Articles, Comments

What Makes People so Stupid?

by Syed Kamran Mirza

November 22, 2004

For all these years after 9/11 tragedy I was always telling my peers that though it was orchestrated by Osama's grand terrorist team al-Qaeda-there must have been at least some sort of supports (Direct or Indirect) from other Muslim countries, especially Iraq and Saudi Arabia.  Why not? The famous universally true proverb could not be untrue! Which is: "Enemy of the enemy is my friend indeed".  Undoubtedly, America has humiliated Saddam's regime most, hence America has become the enemy #1 of Saddam. On the other side, Osama Bin Laden already declared America the enemy #1. Therefore, 1+1=2, Osama + Saddam= (become good buddies) Great enemies of Kafiir America-the great Satan. Even a child of 10 year can guess this equation.  Mysterious question is-why then 9/11 commission failed to understand this simple equation?

With this above universally true perception, American public in general immediately suspected Saddam and Osama for the 9/11 incident. This was the only factor why the national poll on justification of Bush's Iraq invasion-poll never came down below 70% even until a few weeks before 2004 election. About a few days before the election when Bush was suffering heavily by media's lambasting, his poll on Iraq invasion still remained above 50% surprisingly.  

The 9/11 commission was formed mostly by some aggressive senators from Democratic Party, some from Republican Party and a few non-partisan American citizen. After almost year-long investigations the commission concluded that-al-Qaeda was purely stateless and never had any connection with the American enemy #1 Saddam's Iraq. But world knows for sure that al-Qaeda was operating their heinous terrorism right from the lap of Taliban Afghanistan. Question is how then al-Qaeda was stateless?  

Let us judge some prudently relevant incidences:

1) According to intelligence relayed in the famous Douglas Feith memo to Congress revealed by the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri (now the Number 2 in the al-Qaeda hierarchy) paid a visit to Baghdad and immediately met with Iraqi Vice President Ramadan on February 3, 1998.  According to the Feith memo, "the [stated] goal of the visit was to arrange for the coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in Falluja, Nasiriya, and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of Abdul Aziz." This visit went well - very well. Saddam's intelligence service in essence cut a check directly to Zawahiri, for $300,000.

2) After he received Saddam's payout, Zawahiri immediately folded up his tent and irrevocably merged his organization with bin Laden's.  "The merger was de facto complete by February 1998," the 9/11 Report states.

Zawahiri most likely used it to fund the merger costs: to regularize the training and indoctrination of jihad recruits and to jump-start the new project initiatives of al-Qaeda. 

3) Dr. Zawahiri had always enjoyed the reception Saddam gave him. He had already met Saddam personally six years earlier, in 1992, to plot terror. But in 1998, within a month of Saddam's payout and Zawahiri's merger with bin Laden, Saddam suddenly started ramping up his collaboration with al-Qaeda. 

4) The 9/11 Report states, "In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's [Commission spelling] public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one or perhaps both of these meetings were apparently arranged through Bin Ladin's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis."

 
 5) One way to exact the proper revenge was to keep the money flowing to al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Former Iraqi intelligence officer Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, now in a Kurdish jail, told Jonathan Schanzer of the Weekly Standard that he personally was an aid conduit to Ansar al-Islam on Saddam's orders. Ansar al-Islam is, of course, an al-Qaeda affiliate that was badly bombed during Operation Iraqi Freedom. We gave them money every month or two, Shamari recounted, noting that "on one occasion we gave them 10 million Swiss dinars [about $700,000]." Shamari's immediate boss was high-ranking Saddam loyalist and Mukhabarat officer Abu Wael. Saddam used Ansar al-Islam to make trouble in the pro-Western Kurdish north of Iraq, Shamari explained. Mullah Krekar, the spiritual head of Ansar al-Islam, while protected by the government of Norway, actually admitted to ABC News that Abu Wael "is an Arabic member of our shura, our leadership council also."

