QandO

July 23, 2004

Saddam and Usama. Or Osama. Or whatever the heck his name is
Posted by Dale Franks

Byron York details some of the 9/11 Commision's report about Iraq and al-Qaida. Remember when we were told that they'd never ever cooperate with each other, because Osama hated Iraq's secular Ba'athist government?

In February 1999, for example, the CIA proposed U-2 aerial-surveillance missions over Afghanistan. The report says that Richard Clarke, then the White House counterterrorism chief, worried that the mission might spook bin Laden into leaving Afghanistan for somewhere where it might be even more difficult for American forces to reach him:

Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared.

National-security adviser Sandy Berger suggested that the U.S. send just one U-2 flight, but the report says Clarke worried that even then, Pakistan's intelligence service would warn bin Laden that the U.S. was preparing for a bombing campaign. "Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad," Clarke wrote in a February 11, 1999 e-mail to Berger. The report says that another National Security Council staffer also warned that "Saddam Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad."

"Boogie to Baghdad", indeed.

So, essentially, Clinton's National Security people knew that Saddam and Osama had some flirty thing happening. Yet, the Democrats were unsparing in their criticism that OBL and Saddam would never, ever be interested in any convergence of interests. Both the New York Times and Washington Post assured us repeatedly that this talk of al-Qaida-Iraq ties were nonsense.

Well, it seems they both hated us more than they hated each other, and that there were links between them.

<sarcasm>I'm confident that both the Times and Post will soon make appropriate and highly public corrections.</sarcasm>

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