upon the forgeries looks to be plainly false. Reports have surfaced just this past week that the British based their claim on French intelligence that, in turn, was based on human intelligence and not upon the fraudulent documents (Nick Fielding, "French Uncovered Niger 'Link'" Sunday Times, July 20, 2003).

If we should come to learn that Bush was mistaken, does it follow that Bush lied? Of course not. One can speak a falsehood and not be lying. For, if one thinks one has good and sufficient reason to make a claim, then one does not lie, even if one turns out to be wrong. Unless we have reason to think Bush did not believe what he claimed – and we do not -- then we have no reason to say he was lying.

So, why all the hubbub? It is no mystery why those wishing to extract some partisan advantage would try to keep this story alive. But why did the Bush administration concede that the sixteen words should not have been in the speech, and why have they helped keep the story alive by bringing forward people –first George Tenet, and now, Stephen Hadley -- to take the blame? Why should there be any blame? Why didn't the claim belong in the speech in the first place?

Ignatius only comes close to the answer. He points to the wide technological gap that separates merely having uranium ore on hand from possessing the fissile material required for nuclear weapons. In order to make nuclear weapons using uranium ore, one needs to have the highly sophisticated capabilities required to enrich uranium. One method involves the use of gas centrifuges. Ignatius points out that the British estimated in their September dossier that Iraq was at least five years away from producing fissile material indigenously.

So, essentially, Ignatius thinks Bush was misleading, not in what he said, but in what he didn’t say. He thinks Bush should have also said that the Iraqis were years away from being able to manufacture fissile material from uranium ore. Yet, perhaps that too would have been misleading. We know the Iraqi regime was very close to having the conversion technology in 1991. Ignatius himself concedes that Bush's larger concerns about Iraqi nuclear ambitions and capabilities were vindicated by the Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeide's disclosure last month of his orders to bury plans and equipment for gas centrifuges beneath his backyard garden in Baghdad.

Yet, even if the Iraqis were not close to converting uranium ore into fissile material, that would not have rightly alleviated the legitimate concern regarding their capability to build nuclear weapons, should they have proven able to purchase weapons-grade uranium itself. The threat that would have been posed by any purchase of fissile material would have greatly exceeded the danger of their having attempted to procure uranium ore from Africa or anywhere else.

In any event, should much have been made of an attempt to get uranium ore? Perhaps not. Edward Jay Epstein observes that if the Iraqis had only needed uranium ore to build bombs, they would have found it far handier to look to their own phosphate deposits, near the Syrian border, in Al Qaim.

So, at long last, we have come upon a slight reason why perhaps too much should not have been made of any alleged Iraqi attempt to obtain uranium ore. Obtaining uranium ore is a lot easier than refining it into weapons-grade material. Yet, that is public knowledge. Politicians cannot claim they were misled about the relative importance of uranium ore procurement without admitting that they didn’t know what they should have known. So, ironically, perhaps the best reason why the 16 words should not have been in a State of the Union speech is a reason that cannot be readily exploited for partisan advantage.

Finally, and most importantly, if the essential mistake was one of emphasis, if in a mere 16 words the president gave the British allegation more prominence than it deserved, then that relatively trivial overemphasis is no match for the unwarrantedly excessive coverage this matter of the 16 words has subsequently received.

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, sixteen words, State of the Union Address, uranium ore, yellowcake