7) And, of course, there was always Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi is to this day writing letters to Osama bin Laden begging for cash to fund his bombings of Iraqi and coalition targets inside Iraq. One of these was intercepted en route via courier and published by Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer on the Web site of the Coalition Provisional Authority. But Zarqawi didn't show up in Iraq out of a seething but justified sense of outrage over the U.S. occupation. Before the Iraq War, Zarqawi had his own camps in northern Iraq, where he made poisons. He was a ricin specialist, according to Colin Powell in his February 2003 address to the U.N. Security Council. 

8) One of these camps, searched by the Marines earlier this year, turned up a 7-pound block of pure, ready-to-use cyanide. Saddam had his own paid man working right under Zarqawi. When Zarqawi became ill in May of 2002, Saddam put him up in Baghdad's best hospital - used only by the loyalist elite - for two months. Zarqawi never saw the tab. From his bedside, with Saddam's approval, Zarqawi held court over perhaps 24 jihadis in his own group, which coordinated al-Qaeda travelers in and out of the country to places like Saudi Arabia. In case the world missed the point, Zarqawi and his group this week reportedly declared their solemn allegiance to Osama bin Laden and merged with al-Qaeda.

9) He sent the deputy head of the Iraqi Mukhabarat, Farouk Hijazi, on a secret mission through the high Hindu Kush mountains in wintry December 1998 to Kandahar to meet with bin Laden, according to the liberal British newspaper The Guardian. Was Hijazi carrying money with him? Unfortunately, the 9/11 Commission wasn't interested in asking. But one remarkable thing immediately happened: according to the 9/11 Report, bin Laden, now confident in the backing of Saddam's Iraq, and "apparently at [military chief] Muhammed Atef 's urging, finally decided to give al-Qaeda planner Khalid Sheik Mohammed the green light for the 9/11 operation," the Report states.
 
10) Saddam used his Mukhabarat operative in Prague, Ahmed al-Ani, to keep tabs on the 9/11 project through its ringleader, Mohamed Atta. Saddam also employed Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, a lieutenant colonel in the Fedayeen Saddam, to babysit some of the 9/11 hijackers in Kuala Lumpur.

11) As September 11, 2001, loomed, Saddam could hardly conceal his anticipation. Two months before 9/11, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper Al-Nasiriya carried a column headlined "America, An Obsession Called Osama Bin Ladin." In the piece, Ba'ath Party writer Naeem Abd Muhalhal predicted that bin Laden would attack the U.S. "with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House." Saddam's writer also insisted that bin Laden "will strike America on the arm that is already hurting [i.e., the economy] and that the U.S. "will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs" - an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic "New York, New York."

12) A mere two weeks before the strike, Saddam put his entire military on high alert, expecting the United States to bomb him in response. Only a single news source, Con Coughlin of the British Daily Telegraph, reported this fact, which has never since been disputed.

13)  Headquarters of al-Zarkawi found in Fallujah. Command and control center of Jordanian Terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been fond in Fallujah. Bomb-making shop, documents, photographs, old computers and copies of the Quran found. A large sign in Arabic read:
"Al-Qaeda Organization" and "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger."

Now it is very strange and utterly hypocritical why in the world that erudite 9/11 commission found no connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hossain. Whatmakes the real connection between the two rogue groups? Does it require a marriage ceremony to have connection?  

Money was always the core factor for the al-Qaeda group to launch world-wide terrorist campaign against America. In addition to those world wide Muslim charities, Saudi Arabia and Saddam's Iraq were the two nations funneled millions of dollars and moral boosting to this rogue al-Qaeda who vowed to dedicate their life to hurt America anywhere in the world. 

Could it be possible that the 9/11 commission was highly politically motivated only to un-seat Bush for the second term in White house? Was it a dire conspiracy? Only time will tell that.

No wonder Bush-Cheney regime never agreed with 9/11 commission or with any other party and they were beating their drum louder and clear that-Saddam did have connection with al-Qaeda. George Bush was all along very adamant and strong in his conviction. This forceful conviction of George Bush brought him the jubilant victory on November 2, 2004 Presidential election. No doubt about it!

Source:

1) Saddam, the ATM of Al-Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 16, 2004
(Christopher S. Carson, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, is an attorney in private practice in Milwaukee.)

2) Washington Post, November 19, 2004